After proposing to me last year, my partner took a job in Europe and moved the two of us from Melbourne to Berlin. Battling the winter snow – and Germany’s infamous bureaucracy – was just the beginning.
“omg WHY??”
This is, almost without fail, the first question we get asked whenever we tell anyone we’re from Australia. Australia has always represented a dreamland for many European travellers but it’s the Germans who reserve the keenest affection for the land down under.
When I travelled around the western and eastern coasts of Australia in my late-teens, I encountered bucketloads of Germans in just about every hostel I stayed at. It’s a rite-of-passage for many young Germans to take a gap year across this big red rock of ours. They all wanted to live in Australia and fell in love the week they landed.
The notion, then, of trading summertime Australia for snowbound Berlin is inconceivable for many of the locals here. However, there are plenty of reasons for setting up camp in Berlin as the German capital embodies for us just as much as a dreamland as the Aussie beaches do for the Germans.
Work perks and paperwork
I have wanted to live in Berlin since I was 21 and have visited this fabulous place nearly ten times in under ten years. It’s a place in which I always knew I belonged – I just never knew when or how I’d get here.
Luckily for me, my boyfriend proposed last year and he holds a European passport. He wanted to move to Berlin, too, and managed to snag a Europe-based role in the same company he worked for in Australia.
That more or less covered the logistical side of things, as it certainly makes life easier to move countries when you’ve got an employer behind you. We were given a relocation budget to help with things like language classes and shipping boxes from Australia as well as some help with scouting out initial apartment viewings.
I will openly admit this is not the standard process and that many other adventurous newbies will not enjoy this kind of assistance when they arrive in Berlin. I totally recognise my good fortune in being transplanted to my lifelong dream city on the coat-tails of my partner’s job relocation!
One useful insight though is that Germany and Australia have friendly bureaucratic relations. This makes it relatively easy to acquire a Working Holiday Visa, which is how I got here, because my partner and I aren’t yet married. It’s a 12-month visa that just requires proof of a small amount of savings and of a health insurance policy. It is genuinely that simple and fewer than ten countries have access to this visa, Australia being one of them.
On-the-ground experiences
That’s the admin out of the way. So, what’s it like here on a day-by-day basis in the peak of winter? Well, moving to Berlin at the end of November does actually have its upsides. The first is that we essentially got two springs, leaving Australia just before it got too hot and then sitting tight for a few months over here until the flowers blossom in March.
The weather itself is actually bearable. Honestly, it’s kind of fine. Yes, it snows a lot and the temperatures do drop to -10 degrees on some days but you really don’t feel it if you’re dressed in thermal underlayers.
That really is the first and last rule of getting through a Berlin winter: dress correctly. Before moving here, I never took the winter seriously and for the 18 years I spent growing up in England, I always loathed this time of year.
That’s because I didn’t know what thermals were – seriously – and because I wasn’t living in a German apartment building. Let me assure you, Berliners know all there is about thermal insulation. The walls here are THICC.
There have been plenty of nights where my partner and I are tucked up on the couch, watching The Sopranos with a foot of snow outside and we’re barely dressed in more than a hoodie and a pair of trackies.
The chilly weather does become annoying in other ways, however. The snow that melts during the day will freeze overnight and then form black ice.. and that shit is absolutely lethal. So that’s an extra five or ten minutes added to any journey, as you gingerly amble along the pavement trying not to fall on your ass.
Then, all the snow that sticks to your feet on the train melts in a big black puddle on the floor, so you can never put your bag down. Also, the grit sprinkled on the pavement to melt the snow is so corrosive that it will also melt your shoes over time. Therefore, protective shoe spray is just as important a purchase as the abovementioned thermals!
Berliner boy
Despite all that, I am elated to be here. I love Berlin’s wide, spacious streets and the clusters of green areas all across the city. I love the building restrictions, the shallow towers that scarcely climb above 12 floors and blot out the sky. There is just so much sky here when you look up.
I love speaking another language and learning more in my weekly language classes. Ordering food or going into a shop without a word of English is a joy unlike anything else. From the wealth of second-hand clothes stores to the limitless options for affordable and delicious global cuisine, Berlin has so much more going for it than the city’s party-hard reputation would have you believe.
It is a place in which I always felt I belonged and I still pinch myself with delight to know that I’m finally here.
By Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier
