Category Archives: Allgemein

Relocation – start your journey with the right way

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Relocation

There are many things you can do in advance to make your way to the new country easier:

When you relocate, you’ll have so many decisions to make that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Do as much research as you can before you go. Make good use of social networks, they can help you to avoid isolation that can occur when moving abroad.Learn the language from day one. Every step you take in learning the language of your host nation brings you closer to the culture.

Gather information as much as possible about the new country, city and your potential neighborhood.

Become acquainted with the culture of your host nation. Which are typical characteristics of the people? Which are the main behavioral differences between your home country and your host nation.

Elections in France – Changing Point for the EU?

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Macron clear success in the parliamentary elections mark a success for the planned reforms in the EU. Macron is known for his rather pro-European mindset. In the parliamentary elections this weekend he won clearly and defeated the traditional parties as well as Marine Le Pen’s “Font National” significantly. What the first round of the parliamentary elections indicated already was confirmed in the second round: Macron has a huge majority in the parliament.

German politicians congratulate Macron and welcome the results of this weekend’s elections as success for Europe. Does Macron`s success mark a changing point in the development of the crisis-ridden Europe?

It could be, however the success is not as beautiful as it seems, there is a flaw: the historically low turnout of the elections: more than 57% did not participate in the elections. How representative is this result then? Nobody knows.

Nevertheless, change is coming, the new French parliament will be younger and composed of more women than ever before. The average age drops to 47 years and 37% of the parliamentarians will be female. This shows that something is happening and keeps hope alive for change and modernization, not in only in France but in the whole EU.

For the EU however, we need to await whether the French elections will have any influence on German elections in September. The last election of the year will mark a distinctive point for the further political, social and economic development of Europe.

Fingers crossed, hope for the best and go voting in order to participate in reforming EU and solving our problems.

Germany – a developing country in regards of digitalization?

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Angela Merkel introduced the national IT-summit, which is now renamed into ‘Digital-Summit’. It was designed to create a digital agenda, increase digitalization in Germany and hence to secure Germany’s competitiveness for the future in a digitalized world. However, after Merkel declared the ‘Internet as new ground for all of us’ in 2013 not a lot happened until now. Germany fell back even further: from place 15 to place 17.

Especially, broadband expansion and the low degree of attractiveness of digitalization to the majority of the German middle- and large-scale companies are the problems. The German broadband infrastructure was ranked 28th out of 32 by OECD. Germany risks loosing infrastructure for its industrial locations. Furthermore, most of the large and middle-scale companies in Germany fear the risks of digitalization more than valuing its benefits and improvements. Even if the companies see the benefits, most of the time the decision to modernize and digitalize is driven by cost-saving factors rather than by developing new business models and concepts.

Room for hope: the increased number of start-ups as well as more and more graduates who rather start their career in those more digitalized as well as future-oriented companies than in more stable, though older and more backwards oriented companies.

In light of this Berlin is on the best way. It is attracting more and more startups.

Berlin – a weekend full of dichotomy and fun is coming up!

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Everyone enjoys a short working week and Berlin is preparing for a long weekend full of contrasting events: German Protestant Church Day, Men’s/Father Day and the final of the German Cup Competition.
The long weekend starts on Thursday with Ascension Day. However, the first big events takes place on Wednesday evening already. In front of the Reichstag, on Gendarmenmarkt and in front of Brandenburg Gate the German Protestant Church Congress is started with huge, ecumenical, cross-generational church-services. Afterwards enjoy the summer evening at the big street party with culinary delights, music and prayers. The German Protestant Church Day lasts until Sunday, 28th May, and has a schedule full of international, intercultural, political and other interesting themes. It offers a variety of services, opportunities and cultural entertainment for the whole family. One of the highlights might be the biggest event of the Protestant Church Day: former US-President Barack Obama will hold a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate on May 25th; other prominent speakers are Melinda Gates and Angela Merkel.

On Thursday, the attendees of cultural and political program of the Protestant Church Day, will be joined by mostly male Berlin visitors as well as Berliners celebrating father’s (or in Berlin Men’s Day) strolling through the city with their friends and handcarts and a pint or two of beer.

On Saturday the mixture of becomes even more colourful! In the evening the final of the German Cup Competition takes place between Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt. The match starts at 8 pm but the fans will celebrate the whole day and will mix and mingle in the city.
The fans of Borussia Dortmund will celebrate in front of Gedächtniskirche, whereas the Eintracht Frankfurt fans will start their party on Alexanderplatz.
There are even opportunities for those who want to join both: the Protestant Church Day and the soccer feast: Start your day with the ecumenical service in Gedächtniskirche on Saturday at 11 a.m. with all the BVB fans and afterwards celebrate at one of the fan feasts.

Berlin will be full of happy people that’s for sure!

For more information on the Protestant Church Day: https://www.kirchentag.de/programm/programmsuche.html
For more information for BVB Fans: http://www.bvb.de/ger/News/Uebersicht/Fanvorabinfos-Pokalfinale-Berlin
For more information for Frankfurt Fans: http://www.eintracht.de/news/artikel/adlerimanflug-eintracht-fantreff-in-berlin-60199/

Relocation and Digitalization for migration?

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Relocation is a long and well-known but costly thing. It is more a service offered to highly settled managers and high-end salary earners than a service for average earners. Furthermore, it became dramatically complicated and unclear due to increased digitalization and more and more websites providing information.
How can relocation get clearer again? And how could the process of digitalization be used to increase proficiency of relocation, to facilitate migration from one country/city to another country/city and how could we make relocation available for average earners and the broad population?
Nowadays the main problem is that every city itself provides a bulk of information on its city website, however most of the time in the country’s language only, or without related links or further information regarding specific documents or specific steps one has to take. Not everyone can effort to engage private relocation services and those people have to wander alone through the jungle of different websites, languages and chaotic documents to get the information they need to organize their migration.
The new idea is to combine relocation services with digitalization in such a manner to make it easy and affordable for the vast majority of people moving from one country to another. Online-Portals such as gohelpy provide all the information you need in multiple languages, and most importantly: on one platform! You do not need to search multiple websites or research for hours the specific documents you need for e.g. a renting contract or your registration with the municipality. Those portals provide all information, steps and documents you need and adapt it to your desires and circumstances! Those portals digitalize the old relocation service and develops it further on to another level: away from an upper class, top-salary earner service to a service for everyone!
Try it out now!

New Trend: Professional people sharing flats

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You are not a student anymore but you do feel like a student or miss your good old student times in shared flats? You are single but you do not want to live alone?
Then you should follow this new trend: professional people sharing flats! More and more of these types of shared flats are popping up in bigger cities.
The advantages? – Many!
You do not have to live alone by your own, however if you are professional you might not want to live together with students, having completely different daily routines, and of course a different standing towards tidiness and comfort.
Sharing a flat with other professionals offers you a family of like-minded people. You share a similar daily routine and most of the time you have similar standings concerning comfort, tidiness and house rules.
Professionals do have a higher level of comfort they want to live in, however they also have a bigger budget as they are working already. Students do not have such high-level expectations towards their rooms as their budget is only small and they are not working but studying…and partying (you know you were a student once as well). However, therefore professional sharing a flat with student could cause some trouble. This is the reason why the new trend of ‘professional shared flats’ is rising so fast. Multiple online portals included already the option to search for ‘professional shared flats’ as opposed to ‘student shared flats’ within the bigger cities of Germany such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and co.
This might be something for you? Try it out! Find your room in a shared flat and live together with like-minded.

Top Ten Fun Facts Düsseldorf

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This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. Officially, Düsseldorf has 600,000 inhabitants, however because of all the commuters travelling to and from their offices, there are about 200,000 people more are in the city on weekdays.
  2. Düsseldorf the advertising city – about 400 advertising agencies are based here, including international agencies as well as three of the largest agencies in Germany.
  3. the ‘KÖ’ is Germany’s busiest upmarket shopping street: it is nearly a kilometer full of international flagship stores and shopping centres
  4. ‘the longest bar in the world’ Düsseldorf’s Altstadt (Old Town) comprises over 300 bars and clubs in a very small area
  5. Düsseldorf itself is mentioned in the US- series ‘The Simpsons’ where it is the hometown of the German exchange student wearing Lederhosen.
  6. Wheels of joy play an important role in the city’s history: in 1288, when Düsseldorf won the battle of Worringen and received the town charter, children did wheels of joy. Even today, when you are strolling through the Old Town, children will offer to do cartwheels for one or two coins – and there is even an annual cart-wheeling tournament.
  7. It became the Capital of North Rhine-Westphalia although it is only the fourth largest city of NRW. It did so because it was the least destroyed city after World War II.
  8. Düsseldorf is in constant competition against Cologne. Both towns hate each other and compete when ever possible and in every matter possible against the other one.
  9. The Rhine-Promenade connects ‘The Old’ with ‘The New’ of the city. It leads from the Old Town to the modern Media Harbour and makes Düsseldorf a skater paradise.
  10. It was and is the home of many musicians: Robert & Clara Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn Bertholdy and Johannes Brahms as well as the modern bands of Kraftwerk, die Toten Hosen und Marius Müller Westernhagen called or still call the city home.

Happy 828th Birthday Port of Hamburg!

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Hamburg is celebrating the 828th birthday of its port on 5th to 7th May 2017 with the world’s biggest port festival.
A varied maritime programme for the whole family will be presented in the  unique setting of the Port of Hamburg: More than 300 ships from all parts of the world, spectacular displays, lots of stages with live music and French savoir-vivre of this year’s partner country France.

The world’s greatest port festival will be celebrated at various parts in and around the port of Hamburg: around Landungsbrücken, in the Speicherstadt warehouse district, the new HafenCity district, at the Fish Market and Oevelgönne Museum Harbour.

Get to know Hamburg from the seaside and celebrate its port birthday! Discover Hamburg, its party face and its maritime history!

Spring Festival in Stuttgart: WASEN

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They call it WASEN: The spring festival in Stuttgart. This year the WASEN started on the 15th of April and lasts until the 7th of May! For three weeks, visitors from near and far celebrate the launch of spring in a cheerful and jolly manner.

Europe’s biggest and best attended spring festival attracts around 1.5 million guests to the Cannstatter Wasen fair grounds. On an area of 4.2 hectares, a wide selection of stalls and confectionery stands, modern and traditional fairground rides, side-shows, beer tents and catering stalls offer every conceivable type of family fun and entertainment.
Alongside the traditional keg tapping ceremony on the opening Saturday, annual highlights of the festival program include the balloon glow and musical firework display. Every Wednesday is family day, when a wide variety of cut-price offers are available to parents with children.
Enjoy Oktoberfest in Spring in Stuttgart! Great fun for the whole family!

Tallinn – Berlin: a win-win partnership for startups

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A delegation of several different start-up companies from Berlin visited Tallinn, Europe’s heart of digitalization and start-ups. “48h- Tallinn” was a short trip to the Labs and start-up centres of the Estonian capital.
Both sides would benefit immensely from a partnership between Estonian start-ups from Tallinn and start-ups in Berlin. Estonia being the most digitalized European country, providing its citizens with the opportunity to vote online, make their tax declaration online and providing an extensive e-government, the start-ups from Tallinn are technically advanced to those from Berlin. Berlin’s start-up scene can learn from Tallinn’s start-ups and could digitalize faster and more efficient. The Estonian side however would benefit from the partnership through access to the large German market. By cooperating with start-ups from Berlin, Tallinn’s start-up scene could expand to the German market, as well as attracting more German investors to the Estonian start-up scene.
Therefore, this is a win-win situation and we are glad to welcome the Estonian start-ups here in Berlin!