No one really tells you how to look for a home — and I don’t mean a structure with four walls and a front door.
I mean the place you’re proud to be part of, to describe to people who’ve never been, to bond over with strangers you’ve just met.
If I’m honest, my husband Cody and I started our search for a new home from vastly different perspectives: I’m a Guyanese-American Black woman raised by Caribbean parents in an eclectic corner of North Jersey.
I grew up proudly wearing my badge of independence as I took the bus and train between my hometown and New York City, the sound of different languages lulling me to sleep on the way home from Manhattan.
Cody, the firstborn in a blended, mostly evangelical family, jumped at the chance to leave rural Indiana as soon as he was able. He craved walkability, third spaces, and access to culturally diverse communities.
We met nearly 12 years ago in North Carolina and, for a while, found some common ground in Durham — its tight-knit community felt familiar to me, and the (semi) walkable neighborhoods suited him.
When remote companies became our sole source of work, we found ourselves with the freedom and opportunity to do what we hadn’t before: travel overseas.
Soon, we began to wonder if home might exist outside the contiguous US.
Throughout our summer of travel, we began looking for a place to settle
Ashley Stahm
We’d never been to Europe, so we took two months in the summer of 2023 to travel to Paris, Nice, and Cassis, France; Brussels, Belgium; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and London, England.
Those cities, of course, are as different as the four corners of the US, and perhaps even more so due to linguistic, cultural, and climate differences.
We packed a single checked bag and hauled it from city to city on trains and across cobblestones, shedding our crewnecks and rain jackets as we walked along Amsterdam’s canals for shorts and bathing suits in the south of France.
We loved the bicycle infrastructure in Amsterdam, the café culture in Paris, and the cultural diversity and ample green space in London.
However, our research taught us that the Netherlands, France, and the UK would not be particularly easy countries for us to immigrate to.
Not to mention, we stayed in each city during the summer, experiencing the most vibrant version of each. What would living in London feel like in winter, with the sun lost behind endless overcast skies? What would Paris be like when it rained days on end?
Ashley Stahm
Around six weeks into our foray across those four countries that summer, we took a beat. What, exactly, were we looking for?
We’d seen Big Ben. We’d seen the Eiffel Tower. We’d biked across canals in Amsterdam, and had Belgian waffles in the place they originated because, well, of course we did.
The magic of our first European tour was captivating, sure, but we were looking for a home.
We realigned on the basics: We specifically wanted a place where we could build a childfree community. We craved places for adults to meet and support one another, with the intent of growing old together.
We never, ever wanted to own a car again. We wanted healthcare to feel accessible. We needed a feasible way to immigrate and integrate, language, bureaucracy, and all.
We wanted to be in this new home for the long haul.
As our travels continued, we found a not-so-great fit and one city that felt right
Ashley Stahm
It was with that renewed direction that we went home and planned for our next trip across the Atlantic: this time to Lisbon, Portugal, and Barcelona, Spain.
Although their two countries shared a border, these two cities couldn’t have been more different to us.
In Barcelona, Catalan was spoken so widely that my high-school Spanish wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. Between the stifling summer heat and what I perceived as a noticeable lack of visible representation of dark-skinned Black (and Afro-Caribbean) women like myself, the city just wasn’t a match for me.
I wasn’t expecting to see reflections of myself everywhere; I was in Europe, after all. However, knowing that Spain is home to millions of immigrants, I also hadn’t expected to feel so conspicuous and be pored over so much.
Although I left Spain feeling more alienated than ever, Portugal soon stole our hearts.
Everywhere I looked, I saw melanin. Throughout our time in Lisbon, I heard a mix of languages and accents — not just European Portuguese, but also Brazilian, Angolan, and Mozambican Portuguese, along with French and English — reflecting the diversity of the people around me.
I sat among greenery, quiosques, miradouros, and old ladies in crisp slacks with beers in hand at 11 a.m., gossiping with their neighbors before heading to the local tasca for almoço and a pastel de nata.
For us, Lisbon felt like it could be home.
After 2 years of searching, we’ve settled on Lisbon
Ashley Stahm
Eventually, we decided to move to Portugal’s capital city, where we had found walkable neighborhoods and a social community of both locals and expats — just as we’d hoped.
It’s warm and sunny year-round, so we didn’t need to worry so much about possible gloominess during other seasons.
Portugal also offers a universal public healthcare system that seems accessible, plus more visa routes than some other countries we’d considered.
Like most truly multicultural countries, though, it is grappling with geopolitical and economic friction that we’re still learning about.
However, there was what was on our list, and then there was what our hearts needed: A country willing to welcome us, teach us, and be patient (as we figured out how to file our immigration paperwork in a language we’re still learning).
We’re immigrants in a land whose respect we are still earning, alongside friends from all over the globe who are starting over, just like us. The effort is well worth it.
From where we stand, a full two years after we began our search, we’re finally home.
