Applied for 60 Berlin jobs over 4 months during evening hours. Got one offer at €58k. The EU Blue…
T=0: The Decision
Five years at a Hyderabad fintech. ₹18 LPA — a salary that looks significant in India and is approximately €18k in real European purchasing power. Good work, smart colleagues, increasingly difficult air quality, and a growing awareness that the gap between my compensation and my European counterparts' was not explained by productivity.
Applied for 60 Berlin jobs over 4 months during evening hours. Got one offer at €58k. The EU Blue Card processing took 3 months. Arrived in May 2022 with one suitcase, no German, and a 3-month sublet I had found on WG-Gesucht.
Permanent residency. My parents visiting and understanding why I left.
6 Months Out
The apartment hunt was brutal. Without SCHUFA (German credit history) and German income proof, most landlords rejected automatically. Ended up in an overpriced sublet for 4 months before finding a proper place. The bureaucracy is not hostile — it is just indifferent to your situation.
“Before arriving: get a German bank account (N26 or Deutsche Bank works with passport), organise your university degree apostille, and get your employment contract translated. These take weeks and block everything else.”