On migrating from the United States to Germany to Switzerland

When I went to Berlin for a year in 1991, I did not think of it as migrating, because I did not plan to stay in Germany. After twenty months there, I moved to Saarbrücken, Germany, where I taught English at the Universiety for two-and-a-half years while finishing my dissertation. I still did not think of myself as a migrant, because I still did not plan to stay in Germany. On 1 October 1995, I moved to Basel, Switzerland, to teach English at the University for two years. Perhaps I could have begun to think of myself as a migrant by 1997, when my contract was extended for three more years. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 October 2023)