Car in Germany

With five kids is a car almost a necessity. I have many times thought about a life without a car, because we would save in total appr. 400-500€ per month. But a life with small kids, hobbies, shopping and commuting would become so hard, that after all it is needless to even imagine life without a car. The thing would be different, if I would live in Helsinki and if my whole life would circle around few metro stations.

Because of these reasons is a car in exchance oblicatory. In the middle of the challenges and feelings brought by the strange surroundings, we don't want any additional challenges. And addition to that, travelling around Germany and its neighbourhood is so much more flexible with own car, than by train or buses. My dream is e.g to go to the Alps to explore the valleys and mountain slopes.

But how to implement a car into Germany? In practice, the options are to take the own car to Germany, or to sell i and buy a car in Germany.

Transporting own car to Germany

Would I take my own car to Germany? The first option coming to my mind is to drive it into Germany. There are multiple route options. From Helsinki one can take a ferry direct to Travemünde Germany, which takes 31 hours of time and costs 280 € with own cabin. Second option is to take a ferry to Sweden, to drive to Southern Sweden and after that, either to take a ferry from Southern Sweden to Germany, or to drive through Denmark trough the Öresund Bridge (around 50 €) and the through the Great Belt Fixed Link (around 35 €). The last option is to take a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estland and to drive through the Baltic states and Poland. This option would have the most driving kilometers.

The disadvantage of driving the own car to Germany would be, that I should drive it into Germany beforehand, leave it there, and fly back to Finland to accompany my Family to Germany. This because of the reason, that it would be too burdensome for my wife to come alone with five kids by train and flying to Germany.

On the other hand I could as some friend or sibling to drive the car for us to Germany. In any case, based on my calculations it would cost at least 700 € to drive a car to Germany and then fly between Finland from Berlin by EasyJet (the cheapest flights between Finland and Germany) and this two times, here and back. Not so cheap.

The last option is to look for companies, that transport cars from a country to another. I contacted one of such companies, and their price was 1200 € from Helsinki to Regensburg.

Buying a car in Germany

Would I sell my own car in Finland and buy a new one in Germany? Germany, the land of cars, where you can drive with full throttle in Autobahns, if you dare. This option is very appealing. In Germany, depending on the car make and model, I would get for the same price a newer and less-driven car. When considering also the fact, that our family will most likely continue to grow, so a bigger car is going to be needed - and this need I could fulfill at the same time. So I would bring the car into Finland at the end of the exchange.

But the thing is not so easy. A good car can take time, and the residence during the first days without a car can feel hopeless. How do we do shopping? And all that time that I am looking for a new car, my wife has to take care of our kids alone in strange country and strange apartment. Additionally, I do not have too much money as a student, so the budget is very tight, and this limits the selection and makes it difficult to close a good deal.

And I have to sell my car first in Finland. Ford Galaxy, 2006, driven soon 390 000 km (244 000 miles), diesel, manual. There are risks on selling the car, how long does it take and for which price?

So, which kind of car would I buy in Germany? Maybe the easiest option would be to buy same model, but preferably from 2012 model year up and as less driven as possible. The similar size would be Volkswagen Sharan, but they are more expensive. The low-cost options are Opel Zafira and Volkswagen Touran. But when thinking the future, the best option would be Volkswagen Caravelle or similar 9-seater small bus. But they are very pricy!

Renting a car in Germany

I have also explored the long-term renting of car, but this would be so expensive, that frankly this won't be worth it. Every euro is thrown away, and because we need car also after the exchange, the money would be directly away from the next deal.

Choices

So, which option to choose? Provisionally we have thought, that we will sell our car here in Finland and buy a new one in Germany, which is the brought to Finland after the end of exchange. Most likely this is the choice, but it is not yet completely decided. The timing of selling the car in Finland before leaving and also finding a new one in Germany is challenging. And the budget brings its own challenges. Extra 20 000 € would simplify this issue oddly.

Thanks for your interest and until next time!

Apartment in Regensburg

Home has a big role with kids in regards of quality and meaningfullness of life. Even a small courtyard brings easiness and flexibility to life, when you can get outdoors nearby and you don't need to go farther to playgrounds. Also the kids can go outside to play with each other and we parents can do our own things inside. For example during cleaning or other household works the kids can be outside and we can peek them through the window and supervise if there are some fights to be solved.

The University of Regensburg offers in practice only shared flats for exchange students. For some reason they didn't appeal to us with five children, even though it would have been inexpensive. The only option left was to get an apartment from private markets. Therefore, getting an apartment is the biggest and most expensive challenge in exhange studies.

When researching the rental markets of Germany from various sources, it became clear quite quickly, that in big cities the rental markets are very challenging. It is very difficult to get an apartment and you might need to search for an apartment for months. And Regensburg is one of those cities. So the biggest challenge became even more challenging.

I researched the rental offerings from many sources, e.g. Immobilienscout24.de, immowelt.de, ebay-kleinanzeige.de, wg-gesucht.de and AirBnB. I googled also many sources and read also the instructions in Reddit for people interested to move into Germany, which can be found here. I found also a very good tip to look for local newspapers and their adverts. The local newspaper of Regensburg is Mittelbayerische Zeitung, and at first looking into it I didn't understand anything, because the adverts were full of different abbreviations, e.g. ZKB, EBK, NK, OG, EG etc. Very soon became clear two characteristics of the rental markets of Germany. The first characteristic is that the rents are announced as cold rent (Kaltmiete) and on top of that comes the additional costs (Nebenkosten) such as heating, water, etc. So compared to Finland you have to total the cold rent and additional rent. The second characteristic is, that the rental aparments don't usually include kitchen, but the tenants have to obtain the kitchen by themselves! Yes, you read precisely! This is totally insane from the perspective of a Finn... But, if there happens to be a kitchen, it is informed with word Einbauküche or with abbreviation EBK.

In addition to normal rental apartments there are also vacation homes, which appeared to be very expensive. These can be searched from e.g. ferienwohnungen.de or by googling different variations of words ferien wohnung.

Because it started to feel yet more challenging to find a suitable sized apartment for short-term renting while being located in Finland (though I was also prepared to go there in Jan-Feb to look for good apartments), I asked help from International Office of University of Regensburg. They directed me to office of longer term researchers etc. They have to some extenct different welcome services for exchange students and longer term researchers and PHD students. They pointed me to AirBnB-like company Bed-and-Breakfast-Regensburg.de, and initiated negotiations of an apartment for us. This was a good finding, because with my own googling I wasn't able to find it.

Bed and Breakfast Regensburg had surprisingly wide and good offering in Regensburg-sized city, and there were many suitable options. There was upstairs or downstairs of a house, flat apartments, but also even whole houses. The price level was manageable, if you didn't want to get an apartment from the center of Regensburg. Though, there wasn't any row houses or semi-detached houses.

When considering the alternatives the criteria of the comfort and home-like of living started to weigh the most e.g. compared to inexpensive price. We thought that the experience of Germany for my wife and kids would be the most comfortable, if we have our own courtyard, own house and own permission (a saying in Finnish "oma tupa, oma lupa"). So we ended up renting a whole house, even though it costs more. On top of being in a strange country surrounded by strange language and strange people, we didn't want any more stress factors, so this was the best option. For example, in the other half of a house offered, the landlord didn't want to give permission to use their courtyard, and on the another they would, but we should always pay attention, that we don't disturb the landlord too much, and that would have been too exhausting.

So there is waiting a confirmed house for us, which is fully furnished. It is located a little farther than 20 km from Regensburg, but it has good transport connections. The rent includes in practice everything: heating, water, electricity, furniture, washing machine, linen&towels and even some kind of cleaning every three weeks. The amount of rent is 2500 €/month, so for whole exchange 10 k€, completely shocking amount! We have to check yet the broadcasting fee (Rundfunkbeitrag) if it is whether us or the landlord to pay it. But anyway, the broadcasting fee is mandatory to everyone in Germany, even for those exchange students in the shared flats!

I started the apartment searching very early. I contacted the University of Regensburg first time at April 2019 so approximately one year before the exchange. The confirmation of the apartment took place in July 2019. So the biggest challenge of the exchange is already overcome, and we have been able to start thinkink about the exchange even more positively. It feels it is really going to realize. There are only way more minor things left to organize.

There are still 5 long months to wait.

Thank you for reading. Until next time.

Destination

The destination of the exchange studies was selected to be University of Regensburg in Germany. The consideration of the exchange destinations began from New-Zealand, because of its beautiful nature, Canada, Nordic countries and Europe. Also, we considered more exotic destinations such as Asia.

The Nordic countries were excluded, because when we really go to exchange, it is a bit unimaginative, not getting farther away than Nordics. New-Zealand and Canada would have been good choices, as the family could develop their English skills and getting along would have been easier for my wife with local language. Anyway, my university doesn’t have an agreement with a university in New-Zealand, so I should have acquired one by myself and addition to that the tuition fees are rather high. In Canada there was one destination ready, but here also the tuition fees would have been rather high.

At this point the choices were limited in practice to Europe or some Asian destination. The practical means started to guide more the selection. Maybe the most important criteria were, that with kids the destination must be safe. Because of that the exoticism of Asia wasn’t so appealing anymore. The only exotic choice left was Las Palmas, which was rejected because of requirement of Spanish skills.

For myself one important criterion was the job possibilities of the future and the impact of the exchange to the job possibilities. My big dream is to have a job from BMW in München Germany. For this goal the exchange in Germany would be the most useful. We could learn the language, experience how the living in Germany feels, get to know the culture, people and places, and to get a foot in the door of BMW. The exchange would work as a test for the whole family, how the life in German would be. Based on that experience we could decide of possible permanent living in Germany. Because of these reasons we chose Germany.

There was variety of universities in Germany, of which to choose from. I picked those options, where BMW has production or other offices. Our university has mainly two choices: Leipzig and Regensburg. In Leipzig there is two alternatives: private top-university Handelhochschule Leipzig, in which the teaching is held in English, or the public university Universität Leipzig, which requires min. B2 German skills, because there are no courses held in English. In Regensburg there were also courses held in English.

So, the destination was selected to be Regensburg. Regensburg is located in south Germany in Bavaria 125 km to north from München. In Regensburg there are 166 000 residents, so its size is in halfway between Jyväskylä and Turku. Regensburg is known of its old town, which survived well of the bombings of World War II. There is also a big production plant of BMW, where they produce for example 1-series and X1 & X2 models. In the university of Regensburg there are 10 faculties and 21 500 students yearly.

Until next time!