One Year in Berlin, Part 2
Part 2: A timeline of my moving process, plus what it's like living in Berlin
I wrote about 1) why I moved to Berlin and 2) general tips for moving to Berlin in Part 1. This time, I’ll be covering 3) a timeline of my moving process and 4) what living in Berlin (as a queer Black person) is like for me.
This letter is called One Year in Berlin, Part 2, but I’ve actually been living in Berlin for a year and a half now.
A timeline of my moving process
After I bought the one-way ticket to Berlin, I had three months to pull everything together. Three months of hardcore research and planning. I did so much research that I was sure my plan was airtight. It was not.
After two months of living in Berlin, it seemed like I might have to give up the dream. Nothing was working out as I needed it to. My Plan B was to move to somewhere else in Europe. If my tourist visa were to expire, then I’d have to leave the Schengen zone, but I wasn’t sure I’d have enough money left to fly home to the U.S. I would then work as an au pair or try WWOOFing. I really didn’t want to do this, so I ignored Plan B for as long as I could.
My Plan A was to move to Berlin, get a freelance visa, and continue working as a freelance web developer. I spent most of my three months figuring out how my freelance life would work in Berlin. Then, right before I left, I realized I needed to be applying to full-time jobs instead.
I learned I wouldn’t be able to get public health insurance as a freelancer. (There’s one way to do it if you’re an artist, but it’s complicated, and there’s a good chance you won’t get accepted.) It was important to me to be on public health insurance because private insurance, while cheaper when you’re young, becomes very expensive as you age. Private insurance works fine for people who only plan on living in Germany for a few years.
When people ask me how long I intend to live in Germany, I say, “I don’t know, but I currently don’t have any plans to leave.” I play the long game. I didn’t want to lock Future Me out of the recommended health care system just so Current Me could have some years of cheaper health insurance.
My new Plan A was to move to Berlin and find a company where I could work in-house as a front-end developer. Although I was reluctant to give up the freedom of being self-employed, I saw the benefit of working at a company. All my front-end programming skills were self-taught. A company could give me training and mentorship and help me strengthen those skills.
I felt very prepared by the time I finally moved to Berlin. In fact, I ended up with not one but two places to live when I landed in Berlin. Haha! I had to pay June rent for both places. Not so funny anymore. I was still self-employed. I was almost at the end of my contract with my client. There was just one more paycheck coming in from them, and then I would have no income.
End of May
I landed in Berlin and moved into my first Berlin apartment. I met my roommate, whom I had only video chatted with once before. I was relieved that the one month’s rent deposit I had transferred in April hadn’t gone to a scammer.
June
Part of my move to Berlin involved paying for a relocation program. I’m not naming it because I don’t recommend it. That program included one month of housing (which is how I ended up with another place to live in addition to the apartment I found on a Facebook group) and assistance with Anmeldung. Anmeldung, the registration of your residential address, is very important in Berlin. You can’t really start your life here without it because a lot of other paperwork requires the proof of registration.
I also started the 2-week German intensive course that was included with the program. My housemates and I attended class for three hours a day, Monday through Friday. After school, we’d come home and sit at the kitchen table and do homework/apply for jobs together. I paid for another two weeks of German intensive course so I could complete the A1 level.
I had a couple of job interviews, but I wasn’t applying to a lot of companies because I felt confident I was going to get the job at one particular tech company I was interviewing with.
July
I didn’t get the job at that company. I started applying for more jobs. Why were so many people on vacation, and for weeks at a time? Forget European work-life balance—I needed companies to interview me!
I signed up for two services in which you fill out your developer profile and then tech companies apply to you. No company applied to me.
I think it was July when I started applying to non-tech jobs. I was feeling really demotivated, and the imposter syndrome was strong. I stopped focusing solely on developer jobs and reluctantly started applying to jobs in a field I had more experience in—communications and marketing.
Then I tweeted something I’d noticed during my job application process, and it went viral.
I received a lot of harassment for this tweet. On the plus side, I also received some leads for job postings I wasn’t seeing on Glassdoor or LinkedIn.
August
Sheer panic. I kept coming really close to getting a job only to not get the job. By this point, four different tech companies had told me that they liked me and would hire me if they could, but they didn’t have the resources to train and mentor me. This was nice for my self-esteem, but I can’t put self-esteem in my passport.
I was frustrated because ever since I’d decided to move to Berlin, people had been telling me that I would have no problem getting a job as a developer. The reality is that you will have no problem getting a developer job in Berlin—if you are mid-to-senior level.
My 90-day tourist visa was going to expire at the end of the month. Knowing how slowly things move in Germany, I figured I wouldn’t be able to secure a job that would qualify me for an employment visa by the end of the month.
It was time to switch tactics, but it wasn’t time for Plan B just yet. Instead, I switched back to Plan A. The original Plan A, which was applying for a freelance visa. Yes, I would be obligated to sign up for private health insurance. However, I’d since learned that I should be able to switch to public health insurance if I were to later get a job at a company.
So it was settled. I’d apply for a freelance visa. One of the things I needed to do was make an appointment at the Ausländerbeörde. There were no appointments available for the next several months. No problem, I thought. I’ll just choose the earliest available appointment and wait it out. It’s not like the government can say I didn’t try!
This is when the second major flaw in my plan was revealed. It turns out you cannot legally stay in Germany with an expired tourist visa. A lot of people think you can, but it’s only with certain visas where being unable to get an appointment is a valid excuse. It doesn’t matter if the only available appointment isn’t until three months after your visa expiry date—you cannot overstay with an expired tourist visa. Tell your friends.
How was everything going so wrong? I had planned so carefully! In the midst of all this, I saw a quote online that was too spot-on:
“The risk I took was calculated, but I am bad at math.”
Someone had told me that the Ausländerbehörde releases appointments that people have canceled and makes them available online at about 7 A.M. After three days of waking up early to check for appointments, I finally got one. It was for Aug. 16, 2018—exactly one week before my tourist visa was to expire.
About a month after my viral tweet, someone I’d connected with because of the tweet sent me a link to a job application for a company called Cobot. On Aug. 15, I applied for a trainee position at Cobot. It was perfect—the job was to learn Ruby and receive mentorship. But I couldn’t wait around to find out if they’d hire me. Every new day was a stressful reminder that I was one day closer to my visa expiring.
I quickly pulled together a freelance visa application with the help of Berlin friends and connections I had made over the summer. Three of the companies that I thought I was going to work with wrote me letters so I could include them in my visa application. A German friend I had made through a hobby group came with me to my Ausländerbehörde appointment. If not for her, I still would have had to leave the country after the immigration official swiftly rejected my application on a technicality. I was in there for all of three minutes before she told me to leave her office and, by extension, the country.
The immigration official said she was rejecting my application because I didn’t have travel health insurance. I’m pretty sure she made up this rule or at least arbitrarily decided to enforce it. Never mind the fact that I already had a letter from a private German health insurance company stating that they would insure me once my freelance visa was issued. Never mind the fact that a friend of mine had gotten a freelance visa a few weeks before me without having travel health insurance when she applied.
German bureaucrats like rules so much that they’ll throw in some bonus rules just for fun. The thing about needing to include letters of intent-to-hire with your freelance visa application? It’s common knowledge, yet it’s not even an officially listed requirement. You’ll only find out about this requirement through word-of-mouth. There’s no way to even know how many letters you need, but word on the street is that three to five letters should be enough.
Anyway, my German friend was able to convince the woman to give me another appointment. The thing is though, if that appointment didn’t go well and my application got rejected again, I wouldn’t have enough time to fix anything. So instead of waiting another week, I queued up at the Ausländerbehörde at 5 A.M. on Aug. 20 to try to get seen without an appointment.
There was already a long line by the time I got to the gate. I stood there for two hours, simultaneously bored and worried out of my mind. I was one of the last ones to receive a waiting number. I took the precious number and sat in a waiting room for a couple more hours. Finally, they called my number. A different, much nicer immigration official reviewed my application. I had travel health insurance this time. I got my freelance visa that day :)
Many thanks to everyone who helped me with the visa application that summer. I couldn’t have accomplished Plan A without them.
September
I continued the interview process with Cobot, and I got the job! A year and two months later, and I’m still at Cobot. I’ve since transitioned out of the trainee role, but you can read about my first 6 months as a Ruby/Rails developer.
What living in Berlin is like (the good and the bad)
When I landed in my new home city, it didn’t feel real. It felt like I was on vacation and I would soon have to turn around and hop on a flight to the U.S.
Returning to Berlin after a vacation used to be exciting because it felt like I was going from one vacation to another. Returning to Berlin doesn’t feel like an extra vacation anymore. The excitement I feel nowadays is because I am coming back to a place that solidly feels like home. I don’t get post-vacation blues now that I live in Berlin.
Culture Shock
Culture shock wasn’t that bad. I’d experienced a bigger culture shock when I lived in Kyoto, so Berlin felt easier by comparison. I did experience it on a small scale though. One thing I noticed is that the ambulance sirens sound different in Berlin. That was really frustrating at first, and I can’t explain why, but then I got used to it. I went to Warsaw recently, and the sirens sound like they do in the U.S., and I noticed that too because it’s no longer what I’m used to.
Grocery shopping was overwhelming. I didn’t know what labels said, and I didn’t know which brands to trust. I didn’t buy groceries during my first week because of this. Eating out for every meal was not ideal, but luckily there are a lot of cheap dining out options in Berlin.
Finally, a German internet friend recommended that I go to Alnatura. I felt much less overwhelmed there. Not as many options, not as many people. It’s like the whole store is designed to soothe you. When I got comfortable shopping there, I eased into other stores. Now I can shop like a pro at Rewe, Lidl, Edeka, and other common grocery store chains.
Being Black
I feel safer in Berlin. I’ve written about race in Berlin, and yes racists are here just like anywhere else. But the way things are set up in the U.S., especially where I was living in St. Louis…the contrast is stark. I feel like I can breathe now.
There are Black people in Berlin, but it doesn’t feel the same as the community I had in St. Louis. Most Black people I meet here aren’t from the U.S. More commonly, they come from other countries in Europe, or they’re German, or they came here directly from Africa.
My family is from Nigeria, but I was raised in the United States. I don’t have the same experiences as Black Europeans. This can feel isolating, like when people talk about being Black in America. For Black Europeans, it’s a theoretical conversation. For me, it’s the reason why the sound of fireworks freaks me the fuck out. I’m still getting used to not living in fear for my life. I’m healing. In Berlin when I see a police officer, I don’t fall into an anxiety spiral.
When it comes down to it though, Black people in Berlin share a fundamental understanding. Being out in public and receiving a Black Nod—or even better, a Black Smile—is a beautiful thing.
Being Queer
There are so many queer people in Berlin. At the same time, the queer community in Berlin feels very small. Maybe you show a new friend a Tinder match and they say, “Oh, that’s my roommate.” So you show them another Tinder match and they say, “Ah, that’s my friend!” And then maybe you decide to stop telling that friend about the people you’re matching with on dating apps because it makes things awkward.
Berlin is generally very accepting of queer people. By “queer people,” I mean cis gay white men. Acceptance is less certain for queer people of color. Luckily, the worst that has happened to me is getting yelled at on trains and in bathrooms. Others have been physically attacked, recommended for conversion therapy, harassed at their own performances…and these are just the stories I know about from friends. So. There’s that.
Media can make it easy to believe that being queer is casual, but never forget that queer and trans people are still fighting every day, around the world, to be seen and respected as people.
Living in Berlin felt a little off at first because it felt like my life in the U.S. hadn’t been tied up properly. I kept feeling like maybe I had done something wrong or forgotten something important. I had been living a whole other life thousands of miles away. It couldn’t be over just like that. Was it really as easy as moving out of my apartment, leaving a suitcase of stuff at my brother’s house, and hopping on a plane?
But this was my new life. And it wasn’t that easy. And even if I was under the impression that it had been easy for me to get there, getting settled down in Berlin would be anything but that.
It feels like there’s always a new challenge to tackle. First, it was finding a job. Then it was getting a freelance visa. Then it was back to looking for a job. Then it was finding a place to live because my roommate situation was making me miserable. Then it was looking for an English-speaking therapist that was covered by insurance. Then it was finding another place to live. I’ve accomplished all of those things. I have a great job, I live alone, and I have a great therapist*.
I remember sitting with a friend in the fall of 2018 and expressing my shame that my German was still not where I wanted it to be. “Uh, but think of all the other things you’ve done since you’ve been here!” she said. “You’ve accomplished so much!”
I was grateful for that reality check. Not all my goals can be actualized at once. My German has gotten much better, and I frequently surprise myself with the conversations I’m capable of having in German.
*That was true at the time I started writing this. I’ve since broken up with that therapist because he turned out to be racist 🙃
Finding a Home
Housing in Berlin is no joke. You can read about my ordeal in this Twitter thread.
I love the apartment that I live in now. It was honestly worth the 4.5-month nightmare of an apartment search. Before I lived where I live now, I lived in a 17 sqm. box. One night, when I was sitting in my overpriced box and having a dull time, it hit me that there was so much entertainment in Berlin at that very moment that was available to me.
I thought, “Think of all those movies that feature party scenes in a Berlin club. I could be there in 20 minutes. Even if I don’t go, just knowing that I’m in a city with this kind of energy is enough.”
I partied when I moved here. Now, I prefer to be in bed by 10 P.M. It’s not really about the parties. It’s about the thrill of being able to find what you’re looking for. There are so many different communities, activities, and places to discover in Berlin. I’ve only just grazed the surface of what is possible.