About

Author: Sabine Muscat

A journalist by profession and a China geek by education, I spent many years traveling between Berlin and Beijing. But life is what happens while you make other plans, as John Lennon famously said, and in December 2007 I arrived in Washington, D.C. as the U.S. correspondent for Financial Times Deutschland – with two suitcases and my grandmother’s carpet.

Five years later, in December 2012, FTD became a victim of the seemingly endless crisis in the German media. I remained in D.C., covering political, economic and social trends in the U.S. for German TV channel N24, Capital magazine and others. And I started this blog.

Finally, in the summer of 2015, I made it back to Germany, with my American husband, our son and our dog – and, of course, the carpet. I enjoy writing about our new life in Stuttgart for the Wall Street Journal’s Expat Blog, as well as catching up on all things China as a contractor for the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

So the carpet has flown full circle in some ways, but not in many others.

Illustration: Annika Giesbert

Annika Giesbert designed the website illustration which represents my journey between Beijing, Berlin and Washington, DC. Missing on the carpet is Alzenau in Unterfranken (Lower Franconia) where Annika and I went to high school together.

A product designer and carpenter by education, Annika answered her calling to combine her passions. She designs furniture and interiors with Boris Richter from their home and workplace in the Harz, the rugged mountain range in the center of Germany.

In her design education she specialized on working with glass and on the art of food presentation. She applied those skills when she worked as an event planner in Berlin.