Breaking up with Berlin: why expats falve with the German capital - … · 2018. 8. 31. · tour guide, video editor, and even as a bottle collector. ... Since many Berliners speak

8/31/2018 Breaking up with Berlin: why expats fall out of love with the German capital - The Local

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31 August 2018 12:36 CEST+02:00

Breaking up with Berlin: why expats fall out of lovewith the German capital

Sabrina Iovino, who left Berlin in 2008, in front of the iconic Teufelsberg spy station. Photo: Private

Yasmin [email protected] @thelocalgermany

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Berlin can cast a spell on expats. On an adventure around Europe, some plan to live here

for a few months, but end up staying years, enchanted by the creativity, the

multiculturalism, and the nightlife. A full 463,000 people living in Berlin last year were

foreign-born.



Once the honeymoon period comes to its natural end and homesickness hits, however, the realityof living and working in the capital kicks in. The language barrier, the competition for low-paidwork, and the harsh winters in this transit city – where friends come and go – can dampen thelove affair.

The Local spoke to six expats who left Berlin in the last decade. Young, wide-eyed, and �lled withwanderlust, they were drawn to the creative buzz, startup scene, and cheap living costs, butultimately fell out of love with the city.

Scraping by for a living

Katya Petrova went to Berlin in pursuit of an creative career, but ended up doing a total of 19 different paid jobs here. Photo: Private.

Katya Petrova, a self-described “urban explorer,” moved to Berlin in 2011 after completing threecreative arts degrees in the UK. At the age of 25, she came to the city with a dream to work in acreative �eld by day and party by night.

“I was young, naïve, and quite fearless,” she says. “I thought Berlin, being so cultural, should bethe best place to land a job in a creative media agency.”

But her dreams didn't materialize. Facing a lot of competition from young artists who werewilling to work for very little or no money, Petrova ended up doing 19 different paid jobs. First sheworked as a chef's assistant in a paleo restaurant, then as a social media marketer, journalist,tour guide, video editor, and even as a bottle collector.

“I never missed a bottle too. That's how sad it was sometimes,” she says. In a post on her blogAvant Hard from July 2017, Petrova jokingly wrote, “How am I supposed to ever �t all this in my



two-page CV? I might just change my LinkedIn title to Senior Survivor Strategist.”

She lived on €300 to €400 a month, which was enough for her to scrape by, but not enough tobuy new clothes or a bus fare to visit her mother in Latvia.

Leaving Berlin isn't as simple as packing up and boarding plane. Kathleen Parker helps expats tie up loose ends and leave the city. Photo: Private.

Kathleen Parker, the founder of Red Tape Translation, which helps English-speaking expats inGermany navigate the maze of German bureaucracy, cited the main reason for leaving Berlin as�nding a better-paid job opportunity elsewhere.

“I think people quite often misjudge Berlin,” Parker said. “When they move to Berlin, it seems likea very cheap city and it is generally in comparison to other places. But then funds start to run outand… self-employment is much harder to sustain �nancially.”

Petrova's lack of �nancial stability took a psychological toll, lowering her sense of self-worth anddistorting her attitude to money. Moreover, she lacked a stable social network. Although sheconnected strongly to other expats, spending so much time in the international community hadits disadvantages.

“Berlin is like the largest European airport, where you wait for a connecting �ight,” she says. “It'snot a problem to meet new, wonderful people, but it's hard to keep them as friends.”

She noticed that her career-oriented friends quickly became dissatis�ed with Berlin. One afterthe other, they moved to other destinations in search of more lucrative jobs.



Eventually, so did she. In 2008, Petrova received a job offer from Google's branch in Dublin,Ireland, where she has since made a home. She has no plans to return.

Struggling with the language

Fed up of living in Birmingham, where he had grown up, Adam Fekete moved to the Germancapital in January 2010 and worked at an English-speaking startup as a software engineer.

Since many Berliners speak English �uently and there is a large English-speaking expatcommunity, Fekete admits he felt less pressure to learn German. In hindsight, he wishes he hadcommitted himself to gaining �uency.

“I thought I might pick it up as I go alone, but it was kind of di�cult because everyone doesspeak English there,” he says. “This made it a bit harder [to make friends] in the Germancommunity because of the language barrier.”

In her work with hundreds of English-speaking expats, Parker has noticed that the Germanlanguage, while not an initial obstacle, can ultimately hinder integration efforts and turn peopleoff the city.

“If there's one city in Germany that you would get away with not learning the language it's Berlin,”Parker says. “It's very easy to have a social circle that is pure expats, but the problem with thatlife is that everyone leaves after a couple of years.”

Fekete was also occasionally frustrated by the unfriendliness and poor customer service inBerlin. He remembers several times when people were rude or curt towards him, recalling a timehe tried to buy a sound system at a multimedia store.

“I asked the guy in the shop to talk me through some of the products and he said, ‘just go look atthem.' So, I left the shop.”

The catalyst for his return home after eight years in Berlin was the birth of his nephew. Backhome and surrounded by his old friends and family, Fekete says he thinks he underestimatedhow homesick he would feel abroad and the toll that leaving his loved ones behind would haveon him.

Yet he warned repatriates that they might experience reverse culture shock.

“It's weird being back after eight years,” Fekete says. “You're still in the group and you're stillintegrated, but there's an entirely different set of memories that they share and that you weren't apart of.”

Facing prejudice from the locals



Gra�ti from the street where Emily Gibbons and her partner lived, which reads, “You aren't a Berliner.” Photo: Private.

Fresh out of university, both aged 22, Emily Gibbons and her partner moved from Britain to Berlinin 2010.

“When we �rst moved to Berlin, the novelty and excitement blocked out the negative aspects butthat waned over time,” she says.

Determined to become Berliners, they tried to assimilate into local life by stepping outside of theEnglish-speaking bubble and making friends with locals.

However, this strategy back�red when they began experiencing hostility from them. While somelocals were extremely welcoming and appreciated their German language skills, they sufferedverbal abuse from others.

“We had a fair share of hostility because we weren't German and this de�nitely impacted ourtime in Berlin,” she recalls. “We were regularly shouted at in the street and on public transport forspeaking English to each other and some people in our [district] hung posters blaming foreignersfor rising rents, so we didn't really feel welcome.”

It became harder to call Berlin their home and made them miss Britain more. Fraying familybonds took its toll, as did the pain of missing a family milestone like a birth or a wedding.

“It was always a little bittersweet to hear about all the things we'd missed,” Gibbons says.“Grandparents getting older. And the birth of a niece was a kind of turning point.”



The couple are now living in rural Yorkshire, which they �nd better accommodates this stage oftheir lives. “It was just time for us to leave,” she says. “I think it made me appreciate living hereand the availability of strong cheddar and Twirls.”

Catching the travel bug

Multicultural Berlin inspired Iovino to leave the city and travel the world. Photo: Private.

Sabrina Iovino is a German-Italian who grew up near Stuttgart in the south of Germany, whereshe lived until her early 20s. She moved to Berlin when she was 25.

“I remember, I just went for a weekend to Berlin and I loved it,” she says. “That was my �rst timein Berlin. One year later I quit my job and everything in Stuttgart. I terminated my apartmentcontract and just moved without a job or anything.”

With its stately architecture and smartly-dressed executives, Stuttgart contrasts starkly to thecapital. Iovino found Berlin to be refreshingly unconventional, international, and cheap.

“In Stuttgart, people were so narrow-minded,” she says. “Back there, I would pay 400 euros forone bedroom and then I came to Berlin and I could afford my dream apartment.”

It was relatively easy to �nd a cheap apartment to rent in Berlin two decades, with the averagerental price around €6 per square meter.

The city was still remaking itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall and there was a large surplus ofpublic housing in addition to some empty houses, making it a paradise for squatters, bohemians,



and young people. Berlin's reputation spread quickly and since then hundreds of thousands ofpeople have �ocked to the capital, doubling and sometimes tripling rents.

Inadvertently, it was here in Berlin – spending more time with people from all corners of theglobe than locals – that Iovino caught the travel bug. She learned English from her internationalfriends, listened to their stories of foreign places, and tried new cuisines in restaurants aroundthe city.

In 2008, she left Berlin, heading to India �rst and then Turkey. For the past 5 years, she hasmoved around East Asia, �nancing her adventures through her travel blog ‘Just One Way Ticket.'

Burdened by Berlin's bureaucracy

Rachel Bale took a creative risk in Berlin, resigning from her teaching job and launching her travel blog Department of Wandering. Photo: Private.

Rachel Bale, an Australian from Melbourne, moved to Berlin in 2013 when she was 27 years oldafter her partner received a job offer from Volkswagen.

“It was a di�cult period of adjustment, especially the �rst six months away from home,” shesays. “Not only are you missing friends and family, but you're also adjusting to a whole new wayof life, learning a new language and settling into a new job.

Even after two and half years away from home, Bale and her partner still missed how easyeverything felt in Australia. Struggling with the language and wading through bureaucraticpaperwork, they were tired of Berlin.



“From getting visas, to cancelling contracts, to dealing with everyday situations like visiting thepharmacy or post o�ce, nothing was easy,” she remembers.

They moved back to Australia in 2015, returning to the scorching summers and company of laid-back Aussies in Melbourne.

As it turns out, leaving Berlin is burdened with almost as much bureaucracy as moving to Berlin.

To leave the capital, expats must �rst deregister from Germany. Ideally, they should inform theauthorities a month beforehand, but they have a two-week window. Once they receive adocument that con�rms their deregistration, they can cancel any running contracts such as theirhealth insurance, landline, and utilities, as well as terminate their rental contract.

“There's a bit of bureaucratic chaos and you expect everything to be wrapped up quickly,” Parkersays. “Quite often it takes months to get all the loose ends tied up.”

Still in love

One of the expats we spoke to, however, has not fallen out of love with Berlin.

Eager to discover more of Europe and �nd a better job, Virginia Head — who is originally fromMinnesota in the U.S. — moved to Berlin in the summer of 2012 after spending a year in Prague.

“I was teaching English like all American expats who don't work in tech,” she says wryly. “I left thepreschool after a few months because I just couldn't work full-time with kids. It was too much forme.”

Head admits that her goal wasn't to assimilate into Berlin life. With one foot always outside thecity, she never committed to learning the language.

“I was a really shitty expat and a total asshole and I never learned German properly,” she says. “Iused to say I wish Berlin spoke French because I would love to learn French, but I don't want tolive in Paris.”

After working in a nursery, she subsequently did odd jobs here and there, considering 15 differentoccupations at a time and feeling professionally unful�lled.

It wasn't until the Berlin Art Week that she turned her attention to the city's artists, who shediscovered could make a living from their artwork alone.

“I remember feeling really jealous these people could work in art all the time and I wanted to beone of them,” Head says.

This episode in her life inspired her to return to America in 2014 to get her Master's in ArtsManagement.

Head has no bitterness towards Berlin and reminisces about all the parties she attended. “I reallyliked the nightclub scene, which is bananas. Partying in old warehouses and old communist



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buildings, I loved that.”

She says that she hasn't broken up with Berlin.

“It just isn't where my family is in Minneapolis, the U.S., and I had been away for three years,” shesays. “I'm still very much in love with Berlin. I think about it every day.”

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Breaking up with Berlin: why expats falve with the German capital - … · 2018. 8. 31. · tour guide, video editor, and even as a bottle collector. ... Since many Berliners speak