(upbeat music)
- Good morning, my name's Brielle,
and we are here in Dusseldorf, Germany.
It's about 9:00 AM.
I am enjoying my morning cup of coffee
and the view outside my bedroom window.
So a little bit about me.
I'm originally from Central Maryland
about an hour outside the DC-Baltimore area,
and then I went to college
at a small liberal arts school
in North Carolina
where I got my BFA in musical theater
and a minor in music.
And suddenly, when the pandemic hit,
working in live entertainment became tricky.
So I remember seeing on Facebook
that my friend was getting ready to go
to South Korea to teach English,
and that she got certified through ITA,
and I was like "Teaching, traveling?
"Yeah, okay, let's see what this is about."
So I talked to my friend about it,
I contacted one of the delightful admissions counselors
here at ITA and talked about it,
did some of my own research,
looked around and I was like,
"Yeah, all right, let's do it."
So I took the 11 week online course
over winter break
my senior year at university,
finished my practicum in the spring,
along with my thesis,
and moved here to Germany in August.
So when I first got to Germany,
I actually stayed with some relatives
that I have in Munich, in Bavaria,
for about a month,
and then I moved into an Airbnb in Neuss,
which is a small town outside Dusseldorf,
while I waited for this apartment
to become available,
then in November, I moved here.
And I am gonna give you guys a tour
but I'm gonna wait a bit for all
of my roommates to get ready
and get where they need to go.
I have the morning off, they do not,
so we're gonna give them a minute
and in the meantime,
I'm gonna put my little ask me anything button, bubble,
in this vicinity somewhere.
But do know that the budgeting stuff is coming.
If that's your question,
don't worry, I'm on it.
It's coming soon.
Okay, so here is our entryway.
We have two bathrooms,
'cause there are four of us that live here.
First one, very small,
call it a water closet,
an apt name.
Second bathroom is bigger,
has the shower in it.
We do not have a bathtub
but, for me, that's okay.
Yeah, and we have some shoes and things.
And then, we have our kitchen.
It's pretty common in Germany
to not have a living room
so really, we have kind of this galley kitchen.
We do have our washing machine.
We also have a dishwasher,
which is nice
'cause we have four back here.
We have this little park,
you can probably hear children.
There's like a daycare back here.
So yeah, here's our kitchen.
That's the end of our shared spaces.
And then we have,
like I said, there's four of us,
so there's a bedroom,
there's a bedroom, there's a bedroom,
and here is mine.
So here is my room.
It is definitely the biggest in the apartment.
This is a pretty big room
for a shared apartment.
All of the furniture came with;
the side table, the lamp, the bed,
even the sheets and the bedding,
the chair back there.
The only piece that's did not come is this one,
that's from my roommate.
The wardrobe, the desk, all of that,
came with the apartment,
even some of the art on the wall.
You'll notice it's a little naked right now,
it is because I am actually getting ready to move
tomorrow to a new apartment.
Not for any real reason other
than my lease was up,
and my new apartment is cheaper
and closer to my work.
So I did wanna talk a little bit more
about how I found my apartment
and what the a living situation is.
Like I mentioned,
there's four of us that live here.
It's what's called a (speaking foreign language)
or (speaking foreign language),
which means "inhabited completely," kind of.
It's a shared department,
they're super popular here in Germany,
and there are a bunch of different websites
that you can go on.
If you're interested,
let me know and I'll drop links.
So I just went on one
of these third party websites,
I found it,
I emailed the landlord and was like,
"Cool, I'm interested,"
and we figured everything out.
For my new apartment, I did the same thing.
I went on a bunch of different websites,
and yeah, I really recommend
the shared living.
It's really popular with students
and with expats,
and when you're moving to a new country,
you kind of have built-in friends,
which is really nice.
One more thing I'll say about apartments is
the month that you were looking for them matters.
So here in Germany,
the start of the university semester is
in March and September.
So if you were looking
for an apartment at that time,
like I was,
it can be really hard.
I started looking in January
and I found an apartment last week.
So if you're looking to come at...
Of course, these are also peak hiring seasons
in a lot of schools,
so if you're looking to come
at the peak hiring season,
plan ahead and start looking for apartments
because that's how I ended up
in an Airbnb for two months,
because I could not get into this apartment sooner.
So start looking for apartments
before you leave your home country,
your future self will thank you.
This is absolutely my favorite place
to come in Dusseldorf.
It's down on the Rhine,
close to the bridge of the river.
I try to come here at least once a week
to walk the river,
and we're gonna go down and see a little bit more.
Also, behind me is a great
big concert hall called the Tonhalle.
Yes, I've been inside.
I saw symphony there and it was magical.
It was my favorite thing ever.
This is Altstadt,
which literally just translates to "old town."
It's the town square.
You can see, I'm kind of standing in
a really big courtyard area.
A Christmas market is set up here.
You can see, it's right on the river.
There are a lot of bars, restaurants,
a bunch of shopping over that way,
and it's really just a great place to be,
to hang out,
people sit and eat,
which is where we are going next.
This is my absolute favorite thing
to eat in Germany,
it's called "Pomm Döner."
"Pomm" is just a...
"Pommes frittes" is French fries,
but this "Döner" is the meat on top.
And it's kind of gyro meat
that we have in the States.
And it kind of has a tzatziki on it,
as well as some other sauces
with a little bit more kick,
a little bit more spice.
As you can see, it's eaten on French fries.
Comes in a little box,
it's really, really handy,
it's great to-go street food.
And it's also not actually German,
so it's my favorite food here in Germany
but it's actually Turkish
and it is ugh, exquisite.
Highly recommend.
So this is one of our classrooms.
This is at my brick and mortar school.
So this is really for private lessons,
since there's only the one table.
And that's what I have here, coming up,
in about half an hour.
They do outfit us with a computer and a TV.
You can see the little camera on top
'cause we have hybrid courses.
But for me, I bring my own laptop
and hook it up,
which I will do here in a second.
So like I mentioned,
my class that I'm teaching here tonight is
a private student,
he's a business English student,
B1, B2.
I teach him on Tuesdays and Thursdays
here at the school.
I have an online business class
that I teach on Thursdays,
where I teach the whole company
so it's a big class.
And then, I have another General English A2 class
that I teach here on Mondays.
And then, I will also have intensive courses,
which are like nine to noon,
or nine to two,
but I don't have those all of the time.
And my schedule tends to vary a lot
because I'm a freelancer,
which is important.
So most English teachers
here in Germany are freelancers,
which is special for your visa.
It means my employer is not responsible
for my insurance,
they're not responsible for my housing
or for my transportation,
they're not responsible for my taxes.
This means I have to do
all of these things myself.
I also have to be consistently employed
under two different companies
at least, at all times,
to maintain freelancer status.
And so, that is the work permit
that I am on right now,
which is why you noticed,
in my budget, I have to pay
about 220 Euros a month for insurance.
I have to cover it myself,
it's not covered by my job.
It was a pain to get
because I'm a freelancer.
You have to have very special requirements
for your insurance.
And so, if you are doing English teaching in Germany,
you will most likely be a freelance teacher
and you have to make sure
you're keeping everything in order,
all of your paperwork,
all of your books
you have to do yourself,
very important.
But of course I do work
at two different schools.
One is, of course, here,
my brick and mortar school.
The other, it doesn't have its own building.
It's either online or I teach students
in cafes, libraries,
in their home, in my home,
which I don't really like to do but I can,
and those are all private students.
And so, I don't do a lot of work
right now with that school
because I'm still trying to build up
my client base.
But yeah, so I'm working on that still.
And it's important to know
that you cannot work
until you have your visa in hand,
so you need to budget for that
when you first come abroad.
I was not able to work
the first three-ish months that I lived here
and I had to pay everything
out of my savings, out of my pocket.
So make sure you have a cushion
because you can't legally work
until you have that visa.
Okay, so very quickly about my visa
before I get on the train home.
My visa was a three month process
from when I turned in all of my paperwork
to the immigration office
to when I actually went in for my appointment,
they took my fingerprints,
and they got me my cart.
So again, like I said,
have that cushion,
be prepared to be a couple months in process.
As an American citizen,
you can enter Germany on a tourist visa
and you can stay for 90 days,
and as long as you apply
for a different work permit
or a different visa within that 90 days,
you're okay.
They're not gonna kick you outta the country
if you have started the process.
Again, my process took three months
and I've been told that's record speed.
You need a ton of documents
and I'm gonna drop a list below,
and then I'm gonna explain
some of the funky ones.
Bear with me.
Okay, so the three weird ones is
the application for the actual freelance permit,
the application for your residency permit,
and your registered address.
In Germany, you have to register your address
anytime you move.
Whether it's across the street
or across the country,
you have to re-register.
The other two forms can be found
on government websites
for your city and your state.
It's different wherever you're moving to.
Fill those out
and send your emails in German
when you communicate with the foreigner's office
or the immigration office.
I sent my first email in English,
I never heard back from them.
My friend said, "Hey, try it in German."
I send it in German.
Within 48 hours, I had a response.
Stick it into a translator,
not Google Translate.
I use DeepL Translator, it's much better.
Stick the email in a translator,
send it to them in German,
they're much more likely to give you a response.
Pro tip.
Okay, so I just got home,
it's almost 10 o'clock here in Germany,
so I'm gonna rapid fire some of these questions
that you guys sent in before signing off,
so let's go.
First up, "Why Germany?"
For me, I visited when I was a teenager
to visit my family
and I really just fell in love
with Germany, with Europe.
The whole vibe, the whole atmosphere is different.
And I really just felt this kind of nostalgia for it,
even though I had never been there before.
And it really was a place
that just felt right for me.
Ancestrally, a lot of my family is German.
I had started studying the language
because I had family here,
and yeah, something about it really just felt right
and continues to feel right,
and I love it.
Next up, you guys asked about the job search.
So for me,
I really just started sending cover letters.
I searched for language schools
and international schools,
and just kind of started throwing stuff
at the wall until something stuck.
Yeah, the peak hiring season, September,
and then also February and March.
August is their vacation month,
everyone is on vacation in August,
do not try to find jobs in August,
they will not respond
because they're all on vacation.
"Do you need German?"
No, but yes.
You don't need it because all
of your classes are gonna be conducted in English
but you should learn it 'cause,
one, you're moving to the country
and it's the respectful thing to do, I think,
and number two, it's gonna help you communicate
and connect with your students
and help them learn if you can make comparisons
across their language to English.
I do it all the time.
Learn German.
So I'm out of time,
but I will try and text answers
to the questions I didn't get to,
and I will drop my personal Instagram
or you can find me
on ITA's Germany Facebook discussion group.
Thanks so much for coming with me
on my day in Dusseldorf,
and thanks to ITA for letting me host,
and (speaking foreign language).
(upbeat music)