How I ended up living in a German village with two alpacas, 13 chickens, a dog, a cat and a German fiancé

In today‘s Alumni Profile, Sarah Mamer looks back at connections forged during her time in Freiburg – and how she found joy in German village life. 

By Sarah Mamer (AYF 2008-09)

Presenting a fierce silken chicklet

I enrolled in the AYF program for 2008-2009 to spend a year of my undergrad degree studying and living in the city of Freiburg. 12 years later, I’m (still) here. During my time in the AYF program, I was able to deeply immerse myself into German society, forge meaningful connections with German friends, and become part of a German family for whom I babysat. Getting used to German culture wasn’t always easy, but once I felt at home, I knew I wanted to stay. After going back to my home university – UW Madison – to complete my bachelor’s degree, I was on a plane back to Germany less than a week after my last exam.

May 2011, I returned to Germany with a bachelor’s degree in political science and absolutely no clue what to do with myself. Thankfully, I had an amazing support network of friends, my German host family, and the AYF alumni network to help me overcome the hurdles of finding a place to stay, getting a visa, and working in order to make ends meet.

I spent that first year after my bachelor’s degree, which I fondly think back on as my “freshman year of life,” figuring out what should come next. I spent 6 months as a live-in nanny in France learning the language. After that, I returned to Freiburg and bounced around living on different friends’ couches while taking random university classes. Meanwhile, I was juggling teaching English and waitressing to get by. In that year, I learned more than I had in the previous four years combined, and I finally knew what I wanted to study: linguistics. I began an M.A. in Linguistics at the University of Freiburg and spent the following two years studying linguistics with a focus on second language acquisition. During this master’s program, I was able to continue teaching English to support myself.

Sarah and Ulli with advice for our times: Meet outside and keep one alpaca length distance between you!

When my master’s program was complete, I decided to look for a full-time job in Germany. Through a German friend, I found an entry level position as an assistant at a company which provides professional development courses for specialists and managers in a variety of fields. This wasn’t directly related to my master’s in linguistics, but adult education seemed like a good place to start. Being a native English speaker came in very handy at this job. I was called in to advise on all kinds of marketing topics, proofread offers in English, and after a short time, I took over as product manager for all the international business courses and English courses that the company offered. Another short while later, I found myself responsible for digitizing the company’s courses and leading software projects to automate and optimize our business processes for digital learning. Do I directly use my master’s degree in my work? No, but it opened the door for me to get into adult education and project management. That’s just my day job, though. 😊

My real passion, and I think of it as my other job: I love to collect fluffy animals. My favourite thing about my life in Germany is that here, you work to live, you don’t live to work. I’m able to keep a healthy work-life balance, and as a result, I have quite a bit of free time. I decided to spend that time doing what I love – and ideally something that would balance out stressful project management life in the office. I love fluffy animals more than anything, and I wanted to be able to surround myself with them and spend my time with them. Therefore, I moved out into the countryside to a house with a relatively large garden and a pasture nearby. I’m currently filling the pasture with a herd of alpacas, whose wool I collect and knit. I’ve filled the garden with a flock of fluffy chickens called silkie chickens. I breed them, collect their eggs, name them after influential female figures, and love to watch and pet them. My fluffy Pomeranian named Yoko-Ono comes with me everywhere. That’s an added bonus of Germany: most shops and restaurants allow dogs, so Yoko is my full-time sidekick. The cat and the fiancé found me, but I’m not complaining, and I intend to keep them around.

When I started my year abroad, I never dreamed it would change the full course of my life, but I am so glad it did. The path less travelled wasn’t always easy, but for me it’s been worth it. I couldn’t have done it without the support of the AYF program, my German (host) family, my (very tolerant and understanding) US family, and all the friends and companions who have come and gone along the way.

Sarah and her budding alpaca herd.

Contributions to our communal story telling are invited through the AYF Alumni Profiles Project page!