Do you remember the day you got your “Anmeldung” in Germany? 🙂
I do… vividly 😂.
Maybe you understand right away where this story leads to… and what I mean, because – we expat women – we are facing similar situations, I guess. I am writing this here not only for you, but also… a little bit for myself.
Because there are things about living here in Germany as an expat that I’ve been quietly carrying around for some time — mentioning them over a Latte Macchiato to my friend from Italy, then we are nodding and laughing… and then just… we are just moving on. Taking things as given.
Yes, I totally agree, humour makes everything a little better, and I truly think our brain also needs this kind of mechanism to cope a bit better with annoying situations.
But still – I want some “issues” we have to be seen – like not only joked about, but yes – also seen as problems, we have to deal with and not only charming little ‘accidents’ everyone is making fun of. Like ‘yes, this is just the international life we signed up for. Ha ha, Germany, you got me again with your cute Brezels 🥨.’
And look — most of the time, they ARE funny. Genuinely. The kind of funny where you’re retelling the story at a dinner party and you can barely get through it.
But some days? Some days they’re just annoying. Like, properly, legitimately, ‘why-is-this-happening-oh-my-gosh’ annoying. And I think that deserves a little more airtime than a punchline and a subject change, right?
So I’m writing this partly hoping you read it and go “oh my god, yes, SAME” — because that echo is kind of the whole point. These stumbling blocks are real. They have nothing to do with how much is in your ‘Konto’ or whether you’ve finally sorted that ETF portfolio.
They’re just the stuff that comes with life. Funny most of the time. Genuinely exhausting sometimes – most of the time very German. 😄 🤓
Ah, and yeah, I still owe you my ‘Anmeldung’ story.
So, I remember standing in a Bürgeramt waiting room on a Tuesday morning, clutching a number ticket like it was a gold medal, watching the screen flicker from A087 to A088. I had been there for 47 minutes. I had no idea what was going to happen when my number was called. I didn’t know what documents they wanted. I had googled “Anmeldung Berlin what to bring” three separate times and gotten three separate answers.
And then — A089. My moment. I walked up, sat down, laid out every single document I owned like I was presenting a business case to the board.
Passport ✓.
Rental contract ✓.
The Anmeldeformular I had painstakingly filled out the night before ✓.
I thought I was ready, yeah and then the woman looked at my little pile, then looked at me, and said I was missing the Wohnungsgeberbestätigung — this form my landlord needed to sign.
Uff, how could this have slipped through… But yeah, this is just one of those typical German things. It’s not enough to bring a signed contract from your landlord – no, we need double-proof: Bring another document and fill in the data… again… Jesus. 😀
Sure, I should have checked again to make sure I have everything… but this extra document still seems unnecessary – at least to me.
So yeah… I wasn’t lost, exactly. I was just… in the fog.
And that’s the thing about expat life in Germany — it’s not one big dramatic crisis. Nobody moves here and immediately falls apart. It’s subtler than that. It’s fog. Thick, persistent, bureaucratic fog that rolls in quietly and sits on top of your brain until you start questioning whether you’re actually a competent adult or just someone who only looked competent back home.
If you feel it, this one’s for you. 💛
Fog Bomb #1: You can nail a presentation in English, but can’t call your Arzt without sweating
Do you know those moments when you actually know something subconsciously but you are just too embarrassed to say it out loud? Like to actually let it out?
So here we go… I was doing well — after moving here, I got a good job with a decent salary, living in a city – Berlin – I genuinely loved. And yet I’d stand in a DM trying to figure out if I buy washing powder or a toilet cleaner, or feeling a low-grade panic every time my Vermieter (landlord) sent a letter, I had to Google Translate three times before it made even partial sense.
There’s this weird kind of cognitive dissonance of being a high-functioning professional in one language and culture… while feeling like a slightly confused child in another.
And I am not saying this to just complain (that’s cliché maybe, but isn’t this also more a German thing 😀) – it matters, because that fog doesn’t just affect your mood: It affects your decisions.
When you don’t feel confident navigating the basics, you definitely don’t feel confident asking questions about your Rentenversicherung (pension contributions) or whether your tax return is actually correct. And this is super important and yes – leads to you eventually being less independent. The last thing we want, as we all left our country for a little adventure, right?
You put it off. Of course you do. We all do. That’s the thing… 🤔
The fog makes you procrastinate on the things that matter most, because those things feel even more impenetrable than the Bürgeramt queue.
So, my German friend Nina said recently, “I am sorry, honey, sounds rough… but you know we have to deal with this bureaucracy as well.. and not even we understand it.”
Yeah, I get where you come from, and thanks for your loving words, dear – but honestly… I feel this is… not the same. Since I am always stressed out, I might miss important information because I don’t understand every word they.
And don’t even get me started on the Frauenarzt. Because there are appointments where you can bring a friend for moral support and live translation — and then there are appointments where you absolutely don’t want to. Or at least not everyone who is available at this point.
You want to explain your symptoms, ask your questions, and understand the answers — by yourself, like the adult you are. But medical German is its own language entirely (Like ‘Lungenentzündung’ vs ‘pneumonia’, e.g.), and it hits you right when you’re already feeling a little vulnerable. I’ve smiled and nodded my way through more of those appointments than I’d like to admit, Googling the medication name on the U-Bahn home like a low-budget detective. 🤔
But yeah… doesn’t matter if we are in Köln, Hamburg or in Heidelberg… I guess the language is giving us everywhere a hard time (I know that I am better off in Berlin, of course…).
And I think that’s what gets to us after a while — that we are losing our autonomy a bit. You’re someone who makes decisions confidently, advocates for herself, and knows her own body. And then… at the doc you’re suddenly dependent on whether they speak enough English.
Yeah, fair enough, you could say “Just learn German”. But there’s a difference between not knowing how to order your “Ingwertee und Stück Marmorkuchen” and not fully understanding a diagnosis or a treatment option. This isn’t small talk vocabulary.
Fog Bomb #2: Everyone around you seems to have figured it out
I was recently at a dinner party in Prenzlauer Berg: Boris, my friend from Yoga, invited and we had a good wine and my other dear Jenna has brought a very respectable Käseplatte (you know those with all kind of cheese from France, Switzerland and Italy you can find a in Bio-Supermarket – such a cliché in this supposed to be super ‘upper-middle-class-Kiez’ 😂).
We sat down, cheered to our lives, and the conversation turned to, I don’t know, the housing market, then Elterngeld (parental allowance) and then switching health insurance providers.
I was already like, ‘interesting…,’ but would also have really liked to talk about lighter topics after work.
So I’ve been a bit quieter because I have been tired, and suddenly Boris and Jenna are having this very confident, informed conversation, and everyone’s nodding along, doing their absolute best impression of someone who also knows things. (Me too 😀)
But here’s what I’ve learned from building and being part of the fin:marie community: almost nobody actually has it figured out. They’re just better at performing, having it figured out.
The women who come to our Academy? They’re smart, accomplished, globally-minded, earning good money — and the first thing almost every single one of them says is some version of: “I thought it was just me.”
It’s not just you. It was never just you. We’re all running on vibes and Google Translate and the one German colleague who’s nice enough to explain things twice.
Yeah, and this is why the fin:marie Academy even exists – to show you ‘hey, there are others like you and me.’
Our aim at fin:marie was to build a community of women who show each other how to get a piece of the pie. And I have to say that one more time: Especially for expat women.
And spoiler: Even though those people might seem to have everything figured out already when it comes to money, insurance, assets and whatsoever – all of those topics are super individual. There is no one-size-fits-all – meaning what’s right for them doesn’t have to be for you.
Not even mentioning that sometimes they are just loud and might not even know more than you … (I am not even slightly side-eyeing men, haha).
I don’t want to point fingers at anyone of course, I just want you to feel less intimidated by conversations like that – as, trust me, so many people have no clue either and need to get started or pretend they have don’t acknowledge it and.. yeah – sometimes don’t really get started in the end.
So the actual power move is to admit you are mayyybe a bit clueless and, after all being open and really learning how to deal with money, e.g.
Fog Bomb #3: The “I’ll sort it out when I decide to stay” trap
Oh, this one. This one is particularly German-expat-flavoured.
Because Germany is not always the easiest place to settle into emotionally.
The winters are long. Oh my god, I don’t know if you have been living in Berlin this year, but especially this one tested us, right? Maybe my Munich expat peers – you had a good time – as the Alps were screaming “get your snowboard out!”? 🏂
Anyways… let’s continue with the list 😀 – The bureaucracy is relentless. Even making close German friends can take years. And so a lot of us exist in this semi-permanent state of “I’m here for now, but maybe not forever” — which sounds reasonable but is actually just a very comfortable way to avoid making decisions.
And look — it’s not just the bureaucracy that’s exhausting. It’s everything that comes with it. You’re navigating a new language in high-stakes moments. You’re sometimes just… homesick.
Like, properly, embarrassingly homesick — missing your mum’s Carbonara (delicious… 🥹), or your best friend who just gets you without you having to explain yourself, or even just the comfort of knowing exactly how things work somewhere.
You’re also simultaneously trying to build a social life from scratch — which, by the way, is a full-time job in itself and also – which you really need. As you are far away from home, you need your ‘chosen family’ or ‘second family’ to basically survive and making friends as an adult is hard enough.
Like we don’t have play dates anymore, our moms organised for us – like ‘Listen Annalisa, this is Brittany – don’t you wanna invite her over this afternoon?’ And then Brittany has no choice but to become your friend as her mother wants a free afternoon to clean the house and drink a cappuccino by herself 😀.
No, sadly not anymore. On top of it, making friends as an expat in a city where the locals have known each other since kindergarten? A whole different level. 😅
So long story short – I get it. I get, that you have zero capacity for uncomfy topics. And those are sometimes related to money. You might think: “I’ll figure out my finances when I know if I’m staying for longer” or “I’ll open a proper investment account when I have a permanent contract.”
Let me tell you one thing – and nothing else than with love: Money actually gets “uncomfy” when it’s – exactly – not figured out. Not to blame you or to shame you, but to just say “Yes, I get all of it… would be just good to take some me-time and have your financial situation on the radar.”
The fog here is existential, not just administrative. And fin:marie was honestly one of the places that helped me separate “I don’t know where I’ll be in ten years” (valid, relatable, fine) from “therefore I don’t have to think about money” (a story we tell ourselves that costs us more than we realise).
You can plan for yourself without having to have your entire life plan locked in. 💪
Fog Bomb #4: The expat bubble — cosy, comfortable, and a little bit of a trap
Okay, hand on heart – maybe it was the same for both of us… We had some plans when we moved to Germany, no? Like, not the obvious ones, getting a job or whatever.
Okay, maybe also obvious – we were going to learn German properly, seriously. Also, of course we thought we would only make real German friends. To well… actually, integrate, right? Not just land in Germany and immediately find the nearest group of English-speaking internationals and… stay there forever.
What should I say… here we are. 😄
Some of us maybe more, and some less, but I guess the majority would say “yes”.
Because yeah we didn’t come here and say “let’s find an expat bubble” — as you know, the expat bubble isn’t something you just choose exactly. It just happens.
Like automatically. You sign up for a yoga class thinking, okay, this is where I meet real Berliners or Frankfurters – in the English-speaking class (let’s fool ourselves a bit 😀)
And maybe you even do! Two of them. Who both immediately start talking to you in English because they clocked your accent when you were complaining about how little flexible your hamstrings are in the first Downward Facing Dog. And the other six people in the class? An Australian, two Americans, someone from Amsterdam, and a girl from Milan who becomes one of your closest friends. Bless. (of course she’s an Italian speaker – what else 🙊)
Hey, I absolutely don’t wanna talk this down – please don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing to meet people from all over the world — it genuinely is. You don’t have to translate yourself, not linguistically into a language you don’t feel comfortable at all and for your new Italian bestie not even not culturally.
In the end, it’s not about from where somebody is, but rather about you vibing in the same way. Like making friends in Yoga, e.g. means that you share sometimes similar philosophies of living.
For example, you mention that you need a slow weekend for your mental health and nobody looks at you like you just said something weird. Or you go out together in the evening, but you rather wanna have a peppermint tea than a third glass of wine, and everyone’s immediately on board. Nobody wants to talk you into another Riesling from this beautiful Mosel area.
Yes you could say – the friendship is easy in a way that just feels like oxygen.
But yeah, I had this situation… I have been here five years, and I was sitting in my favourite little café on the opposite side of my Wohnung — the one with this crazy good vegan blueberry cheesecake and the window seat I kinda… consider mine at this point 😬.
And the door opens, my German neighbour enters, and she smiles at me… and at this point I realise… oooh, I still don’t know her name. Was it Melanie? Or Jessica?
Maybe you also know those kinds of situations.
I mean, we’ve said ‘Hallo’ approximately four hundred times, and that’s… as far as it’s ever gotten. Always coming home the same time from work… opening the front door for each other and then walking silently upstairs until I have to get one more floor up and then ‘Tschüüüss’.
You’re living in Germany. But not quite with it. At least this is how it felt to me.
But here is the thing: Breaking out of the bubble takes real effort.
And after a long week of navigating everything else on this list — this Deutsch, the bureaucracy, yeah… the fog
— sometimes we just don’t have that effort (or brain cell 🧠) left.
So it’s just a bit easier to go back to our little comfy expat bubble, because it’s warm and it’s ours, and sometimes we just want to sit across from someone who already gets it — over a good coffee, no explaining required.
There is only this thing that I am thinking sometimes. People are also leaving to live somewhere else – let’s say, at a higher percentage than locals. And then you have to start to connect again.
Sure it’s super nice to also have a friend in Barcelona, Buenos Aires or in Cape Town you can eventually visit, but yeah… here the word ‘chosen family’ comes in again. We also need stability, of course, in a way.
And just saying… sometimes that comes also with bonding a bit more with the locals – makes you feel more part of your surroundings, maybe or like gives you a sense of belonging somewhere.
Still, I would never ever wanna miss my friends from all over the world – they make my life here, and yes, we understand each others fog bombs 😀.
So having only expat friends is also super valid. Completely valid. Just — worth noticing if we could also open up a bit more 💞
Fog Bomb #5: Nobody in your life back home gets it
Recently, I have been sitting on my couch after cooking lunch on a Sunday, a super-nice mushroom risotto recipe I got from my friend Giulia from home. And then I thought about her, and of course, I dialled her number and wanted to tell her how awesome it tasted again.
After thanking her for showing me this amazing food, I ended up talking about how I feel, and tried to explain why I am a bit stressed about my Steuererklärung (tax return) or whether I should stay in gesetzliche (public) or switch to private health insurance… her eyes glaze over. Even over a video call, I can see it.
Of course, we love each other. We have known each other since first grade and eventually grew up together – and yes, exchanged recipes to become perfect housewives (silly me 😅 – life had clearly another plan for me).
But… yeah, she wants to help me, of course. She is just missing a frame of reference. Which is not anyone’s fault, of course… I am not here to blame anyone, neither her nor myself.
Still “Can’t you just get an accountant?” is maybe goodwill, but doesn’t really help me at this point…
It’s a bit bigger than that. There is this emotional weight of doing so much of this alone. Because you make all those decisions: big ones, real ones — without a single person in your life who’s already walked this exact path and can say:
“I know how it works, let me show you how what’s best, stay in your public insurance, because of a) and do this in your Steuererklärung because of b).”
Yeah, I’d bet most of us don’t have that. There’s no older sister who also moved to Germany in her 30s and figured out the health insurance system, and can tell you what she did. No family friend who knows what it’s like to build a life from scratch in a country that’s so different to yours.
You’re doing a lot of things for the very first time — in a constellation that’s on top of it, uniquely yours — and yes, that’s suuuper exciting, but it also comes with something else, which is a tiny risk that you make a decision that’s not exactly for you… That’s emotional labour and yeah, we carry it mostly by ourselves.
And sure, you don’t need someone to fix it all the time.
We also don’t want somebody to explain how we should live our lives, no? But sometimes we just want to say it out loud to someone who won’t immediately try to talk us out of experiencing these intense feelings.
You want to name the worries… and yeah, just get them out to maybe move on with a little lighter heart.
So that’s what I wanted to do here, honestly. Not solve anything (and I could not probably 😀). I just wanted to say: I see you. If any of this sounds familiar — the overwhelm, the loneliness of being emotionally self-sufficient all the time, the feeling of navigating without a map… I feel it too.
And I’m pretty sure there are a lot of us out here feeling exactly the same way and not saying it nearly enough, because we always expect that others would not get it.
So, gentle pat on the back. You’re doing great, even when it doesn’t feel like it. 💛
So, what do you do with all this fog?
Well… You don’t need to clear everything at once – like you also don’t tidy your basement, clean your flat and cut the grass in the garden the same day, no? (At least I hope not, otherwise I’ll start feeling bad 😀)
Overall, I don’t think that’s even the point. To get rid of all fogs at the same time.
The point is — and that’s really why I wrote this — that you’re not alone in it.
Not even a little bit. There are so many of us navigating exactly this, quietly, from our favourite café window seats and our Sunday risottos and our Bürgeramt waiting rooms.
Sometimes, not knowing what’s actually going on in this country.
We are doing it well, mostly, also struggling sometimes, and often figuring it out as we go. But also if we don’t sometimes… that’s fine.
And if reading this made you feel even slightly less like you’re the only one — then that’s everything. And I am happy for you (and me 😛).
The one thing I will say, gently and without pressure: when you’re doing this much on your own, it does matter to have a few things in place that you can actually rely on.
One of the things I’ve come to believe pretty deeply is that women are incredibly good at taking care of each other, when we actually let ourselves. We share recipes, we share apartments, we share the name of a good Steuerberaterin who speaks English.
Yes, we show each other how things work, not by lecturing (not by …-splaining 😣), but just by saying “okay, so here’s what I did.”
And I think that’s exactly what’s possible when it comes to money, too. Not scary, not complicated — just women, at different stages, sharing what they’ve learned. No judgment about where you’re starting from. No pressure about how much you’ve already figured out.
We’re all figuring it out together, and there is nothing like “Do-it-like-me-because-this-is-the-only-way” – no, we are no fans of those absolute statements that don’t even leave a little space for arguing against them.
Just a space where the question “wait, what even is a Riester-Rente?” is completely welcome.
That’s what fin:marie feels like to me. Less a finance course, more a group of women who’ve decided to figure this out together — on their own terms, in their own time.
So if the fog ever gets a little too thick and you want a starting point — we’re there. And if you’re not ready yet, that’s completely okay too. 💛
