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bergie

I moved to Berlin from Helsinki (another regional start-up hub) last March: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/hacker-nomadism/

There are several things that I've been positively surprised about:

* Cost of living is really cheap. Now when I travel to France or Finland I feel everything is expensive there

* Berlin is very well connected with rest of Europe (trains, flights)

* The hacker scene here is great (huge meetups, etc)

On the slightly negative side:

* bureaucracy is ten years behind Finland. You still need to visit an office to get anything done instead of doing things over the browser

* Rental agencies really try to fleece you

Since moving inside Europe is really simple, I'd urge anybody curious to take a shot and stay here for a while. For example a month in some co-working space.

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> bureaucracy is ten years behind Finland. You still need to visit an office to get anything done instead of doing things over the browser

I found this to be the case when moving to Finland; the amount of bureaucracy needed to get started as a foreigner, even one from the EU, is insane (from a British perspective).

- register with tax office

- register with KELA (you'd think registering as a taxpayer would be sufficent; but no)

- register with the Maistratti (um...)

- register with police station (hey, I've just given my address details to the tax office, KELA, and Maistratti, but let's waste another half a day in a police station in middle of nowhere, Espoo).

But whatever, glad to be doing my part to support the National Bureaucrat Jobs Program.

Getting started as an EU foreigner in UK:

- HMRC

- Council tax

- NI number

- Local doctor

- Voter registration

Never mind that even doing all that, most companies still don't think you exist because you don't appear on credit checks. Granted, most of these can be done via mail (someone should really introduce the British public service to the interwebs one of these days), the bureaucracy in Berlin is hardly uniquely bad from a British perspective :)

Yeah, and getting hold of the HRMC or any of these bodies over the phone can be very difficult. Apologies for that. I once got hit by a HMRC error and it was impossible for me to reach them to correct it while they fined me. Of course, they didn't admit that it was their error and that I took too long to get back to them...

All good points - from a foreigner's perspective in either country.

I think the key here is not web/non-web but the government in question having an intelligent, joined-up registration system.

In the case of Finland, once I'd registered with the tax office my address and other details should have been registered in the system. KELA would be notified - along with all my income details - and the magistrate and police would have up-to-date records. Done, one visit to one office.

You can also spend too much time optimising a relatively rare use case. Each of those steps require that you fill out a form and mail it off. The exception is registering for an NI number where you actually have to book and show up for an interview. That's it. You'll be prompted to do each when necessary, there's no benefit/penalty for doing each too early/too late.

In contrast to Finland, where each of the cases above require me turning up in person. Had I just needed to mail off a form, it wouldn't be so much an issue.

I 'love' the British voter registration process.

"You can do it online!" say the commercials.

Yes, you can fill in a form online, you're then presented with a PDF that you have to print off, sign, and post back to the local council office. Huh?

There's a very frustrating mix of "concern for privacy" vs "being effective".

All these different agencies have their own databases (with slightly different fields making transfer of data between them a bit tricky) and they're not allowed to communicate apart from a few limited examples.

To get anything done I need to fill out a form, on paper. That same information needs to be filled out across many different forms, to different agencies. It's so bad that sometimes one form asks for the same information (address, date of birth) twice.

I'm not sure how governments could kludge all that data into one big database and protect people from hideous privacy violations that result.

C-base (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-base) and co-up (http://co-up.de/) would probably be good starting points for a visiting hacker.

I've also heard a lot of start-up people hang out in Sankt Oberholz (http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?lang=en), but I have no personal experience on that one.

Thanks. Would be great if anyone else has anything to add. Have been looking into this for a while and this has been very useful.

>I've also heard a lot of start-up people hang out in Sankt Oberholz (http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?lang=en), but I have no personal experience on that one.

Coming from Tallinn to see Berlinale in February, I had a misfortune of not having a desk in my hotel room during my stay there. Thankfully, St. Oberholz was just around the corner. I spent most most of the days working there and met many great people from artists and art curators to programmers and entrepreneurs, and it seemed that about third of visitors came from Denmark/Sweden/Iceland and the US/Canada. As much I could gather, Oberholz was the place were tech people could work when they didn't have a office space for themselves or wanted some rest from their primary offices. The place is overcrowded most of the time so you don't have a luxury for your own private table, and more often than not, you'll have to ask for a place at someones table. They also provided almost decent wifi, which really isn't really the norm for the majority of places in Berlin.

On the broader perspective, Berlin is a great city with a good vibe attached to it, and I have been thinking of moving there for a while now.

There are also a number of other hacker-spaces and the Chaos Computer Club. There is one hacker space devoted entirely to the intersection between Textiles and Electronics. Just a warning, Berlin is not the valley. It is it's own unique and awesome thing. A huge proportion of the hacking community couldn't care less about start ups. But it is a large community, and I can't speak for everyone.

Do you have any links for the other hacker spaces in Berlin? I'll be travelling there in the very near future, and will likely need a space to work while I'm there.

I'll be there for a month, and don't mind paying a membership fee. I already checked out c-base, co.up, and Sankt Oberholz, linked above. They look promising, but more information can only help.

Another popular coworking café in Kreuzberg is The Nest, http://cafenest.de.

I moved to Berlin also from Helsinki last autumn to work in a start-up.

What I should add to your list is the open-mindedness of the people: it is one of the most liberal places I've ever been. People are nice, the police won't arrest you so easily for spending a splendid day in a local park and of course the nightlife.

When I visited Berkeley and New York this spring, it was really a joy to be back home.

Why would the police arrest you for spending a day in the park?

If you like to drink beer or smoke cigarettes in a public park, for example. Or smoke weed.

so basically doing things that are against the local laws

It's not illegal to drink beer in public places (like the subways, parks, streets) and it's also legal to smoke tobacco in many places.

Weed is not legal, but it's tolerated and discriminated.

Only they are not legal in NYC given the scenario described. NYC has open container laws (no open alchoholic containers in public), public smoking laws (particularly in public Parks) and weed is illegal under Federal law in th US.

> Since moving inside Europe is really simple, I'd urge anybody curious to take a shot and stay here for a while.

Not everywhere in the EU, I moved to Denmark almost two years ago, and I am completely sure that the Danish system was designed to keep people out of their border. Simple tasks like open a bank account are a troublesome for even EU citizens

> Simple tasks like open a bank account are a troublesome for even EU citizens

Could you give some details of that?

So, there are EU regulations in place that are supposed to make money laundering harder. This raises the bar everywhere.

I suppose he's not referring directly to a bank account, but to our lovely home grown credit-masking-as-debit-card "Dankort" without which you might as well not have a bank account. Since they are in fact credit cards, banks are reluctant handing these out to people they might never see again.

I'm a foreigner with a bank account and no Dankort, and I haven't really found it a huge hassle. While it's hard to get a Dankort, it's easy to get a Visa Elektron, which most places accept without fees (unlike foreign credit/debit cards). And the only things I've found really necessary about a Danish bank account are: 1) having an account to designate as a NemKonto; and 2) being able to use the betalingsservice through netbanking, e.g. to pay my rent, utilities, and TV license fee. For smaller things, I haven't found just using cash to be problematic, even if most Danes don't pay in cash.

Fair enough. I'm happy Electron is gaining ground. Not too many years ago, an Electron basically limited you to withdraw cash (for a fee) from other bank's ATMs and pay in a few places - not including most supermarkets.

To open bank account in Germany you must be a resident or have a work/student visa. The Czech Republic will let anyone open a bank account however, but double check. Just some things I learnt last time I was in Europe on a tourist visa.

As a Dane, I can confirm that most of the policies here are created to keep foreigners out.

Until recently the government needed the support from a small nationalistic party and those laws and regulations were the price.

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