Hello beautiful people. If you are new to this blog my name is Chandrasen, I’m an Indian immigrant based in Germany. I am also the co-founder of Destination Germany – Ramm. This blog is aimed to share genuine experiences of foreigners working and living in Germany. In this particular blog post I will share my experience about me living in a hostel for two weeks when I first arrived in Germany.
I really do not know about other non European countries, but in India the concept of Hostel is quite different than in Germany and Europe. In India, hostel is a place where mostly students live for very long time (more than 6 months or so) when they move from their home town to different city to do their studies. But in Germany Hostel is something where anyone can stay in a shared as well as private rooms for short periods of time during their travel. It’s a hotel which costs way less than the actual hotels, it’s usually preferred by students but also anyone is welcome to stay between one day to a maximum of one month (atlest according to my experience).
I arrived in Heidelberg Germany on the 28th of October 2014 (because my university starts on the 1st of October) but I got the accommodation at the student residence within the university campus only starting from 13th October 2014. As this was the case I had to take care of my accommodation for first 2 weeks. If I had to stay in a hotel for 2 weeks it would have been too expensive for me, because on an average it costs about €50-80 per night (which would be between €700-1120) to stay in a decent hotel. Thanks to hostel concept that is present in Germany and many other European countries where you can stay for short term in a very decent place with bunker beds at a fraction of the price.
I ended up staying in a hostel called „Steffis Hostel“. The advantages of living in hostel in any European cities are
- They are super cheap compared to living in hotels
- More or less all hostels will have a shared kitchen where you can cook your own food
- Plus you get to meet really interesting people from all over the world with whom you can spend quality time
My 2 weeks living in Steffis hostel in Heidelberg was a memorable one where I got the chance to meet and learn about a lot of interesting people. I got the chance to explore the beautiful city of Heidelberg together with the new people who I met in the hostel. We visited places like Schloss Heidelberg, we walked on the famous Old Bridge Heidelberg , we went to Zoo Heidelberg, and we went hiking to famous Königstuhl from where we could see the the whole city of Heidelberg from the top of the mountain.
As of now I have been living in Germany for more than 7 years and I must say that I am quite lucky that I have got the chance to travel around the Europe quite a bit. Every time I visit a new country and a city in the Europe I prefer to stay in Hostel even though I can now afford to stay in the hotels. The main reason being that the experience that I get by living is hostels is immense and sometimes life changing.
After living in Germany for more than 7 years (at the time of writing) I see a lot of changes (positive) that has happened to me in my life. I strongly believe that those changes are because of me getting the chance to live my life both in India and Germany for many years. I believe that this experience is very rewarding and has helped me to lead a better quality of life both personally and financially.
For couple of years I have been looking for ways to build a business around this idea where I can give this rewarding experience to as many people as possible. Recently I have got the chance to join hands with my colleague, dear friend and now my business partner Vincent Ramm to start Destination Germany. A recruitment agency taking one extra step to find top candidates worldwide and fill in the open job positions at the top companies in Germany.
Ofcourse we want to help as many people as possible, but there will be always limitations. If you are genuinely good in what you are doing for living, curious to know more in your domain and have proven those things somehow in your home country then Germany will definitely accept you and gives you the best experience of your lifetime. I would guarantee this because I am the living proof for it. I believe that if I can do it anybody can do it.
If this is convincing for you then go to our careers page and check out all the open positions that we are currently hiring. If you find the one that fits your profile then go ahead and apply for that position.