Well, Stina and I have gotten this far, and I think it's useful to share our experiences. We found no good how-to guides, and really didn't know what to expect. Let me break it down for you future movers into Germany, specifically Magdeburg:
Step zero: decide what, where, and why, and move to get those things done. Americans have three months from the time you enter the Schengen Treaty zone (includes most of Europe). If you want to work here, it's pretty much the same procedure as in other parts of the world. Make contacts, send out C.V.s (definitely convert your resume to a C.V. Do it here), pound the pavement. You are looking for a job that no German can do, otherwise the officials might deny your application and send an otherwise unemployed German citizen to do your job. If nothing else, teaching your native language somewhere is a good option. It will be very important for you to have official documents stating your qualifications: college and high school diplomas are good, official transcripts seem to be working as well: get certificates for anything and everything. Decide where you want to live and make that happen. Knowing what you hope to get out of the experience of living in Germany will help you make all your other decisions.
Step one: find an address. Whether this means finding an apartment to rent or a friend willing to let you stay with them for a few months, you can't really do anything official without a physical address. See our blog here for our experience with this part of it.
Step two: register your address. Go to the official building (you'll have to ask someone which building it is for your city... I've registered at police stations, city halls, and the Bürger Büro here in Magdeburg)
Step three: get a German Bank account. Almost all transactions are made through the bank. Rent comes out of the account directly, as will fees for electricity, internet, and insurance. If you work, paycheck deposits are also directly made from your employer to your account.
Step four: get health insurance. Whether or not you get a job will define how you go about this. If you work as a freelancer or don't work, you will need private insurance. If you get a contracted salaried position, you will need government insurance (which are still handled by private companies). Stina has the former. I will have the latter. Stina pays 51€ per month. According to reliable sources, I will pay 20% of my gross income of 2000€ per month, 7.9% for health insurance, 9.95% for what I think is the equivalent of Social Security, 1.4% for unemployment insurance and 1.1% for "nursing care insurance". Stina set hers up by calling a coworker's mother who works in the insurance industry, and I set mine up by asking my boss for help, and she took me to IKK and talked to them with me.
You should set up health insurance within the first month of your arrival in Germany. If you're reading this and it's been more than a month, I think, but am not sure, that it is acceptable to cross the border and return to reset the date of your arrival in Germany. If you don't get it within your first month in Germany, you can talk to someone who knows about the insurance industry and the laws governing it and get help from them. I'm still not clear on how it all works, but essentially we told someone in charge our dilemma, and they figured out any workarounds we might need.
Step five: assemble your various documents for the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigner Authority) and make an appointment. The packet of documents should include passport photos (done biometrisch-ly; they'll tell you how), a copy of your lease, proof of health insurance (something from the insurance agency that states that your health insurance conforms to paragraph 11), proof of financial support (i.e. a contract offering gainful employment), passport, copy of your address registration paper, a pink form that they will give you to fill out, and, if you are working, a copy of your University transcript or Diploma. A strange warning: we heard someone was denied because the agency thought their apartment was too big for just one person and said she had to find a roommate. Germany does have 80 million people in a country the size of Montana, so perhaps overcrowding is an issue for them. Magdeburg has empty apartments galore, though. [edit: Stina corrects me. It was about the money. They thought she couldn't afford it. She brought more proof of more money, and they allowed it.]
Step 6: submit all materials to Ausländerbehörde and wait. We've heard tales of it's taking as few as 2 weeks. Stina's been waiting 3 weeks now. We hear they have to return it within 4 weeks. We've also been quoted up to 6 weeks. (A lady in Bonn said 6 months. I can't imagine that). I will have to pay 50€; we're not sure for which part of things the fee is. Stina's on her way out the door with 50€ just in case she has to pay it, too, though she was never told of this fee.
Good luck! If you have more questions, visit our ...And Contact Us page (http://andjuggling.com/contact.html)
Disclaimer: this is our experience, which is incredibly specific. It is also not guaranteed to be accurate. I hope it is nonetheless helpful.
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Friday, October 3, 2008
On the Train - Brendan
Seattle is 3 hours behind us. We spent our past week giving away our stuff as best we could, and then we moved all the rest to Stina’s parents’ house in Everett, WA. Giving things away was fabulous! We managed to convince our friends to take bags and bags and bags of stuff from us that they will hopefully enjoy as much as we did. There’s more stuff in the world than there needs to be. We should share more, then we wouldn’t all need to own our own. I read an article the other day about Lucy, the “missing link”, and it made me think about what funny beasts people are. We hoard things and love them and hide them and collect them and lock them away. It’s just funny - there’s no inherent value to many of them, we don’t even enjoy a lot of them, and yet we save them. It’s funny is all.
My best advice for moving cheaply: do the math (and the research). After all was said and done, we paid $70-ish for the moving van plus $14 for gas, and $114 each for our train tickets. We used online promotional codes to get discounts on our rates (just use a search engine to find them) and we compared the various deals and then we did lots and lots of math to come up with each option’s final cost.
On from the tedium of our move, we were interviewed by the Everett Herald. We talked at length with the reporter about the philosophy of this whole trip - the idea of trusting strangers and of living this way that we’re living - I’m looking for words to describe it: “cheaply” comes to mind, also “sharing” and “through the kindness of strangers”, but I think it’s less about our not spending much money and more about our consuming fewer resources, which probably go hand-in-hand, but have expressly different goals... though cheaply also describes a goal of ours. “Living Sustainably” is a nice, quotable phrase. I don’t know how accurate it is, but as long as we’re living on other people’s excesses (hitchhiking, couchsurfing, dumpster-diving), I don’t think we can really count our carbon footprints. Hopefully we’re giving people something back, too, with our busking. We’re the rats of society - scavengers have a bad rap, but they serve a function and don’t hurt anything with their consumption of other creatures’ excesses.
The reporter also seemed interested in talking about our politics and the politics of our trip, from our interaction with the current state of US economics and our views on the failure of the bailout to the sexism inherent in hitchhiking safety (how to make it safer for women to hitchhike alone).
Later, we met the photographer, who turned out to be a hitchhiking hopeful himself. He told us about always having wanted to take a grand hitchhiking adventure, but never being able to. I’m sure he’ll find his way to it eventually. Look for the article in the Friday Everett Herald.
By the way, we have a show. A funtabulous show. We’re such convincing actors - when we showed the reporter a little bit of our show, I’m not entirely sure she got that we were pretending to fail. Either that or SHE’S a fabulous actor. Our performance last Saturday went off without a hitch, twice! We’re looking good. I don’t know what we’re going to do with an unsuspecting crowd, though. We’ll have our first real test in Wisconsin at the West Bend Farmers’ Market. Look for us there if you’re in the area!
My best advice for moving cheaply: do the math (and the research). After all was said and done, we paid $70-ish for the moving van plus $14 for gas, and $114 each for our train tickets. We used online promotional codes to get discounts on our rates (just use a search engine to find them) and we compared the various deals and then we did lots and lots of math to come up with each option’s final cost.
On from the tedium of our move, we were interviewed by the Everett Herald. We talked at length with the reporter about the philosophy of this whole trip - the idea of trusting strangers and of living this way that we’re living - I’m looking for words to describe it: “cheaply” comes to mind, also “sharing” and “through the kindness of strangers”, but I think it’s less about our not spending much money and more about our consuming fewer resources, which probably go hand-in-hand, but have expressly different goals... though cheaply also describes a goal of ours. “Living Sustainably” is a nice, quotable phrase. I don’t know how accurate it is, but as long as we’re living on other people’s excesses (hitchhiking, couchsurfing, dumpster-diving), I don’t think we can really count our carbon footprints. Hopefully we’re giving people something back, too, with our busking. We’re the rats of society - scavengers have a bad rap, but they serve a function and don’t hurt anything with their consumption of other creatures’ excesses.
The reporter also seemed interested in talking about our politics and the politics of our trip, from our interaction with the current state of US economics and our views on the failure of the bailout to the sexism inherent in hitchhiking safety (how to make it safer for women to hitchhike alone).
Later, we met the photographer, who turned out to be a hitchhiking hopeful himself. He told us about always having wanted to take a grand hitchhiking adventure, but never being able to. I’m sure he’ll find his way to it eventually. Look for the article in the Friday Everett Herald.
By the way, we have a show. A funtabulous show. We’re such convincing actors - when we showed the reporter a little bit of our show, I’m not entirely sure she got that we were pretending to fail. Either that or SHE’S a fabulous actor. Our performance last Saturday went off without a hitch, twice! We’re looking good. I don’t know what we’re going to do with an unsuspecting crowd, though. We’ll have our first real test in Wisconsin at the West Bend Farmers’ Market. Look for us there if you’re in the area!
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