I met Ricky and Klaus last year in September. They had come for a guided tour in Timisoara, and the company where Klaus was going to work collaborates with us for welcoming and guiding their future expatriates. As always, we prepared a personalized tour of the city, for which we take into account the nationality of our clients (for cultural reasons), their family status and their hobbies.

For example, for a family coming from France, we will organize a visit to the French Institute, so that they may know its location and services, while for a family coming from Germany, the tour will include, among others, the German Theatre and the German Cultural Centre. Similarly, for a family with school children, we will prepare visits to the schools where they could be integrated, depending on age, mother tongue and facilities existing in Timisoara.

I liked Ricky and Klaus right from the beginning: they were both very open, very friendly, communicating in a free and smart way. They elicited my admiration through their care for their 7 year old daughter. First and foremost they thought about the opportunities that existed in Timisoara for her, whether she was going to be able to adapt and whether she was going to be okay. We visited a public school, with instruction in German, but I could see they were very worried and concerned. Something did not seem right for them.

We stopped a little, taking advantage of the wonderful weather, and started to talk as from parent to parent. I told them that our son is of the same age as their daughter, that he goes to a public school, but in a class using an alternative teaching method. Then the idea that brought them peace came to my mind. I called immediately, set up a meeting at a private school, we visited it… In a few months, Ricky and Klaus came back to Romania, accompanied by their daughter. We visited the school again, they chose a nice home and things settled for them nicely: they could come light-heartedly to Timisoara, as their future life here began to take a concrete shape, where they could imagine themselves.

Now, Ricky and Klaus have been living in Timisoara for almost three months. Their daughter goes to school, she made ​​a few friends, has many extracurricular activities, is very busy and starts to like her new life. She was a little sad for her birthday, when she has just started school and didn’t know too many children, but we all called her and in the afternoon she seemed better.

As for Ricky, for me she is a model of fast and mature integration. She uses her years of experience as an expatriate living in the United States, she knows how to make friends, talks to everybody, even if she hasn’t learned Romanian yet. She quickly made a few friends, because she went to the gym and there she met a few trustful ladies, she introduced herself to several mothers in her daughter’s class and, this way, soon her phone agenda was full of contacts from Romania. As she has already gone through a similar adaptation process in a foreign country, this time she knew what to do and did not hesitate to do it. Another great advantage that Ricky has is that in the United States she became a yoga teacher. In a very short time after their arrival in Timisoara, she found a gym where she began to teach, then a second one, and now she’s so busy that she rarely finds time for a coffee…