Category Archives: Cologne

Startup scene Germany

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New star on Germnay’s startup scene – Hamburg gains impotance

Berlin is the heartland of the German startup-scene: good infrastructure and low housing price. However, one city is catching up – Hamburg. The Hanseatic town is catching up fast and even leading concerning Tech-Startups.

Following a survey Hamburg meet the current trends for choosing a startup location. Founders of young technology-enterprises estimate that the Hanseatic city will gain in importance even further as a study of PwC indicated. Hamburg ranks with 74% best out of 9 compared cities, followed by Berlin and Frankfurt a. M.

At the bottom maneuver, according to the study, Stuttgart, Dresden and Karlsruhe. Not even 50% of the 500 interviewed Start-up-founders believe that these cities will increase their importance in light of the startup-scene. Munich, Cologne and Düsseldorf reach mean values. The study is based on the European Digital City index, which includes all German cities.

Reasons for the assessment are unknown. Hamburg is amongst other a location for media and trading enterprises. More than half of the respondents operates in the sectors of information- and communication technology followed by E-commerce (25%).

How can you plan your move to another country professionally?

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This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Relocation

How can you plan your move to another country in order to be professionally successful over there?

Of course, first of all you need some information and Expat-Portals are perfect to gather information as well as experiences of different people. However, it takes long to find information appropriate to your case. You might have to scroll through experiences of expats, moving neither from your home country to another country nor did they move to the country you want to move to. Still, you will find people’s experiences of moving from your home country to other countries, moving from other origins to the country you want to move to or even people making the same move as you: from your home country to the country you want to move to (the ideal case for you).

And afterwards – what to do with this bulk of information and experience you gathered? There won’t be a case that fits you completely. There are always specialities to each of us, furthermore, in those portals you can find experiences only, there is no security that everything will happen to you the same way it happened to them. Rather, there is security that at least something is different. You want to live in a different part of the city, you have children, you have another budget or simply the circumstances in the town changed (because of time, supply & demand or whatsoever). Therefore, you need something more specialized, more tailor-made for your further steps like gohelpy and Xpatvisor. Expat-Portals are great to get a first or even a detailed overall impression of what to expect and what to bear in mind. However, when entering the actual planning of your move and planning your steps to your new home, do not rely on experiences of other but use the possibility to have a tailor-made path to walk along. You have special desires and demands which should be realized. The Xpatvisor does exactly this and hence adds a more personalized and specialized part to Expat-information portals.

 

Brexit is on the horizon already – first impacts are felt

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A recent case shows that Brexit has its influence on European as well as British citizens already. Uncertainty is immense and still growing among all citizens. A British had to feel this personally: Because of uncertainty a landlord decided to rent his flat to a person with lower income, however a European citizenship, lasting longer than the next 2 years. He valued the security of having a tenant for probably longer than the next year higher than the security of the higher income of the British citizen.

Uncertainty, especially concerning citizenships, work and residence permits is extremely high, not only on the side of the British citizens but among EU citizens working and living in Great Britain as well. “Will I be allowed to live here? Will I be posted to another country? How long will I be allowed to live here from now? What will happen?” All these questions are going around in many peoples’ heads. And of course not only those directly influenced by the Brexit, but they influence those indirectly affected as well. This group is huge: landlords, hotels, apartment-owners and many more are people being uncertain about the Brexit´s impact on their jobs as well.

Although, nothing is really decided yet on the Brexit conditions the consequences of it are growing and growing as uncertainty rises.

We have to wait and see and hope for the best, for both sides.

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.

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.

How useful are opendays, career fairs and Co?

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In nearly every month and in every bigger city multiple career days, career fairs. open days at universities or trade fairs about different universities take place. How useful are those trade fairs and open days? Does it make sense to visit such events?
YES!
Of course you do not need to visit every career or study fair, and of course attending every University openday is not even down-to-earth, but to get an overview of todays possibilities, opendays and career fairs are the way to go.

Today there are so many different Bachelor and Master studies, most of them you do not even know now and cannot imagine that those studies exist. Fairs of the different Universities or study programmes provide a good overview of what is possible. Get inspired by those fairs! It might happen that you find a study programme meeting all your desires but is relatively unknown, wherefore you have not heard about yet.
Similarly, career fairs: You are done with you studies but not sure where to head to? Get inspired by the vast range of possible jobs. Make good contacts and expand your network at those events.
And once you found interesting study programmes or traineeships you can visit the opendays of the universities/study programmes and traineeships you are interested in. Most of the time these specific events provide more into-depth information and easier opportunities to network.

Therefore, take your chance and visit one or two or more of the many career, job and uni fairs in Germany to get inspired and kickstart your career!
We listed some of the upcoming events in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne and Co.

  • Berlin: Connecticum (25.04-27.04.2017), Studyworld 2017 (12./13.05.2017)
  • Hamburg: Talente kompakt (27.04.2017)
  • Stuttgart: Stuzubi (29.04.2017)
  • Köln: meet@th-koeln (03.05. & 04.05.2017)
  • Düsseldorf: Master and more / Bachelor and more (05.05. & 06.05.2017)
  • Frankfurt: Jobmesse Einstieg (21./22.04.2017)

Fibo 2017

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This weekend in Cologne: The world’s largest trade fair for fitness & health takes place in Cologne and will open its doors for private visitors on Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
More than 940 exhibitors will show the newest trends and innovation for fitness and a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, to the newest products and trends an extensive interactive programme is offered to the more than 153,000 visitors.

You can find products reaching from training clothes over training equipment and mobile devices to healthy nutrition and cosmetics.

 

Student–thoughts: Moving to another EU Country for my studies

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Yes! There it is – the notification of admission to my master studies.
However, the first mood of celebrating the placement is gone fast: I have to move to another country… I have to organize a lot of things! But what exactly? All those thoughts come up when thinking about the master placement a second time, less emotional.

What exactly should one consider when moving from one EU-country to another in order to complete one’s studies there.

The following things came up to my mind when I got the notification of admission to study my masters in Madrid.

First of all: Where shall I live? And how?
– Do I want to live near to the University or better more in the center of the town, where something is going on and I can enjoy my leisure time?
– Do I want to live in a shared flat or do I want a small apartment for my own? Do I need other people around me or do I prefer time and peace for me?
– Do I want to have a furnished room or do I want to bring my own furniture?

Once I settled these questions, another one arose: HOW do I get infos about flats, rooms etc. and HOW do I find one?
– The easiest way for me: Facebook and friends which might know someone who knows someone etc… Social media helps a lot! Ask you friends to ask their friends, search for housing groups or groups of your study in Facebook. You might get extremely helpful hints and get to know some nice and helpful people!

Other thoughts, which might not be that obvious in the first case:
– What is about my health insurance? Does it cover a longterm stay in another EU-Country and what are the conditions? Is it better to sign up for a foreign health insurance, or to make a contract with an on-site health insurance?
– What is about my mobile phone contract? Do I have the same conditions as I have at home?

All these thoughts came up to my mind when I received my master placement in Madrid.
In my opinion most of the questions depend on the period of your stay in the city/country. It might not be that reasonable to rent an unfurnished apartment when you are staying for one year only. However, if you will stay at least 3 years in the city it might be nicer and more comfortable to have your own furniture in your ‘home abroad’.
Additionally, all these questions depend on personal circumstances and desires.
My hint: Visit blogs and website, and search for Facebook groups to get to know the possibilities you have. Once you know your possibilities you can decide what you want.
Many online-portals provide a lot of infos about housing, electricity, water-suppliance, about health insurances as well as mobile phone contracts.
Gohelpy is a wonderful example of these online-portals comprising a lot of information about the big German cities.

Top Ten Fun Facts Cologne

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This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. Expensive – Building Cologne Cathedral today again would cost more than 10 billion Euro
  2. Heavily romantic – many couples put padlocks on the Hohenzollernbrücke as a sign of their eternal love. All padlocks together weigh about 15 tons.
  3. The Airport Köln/Bonn is the one of only few emergency landing spot for NASA space shuttles.
  4. long-lasting – Building Cologne Cathedral took 623 years. Today it is the third largest cathedral in the world.
  5. cheers – Kölsch is the city’s traditional beer: sweeter than usual beer and served in very small glasses, it contains the same percentage of alcohol as other beers.
  6. special feelings – No other city in Germany loves and celebrates itself as much as Cologne does:
    • several songs about the city and their love to the city
    • Kölsch beer
    • the relationship of FC Köln and its fans is unique and very tight (Prinz Poldi)
  7. The Catholic Church has bestowed upon Cologne the title of “holy city”. Only Rome and Constantinople (today Istanbul) possess this title as well.
  8. Underneath the University of Cologne a 215 m long old mine tunnel including an mining lift exists.
  9. Cologne was the first German city to introduce a waste collection system using closed containers.
  10. bad luck – Cologne is the largest and most popular city of North Rhine-Westphalia (the state it is situated in) however it is not the capital. This may be one of several reasons for the ongoing and constant competition between Düsseldorf and Cologne, the two cities who hate each other.