Fireside Chats, Episode 86: An American in Germany (Patreon)

A few months ago, a 21 year old college student reached out with an idea for Fireside Chats, and his pitch was simple: He's an American who, because of his father's military service, pretty much grew up entirely in Germany. In one of his e-mails to me, he wrote, in part: "My experience at home was weird and still mostly American...  but in all other aspects I grew up as just a regular German kid, despite not having German citizenship." That alone is a fascinating enough pitch for me, and so we built an episode entirely around it. What's it like calling two places home? What's it like calling two cultures yours? And, perhaps most pivotally, what's it like to hail from a country you don't know nearly as well as the one you adopted? Can you ever go back? Do you ever want to go back? Where do you belong? Let's jump in and find out.