So, you've made the decision to move to Germany? Yeah, I did
that too. I went to Berlin for a week's
holiday, and by lunchtime on day two, I had decided that I just had to
be a part of it. One of my friends described it as 'the place where young
people go to retire....' and she was
right. Vibrant, fun, creative and tragically 'poor but sexy', it seemed to be
perfect to me. (If I am honest, that
sounds like my perfect guy, but in city form...)
When I got home to Ireland, I immediately turned in my
notice at work and got about setting up my 'neues Leben'. This is where the fun started- turns out
going on holiday is very different from moving country. Uh oh.
Thing is, there really is only so much you can do before you
actually get to Germany. Sure, you can
look for jobs, but it really is distinctly more difficult to do this
remotely. Accommodation wise, I was really lucky and met a friend of a
friend who needed a room mate- many people I know camp out on friend's sofas
for, at the very least, a few weeks, until they find somewhere more
permanent. Besides booking my flight and
looking (unsuccessfully) for jobs online, I couldn't really do much until I
landed in Deutschland.
In the meantime I was linked by friends to myGermanExpert.
At this stage a new company, it helped
people moving to Germany to deal with the mountains of bureaucracy that they
would be bombarded with. I thought this
was a great idea, but not really knowing what to expect, had no idea of just
how useful I would find it.
Wow. Fast forward to the first week in Germany, and I was
emailing myGermanExpert nearly every day for advice. There are a lot of new obstacles to overcome
in any new country, and Germany is no different. Whilst my German is strong
enough for conversations, high level important German.... well... I felt
out of my depth.
Registering at the Bürgeramt
was one such example of feeling overwhelmed.
If I had done it my way, I would have just strolled up to the office,
merrily asking to become 'eine echte Berlin Frau, bitte.' myGermanExpert had a way better
approach. By which, of course, I mean
the correct approach. The website
clearly tells you what you need, and it includes much more than just a merry
attitude to citizenship. When I went to
the Bürgeramt, I
followed everything myGermanExpert told me, and unlike every other story I
had heard, I was in and out of the place within an hour. (To put this in
context, many of my friends had warned me to expect sitting around for hours on
end. If I had done it my way, I know this
is what would have happened.)
From this simple registration, everything else opens up for
you. A word of warning though- Berlin is
pretty much the most exciting place in the world, so its hard to remain focused
on boring things like banks and taxes and jobs. Why would you bother with that when all of the fun things you could
possibly imagine are on your doorstep?!
Cat
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| Cat (left) with a friend in party format., completely sober apparently |
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