How to survive in Berlin

Hello people,

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Today, I will try to share with you some useful tips about how to survive in Berlin. To begin with, I had the opportunity to live and work here for 3 months and want to thank Erasmus and the University of Tartu for the opportunity to visit one of the most famous cities in Europe. Berlin is also known as the nightlife capital in Europe (as well as the vegan one for anyone interested) and there are a lot of blogs on the internet about where to go, which club you should visit, what you should eat and so on. I hope you definitely find something useful by simply googling it or searching for it here, in Erasmusu.com. But my goal for today is to tell you about the other part - the more practical one. So let's begin!

Accommodation

It is definitely the most painful and difficult question in Berlin. I have changed my accommodation 4 times and each time it was super hard and probably the most troubling thing that I have had to deal with in this city.

If you are going to Berlin, here are some links where you can find an accommodation for a short/long term:

• Here in www.Erasmusu.com , you can find really good ones. Try to monitor it as much as you can.

• Airbnb- the most famous site for renting, but the price will be a little bit higher than others. It is the easiest way to find a place definitely.

• Facebook - the most helpful for me. There are a lot of groups where people leave their ads with pictures and renting period. It helped me to find a place within one day!

  Links:

• Facebook
• Facebook.roomsurfer
• Facebook.groups

But be ready to put up some front money, even for a short term period. I really advise you to start with Facebook because you can find a place for a short time quite easily, just for the first time, and later, in Berlin, there are better chances to find a place near your work/university.

Prices start from 300€ per month. Average price is 400-600€ depending on the flat.

Language

Most of the people, as you can guess, speak German. But if you only know English it will not create significant problems for you. The problems can occur in some public place /supermarket often with older people (almost all of them don’t speak English). I had a bad experience in a supermarket when my card didn't work and I had a full bag of products without any cash and the cashier didn't understand English. But I will come to it later.

Transport

For the first time, it can be hard to understand how to get from point A to point B if you look at a metro map but trust me the transport system is really good. Berlin is a big city, but the transport system is so cool that you can easily get to any point without any problems.

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Apps that can come in handy are:

• BVG

• Google maps

• Maps. me (for offline)

The free Wifi is only on U-Bahn stations, so if you get lost, try to find a metro with "U" and you will be in safe.

The AB ticket in most cases will be enough for you. It covers almost all of the main parts of Berlin and a monthly ticket is a good deal if you are planning on using it everyday.

But if you arrive at Schönefeld airport, which is in the C zone, you need to buy a ticket which includes that zone. So, I recommend you to buy a single ABC zone ticket or daily ABC ticket just to get to the city and later you can buy a ticket that suits you the most.

About the tickets, all information you find it here: BVG

Money, money, money. Must be funny. In a rich man’s world...

Cash really matters here. You definitely need to have cash here if you don't want to get in trouble as I was in a supermarket. In Estonia, I used to pay by card (MasterCard), so in my first time in Berlín I put a lot of products in my bag and tried to pay with card, but the supermarket didn't accept it and the cashier didn't understand English, so I had to explain with gestures that I had no cash and needed to go home to grab some.

So, if you are a Mastercard user, try to withdraw some cash to avoid problems. (Note: you can buy transport tickets with MasterCard).

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Products

Berlin is one of the cheapest cities in Germany. Everything in Berlin is very cheap (except the rent). With 20 euros in your pocket you can buy food for the entire week (it depends on what food are you eating, but in general with 20 euros is ok). The beer is super cheap - I found one for 20 cents, but a pack of cigarettes is 6-7 euros. I recommend buying food in big supermarkets like Kaufland, REWE or Edeka.

Links:

• Real
• Rewe
• Lidl
• Aldi
• Kaisers
• Edeka
• Kaufland

Summary

To sum up, 600-800 euros will be enough per month (it really depends on the rent).

I hope this short piece of information will be helpful to you. Also, I will add some places that were really interesting for me:

• Mauerpark - just a big park with a lot of facilities,
• Panoramapunkt 360 - for student with student card will be discount,
• Berlin zoo - one of the ‘must see’ for me.

I hope you will love this city.

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