{"id":1724,"date":"2021-04-14T06:14:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/february-2014-uberlin\/"},"modified":"2021-04-15T06:58:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T06:58:13","slug":"february-2014-uberlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/february-2014-uberlin\/","title":{"rendered":"February 2014 – \u00fcberlin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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February 26, 2014<\/abbr><\/h5>\n
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Stereotypes: The Different Expats You\u2019ll Meet in Berlin<\/a><\/h3>\n

by Guest Blogger<\/span><\/h4>\n
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So you\u2019re new here. You\u2019re walking around with your pint-sized Lonely Planet and you\u2019re feeling Berlinspired. You want to move here and Berlintegrate.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, first you gotta hold up, put your thing down, flip it and kindly reverse it. Because before you move, you should know what you\u2019re getting yourself into. You should know what kind of people you\u2019re getting yourself into. And no matter how much you think you\u2019re going to fully integrate yourself into the fabric of Berlin society, one fact remains: you will always be an expat. You\u2019re going to end up getting to know the expat world a lot better than the German one.<\/em><\/p>\n

So after you\u2019re done visiting the Reichstag, eating currywurst<\/a> and wandering around Lidl looking for Angela Merkel, here\u2019s a little list of the kinds of expats you may end up meeting.<\/em><\/p>\n

The One Who Actually Moved Here for His Career
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\u201cAre you a unicorn?!\u201d is the first thing you want to ask this expat, who\u2019s so rich they\u2019re wiping their ass with real Euros, and the Euro hasn\u2019t even collapsed yet! While the rest of your friends are living below Hartz IV<\/em>, this expat is riding high, eating 16 Euro salads at the SoHo House, buying Acne jeans and taking weekend trips to Paris<\/a>. After all, their apartment is 300 Euros and they\u2019re making 1700 a month. The downside? They\u2019re always working on some insane project at work and never sleeping. Zaha Hadid\u2019s personal assistant yells at them every day. You comfort yourself in knowing they aren\u2019t really absorbing the \u201cBerlin vibe\u201d but you\u2019re actually jealous because you don\u2019t know what in the actual fuck you are doing in this city and they kind of\u2026 do.<\/p>\n

\"Career\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The One Obsessed with Full Immersion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good luck ever hanging out with this expat! Full immersion friends have a hard time answering your calls because they\u2019re just so, you know\u2026immersed. Some of them won\u2019t even speak English because their language instructor told them not to. Advice: just wait. Full-immersion is a phase that happens during the beginning of almost every jaunt across the pond. Eventually, they\u2019ll get frustrated and overwhelmed and want to gab about the latest Modern Family episode with someone who understands irony and sarcasm.<\/p>\n

The Photoblogger<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh\u2026my god. Can this expat please document my life? Clearly I need to read-up on things like white balance and exposure because my photos look like they were taken by an early 90\u2019s webcam. These people are living a more charmed, aesthetically-beautiful existence than you and I.<\/p>\n

\"Blogger\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The One Who\u2019s Always Out<\/strong><\/p>\n

You get approximately 15 Facebook invites from this expat every day. They can\u2019t hang out tonight because they\u2019re listening to an Afro Klesmer band, attending the launch of a new gay magazine, having a midnight pillow-fight at Brandenburger Tor and then playing Wii Sports with 15 of your other friends. You should go, but it\u2019s -5 and there\u2019s a new episode of Parks and Recreation you want to download and you\u2019re generally too lazy to do anything in the winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The One Who\u2019s a DJ<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically the same as above, except the invites are for concerts at Berghain<\/a> and there\u2019s no question they\u2019re snorting mountains of coke. Also: this Portlandia clip.<\/p>\n