I love that in Berlin, you can be whoever you want to be.
And for myself, I love participating in the startup scene, in the arts, in the dance clubs.
It really feels like a adult Disneyland, and we welcome everyone here.
Guten Appetit.
I'm Vanessa Wachtmeister, I'm 34 years old and I currently live in Berlin Germany, with my husband and my two cats.
I'm originally from Los Angeles, California, but I've been abroad for the last 12 years.
And in 2020, I relocated to Germany.
Most people don't think you can get good Mexican food out here, but you can.
You just have to assemble it at home.
My husband is actually from Germany and here in my home I can speak German, I can speak English, I can even speak Chinese, because both of us studied Chinese.
We met in China.
My cats, they have Chinese names and they have European passports.
Like I get to have this wonderful international lifestyle and that's what I was looking for when I left.
For the last 13 years, I've been running a side hustle which is a combination between a travel blog and a relocation consultancy.
Today, I'm coming to you from the beautiful country of Egypt.
Okay, we are on a camp.
This is not for the faint of heart.
And we help US citizens find meaningful opportunities abroad.
My husband and I split our household bills 50-50 for my part of the household budget plus some of my discretionary spending.
My monthly budget is around 2,500 US dollars.
My rent here in Berlin, Germany is about 2000 US dollars.
And for that money, we get a two bedroom, two bath apartment with a 300 square foot balcony.
So the interesting thing about Germans is they love their kitchens.
They invest a lot of money into them.
So when they leave their apartments, they take their kitchens with them.
This entire kitchen, we had to design, pay for, and install when we moved here.
When it's time for us to leave this apartment, we can take our kitchen with us.
We spend so much time here because we love to cook.
More specifically, my husband loves to cook and I love to eat.
When I was living in the United States as a student.
I couldn't seem to save anything and I was in a ton of student loan debt.
I was actually taking the LSAT preparing to go to law school, and I would accrue another 150000 worth of student loan debt.
I was looking for something a lot more adventurous, meaningful.
I wanted to figure out who I was and where I belonged in the world.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would have moved to China to teach English and only make a thousand dollars a month.
And that was actually the catalyst to this entire life.
I did a internal transfer with my current employer.
And because the salary bands are higher in Germany, I actually made money by moving to Germany.
So here we are at my favorite market hall in Moabit.
We are going to grab some snacks, some coffee, but most importantly, German cheese.
I'm a little lactose intolerant.
Which cheese can I eat?
The way that I learned German was actually participating in the integration course.
The integration course is something that the German government sponsors normally for refugees.
I chose to self-sponsor and pay privately.
Danke!
Wunderschöne Arbeit!
I'm really good with my German when it comes to food gossip travel, but if you want me to like debate anything particularly nuanced or complicated, I'm gonna tap out.
I just get too nervous.
I think Berlin has gotten to be much more expensive, especially for locals who have been here their entire lives.
But in comparison to the United States and to some of the other major cities in Europe, it's still a much more affordable city to live in.
We don't have to save for medical emergencies or anticipate these massive inflated costs for our healthcare system in the same way that people in the US do, even though the public insurance programs are super great.
I chose to be privately insured because they'll pay for facials massage, a retreat in the mountains if I get burnt out.
I rarely pay anything beyond that 450 for my private insurance every month.
This actually guarantees you a percentage of your income if you're laid off or fired for up to 12 months in some cases.
So these programs really create a lot more confidence in the system.
As an individual who's living here and i don't need to save and worry like i used to have to in the united states Something that I struggle with sometimes is being so far from my family.
However, I think a lot of the like average day-to-day family drama really melts away because we really want to focus on having a wonderful time together with the limited time we have.
So now I'm proud to announce that I am a German citizen, and it is by far the thing I'm most proud of in my entire life.
It was not easy.
I failed over and over and over again.
I've been audited.
I've been near deportation several times.
This whole life I've built has not been without blood, sweat, and tears.
And so if you want this, you gotta work for it.
It is absolutely worth pursuing this life abroad because you get to reinvent yourself in your vision.
