She must learn German. The thing with Berlin is that there are a lot of startups with foreign people, and a lot of Germans speak English. But when you want to do normal day things as going to the market you need German to understand what are you buying and to talk with the people. It is not like other countries where you cannot get a job or life if you don't speak the language. You can get a job in Berlin as a English speaker but you must learn the local language for the day to day things.

I agree, my experience after a week of work in Berlin was that a lot of the restaurants I visited, the waitress couldn't speak English at all. Or taking a cab was sometimes quite an effort to communicate as well.

Even more strange, Berlin (and perhaps much of Germany, I don't know), places much greater emphasis on cash than on electronic payments like credit cards. I gave a credit card to a vendor once and they looked like they couldn't figure out what it was. In fact, as they were trying to understand it, I motioned that they were in fact studying it upside down! Other restaurants would tell me it was the first credit card they had seen in weeks, and the owner simply hadn't bothered to bring the credit card machine in from his house in a long time. Not a problem, just a bit strange to me.

Berlin is a neat place, though, and I love German food (and beer) a lot, but it cannot be overstated how you quickly come to realize that you currently take for granted speaking the same language as everyone around you, and unless you know German already, that convenience will evaporate immediately upon moving there. Even all the Holywood movies and U.S. TV shows are dubbed into German -- it is the largest overdub market in the entertainment industry, because Germans generally place low emphasis on learning other languages (just like Americans do).

Cash is much more popular however another big factor is that credit cards aren't really a thing. Instead Germany has its own system of EC cards which are directly tied to your bank account (which most people get as a child here) and work more like debit cards.

The only reason to have a credit card as a German is for buying this outside of Germany.

I've just moved to Netherlands and noticed this. Cash & Maestro (Debit) cards are the norm here.

Credit cards aren't any more popular in the UK, but our debit cards tend to be Visa/Mastercard and we use them the same way. I think mainland Europe has some catching up to do to London as far as being a cashless society :)

Do we really need to put Visa/Mastercard in front of every transaction if we already have model working exactly the same way from a customers point of view?

I would say the opposite is true: If you need Visa/Mastercard, your country's banking system is broken. Sending cheques via physical mail is something nobody would even think of over here. I think I have never even seen one.

And for buying stuff on the internet - I use it more for that than when travelling.

I live in Germany, and I always wondered: how Germans buy online and/or book hotels/tickets online, if most of them don't have credit cards and only have this EC-Karte?

This differs quite a big on the size of the respective business (of sales).

Amazon.de e.g. offers the choice of * credit card (as internationally) * direct withdrawal (meaning you give them your bank account details and they withdraw the amount directly - sort of sketchy from the customer's point of view, but no different from credit cards - if anything goes awry, you just challenge the charge directly with the bank instead of the card issuer) * bill-based (generally only for small amounts or trusted customers - might involve a "credit score" check from Schufa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa) to deter fraud)

I have a credit card for that, but if I have the option, I always use Paypal. There are often other payment options though, like "Sofortüberweisung", paying on account or SEPA bank transfers (the last two more typically for b2b though).

> because Germans generally place low emphasis on learning other languages (just like Americans do)

I agree with everything you say, except that. Older people form Eastern Germany obviously did not learn English in school.

In Germany it is not like the Netherlands or the Nordic countries, but I would say in Western Germany you have a much higher chance to meet people who can speak English or French at a decent level than you have in France or Italy to find someone speaking English or German. And that is inspite of the German market being much bigger and people from Eastern or Northern Europe also often being able to speak German.

Of all highschool student exchanges to France or Britain I know of, the students ended up speaking the other language, not German. I remember a neighbour had an exchange student from England over at his home. He supposedly learned German in school, but just repeated his sentence "Um 5 Uhr fährt der Zug nach Berlin.". This really changed my perspective on the foreign language education in Germany.

Learning enough German for daily things is probably not a problem at all, but can you deal with authorities (business licenses, taxes, mandatory reports etc) in English or very broken German?

Many speak english (except, for some reason, those at the immigration desk). Other stuff can be done online, in English. If people are really nervous, they usually find someone to come along and translate, or they meet someone in the waiting room.

To be honest, those things can be pretty involved here even for me as German, so it probably makes sense to just use someone who does that as a service (obvious for taxes, but most likely also available for business registration etc) rather than investing your time in understand bureaucratic German.

Hi there - I'm the author of this piece. I don't actually speak German. I'm trying to improve - however, I wouldn't say it's required in Germany to start something on your own. Many of the meetups are in English and everyone I've spoken to is fluent. I think it's another story if you're trying to get a job though...

Yes, the hardest thing is probably to get a flat and register a business without speaking German and these are one time things, no ongoing stuff.

The start-up scene speaks English fluently and buying stuff etc. doesn't need much talking.

The start-up I work with has 2 employees who don't speak German at all and they say it's only a problem when they are in smaller villages.

Registering a business is literally going to the "Gewerbeamt" and answering their questions about what you want to do. You will then be contacted by the tax authorities. I would then just search for a tax adviser, who speaks English.

If you want to incorporate a business, you do not necessarily have to do it in Germany, it is the EU after all.

Ah sure, yes I forgot that you can create a company in the UK and simply run it from Berlin without much hassle.

Why not start a business in Central or South Eastern Europe? Most cities are even cheaper than Berlin and still open to young people. Plus people are fluent in Englush, except maybe in Hungary.

Generally the cities tend to be too small, too expensive (for what you get) or not international enough. More than anything "even cheaper" doesn't necessarily matter, around €750 is pretty much the sweet spot in terms of cost of living. Ljubljana seems pretty nice though.

People want to move to Berlin and the city has a great tech scene from what I can gather.