From Cape Town Comfort to Berlin Uncertainty

Since university days, my husband and I always talked about living somewhere else during our lives. We both grew up and went to school in and around Cape Town. We love Cape Town (and South Africa), but we wanted to experience something outside of our bubble. And since we have no kids, no pets, basically nothing keeping us grounded in South Africa, we started looking at ways to move abroad in early 2023.
At first, we were looking at moving to the Netherlands. Many of our friends from uni had moved there, and it seemed easy enough. English is widely spoken there, and there’s a huge South African community. It became clear early on in our attempts to find jobs that it was not going to be easy.
After a lot of applying, cold emailing, and failed references, my husband was the first one to land a job offer. But not in the Netherlands – Berlin, Germany.
Germany was not really on our radar, but after doing some research, especially about Berlin, we decided to go ahead! So now that my husband got an English-speaking job – which he was able to do remotely while we were getting visas sorted – I continued my job search, hoping to also find one soon.
My job in Cape Town was good, and the company was doing well and growing exponentially. I thought that my CV was good enough for a job in Germany – boy, was I wrong. My job hunt was extremely unsuccessful, and on top of that, our visa process was completely stagnant.
It was a really low time for us; we felt completely out of control, and we couldn’t make any long-term decisions because we had no idea when our visas would be ready.

Long story short, we were eventually helped at the German Consulate in Cape Town – we are so grateful for the people there. Our visas were ready, and we were finally able to book a flight to Berlin. It was such a relief – we could finally start planning our next steps! I had to resign from my Cape Town job during this time, too, but I was confident that I would easily find a job in Berlin (haha).
We arrived in Berlin in early September 2024. We moved into a medium-term, furnished apartment. It was expensive, but it really helped to just have a good apartment sorted so that we could focus on settling in the city.

There was so much to figure out – eSims, opening bank accounts, Anmeldung, Deutschlandticket, mit Karte bitte, nur Bargeld, Entschuldigung, TK, Agentur fur Arbeit, Spätis, Kaufland, dm, S-Bahn, U-Bahn, Pfand, Kleinanzeigen, no stores open on Sundays. And of course, still looking for a job. We also had some issues with converting our visas into Residence Permits, but that’s a story for another time.

Surprise, surprise, I did not get a job. I had a few interviews and case studies, but they always ended in a rejection letter. At this point, I had been unemployed and job hunting for over a year. I was pretty miserable. I secretly applied for a masters program at TU Berlin, not even telling my husband, because I did not want share yet another disappointment if I was not accepted.

Meanwhile, the lease for our medium-term apartment was coming to an end. Now we had to figure out the rental market. Scary stuff! We applied for around 105 apartments; we got invited to 4 viewings only. It was really disheartening to go to apartment viewings with 50+ other applicants. We left like we didn’t stand a chance. We were already figuring out backup plans; a friend of ours had a two-bedroom apartment in Hannover, with one tenant. We could move in with the tenant if all else fails. But, with an incredible stroke of luck, we got invited to a viewing with just one other couple! We had a 50% chance, and we got it! We were so extremely happy. Finally, having a long-term apartment put us in the driver’s seat again.

While moving into our new, unfurnished apartment (shout out Kleinanzeigen), I got accepted to the masters program! That really was a huge turning point for me. My husband was really excited when I told him, too. Now that we both have a purpose in Berlin, we feel much happier and settled 🙂 So now I’m writing this while procrastinating my uni studies. We plan to move back to South Africa eventually – it’s where we feel most at home. But until then, we are happy in Berlin 🙂 We’ve also started making some friends, and that has also been a game-changer.