One Year in Berlin
Part 1: Why I moved to Berlin, & tips on how to move here
“Berlin is poor but sexy.” —Abraham Lincoln
I’ve been meaning to write about my move to Berlin. Then so much time went by, and I had other things to focus on (like finding a job or finding a flat), and the process of moving here is so complex that documenting the whole thing felt overwhelming…so I never wrote anything.
I’ve been living in Berlin for a year now (my Berlinerversary was May 23), and reaching this milestone spurred me into writing it all down.
I’m going to cover:
Why I moved to Berlin
General tips for moving to Berlin
A timeline of my moving process
What living in Berlin (as a queer black person) is like for me
Note: this post got long, and I’m not even done writing, so I’m moving points 3 and 4 to the next newsletter. You can sign up if you don’t want to miss it.
Why Berlin?
From a logical standpoint, I chose Berlin because it had the aspects I desired in a city:
- international city in which many languages are spoken
- good public transportation
- large queer scene
- thriving nightlife
- affordable
St. Louis was affordable, but it wasn’t checking the other boxes for me. If I were to remain in the United States, then Chicago, New York, or D.C. might have been the closest I could come to living in an international city where many languages are spoken. But that’s not the same as living in a country that actually functions in a language that is foreign to you. I’d have to actively seek out opportunities to use a different language instead of being surrounded by it every day. And don’t get me started on public transit in the U.S.
The next question is how did Berlin even end up on my radar, and why Berlin instead of some other non-U.S. city? This part is less about logic and more about emotions.
Duolingo
One summer day in 2017, I learned that Duolingo had added Japanese to their app. I had studied Japanese in college and lived in Kyoto for some time, but it had been a little over a year since I had lived in Japan, and my Japanese skills were deteriorating. I hastily downloaded Duolingo, excited to practice again. That’s when I found out that Duolingo had only released Japanese for iOS. When it comes to mobile apps, us Android users are always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
So there I was with a language-learning app on my phone and my target language nowhere to be found. I thought, “Welp, I guess I’ll just start learning another language in the meantime.” This is fun for me; don’t fret.
I randomly chose German. After all, it’s not like starting a language track on Duolingo is a big commitment. I was merely there for entertainment. I wasn’t learning much other than basic vocabulary, but German was consistently on my mind because I wanted to keep my Duolingo streak going.
Free Graduate School
I was interacting with German frequently, so eventually I wanted to know more about Germany. I looked up the cost of living in Germany. I think at the time I was looking at various German cities and wasn’t focused on Berlin. I learned that if I were to go to grad school in Germany, I wouldn’t have to take the GRE or ask for recommendation letters.
I had no desire to take another standardized test, and I dislike asking for recommendation letters, so this was a big plus. Yes, I considered moving across the world just to avoid asking for recommendation letters. More importantly, the education would be practically free. Major plus.
I also found out that healthcare is cheaper in Germany, and I learned about the U-Bahn and S-Bahn systems. I was sold. I started looking for Master’s programs in linguistics and found a cool program in Berlin that was taught in English.
A friend of mine was also looking to study for a Master’s degree in Europe, so we were planning our moves together and encouraging each other.
I wrote this to my friend after learning that AfD, a right-wing German political party, won 13% of the votes. Incidentally, it is Election Day in Germany as I write this letter.
I eventually decided that I didn’t want to go to school again. Not even if it were free. Plus, I didn’t want my move to be bound to an admissions cycle. That could mean waiting a year, and I don’t like to wait.
Cro
Time passed, and I was really enjoying the German language. I wanted more language exposure. I watched a German drama on Amazon Prime called You are Wanted. The show takes place in Berlin, and I got to see a bit of the city that way. I also searched YouTube for German music. That’s when I found Cro.
Cro is a German rapper and hip-hop artist. I’d describe him as the German Eminem, except I don’t think his rhymes and wordplay are anywhere near the level of Slim Shady. Then again, I don’t understand German that well, so what do I know.
When I first watched the video for “Unendlichkeit,” it was musical euphoria. Despite the number of times I’ve hit the replay button, I still love the song. I started listening to Cro’s other music, and then I found RIN and Casper, and wow I finally had something I could really relate to—music. This is how I felt connected to the German language. I’ve since expanded my knowledge of German music to cover various genres and artists from different backgrounds.
Career Change
When I began learning German with Duolingo, I had also just started working as a social media coordinator. I soon found that the job was not what I expected it to be. By the third month, I wanted to quit. Some people said to wait it out and stay for two years or at least one. Leaving so soon wouldn’t look good on my resume. I tried to take their advice, but it was hard to feel convinced.
Why should I care about how the job would look on my resume when I wanted my next job to utilize my coding skills? Tech companies wouldn’t care about how much social media experience I’d accumulated.
I was lucky enough to receive a large front-end development project through a friend referral while I was still working my social media job. There was a period where I was working on the project in addition to my full-time job. I was doing the consultations, writing the project proposal, and designing the wireframes. I suspected that when it was time to start the actual coding, it would be too intensive to do both that and my job.
Why should I care about my resume at all if I wanted to work for myself?
I set my own rates, and the client was paying me enough that I could support myself with the money I was receiving from them alone. I took the leap and put in my two weeks’ notice. I left my social media position seven months into the job. I was worried about what I would do when I was done with the project and had zero clients, but that was a problem for Future Dera.
Because I was a freelance developer, I was now location-independent. I was also now paying for my own health insurance. The premiums were expensive and the deductible was high, and that was just the beginning. Any income increase would also result in a more expensive health insurance plan. It didn’t seem sustainable. Healthcare in Germany seemed much more sensible. Yeah, a move to Germany was sounding pretty good.
Someone close to me suggested that I not move abroad while I was starting a new business. I was already unstable in terms of career. In St. Louis, I had a strong network that I could use to land new clients, but if I left the country, I might lose my network because clients would prefer to work with someone local. I didn’t know anyone in Germany. I decided to stay in St. Louis until I was more established as a self-employed person.
I had been so excited about moving to Berlin though! At this point, I was enchanted by Berlin specifically. WOW Airlines (an airline that is no more, rest in peace) had cheap international flights I could take out of Chicago. I was itching to go to Berlin. “If I could just visit,” I told myself, “then I could get Berlin out of my system.”
I convinced a friend from college to travel with me. Bless him and his spontaneity. I rememeber being so scared to click the button that would finalize the purchase of my my plane ticket. I was already stressed about future finances, and now I was making an international trip. For some reason, I had faith that it would be okay.
My First Time in Berlin
People we met in Berlin kept asking us where else in Europe we were visiting. They assumed we were doing a Eurotour since we had come all this way. Nope. Our eight-day trip was for Berlin and only Berlin. My travel buddy initially protested the idea of staying in Berlin the entire time. By the end of the trip, he was saying that Berlin was now one of his favorite cities and that he wished he could move here.
As for me, I knew I had to move here. It wasn’t just a dream anymore. On my first day in Berlin, I told people I was just visiting. By the end of the trip, I was telling people I was visiting so I could check it out before the move.
I mentioned my travel buddy’s spontaneity and my love for music. These two things collided to provide one of my most influential experiences. We hadn’t planned an itinerary before coming to Berlin. We preferred to take it easy. Each day we looked for things to do. One day, I had the idea to check what concerts were happening. I froze when I saw the name. Cro was playing. While we were in town.
I broached the subject with my friend. Concert tickets are expensive, and neither of us was exactly flush with cash. He was working at a restaurant. I was a freelancer with one client. I played “Unendlichkeit” for him. I was relieved and excited when, less than thirty seconds into the song, he said that he wanted to see Cro in concert.
The concert was sold out. We looked for resale tickets. There weren’t any. However, Cro would be playing in Hamburg next, and someone was reselling two tickets. It was a wild idea but…what if we traveled to Hamburg just to see Cro? It would make the concert even more expensive. I thought maybe my friend would back out. He didn’t. A+ travel partner.
We booked a BlaBlaCar for the ride there and 1 a.m. FlixBus seats for the ride back. Staying overnight would have meant paying for somewhere to sleep. We were in Hamburg for less than half a day.
Cro was the best concert of my life to date. (Or maybe it’s tied with my first Panic! at the Disco concert for 1st place.) Being at the concert was surreal. I was surrounded by German-language speakers. The stage banter was in German! I’d never experienced that before! I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it didn’t matter! I was in another country on another continent with my friend from college whom I hadn’t seen in ages, and we were listening to my favorite German songs! I couldn’t have imagined this for myself if I hadn’t experienced it. It was an incredible night.
I know we weren’t in Hamburg long enough for me to give it a fair chance, but I wasn’t that into the city. I missed Berlin. I had a strange feeling when the FlixBus pulled into the Berlin Central Bus Station. What was this familiar sensation? Ah, yes. It felt like coming home. I was shocked at myself, but the feeling was undeniable. Berlin felt like home before I even had an address.
The trip ended a couple days later, and I returned to St. Louis, a city that I had been struggling for years to make feel like home. I told my therapist about my trip. She told me I lit up when I talked about Berlin. I was glowing.
Damnit, I was in love. That’s why I ended up booking a one-way flight to Berlin just three days after returning from my “let’s just get Berlin out of my system” vacation.
10 Tips for moving to Berlin
If you’re coming from the United States or any other country whose passport grants you the 90-day tourist/Schengen visa (as opposed to a one-year Working Holiday/Youth Mobility visa), start job searching before you get here. Ideally, you’d have a job before arriving in Berlin. It’s hard enough finding a job in your home country in under three months. Doing so in a foreign country where you don’t speake the language and have no network is even more difficult. 90 days might not be enough time.
Use Facebook groups to look for housing. There are so many of them. Search “Berlin housing,” and something will come up. Once you join a few groups, the other ones will start popping up as recommended groups. Turn on notifications for all posts in all the groups.
Many people use the website WG-Gesucht.de. WG is short for Wohngemeinschaft and basically means a living situation with roommates. Watch out for scams though. If someone tells you they’re out of the country but a friend of theirs/Airbnb will give you the key after you pay a deposit, it’s probably a scam. Don’t listen to anyone who asks you to pay them before you have a key. Although now that I think of it, that’s exactly what I did…I paid a deposit of one months’ rent after video chatting with someone I met on Facebook.
Just use your discretion and be careful.
If a post on a Facebook group or housing site has been up for a few hours, it’s probably already too late. I’ve seen housing ads get taken down in under 30 minutes because there were already too many replies. The housing vacancy rate in Berlin is currently 1.7%. May the odds be ever in your favor.The Facebook group Berlin | Girl Gone International is great for information. This is where I found the roommate who was luckily not a scammer.
Search the /r/Berlin subreddit. SEARCH first so you don’t post a question that has already been asked many times.
Read https://allaboutberlin.com/ and https://www.settle-in-berlin.com/
If you’re coming without a job lined up, then save as much money as you can. I’d say 4 months’ living expenses minimum, 5 months’ to be safe. I was dangerously low on savings by the time I got my job. Don’t forget that even after you get a job, you won’t get paid for another 2-4 weeks.
Learn German, or find someone who knows it. The people at the Ausländerbehörde (immigration office), Bürgeramt, and Finanzamt will not speak English with you. There are services such as Red Tape Tranlslation that can help you through the German bureaucracy. (None of these links are affiliate links or sponsored, by the way. Just resources I think might be helpful.)
Sign up for travel health insurance. I almost didn’t get my freelance visa because of some arbitrary rule the immigration officer decided to enforce. (A friend of mine had secured a freelance visa just before me without having travel health insurance.) I signed up for Mawista Expatcare Comfort travel insurance after getting my freelance visa application rejected the first time.
Sign up for an appointment at the Ausländerbehörde when you get to Berlin, even if you don’t have a job yet. You are not allowed to overstay your tourist visa even if your reason is that you weren’t able to get an appointment. The appointments are booked out months in advance, so plan accordingly.
I recommend not moving in the winter unless you are used to perpetual cloudy days. I moved in the summer, and the precious memories of warmer, brighter times kept me going through the winter. I knew that open-air events, street food in Thai Park, daylight that stuck around until 10~11 p.m., and picnics with friends would eventually return. If you move in the winter and hate it, it might taint your image of Berlin, and then the city won’t feel right to you. This at least has been the experience of some people I’ve talked to who moved here in the winter. It’s also harder to make friends when everyone wants to stay indoors.
A note about Berlin winters
I almost didn’t move to Berlin because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to handle the many months of overcast skies. I had just gotten to a place where I was feeling good about my mental health, and I didn’t want to backslide because of lack of sunlight.
I purposely chose to visit Berlin in the middle of February because I wanted to see for myself how bad the winter was. It was sunny almost the entire time. I took it as a sign that I was supposed to be in Berlin.
When winter did arrive, it was gross, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. It got dark so early that I didn’t have time to notice that it was always cloudy! I’m being facetious, but really it wasn’t so bad in my opinion. If you want to move to Berlin but are worried about the weather, I say don’t let it stop you.
Down the street from my favorite Berlin ice cream shop. 17.03.19
When people ask me why I moved to Berlin, I say it was to learn German and because there’s good public transit and health insurance. But now you know that there’s a lot more to it than that.
The view from Elsenbrücke. 24.05.19