Comment by hoggle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoggle | Hacker News Reader

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tl;dr BERLIN IS AWESOME!

I just came back from Berlin (awesome couchdb conf @ co.up co-working space) and must say that the energy in a place like Kreuzberg is pretty intense.

The area around Rosenthaler Platz and Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Mitte also seemed kind of interesting but more akin to what I'm used to here in Vienna (neat and tidy).

I only had five days to experience the city but I do have thought about moving there already!

But yeah living in Vienna is so damn comfortable that it really is a difficult decision to go anywhere else.

We have a lot of co-working spaces too and I often meet local devs at coffee shops by coincidence (another strength of a rather small place). So everything being so nice is both a good and a bad thing I guess.

Vienna #1 at quality of life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Survey

Bottom line for me though - the youthful vibes in Berlin are a very special thing and probably worth more than top comfort and beauty.

How necessary would speaking fluent German be to live/work in Berlin or Vienna? I've heard that most young people and tech people speak English, but that it can be a problem, if you don't know good German, to interact with the civil service, banking, business registration, and those kinds of things. But I have no personal experience there.

One thing that makes it easy to stay in Scandinavia is that I've been rather spoiled by how easy it is to do everything in Denmark in English. Official government forms are available in your choice of Danish or English versions, all my banking is in English, doctors all speak it, and every government office I've been to will switch once they realize you're a foreigner. Heck, even many public lectures at universities and museums are in English. The language is good to know for social reasons, but there aren't really any formal/official situations where you have to interact in Danish.

There were certain areas in Berlin where speaking English seemed almost mandatory, especially in Bars and Cafes but that said I don't know how the situation is with gov institutions etc.

I would guess though that it can't be such a big deal as there seemingly are a lot of non German speakers everywhere (in the mentioned areas it felt like German native speakers actually were a minority) and consequently at least some of the local businesses were owned by non Germans too.

Vienna is definitely less pronounced international but telling from my experiences at coffee shops as well as the "Wien" subreddit at least there must be a thriving expat community.

Sorry for not having more info about the official lang requirements in Germany/Berlin but do check out the cities' corresponding subreddits:

http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin http://www.reddit.com/r/wien

Most expats I know here have done well, sometimes 5+ years, without ever properly learning German. So language is not an issue.

That said, you do need help when dealing with the bureaucracy. It can be complicated, and they often do not speak English. But it's trivial to get this help from colleagues or expats.

90% of those I work with are German, and yet I can get by speaking only English as 1) they will switch to English, like I suspect most German developers can and would, and 2) our CTO and a few others in the office are not German either.

Agreed! I moved to Berlin almost two years ago from Amsterdam (not a bad city either!) and I'm still happy to be here. If you're a RoR developer or front-ender needing work and a push to come here, hit me up :).

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