2021#

After having lived in Amsterdam and the Netherlands for almost 4 years (just two weeks short of that milestone) I decided to leave and move to Berlin in Germany.

It is a hard change, things were good at Booking.com until 2019 and I had a very enjoyable life in the Netherlands, but then during the pandemic and lockdowns everything went down hard and took a huge toll on many people including myself. It made me reevaluate many things about the kind of environment I’d like to be working at, and how in specially turbulent times they handle their relationship with their employees.

I tried looking for other jobs during most of 2020 but it was hard, many companies had hiring freezes, others were only hiring for more experienced roles and so on. On the personal side, the isolation was very draining, many friends left for their home countries, and in my poor mental state I also isolated myself from the ones still living there. It truly felt like the apocalypse and like things were never going to go back to how they used to be.

After a very long search for a new job in the Netherlands I decided to expand my search to other countries, and very quickly found a job in Berlin. I took it without thinking twice (or even talking about it with my friends and family) because at the time it was the only path I saw forward to escape the situation I was in.

2025#

When looking back from 2025, in hindsight it feels like it was a rushed decision, it has had pros and cons, but ultimately something that was the best I could do at the time.

Moving from Colombia to the Netherlands was not as hard of a change, yes I was moving away from my family and lifelong friends, but it was a change that came out of the possibility of something new and expanding my horizons, back then I felt 100% it was time to leave Colombia to explore the wider world. But leaving the Netherlands was something that didn’t come out of those things, but out of desperation to escape a bad situation and something that even at the time I was not certain was the right thing.

Berlin came with more extremes, the good things were incredibly good, but the bad things were really awful. Both in personal life and work I had more personal achievements and growth but also terrible people.

If I had to make the same decision today, I’d not confidently say I’d do it again, nor that I’d definitely not do it, I’d instead just talk it out with people who want the best for me and go by their advice.