This (October 2008) is probably the wrong time for advice on how to get subprime mortgages in Germany, but anyway: As a foreigner, most applicants for mortgages will by default be subprime, because your real estate/assets overseas don't count for anything for a German bank. Just cash does (and yes, a few banks will analyse overseas income statements, but add to this translation costs etc). To save you time trapsing through 20 banks in your first weeks in Germany, here is a shortcut, the largest mortgage broker in Germany: http://www.interhyp.de/ They offer cordial and efficient service; after giving your details through phone, on the next business day you should have your first offers by the banks they represent, which...

This is a typical German thing and quite unique, I guess, where people have separate garden lots where they go to in summer evenings and weekends; they are allowed to build small huts on these (usually leased) lots, bot normally not to connect them to power, water or sewage - keeping those lots purely for enjoying spare time and holidays. The lots can be in the middle of cities, along rail tracks or a bit further out of town; done up to the nines, with beautiful pedicured lawns, fruit trees, and yes, the ubiquitous dwarf figurines.

Ok, it's not something to be proud of, but if you need to prepare a foolproof German meal, help is at hand. Head for the Maggi and Knorr packet selection where you'll find things like Schweinebraten, Schnitzel and Spaetzle. The instructions are really easy and you know exactly what to ask the butcher for (or just give them the packet in shame!). For dessert just throw berries and a tub of quark or thick cream into a pre-made flan base or make a packet vanilla pudding. With a little bit of help you can even impress Oma - until your own Hausfrau credentials are fully polished.

As our kids and I are German, when we arrived in Berlin only my wife had to register as a foreign citizen at the Ausländerbehörde, the local immigration authority. We first had to register our place of residence at the local "Bürgeramt" (after we had found our flat to stay - we needed passports, birth and marriage certificates for this), then had to arrange (via email) an appointment at the local Ausländerbehörde to register my wife so that she gets a residence and work permit. We had to do this within the first 3 months of our arrival. The appointment itself took ca. 30 minutes, and again we had to bring passports, marriage certificates, birth certificates, and the "Meldebescheinigung" from the...

These links were useful when we looked for apartments after we arrived in Berlin: http://www.immobilienscout24.de/ http://www.immowelt.de/ http://www.immonet.de /

Moving to a new city will glue you to your laptop for weeks - looking for services, outfitting the new flat/house, and first finding a flat or house. We found quite a few of our things on http://berlin.kijiji.de/ - for most items it just seemed to have the most on offer. I don't know if this is Berlin-specific, they have sites for other German cities as well. http://ebay.de/ was good too sometimes. On Kijiji we even found our flat to buy. I've also posted some other links when you look for property online in Germany, under "Places to Stay // Apartments".

We arrived two months ago in Berlin, Germany, with our two toddlers. We had been shopping around for health insurance online when we were still in New Zealand. Not unsurprisingly, Germany is dearer in health insurance costs than NZ; but when looking in the fine print, there is also more included in their packages: dental care, for example (up to a certain limit). As we want to stay ca. 2 years only, we were also looking into covering our stay with travel insurance, but this seemed not to cover that much (some just offered emergency services, which is no good with 2 small kids, I guess). In the end we went for http://www.hansemerkur.de/produkte/reiseversicherung/gaeste/reiseversicherung/5jahre/, which costs us as a family...