On Building a New
Life in Germany

February 15, 2025.
When I landed at Cologne Bonn Airport, I had one big suitcase, one small carry-on, and a backpack with me.
I had my belongings with me.
But not my whole life.

My wife was in Turkey. Behind me was a home, a life we'd built together over years, our families, our friends, and a life we were used to.
I had come to Germany alone.
I knew where I was going.
But I didn't know what would happen next.

I had a room in a temporary shared flat I'd rented for two months. I had a visa. And dozens of questions in my head that I didn't have answers to yet...
I'd even forgotten to exchange my money into euros before leaving Turkey.
I'd be getting through my first few weeks largely on a credit card.

At passport control in the airport, as someone arriving in Germany for the first time, I tried to speak in my broken German. Despite the handful of words I managed, the border officer appreciated that I was trying to speak German and encouraged me.
It was maybe just a small exchange, a few minutes long.
But it felt good to me.
Because from the very first minute, I was already trying to find myself a place inside this country.

Then I got on a train.
I left the airport and walked around the streets for a while.
I watched everything around me.
Everything was foreign, but at the same time there was this strange excitement of actually arriving, for the first time, at a place that had lived in my head for so long.
And eventually, I reached the home where I'd be living for the next two months.

Maxi

Maxi opened the door.
My German flatmate, with whom I'd share the same flat for two months.
That day, we were just flatmates.
Not friends yet.
Neither of us knew yet what place we'd end up having in each other's lives.

My room was in the attic.
I needed to carry my big suitcase, which weighed around 25 kilos, all the way up. Maxi came all the way down and carried it up with me.
On the very first day we met, I felt a little embarrassed making someone I'd never met carry something so heavy.
But he just said:

“Kein Problem.”

And that was it.
He helped me.

That day, I just had a flatmate.
Over time, we became close friends.
Today, even after all this time, we still keep in touch.

Sometimes you don't know how a story is going to begin.
My Germany story began that day, with that door opening.

Why Germany?

The next day I went to Cologne Cathedral.
It was a place I'd been curious about for a long time.
I stood in front of it and looked at it for a while.
Because I was now really in Germany.
But the idea of Germany had actually started for me much earlier.

After a while, I noticed that my mind kept returning to the same place.
I'd go to bed at night, thinking of Germany.
I'd wake up in the morning, thinking of Germany.
I'd be thinking of something else during the day, and it would still come back to Germany.
Germany.
Germany.
Germany...

At some point I asked myself:

“How much longer am I just going to think about this?”

If I'd been thinking about something for this long, just thinking about it didn't mean anything anymore.
I had to try.

I had a life in Turkey. A job, a social circle, a routine I was used to. But as time went on and I thought about my future, I started believing more and more that Germany was a place where I could build a new future for myself.
It wasn't too far from Turkey.
Being in Europe mattered to me.
And most importantly, I believed I could build a new life for myself here.

When we made the decision, we knew it wouldn't be easy.
We gave up our home.
We sold a large part of our belongings.
We both quit our jobs.
My wife moved in with her family.
I came to Germany.
In a sense, we burned the boats behind us.

My wife knew this process wouldn't be easy. Even so, she trusted me and supported the decision I made.
I'm still grateful for that today.
Because this decision wasn't just for me.
I wasn't moving to a new country for my own enjoyment.
I was taking this risk because I believed we could build a better life together — for the future of our little family.

I was bold.
But I wasn't reckless.
I took a risk.
But I knew what I was taking that risk for.
It was either going to work or it was going to work.
There was no other option.
I only had one shot, and I had to make it count.

The Opportunity Card and the German Language Barrier

I chose the Chancenkarte (Opportunity Card) to come to Germany.
Because finding a job in my own profession in Germany while still in Turkey wasn't easy. Coming here and searching for work directly was the more realistic option for me.

And it's not like I was coming to learn a profession from scratch.
I'm a graduate of Radio, Television and Cinema from Kocaeli University.
I had more than ten years of experience in the media sector.
Videography, drone footage, commercials, editing, post-production and social media management were things I'd been doing for years.
I'd worked at TV channels.
I'd worked at advertising agencies.
I'd worked on projects with well-known actors.
I had a profession and experience built up over years.
What I needed to do now was build a life where I could put all of that to use again, in another country.

But there was one major obstacle in the way of that:
German.

My German wasn't good enough yet.
I knew my profession, but explaining it in another language, expressing myself in a job interview, and showing the person across from me what I was capable of — that was an entirely different matter.

When the Honeymoon Ends

When you first arrive in a country — especially one you've been dreaming about for a long time — you see it differently for a while.
A kind of honeymoon effect.
The streets feel beautiful.
The city feels beautiful.
How people behave toward one another, how rules are followed, the order in traffic, public transport habits...
Everything feels like it has a different rhythm.
That's how I felt too, in my first weeks.

But underneath all that excitement, there was another truth:
I needed to actually be able to stay here.

The date I'd have to leave the flat I was staying in for those first two months kept getting closer.
I needed to find a new place.
And that's when I really started to understand how hard it is to find an apartment in Germany.
On top of that, I was still looking for a job.

The two months in my first home were about to run out, and I didn't know what I'd do if I couldn't find a new place.
The risk of ending up on the street was real.
Would I end up staying in a hotel if I couldn't find an apartment?
And did I even have the budget to stay in hotels for weeks?
I didn't know.

At the same time I was looking for a job, looking for a home, and trying to understand the official procedures in Germany.

Eventually I found a second shared flat.
I moved.

And right around that time, an employer reached out to me through one of the WhatsApp groups for Turks living in Germany.
It wasn't through the job postings I was applying to every day on career sites.
They found me.
We started talking.
We had interviews.
And that's how my first job in Germany began.

My job had just started.
I'd just moved into my new home.
For the first time, I felt like I could breathe a little.

“Okay. I think things are actually starting to fall into place.”

Finding a job wasn't just starting a job.
In a way, I'd fulfilled the first part of the promise I'd made.
But what life in Germany was going to teach me had only just begun.

Small Victories, Small Struggles

Because coming to Germany and building a life in Germany were not the same thing.
I learned how hard it is to find an apartment.
I learned that finding a job is not just about sending out a CV.
I saw how much space a single official letter, an appointment, or a signature can take up in your life in a foreign country.

Sometimes we waited weeks for an email.
Sometimes we heard nothing for months.
Just as one document was finished, another one was needed.
Just as I was waiting for one application to be resolved, another process had to start.
And after a while I learned that patience is also part of building a life in Germany.

I tried to learn German.
Sometimes I'd think for minutes just to form a single sentence.
Sometimes I'd get stuck in conversations where I understood nothing at all.
And sometimes I'd realize I could now do, on my own, something I couldn't do just months before.

I worked.
I waited.
I applied.
I applied again.
I dealt with paperwork.
And through all of it, life went on.

At the same time, I was learning the much more ordinary, but just as real, sides of life.
I slept on an inflatable camping mattress for months.
At first this felt like a small adventure in my new life in Germany.
After a while, back pain completely wiped out the romance of it.

My dryer broke down.
I had to fix it myself.
I learned how to repair it.
I assembled the furniture I bought entirely on my own.

I bought an office chair.
The store was about 25 kilometers away.
I brought the chair home using a train, a tram and a bus, switching between four different modes of transport in total.
It was genuinely hard.
But when I got home, I felt strangely happy.
Because I was building my own life with my own hands now.
Sometimes even something as ordinary as carrying a chair home was part of that.

Everything Changed in an Instant

Then things changed again.
Most things didn't go the way I'd planned.
I lost my job.
Just one month before my visa was set to expire.
I hadn't even gotten my residence permit yet.

All of a sudden I was racing against time.
I needed to find a new job.
I needed to get my residence permit process on track.
And the family reunification process we were running so my wife could come to Germany couldn't be allowed to be affected by any of this.

But it was affected.
Losing my job seriously complicated both my residence permit process and our family reunification process.
All of a sudden I found myself in situations far harder than anything I'd planned for.

That was the period when I truly understood that coming to Germany wasn't, on its own, an achievement.
Coming here was just the beginning.
The real challenge was being able to stay in Germany.
Being able to build a stable life.
And, when things went wrong, being able to get that stability back on its feet.

I found a new job.
I started working again.
Slowly, I got things back on track.
But I was no longer the same person who'd first arrived in Germany.

Today

Today, it's been about a year and a half since I started my life in Germany.
And looking back, I realize it wasn't actually the day I arrived in Germany, but all the small things that happened afterward, that brought me to where I am now.

Finding an apartment.
Finding a job.
Opening a bank account.
Trying to understand an official letter.
Waiting weeks for an email.
Waiting months for the outcome of a process.
Forming a German sentence correctly for the first time.
Losing a job.
Finding another one.
Fixing a dryer.
Assembling a piece of furniture on my own.
Carrying a chair home from 25 kilometers away, switching between four different modes of transport.
Sometimes feeling exhausted.
Sometimes thinking, "What am I even doing?"
And then getting up the next morning and carrying on anyway.

None of these might look like a big story on their own.
But when you're trying to build a life in another country, this — all of this — is actually what life is made of.

My Germany story began this way too.
With one suitcase, one visa.
With dozens of questions I didn't have answers to yet.
And with a bit of courage.

Today, not everything is perfect yet.
I'm still learning.
I'm still trying to get used to some things.
I still have things ahead of me to figure out, goals I want to reach, and new chapters still to be written.

But here's what I know now:
A person's life doesn't always change because of one big decision.
Sometimes it changes because a lot of small decisions, small struggles, and small moments of courage stack up, one on top of another.

For me, Germany was never just about "moving abroad."
After a while, this place became somewhere I was trying to rebuild my life.
And maybe that's exactly why I wanted to tell my own story.
Because sometimes, behind that 30-second moment you see in a video, there's a whole story waiting to be told.
Mine started exactly like that.

But it's not just my story.
Everyone living in Germany has a story that isn't visible from the outside.
Some arrive with one suitcase.
Some leave their family behind.
Some rebuild here the profession they've practiced for years.
Some are learning the language.
Some are trying to find their first home.
Some, even after living here for years, are still learning something new.

I want to make these stories visible too.
I don't just want to share information about Germany here.
I want to tell the stories of people's actual lives in Germany.
Through writing.
Through photos.
Through video.
Through documentaries.

Because I don't believe that understanding Germany only comes from knowing the rules, the salaries, the visas, or the official processes.
Sometimes listening to one person's story tells you more than dozens of facts ever could.

Not to describe Germany.
To show what it's actually like to live here.

Welcome to AlmanyadanSevgilerle.de.
The story is only just beginning.