Why I’m Leaving Berlin (And What it Means for the Future)

In just one short month I’ll be packing up my Berlin apartment and boarding a plane back to Australia. What’s that all about? Why am I leaving Berlin and for how long? What will it mean for the blog and for the future? Here’s the lowdown on it all!

Why I’m leaving Berlin

There are a couple of reasons why we feel like we need to leave Berlin — a couple of them personal and a couple out of necessity. Firstly, and most importantly, we need to leave Germany for six months in order to keep our tax situation as uncomplicated as we can. Our company is based in Australia and so we need to be home for a certain proportion of the year to keep things from getting complicated with residency.

Secondly, our visa situation is a little tricky. You might remember that I applied for a Freelance Visa way back in August. My paperwork had to be sent off for approval and in the meantime I was given a six month extension on my previous Work Permit which was tied to my old job. I still haven’t heard anything about my visa and to be honest, I’m a little tired of german bureaucracy. Ben also needs to renew his Artist Visa, but the renewal process is complicated and requires a tax account to create a financial analysis of his situation, which in itself is costly and a bit of a hassle to arrange. So we’ve decided not to renew our visas or pursue it any further.

Then there are a bunch of personal reasons why we’re leaving and it really comes down to the fact that we’re simply missing home. We’ve been living in Berlin for two and a half years now and our time here has been jam packed full of adventures, but we need a break from Berlin now. We are missing our family and friends back home, are desperate to escape another seemingly interminable European winter in favour for an Australian heatwave and feel like we need to nourish our bodies with good-quality food. We miss how easy everything is back home and are becoming more and more frustrated with how difficult everything is over here (not only because of the language barrier but also because of the bureaucracy). Lastly, because for both of us our work is largely location independent, we are quite free to choose where we work and it just feels right to work from Australia right now.

What does this mean for the blog?

It means that you will start to see a whole lot more content on Australia! There isn’t much coverage of Australia on The Department of Wandering yet, since we’ve only had two short visits since we moved away, so I’m really looking forward to expanding this section on the blog. Living in Europe over the past couple of years has really made me keen to explore more of my home country — it’s so big and I really haven’t seen much of it! I hope to do quite a bit of travel within Australia while I’m home.

Of course, I still have one heck of a backlog of posts on Europe and also Expat Life to write about, so you’ll still be seeing lots of that content as usual.

Am I staying in Australia for good?

Not yet. Since Ben and I both work for ourselves now, our focus for the next little while is to continue to work towards building our businesses. That means that we need to be able to take opportunities that come our way or go and make them happen ourselves. Being tied to a lease, having to furnish a flat and accumulating ‘stuff’ is exactly the opposite of what we want to do right now so when we return, we’ll be shacking up with our parents. Since we won’t have a working space at home, we hope to rent a little studio space somewhere so we can be effective with our work. At this stage we’re planning on returning to Australia for a few months and then will re-evaluate where we need to be to give ourselves the best opportunities. And what about Europe? We’re coming back! We plan on following the sun and returning to Europe in mid 2016 sometime (just in time for the European summer), but just as tourists to keep things simple.

Guys, I’m itching to get back home and I can’t wait to take you with me x