Flat hunting in Berlin

After the weekend in Brussels, I returned to Berlin to embark on the tedious process of finding a flat. While in Brussels I had already started lining up places, mainly finding ones on wg-gesucht.de. Worried that I might not be able to get my own place at a decent price, I also included some flatshares in my search, but tried to keep it at most one or two other people. The trip back to Berlin was, again, uneventful. The only problem was there was about 30 minutes delay, and it meant I'd miss the first flat viewing (which wasn't high on my list, I mainly just liked the location and street name: Buttmannstr.)

A TGV on another platform in Brussels

Waiting for the train. Was actually going to Berlin Ostbahnhof since my hostel was near that station

Train arriving!

Hello, train!

As we were leaving Cologne, we were "racing" with this other train.

Just going through Germany

You know you're near the VW factory when you see a train full of VW cars

Oh just going 250 km/h (155 mph), no big deal.

In Berlin!

I had several flat viewings and they started to blur together. I saw a lot of "WG"s, which essentially means flatshare. The roommates always seemed nice, but either the area wasn't super great (one was facing an above-ground U-Bahn line which was a little noisy) or the rent was just high. I knew I couldn't ask for too much, but I was still hoping the perfect one would come.

At this point, I had also asked my future employer to send a note asking if anyone knew of a place for me to rent. I had one response, and it was looking quite promising. The visit wouldn't be until later in the week, and I had to turn down some places that wanted a response sooner.

After visiting a few more places (including one that wanted to do flatshare without the landlord's knowledge... NOPE!) it finally came to visiting the one my coworker told me about. The landlord sent me pictures of the place and it looked great. Pretty modern, IKEA furniture, updated kitchen with washer. The price was good, too, and in a good location. I visited and it was absolutely wonderful. Only big downside is it's on the top floor (4th floor, which is really the 5th floor in the US) with no elevator.

And I got the place! I was able to get everything done, and my landlord is actually very nice and understands both our needs. What a relief! Since I had already booked a flight from Brussels to Berlin for moving my stuff, this meant that I wouldn't have to find storage or continue stressing about finding a place. I also had my Dublin trip planned for right afterwards, so I had a lot of busy times still ahead!

During this apartment-hunting week I also took some time to do a bit of sightseeing, museums, and just general discovery of Berlin. I'll post more about that and my return to Brussels in upcoming blog posts. After I post about my visits to Dublin and Prague, the format of my blog might change a bit. I'd like to post a bit more about life in general in Berlin, and some of the differences from life in the US.