Your mileage may vary and my best advice is to get yourself an immigration lawyer. This page is full of the immigration things I’ve learned by running headfirst into the brick wall of German bureaucracy.
I can’t stress this enough, immigrating is hard. It’s lonely. It’s isolating. If you run a small business, know going in that being self employed in Germany is its own level of hell.
Visit First and Get Your Visa Together
Having an American Passport means you can just show up in the Schengen area and travel/vibe for 3 months without needing a specific visa. If you’re hoping to immigrate to Europe, make use of this to visit before you yeet yourself across the ocean to get an idea of where you would like to live or start finding a job. Moving sight unseen sucks.
This is where immigration lawyers are handy. V and I moved the easy way: she got a job for a big German company that had lawyers walk us through and expedite the immigration process and helped us figure out what we needed for the Blaukarte (Blue Card). If this is possible for you I highly recommend doing it this way because the bureaucracy is confusing.
The German Government has a website called Make It in Germany specifically for recruiting immigrant workers and providing explanations and documentation for the immigration process. There’s a visa for everything and I am not an immigration lawyer, but that site will get you started.
Banking: You need an anmeldung or at least a visa and proof of your address before you can get a bank account. Thankfully there are banks that are created specifically for folks immigrating from abroad. I use N26 which is very similar to (now-defunct) Simple, and have had a good experience with them so far. They made the sign up process very easy while still in the waiting-for-my-blue-card phase.
ALL YOUR DOCUMENTS ARE MAILED TO YOU. I cannot stress this enough. Check your mail. Everything important will be sent to you by post, even if you say “for the love of god it is 2024 please just let me 2fa my login to the healthcare app.”
Everything except some restaurants, biergartens, spätis, and 5 grocery stores are closed on Sundays. Germans take Ruhezeit (rest time) very seriously. No loud music after 9pm, children are allowed to scream outside between the hours of 3pm and 7pm.
People take vacation (Urlaub) seriously too, and use it. The workaholic and go-go-go culture that has embedded itself in the US psyche doesn’t really have a place here (though some companies want that to change).
Insure all the things. Everyone in Germany has personal liability insurance at the very least. It’s a social norm to have insurance beyond the standard renter’s/home insurance. I use Feather for mine and haven’t had an issue with them.
Find A Place
Apartment hunting in Berlin is its own ring of hell, act early and often and jump at whatever chance you get, once you have a home the rest is much easier.
Like most cities, Berlin is facing a housing shortage. Rents are going up and finding an apartment itself is a full-time job. We stayed at a temporary place for 3 months we found on a platform called wunderflats so we had somewhere we could establish residency while looking for a permanent place.
To find a place I made an account on ImmoScout, did the SCHUFA, spent most of my days emailing apartments under my partner’s German spelled name (because discrimination is a thing), booked appointments, and emailed and followed up on places for months. The place we landed is the first place that offered us a spot and I am not moving until we buy a place in Hamburg.
Moving with Cats
The hardest part is getting your cats on the airplane. Book your tickets then immediately call and tell the airline you’re bringing a pet. Make them email you a confirmation. You can google pet cabin requirements by airline and make sure to follow those.
Traveling/Importing: The USDA website has a guide that tells you what the requirements are. You need to get a certificate from your vet no more than 10 days before you leave that says they’ve had all the required vaccines, etc. When you land in Germany you simply walk into the “I have something to declare” section at customs and give the documents to the agent (who may or may not read them), and let them scan your pet’s chip. Thankfully, most microchips meet international standards so if you got your pet chipped at any shelter in the US it should work here. You can always search just to be sure.
In most places (in Berlin), landlords are not allowed to discriminate against applicants with pets (or at the very least, cats. Dogs do have breed restrictions). As long as you get the “I have a pet” addendum to your lease you’re good to go.
Anmeldung
You have to do this every time you move. And it is by appointment.
The next thing that you need in order to make everything else work (your health insurance, bank account, taxes, mail, etc) is the anmeldung. You need to do this as quickly as possible. Fortunately, once you have the anmeldung, your insurance, tax address, mailing address, etc, also update within the German bureaucracy, you don’t have to do anything about it. Just show up with your proof of address, the “yes I did move here” form, and your passport, hand it to the person at the Bürgeramt office and take the paper they print for you.
Healthcare Access
To some extent, living in a society and knowing I can see any doctor or specialist I need without bankrupting myself has improved my general health and pain levels, but I shouldn’t have had more stress staying on my medication than I had going off.
Germans tend to lean towards homeopathic remedies for everything before prescribing western medication (the amount of times I’ve gone in for IBS issues and been told to drink more ginger tea or take more probiotics is to the point I’ve stopped asking). While my chronic pain is taken relatively seriously by the doctors it took me a year to find, the system is so bureaucratic and slow that it’s really difficult to be disabled in Germany.
There is a shortage of available English-speaking doctors. It’s really difficult to find an appointment for anything less than 3 months in advance. I use Doctolib to find doctors who 1) speak english and 2) take public health insurance. The fluency levels vary and like anywhere else, finding a doctor that you can work with is trial and error. Be prepared for long wait times. Sometimes the Emergency line 116117 can help you get an urgent appointment but the phone line is only operated in German. However, the website is incredibly useful.
ADHD and mental illnesses aren’t seen as serious or permanent conditions. Chronic pain is seen as something you should be able to recover from with the right lifestyle changes. I will say that the infrastructure for Blind folks is pretty decent and consistent throughout Berlin, but if you have any other disabilities, it’s very hard.
If you’re queer and in Berlin I highly recommend reaching out to Sonntags Club. They patiently answered all my questions on how to access healthcare while disabled and are a great resource.
Cost of Living // In A Society
If you move here with a well paying job and a long visa and you’re used to paying Bay Area prices for rent, you will probably find the cost of living incredibly low. We’ve got inflation and fun economic times coming, but the basic cost of living is worlds lower than the Bay Area.
Monthly our expenses are roughly:
- Rent for a built in 2020 ~750ft 2br/1ba apartment (includes heat/water/trash): ~€1900
- Insurances (cat health insurance x2, renters, liability, bike, travel health insurance): €120
- Internet: €55
- Electricity: €175
- My Public Health Insurance: €230
- Deutschlandkarte (nationwide regional rail + transit pass): €50 (increasing to €58 in 2025)
- Groceries (for 2 + 2 cats): ~€400
- Beer is about €20 per crate and I can get decent bottles of wine for less than €4.
- Quarterlies – Berlin Tenant Union & Rundfunkbeitrag (public broadcasting): ~€55/ea
My favorite thing about living here is the freedom of movement that people, but especially children have. Gun violence is extremely rare, violent crime generally is not as high as it is in the US. Kids are able and trusted to go ride transit to visit their friends and are socially allowed and expected to take up space. I’m sure there’s stills some be seen-and-not-heard shit clacking around out here, but from what I’ve been able to generally observe: kids are seen as full human beings and granted age-appropriate autonomy and agency to travel and play with their friends.
Death and Taxes
The dual tax treaty doesn’t play nicely with freelancers.
If you’re employed, taxes are easy. Your employer can probably handle it for you, or will give you the forms you need to send to the Finanzamt.
Same with your health insurance: you can pick your provider but your employer will set it up and you just have to send the agency your documents. Through this process you will also get assigned your Sozialversicherungsnummer (social insurance number)
This is not the case if you are self-employed. If you are self-employed make an appointment with an international tax accountant immediately. Don’t try to do it yourself. You’ll have to register your business with the Finanzamt (I used Sorted for this) and get your own business and tax numbers, in addition to your Sozialversicherungsnummer that should be generated when you sign up for your health insurance; of which you will also pay both the employer and employee portion of.
You will have to pay social security to the US and income tax to which ever country you worked in for however many days you worked there. Meaning: if you worked 2 weeks in SF you owe the US 2 weeks of income tax for those days and the Germans 50 weeks of income tax for the rest.