Hello,

I am planning on spending 3 months in Germany next spring. I am a travel writer and I have been sent to Germany to cover the life of an expat living and working in another country. I've done the same for Thailand and Japan and I enjoy very much learning about living in a new culture.

My question is about housing. I would prefer to rent an apartment in one city and travel out from there instead of finding a hotel in every new city I visit. Ideally I would like a city that has a modern transportation system as I will not be hiring a car. A fair amount of English would help as even though I am taking lessons I doubt I will be fluent in 6 months.

With a budget of 1000 Euro per month what cities would you suggest I start looking? In Asia it is very easy to hire a apartment broker to search for me, is this type of service available in Germany?

Hello Hans Li.
Nice that you want to come and see my country and I will try to help if I can.
The location you pick depends on into which areas you want to breach out.
Do not pick the very expensive cities like Hamburg, München and such, they take a huge amount for rent there and you can easily overstrain your budget.

If I were you I would search in the middle of germany and then travel from there.
Maybe you want to come to cologne (Köln)?
It's not too cheap, not too expensive either.
From there trains and all that go into all directions.
Berlin isn't too expensive either I have heard, but wouldn't exactly know.

We do have apartment brokers, one just gotta take care that they don't rip you off financially.
Sometimes they also only rent out the very expensive places.
It is worth asking at a uiversity if the city you picked has one.
Ask for the local ASTA at the university, that's the student association.
There are lists about cheap apartments and apt sharing available.

Lieber stehend sterben als kniend leben!

ʎlʇǝınb ʎɹǝʌ punoɹɐ ƃuıuɹnʇ sı plɹoʍ sıɥʇ

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lalense/

Danke Lady_Fate.

My main focus will be covering the automotive industry so I will be traveling to the different German auto manufactures. Looking online it seems that they are spread throughout Germany. Porsche, Mercedes in Stuttgart, BMW in Munich etc.

So if my plan is to travel around the country which city would you recommend as being a good central starting point?

If I were to stay in Köln how long would it take to travel to Berlin? Is it possible to do a this trip in 1 day? Or is it a multi-day travel? Forgive my ignorant question but I come from Canada and I can drive for 5 days and still not reach the other side of my country.

Hans Li, you are welcome.

I googled you a map of germany:
Google-Ergebnis f�r http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/511.gif



Here you can check up on what places you urgently want to see and where they are and then decide which city is best for you to stay in.

Because from here I can only guess what you want and what would be perfect for you.
Feel free to ask me about the locations you think interesting, I might not know all the cities though.

One can drive from hamburg to munich in one day, will take some time but it's possible.
From cologne to berlin it might be about 7 to 9 hours, depending on how the traffic is and how fast you drive.
Dunno about how long it takes with a train.

Now that you mentioned you want to see the car factories cologne is not the best choice for you.
You might want to aim more south.

Hmm...

If you're travelling most of the time all over Germany, I would recommend for you to stay in Frankfurt. It is quite an ugly city, but it's central and probably has the best train and plane network of them all. Köln, as Lady Fate suggested, would be a much nicer city and it's also good for getting around by train, not so much by plane. Hope that helps a bit.

just a reminder that the german forum is for german speakers. if you have questions about germany that you want to post in english, you can go to the europe threads.

聖人不仁