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| My cosy room in Munich, found on Airbnb |
I’ll start this off with a warning: I am hyper-organised. Do not read this as a cautionary tale - if you don’t do exactly what I did to find accommodation in these exact steps you won’t end up on the streets, you might just take a little longer to find your digs. It’s not a big deal, don’t freak out. A lot of students in the year above me told me that they didn’t even sort their accommodation until they arrived in their country of choice. It’s not the end of the world. But here’s how it went for me when I was looking for a place in Munich.
As soon as I got my job in Munich (around April 2015) I started looking for accommodation. I figured I knew I was going to be there - for sure - so waiting would only make it more stressful in the end. And ain’t that the truth. A couple of my friends left it much later, and still didn't have set accommodation a week before they arrived. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is definitely not the worst thing that could happen to you. A lot of students don’t find accommodation until they are already abroad and have stayed in a hostel for a few weeks. But if you ask me, that’s a lot of unnecessary stress. I know that as soon as I step out of my front door, it’s going to be one panic after another: the last thing I want is to know that I don’t have a permanent place to go. So, if you’re a bit more of a free spirit than me, don’t panic about your accommodation. But if you’re a worrier (not to be confused with warrior, which I’m definitely not), then the sooner the better. There’s nothing like crossing “find some bloody accommodation ASAP!!!” off your to-do list.
So once you’ve decided to start, you have to decide where to start. There’s a lot of murmuring about sites like WG-Gesucht (for Germany) and Appartager (for France) - where you can find a room in shared accommodation, usually with other students. Living with other people is definitely the number one recommendation for year abroad - it will strengthen your language skills, be cheaper, and make it easier to find friends. But honestly? Not for me. I spent about 20 minutes looking at the places on appartager and knew it wasn’t my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, I loved house-sharing in first and second year, and I loved my housemates. But finding a house share in a very specific area can be really hard. In Paris it’s really tough, and if you’re on ELA (like a couple of my friends) and end up in some town or village in the depths of the Schwarzwald, it’s pretty much a no-go. Honestly, I’d rather live on my own and be able to roll out of bed 30 minutes before school starts than spend an hour and a half commuting to Uni or work every morning just so I could live with other students. But that’s just me. So your first mission is to decide whether you want to house-share or go it alone.
Second - and this might have been decided along with the first - is how close you want to be to your uni/ school/ workplace. As I already said, I savour the idea of avoiding early mornings and long commutes, so in both cases I opted for a place close to my Uni (for Paris) and down the road from my workplace (in Munich). For some people, this will mean deciding between living close to the centre of a city, or living close to the place you need to be. Luckily for me, I’m both studying and working in places which are slap-bang in the city centre, so it wasn’t a problem, but this might be something you have to decide. The downside for me though, was rent.
Rent is the elephant in the room when it comes to finding a place to stay. There’s a lot to take into account. You will be getting more student loan, Erasmus grant (most likely), and for ELA and working students, a wage. But you will want to travel and go a bit wild, so do you want to splash it all on rent? Don’t imagine that you’ll be living the way you do at your home Uni - you’ll want to travel around, go out more, eat out more, and generally be able to kick back. If you’re dishing out XXXX € a month for your fancy apartment in the middle of town, will you still be able to tag along when your friends hop the border to Austria, Prague, Amsterdam? All I will say is that you might want to consider whether you will actually be able to afford to do both, or whether you’re just looking at the massive loan, Erasmus grant, and salary you’ll be getting, and forgetting what else you’ll want to spend that on.
The final thing I will say is take a look at Airbnb. Some lecturers will warn you away from this site, as it was originally founded for short term lets and holiday-goers. Well, Airbnb has now introduced long term lets - or renting in layman’s terms, and you’re completely protected by the site. It’s basically the equivalent of going to a letting agency, but you don’t have to go abroad to do it. There are also reviews from former guests and tenants, which might give you some valuable insight into what you’re looking at. I found both of my places on Airbnb, and it’s been the simplest thing. Give it a chance.
Happy house-hunting!
