I described the move in the first article . Life, work and travel - in the second .
And now I will try to reveal the pitfalls that I stumbled upon. And I'll tell you why I came back as a result.
Wiesbaden: town hall and cathedral on the market square
So get ready. I will describe how the rainbow fantasies collided with reality. If you still have rainbow fantasies - spare them, you should not read further.
Disclaimer:
I am describing my own, subjective opinions and experiences, they may differ from the opinions and experiences of other expats. In no way do I pretend to be absolute truth.
The medicine
We are all accustomed to considering German medicine as something special, advanced, here they treat cancer and do the most complex heart surgeries.
Fortunately, I have not had a chance to find out from my own experience whether this is so. I think a lot can be cured for a lot of money. Although not all.
I know for sure only one difficult case: the husband of a friend got cancer. And he was cured. However, the insurance only covered a small portion of the treatment. Half of the bills were paid by his work, and the other half was paid by the sale of movable and immovable property. And he, in spite of some heirs, remained alive (albeit without a home).
However, these are all beautiful stories.
The average layman (like me, who does not have an extra house to sell) is interested in conventional medicine.
Well, that is, it is much more useful for life to know how bronchitis or a dislocated leg is treated than how a heart transplant is done.
And here we see the following picture: Germany lures doctors from other countries. And they go for a long euro. But they are still not enough. Paradox!
If you have something urgent, but not life-threatening, you need to get in your car and go to the hospital. Help will be provided after an hour or two of waiting in the emergency room.
And yes,
Call an ambulance only if there is a serious threat to health or life.
But you can call and free in German or English (!) To consult what to do right now. And, if everything is as bad as you think, they will come for you. Well, if not so bad, then one of two things: either you insist on calling and pay for it (something about 500 euros), or you yourself get to the hospital.
In all cases, except for emergency, you need to make an appointment with your family doctor. He is a multidisciplinary specialist and he cures most diseases himself.
In case of an acute condition, you can come on the same day without an appointment and wait 1-2 hours (if you are lucky) in a live queue.
God forbid you have something sick on holidays or on Sunday. Then you will have to visit a hospital where the acute condition is stopped, but on the next working day you still need to go to the family doctor.
One of my acquaintances grabbed kidneys, so much so that she did not move. The hospital did not even examine her. A broad spectrum antibiotic was prescribed, and that was all.
If you have nothing urgent and you need a narrow specialist, be patient. The queue can be as long as several weeks or several months. My friends had a problem: the child's eyesight "fell", it was necessary to check and prescribe glasses. They waited 4 months for the appointment.
Of course, this is not the most common case. On average, under insurance, you can make an appointment with a doctor in 2-4 weeks. And sometimes even after a week.
When you make an appointment, you will likely have to wait too. But usually not for long, within half an hour.
Note : I believe that timing may differ in other cities.
But this has nothing to do with medicine. This is Breda, a small town in the Netherlands, which impressed me more than Amsterdam. Historical festival with knights, beautiful ladies, jesters and real cannon firing.
Personally, I only visited the family doctor once. He redirected to a surgeon, who managed to get an appointment a few days later. The surgeon was stern, he didn't really want to speak English, but he knew his business well. He jumped into the operating room, figak-figak with a scalpel, said "I finished" and disappeared.
The result was quite satisfactory for me, I did not come to smile at me, but to solve my problem.
In general, doctors make the most of their time by organizing a conveyor belt of patients. The doctor takes in several offices at once. He enters the first office, where the first patient is already waiting for him. Then he goes to the second room to the second patient. Then - to the third. And when he returns to the first office, a fourth patient is already waiting for him. It turns out, as it were, a circular buffer.
It is interesting that in some places you can get an appointment almost the next day for cash. But there is a problem: having paid once, you cannot stop paying. All tests, follow-up appointments, and, God forbid, hospitalization will be paid for. For serious money.
As a result, you will pay twice: both for the service and for the insurance that you will not use.
The insurance price depends on the salary. I had a little over 700 euros a month.
An explanation of why one has to wait so long was given to me by a German doctor from Kiev during a gathering in a bathhouse over a glass of tea.
First, a well-earning specialist pays for himself and “for that guy” who does not earn much. The cost of insurance can differ at times, and the volume of services must be the same.
Secondly, clinics are business. They receive a certain amount from the insurance for each appointment. If I'm not mistaken, a 15 minute appointment costs 35 euros, a 45 minute appointment - 80 euros. But not the point. Doctors try to shove you out of the office after 5 minutes, writing down 15. Or after 15, writing down 45. Thus, the especially impudent ones generally get more than 24 working hours a day. They are, of course, caught and punished. But there are only a few.
It turns out that doctors are sucking out the insurance budget very quickly.
But the budget is not rubber. The number of receptions is quoted. Therefore, a situation is not uncommon when, for example, a woman wants to register with a gynecologist in September, and she is told: "only after the New Year." Well, just the limit of patients for this year has already been reached. It happens that you have to go to a doctor in another city. Because the quotas there have not yet been exhausted.
It's hard to become a doctor in Germany. First you need to study, study, study. A side effect of quality education is that so many of them speak English well. Yes, they do not like to do this (after all, conversations in English take up precious time), but they can.
And that's cool!
Because otherwise I can’t imagine how I would negotiate with them.
And also the positive quality of German medicine is that it is evenly "smeared" throughout Germany. Yes, there are local fluctuations, but on average, a practitioner from a village will not yield to a doctor from the capital. And the leased equipment will be of comparable quality.
Service
I lived near the NATO base. Over the decades of serving the American military, locals have mastered English at a level from Intermediate to Advanced. Well, really, it's not Americans who learn German! And you need to communicate.
Therefore, I had no language problems at all. Although not everyone knows English equally well, you can almost always agree.
A real "warm lamp" Buran (one of the series) in the German Museum in the city of Speyer. Usually there are fewer people, but that day people gathered to listen to Charles Duke , one of the astronauts of the Apollo program.
Alas, German service in a broad sense is radically different from German museums.
Service is a "pichalka".
Please note, I'm not talking about German goods. They can be characterized by the words of Artemy Lebedev "Long, expensive, oh ... nno."
As for the service, one can say in the words of Oleg Tinkov: "Long and oh ... but expensive."
The contracts are concluded for a long time. For example, apartment insurance is bought for at least 5 years. Internet - for a year or two. It is necessary to warn about the cancellation of the contract one year in advance, and cancellation is possible only on the next "anniversary". That is, you cannot use the services for, say, 3.5 years. Either 3 years or 4.
The contract can be terminated early if you move. And then, your application can be "forgotten" or "lost". This is what happened to my internet service provider, who has ripped off money over the past year.
Yes, and you can't just take it and stop paying. The company is taking your bank account hostage.
Everything is done slowly and how it goes. However, no one forgets to take money.
The same internet connection cost me 80 euros. It consisted in the fact that I myself plugged the cable into the router. But I was also lucky that there was a cable in the apartment. One of my colleagues went through several providers and waited for connection for a total of 6 (!) Months.
Yes, there was another interesting case: they brought a bunch of tables to our office. For a long time we tried to understand why? It turned out that a year and a half ago, when the team was growing intensively, our office manager ordered the tables, and now, they were finally made and delivered.
Another paradox: often buyers run after sellers, and not vice versa. The attitude is such that you want to freak out, spit, and go to another office. But there you will encounter the same thing.
Upon arrival, I ordered a refrigerator and a washing machine from Mediamarkt . Alas, delivery could only be arranged before the entrance. But the cunning manager recommended that I purchase a "connection service". Indeed, in order to connect the equipment, you first have to bring it into the apartment. There were no other options, and I was not trained to carry refrigerators to the 4th floor. Well, I had to fork out another 120 euros for the connection.
At 7 in the morning, a truck drove up to the house and a couple of cheerful fellows dragged the equipment into my kitchen. The fellows coped brilliantly with connecting the refrigerator to the outlet, after which they moved to a new level of play: stick the hose of the washer into the pipe.
The washer blinked affably with LEDs, gurgled and spat out a fountain from the drain. Two of the casket wiped their faces, said: "the pipe is blocked, call the owner" and drove off in their truck.
A bit wet and very sad, I decided to see what happened to the pipe. Taking out the hose, I found a rubber band from the hose in the pipe, which tightly blocked the drain. Having cheered up, he pulled the rubber band on the hose, put the hose into the pipe and started the test wash. So what if 120 euros. In the end, everything worked.
Although I admit there are many normal offices in Germany. But they are not particularly memorable. I believe there is nothing special about doing your job well.
The service should be such that one wants to become a regular customer. And tell all your friends.
Employees must do as a Deutsche Bank intern from Ukraine did. Seeing my passport, she volunteered to resolve my issue in my (i.e. Russian) language. Smiling, I filled out all the papers. She translated incomprehensible moments into Russian. Then she gave her business card and said that you can call on any question. Although she was not my personal manager at all! Moreover, then she herself called me back and informed me about the status of the decision. Although not required, all official information is sent in the form of letters.
This is the "wow" effect.
And there are such examples. But there are only a few of them.
And there are dozens of disappointments.
Now a little about honesty. My German colleagues have repeatedly and meticulously explained who, where and how can throw.
Many individuals and companies fool each other the best they can. And this is where I feel helpless.
Real life example: HR agencies tried to deceive our company in every possible way. One of them sent overpriced bills for services 3 times. Each time they confessed to a "mistake" and sent another fake bill.
Another example: the tax assistant announced one price to a colleague, and after providing advice, he invoiced several times higher. And then either you have to go to court (paying for a lawyer and an interpreter) or pay. A colleague paid.
And where are they, Prussian virtues?
And for insurance companies to refuse payment, using a footnote to some secondary clause of the contract - in general, how to breathe air.
Although, of course, most Germans are personally crystal-clear and conscientious. A friend of mine is worried about how he once rode a "hare" on a train 10 years ago.
The German town of Limburg an der Lahn has a huge concentration of half-timbered houses . I don’t know how a timber frame filled with clay and straw stood for 700 years! The Germans know how to build
Reasons for leaving.
Disclaimer 2:
Throughout all three articles, I have tried to avoid direct comparisons.
However, this point cannot be covered without weighing up the pros and cons. Because the decision to move or stay is based on a subjective sense of where is better.
Better yet, it's not about an abstract consumer price index. This is about my particular case.
I am comparing (in my humble opinion) one of the best places in Germany with one of the best possible places in Russia. After all, I want to live with my family in a better place. The worst ones don't interest me.
In addition, I compare life as an IT specialist, and not as a doctor, teacher, pilot or tractor driver.
So, all the warnings have been expressed, and for this - let's get started.
1) Existential causes.
Don't confuse tourism and emigration.
I do not like to feel “out of place”, for the locals I will always be a “stranger”, although they are nice and polite (for the most part). Also, the average German is cold as a fish and lonely. Discussing the weather over your morning coffee is easy, but melting the ice, getting into your “personal space” is extremely difficult, even being one of them. And what can we say about emigrants.
There is nothing "mine" here, I do not belong to this place.
For the family, the “alien” environment is felt even more contrasted.
Personally, I have no political reason to be in Germany.
And also, most importantly, I have no ultimate goal. Why tolerate a foreign culture and a foreign language?
What am I doing here? What for?
To better convey my feelings, let's abstract from Europe.
Imagine being invited to work in China. And you went there with your family. You find that you are suffering. And your children are suffering. But you endure, learn Chinese, try to fit into Chinese culture. You like Chinese food and sightseeing, although you get fed up with both of them after a year or two. But you don't like the Chinese Communist Party at all. You disapprove of Chinese politics. And not at all thrilled with total surveillance and the Chinese firewall.
You, of course, understand that all your life you will be a stranger in China. But you continue to endure. Let your children become real Chinese at least.
2) Economic reasons.
There is also no economic reason to stay, because I am an established specialist with almost 20 years of experience in the industry. I can get a job anywherewhenever you want , and provide a comfortable standard of living for your family.
Yes, in Germany I had an open-ended contract and earned more than many locals.
But, considering taxes and honey. insurance, given that I need to rent a house for a large family (in Russia there is, albeit not a large, but its own apartment), there is not much left to live on.
In Germany, I am almost middle class. Almost - because without your real estate and practically no chance of acquiring it (try to buy something for such a crowd of children!). This is neither good nor bad, it is average.
When my office closes the direction, or goes bankrupt, I absolutely will not find the same good conditions. The money will decrease by 10-20 thousand per year.
Also in Germany, despite having a work permit, there is a problem with the employment of a spouse. It is necessary to confirm Russian education and complete your studies according to local standards, as well as learn German at least to a solid level C1 (Advanced). Because the profession of a clinical psychologist involves communicating with clients in their language.
Another option is to get an education from scratch. Which, given the presence of three children at that time, is almost unrealistic.
This means that, firstly, you will have to count on only one (albeit larger) salary, and secondly, busFactor == 1. It's annoying.
And local prices are either almost the same (equipment) or higher (my grocery basket - 150%), or much higher (communal flat - 500%) than in "Default City" .
In Germany, the standard of living of my family remained approximately the same. Something we could afford in more (travel around Europe), something in less (services)
But the question is: why live in another country if it didn't get better?
3) Comfort.
I have already mentioned the German service: it is either horror or horror-horror-horror (C). The principle "who pays, calls the tune" does not work here. But it is the service, in its broadest sense, that is the guarantee of comfort.
I don't understand why I need to use services that do not suit me in terms of price / quality ratio all my life. Unless, the path to nirvana leads along the road of suffering.
And also, like it or not, in Germany you are infected with "German thrift". Someone likes it, but personally I feel uncomfortable to have the thought of saving in the background all the time.
For example, every time I shower, I want to relax. I want to feel the hot drops drumming on my skin. Instead, I feel how, with the sound of "dzin", a 1 euro coin falls out of me for heating the water. If you take a longer shower, you will hear a ding for two euros.
4) Education of children.
The most important point for me.
Decisive.
My children and I were engaged in "home schooling" according to the Russian program after the German school and kindergarten. Then twice a year they flew to take exams to Moscow.
The main burden fell on my wife, but I also got it.
When you come home after work tired, have dinner, and then for 2-3 hours pretend to be a teacher of mathematics, computer science and English - this is too much.
In addition, the Russian school curriculum (and the entire system as a whole) weakly correlates with the German one.
In German schools (except for gymnasiums) the curriculum is very weak. Alas. But this is quite natural, because after a regular school, a child, as a rule, goes to receive a secondary specialized education.
Gymnasiums, in principle, are comparable to good Russian schools. But you still have to get to the gymnasium.
My oldest child was in the 6th grade, and I had to quickly decide whether to spit on the Russian school and focus on the German one (but then I need to enter the university in Germany) or return. And I can't even imagine what needs to be done to get into the gymnasium at that age. Unless, pay for a private gymnasium. Because the normal age when the future is determined is 5th grade. And if you want to transfer to a gymnasium in the 7-8-9 grade, you just need to jump over your head with your legs tied.
The gymnasium is simply critical to be able to enter a university.
I don’t want holivars, I’ll just state my position: European education is no better and no worse than Moscow education (once again, I compare it with Moscow, and not with a village lost in the taiga, because personally my question was Wiesbaden / Moskau).
With a European diploma (with the exception of some specialties) it will be difficult to get a job in the Russian Federation. Just as with Russian education, it is difficult in Europe, especially if it is humanitarian.
It's easier to live and work where you learned.
And I also had a 4th child on the way (now it was born). And this is already the Nightmare level. The remaining 3 do not have enough time for home schooling at all. And the level of home schooling is weaker than full-time, no matter how hard you try.
Therefore, the question became an edge: to stay forever and educate all 4 children in Europe, or return and educate in Moscow.
The word "forever" scares me a lot. It scares children even more. Several years - OK, but not all my life.
Children asked to go home almost every day.
Therefore, he returned.
Here's where I'd like to go again: Ghent, Belgium
Return
The move was carried out in 3 stages:
- I took my family to Russia and returned to Germany.
- I redecorated my home and sent all my belongings with the shipping company.
- Arriving in Moscow, I met a car with things and cleared it through customs.
I think I wrote about my luck several times. So, this is all nonsense compared to the fact that the move ended exactly a couple of weeks before the borders were closed due to covid.
Because there could be options: my family with no job and no home would be stuck in Germany.
Or the family would move, and I would be stuck in Germany with my things.
Or the same thing, but without things.
Or things would get stuck in Germany, and we - in Russia.
And, the cherry on the cake: at that time, the wife was 7 months old.
Paradoxically, going “back” took even more nerves than going “there”. Mainly because of the transportation of things. It turned out that when entering the territory of the Customs Union, surreal customs rules are in effect. After reading Article 266 of the Customs Code of the EAEUand other boring documents, I was calm exactly until the moment of ordering the transportation from the First Transport .
They enlightened me that yes, I have the right to import used personal items without restriction after a long stay abroad.
But no, I personally have not been abroad with my family for a long time.
According to the customs of the Russian Federation.
The only confirmation of stay outside the Customs Union can be consular registration .
Neither a work contract, nor a lease agreement, nor a certificate of registration, not to mention a "blue card" do not confirm a long stay abroad. Even being certified by the Russian consulate.
And without consular registration, I need to pay 4 euros for each kilogram of my own old pants, brought from Russia.
In general, I got it.
I sold all the furniture and appliances (I got 1/3 to 1/2 of the original price).
I threw out a bunch of boxes with things in the trash (I took them at night so that the neighbors would not knock).
And I have 700 kg of things left. That's not much for a family of 5. But if you multiply 700 by 4 euros ...
And then the light dawned at the end of the tunnel.
It turned out that you can try to translate all the German documents that you have, assure them at the consulate, and “top-top” legs at customs points, perhaps someone will not be such a literalist. Because the transport company had precedents for preferential customs clearance.
Oh yes, you can also involve a customs broker. And he will do "top-top" instead of you.
So I asked the carrier to overexpose my things in a warehouse in Poland and flew to Moscow. In Moscow, I immediately rushed to the customs points in an attempt to prove that I was not a camel, and that I had the right to preferential customs clearance of my junk.
Note to the hostess : In theory, customs points are tied to your registration.
In practice, a referral to a specific customs point is made at the border. Customs at the border does not care where to send you. And the customs point on the spot can no longer deny you customs clearance if you were sent to him.
And one of the customs posts - Kashirsky - agreed to accept my documents "as is" and provide a privilege.
Hooray!
I paid about 250 euros for notary services.
For transportation and " customs clearance " of my 700 kg in the volume of 4 cubes - 1500 euros.
For warehouse services at customs - 3000 rubles.
And I avoided the € 2,800 tax.
But that's not the whole story! The first transport, which I praised so much, put a pig in my car in the form of 300 kg of carved table top measuring 2 * 3 meters from a piece of solid marble. Even a rough estimate of the cost is over 10 kiloevro. Where is the owner of the countertop - no one had a clue. Either in Europe, or in Russia ...
It would be better if it really was a pig.
Because besides the struggle for preferential customs clearance, this smuggling was added.
But I did it.
And thanks to the Kashira customs post for the professionalism shown in such an exceptional situation.
The driver and I, having dragged all the things to my apartment, ate borscht for the night and parted without mutual claims.
The move is over.
I do not regret going to Germany. It was an invaluable experience.
And all the more I do not regret that I returned.
This is my home.