Picture of flat
As of this moment, my future in Berlin regarding accommodation is assured. STAGE 2 is finally completed. The tenancy agreement for the flat is valid and a date for the key-handover ceremony is set. Everything is going to be alright!
But no time for celebrating there are still some things to be done:
- Composing house-rules (Stage 5) – this shouldn’t be too hard
- Organizing the shipping company – offers have been made already so I only have to accept one
- I have to make a decision what I want to take with me. Dont know yet
- Buying a washer, what type do I need? This is going to be fun to plug it in somehow – i dont have a clue how to do this
- Taking care of some formalities (Einwohnermeldeamt, Versicherungen, GEZ, Fernsehen, Finanzamt, Abonnements)
It is almost sad as I had the plan to get all the flat and flatshare topics off my desk until christmas. But where are we now – christmas was very nice by the way and I guess I am 1000 kilo overweight due to 2x raclette and 1x fondue – but where are we now regarding Berlin? Ok there have been some positive developements but all-in-all it is not very satisfactory. Stage ONE and THREE are completed by now: I did find a nice girl willing to flatshare. We met in Berlin the other day and I think this is going to work out quite well and started a list of all the things we need to buy (start of stage FIVE). BUT why am I whining then you might ask yourself.
Pretty easy to answer: It is until this moment not clear whether we are going to get the flat we already checked out. As everyone knows I am terrible when it comes to the process of waiting. So this is just another crazy-waiting-period for me. The friendly, helpful girl who still lives in the chosen flat has to contact the tenant but due to christmas hollidays this seems to be an obstacle. So here we are, two people without flat – yet :-)
But at this point I think we are going to get the flat. Because of this positive-thinking flash I want to write a few details about the potential new apartement. It is in the north of park Tiergarten in the fourth floor with no elevator – yeah going to do sports every day – has 3 rooms and a nice little kitchen. To Potsdamer Platz I can walk in about 30 minutes, to main station in about 5. So it is very central and you can get everywhere by subway in no time. I think you cannot go too much to the north because its kind of dangerous there with start of Moabit and all but Berlin is big in southern and eastern direction from there. I am going to add pictures in the next post when the flat is mine :-D
So I will keep you posted on any news regarding stage TWO. Ingo Feldmann
There has been a developement regarding scope and thinking about living in Berlin. The question that I asked myself over and over again goes as follows: What do I do in Berlin in a great appartement on the weekends all by myself? Right, I will get really bored real soon – WoW is no longterm option to put up with! Soo what do we do? Yeah you might have guessed by now, there is a hint in the title: BUILD MY OWN WG (flat-share-arrangements). So the why was easy outlined… the how is much more interesting!
What do you need for your own WG in Berlin?
- Take a few people from www.wg-gesucht.de and assess whether they are worthy to live with you (no kidding this process is kind of funny and there are a lot of people in the same situation like me) I think 3 people in one flat is a about enough, maybe four but who can remember all these names correctly?
- Look for a suitable flat. Well ok this could probably be a bit difficult if no one from the selected potential candidates lives in the destined city you wanna go. So at least one of the people should live – in my case – in Berlin, right? But the flat-problem isn’t solved then. Do we simply get a 120 m² appartement and is it allowed to move in with 3 or 4 people? Who is paying the flat-agent-fees and such things? Washing machine and so on is also needed… Dont know yet
- Meeting “the gang”
- Moving – the actual process of getting your stuff to the destined location
- Put up some rules – Well, I hate rules but I like to sleep at 2am during weekdays ^^
- Living happily ever after… or something like that, who knows maybe this project is going to work for a while, I am positive at this time.
Currently I am at stage one! I think I found one candidate, the other one has to be chosen and of course the flat. Or will it be a 2-thing WG? We will see ^^
I will update you on the progress, always refering to the above described stages!
It is really difficult to do many things at the same time – oh boy! – multi-tasking is absolutely needed for what I am doing at the moment! So I think the time has come to do a little scheduling in order to stay focused regarding the important parts of the journey ahead.
I think it is obvious that there is still much time until the first of february and the keys for my flat. So no need to get crazy about an appartement – but wait – I AM ALREADY :-) My new RSS-Feeds proove that: I now get the newest flat-offers from Immobilienscout24.de in the areas of Prenzlauer Berg and Berlin Mitte. Great & Crazy! I have also contacted some People who put in offers but nobody did answer yet…
Also it is time to think about putting together a to-do list of important stuff. Such as getting my own insurance, checking out which bank is the best in berlin (is there a statistic that states which bank has the most subsidaries in berlin or something like that?), getting rid of all the old things like my car (i dont need it in berlin – in case someone needs a black Renault Twingo) or my ADAC membership…much to do. But I guess these are the most important things to put together in the next weeks, the flat-wonder will happen at some point…
I found an interesting site on the whole moving-topic. I have to check it out more thoroughly though, maybe I will have new clues then on how to proceed. At the moment it is all still a big blurry-thingy.
Oh yes and by the way, my work contract just arrived today. So I am officially hired, voilà!
Now that the excitement about the new job has settled it is time to start thinking reasonably again. The most interesting question at that early point is where i am going to live in Berlin. Truth be told, I haven’t got the faintest idea how to proceed in regard to finding a flat to rent. So yesterday I just startet a google search what’s on the real-estate market out there and frankly, you cannot search for a flat without setting some basic restrictions and limits.
Currently I am trying to answer the basic questions, maybe I can brainstorm here along the way:
- How to live in Berlin? flat-sharing, living by myself… I am not really sure about that. In the beginning it would be great to flat-share in order to meet people and so on but I dont know whether it is easy to find uncomplicated people for sharing my adventure. Best case would be to find someone who wants to move there / moved there recently
- When do I want to move? This one is easy, I definitly want to rent the flat at the beginning of February so I can put my stuff in there without haste
- What type of accomodation (of course for rent)? Maissonette, Loft / Studio, Penthouse, ground-floor, high-tier flat… I think thats not important at the moment, just a nice renovated place to stay would be sufficient and no ground-floor flat
- What specific requirements do I have? There has to be a ready-to-cook built-in kitchen installed. The place has to be renovated – I dont want to paint walls or inlay floors this isn’t within my time-budget. There is no need for a balcony or any furniture for that matter. Secure doors
- Where to live? Well it should be either near Potsdammer Platz or near a subway station. I think Charlottenburg, Tiergarten, Mitte, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg would be suited for me and the whole situation but as I said I dont know Berlin ;-)
- Where to look for flats? online (I found some websites regarding flat-share flat-offers and some estate agents), newspaper
- How many rooms and square meters do I need? Good question, next question…
- How much rent do I want to pay? Well as little as possible but as much as necessary
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Many questions and very few answers at this moment… I definitly have to think about all the above mentioned points again in order to limit the search sucessfully.
