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!

Decision

Almost three years ago in autumn 2016, when I decided to go back from worklife to studying, it was clear for me from start, that I wanted to go exchange during the studies. The exchange studies didn't interest me the last time I was in university, and that was starting to regret that more and more.

Getting international experience in form or another started to feel more interesting during worklife. Many times moving abroad was in my mind and I was thinking about different possibilities to make it happen. We also discussed about these plans with my wife. But realizing it would be somewhat challenging. You should find a new job abroad, discontinue your safe contract, find an apartment and so on.

When you study it is a totally different game. Practically, you will get to exchange, if you only decide and fill some application forms. No need to search job, go to job interviews, be anxious about the results, discontinue contracts etc. Only by filling the form you will get an exchange destination with almost 100% probability. Wonderfully easy! Well okay, there are some hiccups along the way, but my intention is to write about these in here.

Anyway, my own decision to go exchange was crystal clear and nothing would weaken that decision. No children, not the possible schoolgoings by kids and nothing else either. I. Had. To. Get. To. Exchange.

And because the idea is to write here about organizing and experiences of exchange from the approach of a family with children, let's tell that I am 31 year old father of big family, and we have 5 kids with my wife. This sets special challenges for the exchange, that differ greatly from other exchange students' challenges. Despite the challenges, the aim is to gain common and wonderful experience for the whole family.

At the time many things is already nailed down for example the exchange destination and apartment. About all these I will write here in the coming weeks and months. The exchange will start in the beginning of April 2020, meaning there is still 7 looooong months to wait.

Until next time!