Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
blog.alexanderdickson.com
Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
1–10 of 219 posts
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#2Some fun albeit superficial information. You forgot to mention that Australians are not simply allowed to move here.
Having a job or at least money to support yourself is a prerequisite.
A friend of my wife is from Australia and she had a hard time to prove she's not a burden to Germany even though she basically lives off renting her house in Australia and selling her art so that she is quite well off.
Also Germany likes foreigners who have white skin. When you don't you risk getting interned straight at the airport.
As you have committed no crime and you are legally not in Germany you have no rights to get a lawyer etc.
People from Africa or Asia routinely get held at extraterritorial prisons indefinitely. In case you have mixed ancestry and look like "people of color" be cautious.
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#3> [My car is] impractical with only two doors and four seats
I like four doors, but only two isn't too bad (drove one of those for five years). Seats though, is it normal to own a bus in Australia? The people I would expect to own a car with more than two rows of seats are families with 4+ kids, which is nobody here.
I've recently been thinking about a 2-seater to save on gas/CO2 since I have no kids anyway and you can always rent or borrow a car for that one time a year that you need it (since friends and family have 4-seaters, when we want to go somewhere, we can go with their car and pay for drinks or whatever). Of course, I'm in an exceptional situation with only a girlfriend and no plans for kids. I just can't help but wonder if this "4 seats is impractical" statement comes from being scared of "but what if I need it one day and then I don't have the option?" when logically, it is really much cheaper to rent a van once every four years than permanently own a huge car.
> The trains are so awesome in Germany
hah, try the Netherlands. Living in Germany for more than a year now, I think the trains here are quite crappy. Not unusable or filthy, but also not like the Netherlands. And the ICEs go 300km/h, not 250, and are very unreliable punctuality-wise.
Related: "You also won’t find automated checkouts [in Germany]." again, try the Netherlands :)
> it’s normal for all shops to be closed except for servos (there’s a confusing word for Germans)
Eh, I'll say. Servo(s) only exists in merriam-webster as well as the community-based dict.cc as I know it: a motor. Is this from a Brisbane dialect or something?
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#4> the bottom floor is 0, not the ground floor
In the elevator sure, though just as often it's abbreviated EG for Erdgeschoss, which does mean ground floor. We call the floor above that "erstes Geschoss" or "erstes Obergeschoss", whereas that would be the second floor in English, but we never say "nulltes Geschoss", always Erdgeschoss.
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#5Some fun albeit superficial information. You forgot to mention that Australians are not simply allowed to move here. Having a job or at least money to support yourself is a prerequisite. A friend of my wife is from Australia and she had a hard time to prove she's not a burden to Germany even though she basically lives off renting her house in Australia and selling her art so that she is quite well off. Also Germany l…
Is he talking about immigration though? Or does he simply have a visa?
> People from Africa or Asia routinely get held at extraterritorial prisons indefinitely. In case you have mixed ancestry and look like "people of color" be cautious.
I've never heard of any extraterritorial prisons here. Can you elaborate / source this?
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#6> [My car is] impractical with only two doors and four seats I like four doors, but only two isn't too bad (drove one of those for five years). Seats though, is it normal to own a bus in Australia? The people I would expect to own a car with more than two rows of seats are families with 4+ kids, which is nobody here. I've recently been thinking about a 2-seater to save on gas/CO2 since I have no kids anyway and you c…
For cars that exist in both three and five door versions the three door version is usually worse for tight spaces, because the doors are bigger and the front seats more forward relative to the back of the door. Three doors / four seats seem to be less common these days, though.
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#7Edit: removed. (My post was too negative and was just me venting.)
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#8> It’s also more difficult for me as a I have a US layout keyboard at home and a German layout at work.
I'd hate tp be forced to use a specific layout governed by my employer and I'm glad it's not been a problem so far to get a replacement keyboard with US layout.
It's pretty common nowadays for developers to simply prefer the US layout if their country's is not great, like the German one that makes typing braces etc. a pain in the ass.
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#9Regarding the trains,
>They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe.
He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying.
I also thought the ICE and non-ICE dichotomy was funny. I would split them into long-distance (IC, ICE, EC) and regional (RE, RB, S-Bahn).
[1]: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... (Db-Fernverkehr tab)
Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)
#10Regarding the trains, >They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe. He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying. I also thought the ICE and…
[deleted]