When I agreed with my partner that I would move to Germany, I specified I didn’t want to stay longer than 18 months to two years, and there was no way I was going to live in Bremen for three years. Now I have to eat my words because almost to the exact day three years later we will say auf Wiedersehen to Germany and move back to the UK.

As is the case for many expats, we moved to Bremen for my partner’s career. It was a fantastic opportunity to progress within an international FMGC (fast moving consumer goods company) who have their European hub in Lower Saxony. Just as it brought us here, employment is our reason for returning to the UK in addition to wanting to settle down, get married, buy a house and start a family. All of which we could have done in Germany but it was never our intention to do this here and we haven’t been persuaded otherwise. Germany offers a great way of life, but in the words of Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like home.

A typical Mietvertrag PHOTO: Berliner Woche

The decision to leave wasn’t an easy one despite our looming timeline. Are we doing the right thing? Should we stay for another year? The hardest part once we made our minds up was telling the people we have grown close to whilst living here. People that we didn’t just share fun experiences with, but people that helped us navigate the expat path and figure out living in Germany. We’ve forged some great relationships and we look forward to welcoming them to our wedding in the UK next year and showing them around Manchester, our new home.

Renovating the apartment

We thought the hardest part was telling friends, however, we have come to realise that exiting your Mietvertrag (rental agreement) brings new emotions, frustration mainly! I’ll hold my hands up and say we were naive when we signed our tenancy agreement when we arrived three years ago. We didn’t fully understand what we signed up for and didn’t take the time to check it out because we were so eager to move in and settle in our new home after spending the first six weeks in limbo in a hotel. In hindsight, not looking thoroughly through the contract with a translator was an oversight on our behalf as now we realise what we are liable for as we prepare to move out. For example, our apartment needs to be renovated to its original condition by the time it is handed over to the landlord. Although the apartment was not painted before we moved in, we haven’t painted the walls since and they are in good condition, we still need to redecorate the whole of the apartment before we hand back the keys. As we signed on the dotted line, there’s no way of getting out of doing this so we’ve rolled up our sleeves, headed to Bauhaus (a DIY store, equivalent to B&Q in the UK) and stocked up on litre upon litre of weiße Wandfarbe (white wall paint).

‘Wandfarbe’ from Bauhaus PHOTO: Sarah E

Seeking some comfort from our German friends, we explained what we needed to do before leaving and how it is so very different from the check out process in the UK. However, they were not surprised by what we needed to do and we began to understand that renovating the flat before you leave seems to be common practise. Thank goodness we didn’t need to install a kitchen!

Departing die Wohnung 

Terminating the tenancy has been an arduous process for us. It’s standard practice in Germany to give the landlord three months notice prior to moving out. What we didn’t realise is that email is not an acceptable form of giving notice, you have to provide a printed letter. One of the things that continues to confuse me about Germany is how they are very hot on recycling but waste so much paper when an email could be used. Healthcare insurance providers are the worst offenders of this. Despite asking our landlord in the email if we needed to provide anything else to sever our contract, this was skipped over. It wasn’t until a few weeks later we realised through online research that we needed to send a letter to confirm our exit. I have read in many forums since how the letter should be posted and signed for as many scrupulous landlords deny receiving the letter and therefore delaying your departure date. It’s also worth noting at what point in the month you should hand in the letter. For example, we needed to provide it within the first three days of a new month, otherwise, it would not be accepted until the first three days of the following month. Again, pushing back the date of when the three months notice starts. So despite handing in our notice in mid-April via email, it was looking like we would need to pay rent until September unless a new tenant was found and we could exit the tenancy early.

Severing the Mietvertrag early

Often if you wish to leave the tenancy early in Germany, you have to provide a potential new tenant. In the UK, you would pay an exit fee to sever the contract or keep paying the rent until the tenancy expires. In our case, we needed to find three potential new tenants. We thought we had been lucky as before we’d handed in our notice, a young family expressed interest. They happened to be friends of people living in the building and found out we were moving after seeing furniture that we had sold being carried out of the apartment block. After several visits to the flat and a meeting with the landlord who agreed for them to move in, everything was going swimmingly. Until the day before we were all due to sit down and sign contracts, and then they pulled out.  Hence, why it is important to gain the interest of several people rather than relying on one group who could let you down at the last minute. For a short time we were back to square one but after a brief advertisement on Schwarzesbrett, an online market place used in Bremen, several people viewed the property and a couple signed the contract less than a week after viewing.

The process of leaving Germany has so far been a turbulent ride and I’m sure there’s a few more lesson for us to learn before we say our final goodbye. If the time comes for you to leave Germany, definitely do your research and don’t fall into the traps we have.

-Sarah E