Getting my own place for the first time - Germany

im getting my own place for the first time and its rly just sunk in and i am actually quite bricking it now. ive lived away from home (in the uk) before but that was with my sister (in new zealand) and now ive got a job in germany and have got my own place and im moving in a months time.

so has any got any tips/recommendations in general and on what id need? and anything german specific?

oh and i have already been informed about the extortionate GEZ...which i will not be paying maybe the radio, but not the tv... german tv is utter crap anyway.

cheers

You're roughly 29, correct? So long as you've got sufficient money, everything else should fall into place. Good luck!

Same thoughts here... wanted to reply, then in a moments whim, checked out his profile... figured out that if he aint got no idea, it is better that way...

It seems like they are. They just write in pure teenager.

Welcome to Germany.

This forum is the place to be for just about any information you need, and the best way to find it is using the Search function at the upper right of your screen. How to find an apartment, how to get Brit TV, how to pick up someone in a bar - at your fingertips.

Close your eyes and drift back in your consciousness to life at your sister's house.
Think about the bathroom and the things in that room. You need all of them.
Think about the kitchen and the things there. You need all of that too.
Think about your bedroom there. You need all of that, including your dirty magazine collection.
Think about the living room. You need most of that. Not the huge TV; a small one will do...
I guess you get the idea.

Seeing that he is roughly 29 and getting his own place for the first time, I would think that nothing has fallen into place as it should till now. In fact, I think he might need a step by step how to guide for dummies.

When I moved into my apartment, I needed to contact the power company with the electricity reading as well as for the heating. I get billed directly for the power and the heat is included in the rent and may change whenever they get around to reading the meters again to see how much I actually use. My agreement with my landlady was that I would order my own trashcan which I did although she got billed for it as the owner of the house so I had to add another 4,60€ to my rent for that. That was pretty much it.

You may want to get insurance as well. Almost everybody in Germany seems to have haftpflicht insurance. That is the one that pays when you cause damages. Say you get drunk and fall on a new Audi or something. You can also have hausrat insurance, that is the one that pays for the contents of your meager apartment in case the house burns down or you have a flood or something. You may not think you have a lot of stuff but you will see when you start buying it that when you put all those little things together, they add up fast.

If you want a phone or internet or something, you'll have to look at your options before you decide who to go with.

I also recommend reading something like Culture Shock: Germany by Richard Lord. That should give you loads of information.

Yes. My tip is to focus on the important stuff and the positives. Seriously, if our basic premise is starting with gripes / moans / seeing threats and negatives, not to mention insulting local culture (whatever we might think of it), we might not get positives back. It's a bit like Karma. There's a much bigger picture and far more important things relating to an autonomous, independent life than the quality of local TV and those nasty TV licence people, surely? Making the wrong decision on where you live will cost you far more than the 10 Eur a month difference between a radio and a full TV fee (and not just in cash). Yet that's all you mention.

One of the things we often learn the hard way about living alone is that always looking at the negatives and being a moaner or a complainer or going on about how rubbish things are often isolates us - most people don't want to be round it. Remember that nobody actually cares about our opinion of German TV or whatever - but they might well care that we are a negative moaner.

What's he gonna use pads for?

You also need to get an Anmeldung (speaken Sie German?). This is a registration with the authorities that you live at a certain address in Munich, and is carried out at the Kreisverwaltungsrefarat (KVR), U-Bahn Poccistrasse (U3 or U6, look for the signs that lead you to this joyful establishment). This will allow the German authorities to quickly track you down in case new regulations are instituted against your ethnic group.