Expat Empire Podcast 6 | From Food Delivery to Software Development in Germany with Matthew Jordan

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Today we will be hearing from Matthew Jordan. Matt was born in Australia, grew up in several countries across the globe, and has been living in Berlin, Germany for the last 2 years. In this episode, you will learn:

• What it’s like to grow up in an expat family
• How to get your start in Berlin if you don’t have a job or an apartment waiting for you
• Strategies for acquiring different types of visas in Germany including working holiday, musician, and company-sponsored visas
• How to get your start learning to code from scratch and find great job opportunities abroad

You can reach out to Matt to find out more about life in Berlin and becoming a software developer at mjordandeveloper@gmail.com. Eli Hermit edited and produced the music for this episode, please check him out at elihermit.bandcamp.com/. Learn more about Expat Empire at expatempire.com!

Episode Transcript

Intro

Welcome to the Expat Empire Podcast, the podcast where you can hear from expats around the world and learn how you can join them.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today for the 6th episode of the Expat Empire Podcast. Today we will be hearing from Matt Jordan. Matt was born in Australia, grew up in several countries across the globe, and has been living in Berlin, Germany for the last few years. We discuss many topics including what it’s like to grow up in an expat family, how to get your start in Berlin if you don’t have a job or an apartment waiting for you, strategies for acquiring different types of visas in Germany, how to get your start learning to code from scratch, and much more.

Without further ado, let’s start the conversation.

Conversation

David McNeill: Hey Matt, thanks so much for joining us today on Expat Empire.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m really excited.

David McNeill: Awesome man! Well, if you could please tell me a little bit about your background, you know, where you’re originally from, where your upbringing was like and, you know, where around the world that you’ve lived so far and where you’re living now, that’d be great. I’d imagine for you it’s quite a long story. So, feel free to take your time going through it.

Matthew Jordan: It is a bit of a long one. So, originally I’m from Australia although I didn’t spend that much time growing up there. So, when I was eight I had first moved to Thailand. This had to do with my dad’s job. So, he was working for Novartis; a pharmaceutical company, and would frequently move to different countries every couple of years.

So, the whole family; my mom, my dad, my brother, we all moved to Thailand and we stayed there for about two years until he got another posting in Indonesia. And we were there for three years then. And then I went back to Australia for a couple of years, then to South Korea for about six months.

David McNeill: Wow.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, which was very interesting, living in Seoul. And then after that, I moved to Turkey, which was actually where I graduated high school but I went to a really small school; it was only about, I think 22 of us in the year. So… Yeah, quite a close group. And then after that, I actually went from high school there to the US and I did a year of university in Tennessee; after that I went back to Australia, it was three years and then now here I am in Germany.

David McNeill: Wow. Yeah, I know it sounds like it’s been quite a ride.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah.

David McNeill: And, I haven’t met so many people over the years that have had such a diverse experience growing up in different countries. And, frankly speaking that was something that I was quite jealous of whenever I heard those stories. So, I’d love to hear more about that. You know, what was it like to move to so many different countries and, you know, having to rebuild your friend base, you know, getting used to a new culture, language, you know, how involved did you get in to that local culture or did you feel like the next movers around the corner and you kind of were just expecting to be there for a short while?

Matthew Jordan: It’s not really something that struck me as being unusual, I guess. Because when I was moving to these new countries, I was going to international schools and encountering other people that were in the exact same situation as me; all my friends would frequently move like every two or three years and you just kind of like build this way of interacting with people where you know, hey, make friends quickly and then two years, you’ll probably both part ways.

And I guess in the early stages I was quite young; I’ve been in Thailand, I started in primary school, Indonesia was just like middle school. So, in terms of like immersing myself in the culture, there wasn’t too much of that, it’s pretty much just home, school, home, school. I mean, when I got to around Turkey, that’s when there was a bit more independence on my side and I really did start to kind of go out and interact with the locals to try and pick up a little bit of the language.

David McNeill: And which of those experiences stand out most in your mind in terms of all those countries? Were there any that you thought, hey, I’d love to live here for longer, have another experience, maybe professional working experience here?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I think definitely Istanbul. It kind of struck me as a place that was quite different than, maybe like preconceptions that people might have. So, I think also at the age that I was, I was 17, it’s kind of like your formative years. Made a lot of really close friends now that are actually living in Germany, which is really good in that kind of like core group of people, the ones that I keep most in contact with.

I also found that a city that was very easy to get around and just kind of be a foreigner. So, there was kind of quite a bit of support networks there, especially for youth. So, I was playing like quite a bit of sport there with other kids from other different countries, yeah, just kind of core network made that easier. I mean, living in Germany we’re not that far away from Turkey now, so I’m quite ambitious to get back there.

David McNeill: Yeah, I can imagine. And it’s a place that’s certainly on my short list of locations that I like to visit, because I’ve heard so many great things about it. In terms of your dad’s job and taking your family around the world like that, is that something that you want to emulate in your career as well, or, you know, has basically coming to Berlin as you mentioned just been kind of a random one off that was unplanned, you know, how did that all come about?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I think somewhere in the back of my mind, that’s a factor. It’s not something that I really strived for but I do notice kind of like in my personal life if I’m in one place for three years I kind of want to see what else is out there in terms of going to new countries. So, moving to Germany though was never something that I had really considered, although I did travel a lot when I was a kid, I hadn’t really been to Europe. I mean, I went to Switzerland once, but haven’t really seen what else Europe had to offer.

It was actually when I met my girlfriend in Australia and she had been to Berlin, I think two years prior to when we met and just had such a great time here and thought, hey, maybe she’d like to move here one day. So, she just kind of started this conversation and then it just felt like a natural thing for me to do. We had absolutely no plans, just thought, why not?

David McNeill: Yeah. It seems like it’s actually a common story for coming to Berlin. I mean, some folks don’t even visit here before they make the big move.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, that was definitely my case.

David McNeill: Yeah. I mean, what was it like in those very first days? You know, you just arrived from the city, maybe you don’t have so many expectations outside of some of the stories that you’ve heard from your girlfriend. What was it like to just see it in person and go through, you know, the process of finding an apartment and getting set up here?

Matthew Jordan: It was exciting. I remember the first few weeks, just being in Europe you’re kind of amazed by every little detail. I think we moved here on May Day, so that was also very interesting.

David McNeill: Maybe you could explain a little bit about what that is for our listeners that are unfamiliar, and I think it’ll be a good story.

Matthew Jordan: So, May Day is essentially a free-for-all on the streets of Berlin where everybody is out and you just have a daylong party on every single street corner, just music, marches, bands, clubs on the side of the road, everybody drinking, having a good time… yeah, it’s very interesting. I moved here and I just thought, wow, is this what it’s like every single day?

David McNeill: Yeah. I mean, I can imagine that being your first experience walking off the plane, jet lagged, just like with all your baggage and then suddenly walking out upon probably… I mean, a couple hundred thousand people just having a crazy party in the street.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, it was really cool. But then and everybody is like super young, like people around your age group are just having a good time and… yeah, I was just like, wow, this was a good choice.

David McNeill: I guess, unfortunately you figured out that that’s not exactly every day in the city. So, as things moved on in the first couple of weeks or months, how did you feel like your experience changed and, you know, what became your focus? What were some of the challenges that you had to overcome in those early days?

Matthew Jordan: Well, I mean, I think a couple months after May Day winter started to set in. That was definitely a big challenge, especially coming from warmer climates like Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Australia, obviously. But, so when we originally moved here, we got an apartment for two months through a site called nest pick, which was very temporary.

We kind of underestimated how hard it would be to find an apartment here, which I think is a very common thing for people moving to Berlin. So, we had two weeks left on our contract before the landlord was going to kick us out. We’re like, yeah, I guess maybe we can start looking. We quickly found out that it takes a lot more than two weeks.

We happened to find a place in the last five days before we got kicked out where… I think this was the only place that someone actually replied to us and said, yeah, you can come and have a look at the apartment. We got there and we’re just like, we don’t care what it’s like, we’re just going to… we need to have this.

They agreed to refer us to the real estate company and I think we stopped by that real estate company to check on our application, I think five separate times. And it just… it just got to the point where the person that was running this property just said, you can have the apartment if you stop coming by the office.

David McNeill: So that sounds like it might actually be an effective strategy, would you say so?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, that’s kind of been my strategy for other things here as well.

David McNeill: It’s definitely a… from what I’ve discovered a society where if something is taking a while or it’s not going in the way that it’s sort of supposed to, it is completely and a100% on your own shoulders to figure out what’s going on, and to follow up, and be annoying; just because the other side will not do that for you.

Matthew Jordan: I mean, we were at a massive disadvantage as well because, obviously, we were both foreigners and we had just moved to Berlin, neither of us had jobs; we had no source of income. So, the real estate agent looked at us and she was like, absolutely no way.

David McNeill: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how did you end up changing their mind outside of just being persistent, in terms of purely the… I guess you just showing how much you have in savings, like, hey, we can pay for this. Don’t worry about it.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah! That was all we had to do. So, before we moved, obviously, we worked quite hard to save up because we knew that coming in we weren’t going to have jobs slash no plan. So… yeah, that was what kind of put us over the edge, luckily.

David McNeill: You know, how did you do ultimately find jobs? And, you know, how did you sort of decide what to do given that… I assume on the savings budget, you know, you wouldn’t have probably been able to survive for too too long.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, It was… definitely didn’t last as long as I’d hoped for. I think… Before we actually moved to Berlin, we did three months in India; so, via Australia, and that took a big chunk out of the savings. But I guess the plan originally moving here is massive refugee crisis, and this is something that Natalie my girlfriend and I quite are passionate about. We had the idea that we’d move here and maybe run some music workshop, seeing as we both love to play music and Natalie herself is a musician.

So, that’s kind of what we started to do but quickly realized that, you know, there’s not… you can’t really sustain yourself volunteering all the time. I quickly took up a job riding my bike for Foodora, the food delivery company, which is the only thing that I could seem to get considering my limited skill set and my limited German abilities. And I did that for pretty much most of the first year up until our visa ended up expiring.

David McNeill: How did you actually come here on a visa? You know, what was the situation there?

Matthew Jordan: We have been very lucky that Australia has a good rapport with Germany. We could get a one year working holiday visa pretty much just guaranteed. So, I mean… There was a few other things you had to make sure; you had to have a certain amount of savings in your bank. Yeah, I think… and have an apartment here and a bank account and… Yeah.

So, that was kind of the plan. I guess, really we didn’t look too far into the future to like, what would I be doing after a year? Or what are we going to… What am I going to do when the visa runs out? I was just kind of taking it like month by month up until that point.

David McNeill: So, it was sort of split between, well, maybe we’ll try to stay longer or maybe it’ll just be a year and then that will be it? Or did you just generally have the sense that it was… you were going to do whatever it took to be there for longer than a year?

Matthew Jordan: Well, there’s definitely the ups and downs of that. When I first moved here, obviously I saw May Day and I was like, yeah, I could stay here for years. Winter came and I was like, Okay, I want to go home. So… Yeah, those… So, you kind of change between these like trains of thoughts. Also, when you get an apartment here finally, you really don’t want to let that go. So, the longer I stayed here the more things seemed to fall in place. With these music workshops, we also ended up getting a contract to run these at a couple shelters and also at a youth center. So, that was running into the next year.

So, I guess that was another thing where I was like, okay, well, maybe I could stay here and see what happens with this and then when this contract finishes, maybe I would consider going home. And it just kind of seemed that every time I had kind of reached that benchmark of when I thought I might consider going back, something else was happening that was just drawing me back in.

David McNeill: That’s a good way to put it. How did you actually make it happen with getting the contract to do the music workshops?

Matthew Jordan: We just met some really amazing people when we started volunteering. So, I think it was like our second week. We were at a cafe and a lady at the cafe just started talking to us and we just mentioned we are from Australia and she mentioned she was from Turkey, I said I used to live in Turkey and we just kept talking about music and then we mentioned running these workshops, and she said that was hosting an event that night about volunteering and that we might be interested.

So, we went to this event and ended up meeting these founders that were running this platform called Vostel where you can just log on and see all the available volunteering opportunities throughout. And we just picked one, went there and volunteered and it just… it happened to be a refugee shelter and we were talking to some of the people that ran the shelter and said, hey, we’d like to do these workshops. And the shelter was outside of the ring. So, if you’re in Berlin, you pretty much don’t leave the ring.

So, they didn’t have many people that were coming there to volunteer and so they were really happy to have us there. And we just went down on like a consistent basis and the… around that time the government started introducing more funding for art projects. So, they received some funding and didn’t have anyone to give it to, and asked us if we’d like to take it and run more workshops.

David McNeill: Wow, fantastic. That’s really great to see how all those pieces kind of pulled together, which maybe at the beginning you wouldn’t necessarily see how it all works but, you know, looking back it all make sense, right?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah.

David McNeill: So, you were coming up on the end of your one year working holiday visa, what was, you know, going through your mind at that point?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, pretty much mass panic. So, because at that time I was still writing for Foodora and you can’t get this working holiday visa twice, so I kind of looked through my skill sets and kind of thought, well, what could I do? And how could I get a visa? So, in Australia I was also playing in some bands and we play music quite a lot and Natalie herself, as I mentioned, is also a musician, so we kind of thought maybe I could apply for a musician’s visa; Berlin obviously loves the arts and they seem to kind of push these visas.

So, that’s what I ended up applying for and luckily is the one that I got. Unfortunately, this visa is very, very restrictive. So, the specific category is you can make money playing music and that’s it. So, you can’t make money teaching music, you can’t make money selling your music; just live performances. Yeah, and as you probably are aware, there is not a lot of money in that, especially in Berlin.

David McNeill: Definitely! Yeah, so it sounds like you were actually able to get the visa that you were looking for but unfortunately you realized that it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind. What were you planning to do at that point? You know, did you actually take advantage of being able to… try playing some music for a while in Berlin or did you start immediately looking at other options realizing that fact.

Matthew Jordan: I was definitely looking at other options before I actually got the visa, because I knew that it wasn’t really something that I wanted to do that much; it just kind of seemed like the only path that was available. I think the first few months when I had that visa, it was very tough. Like, we were out of savings, obviously there wasn’t enough money coming in, we did some… I did some busking, yielded a couple Euros and I guess at that point I was considering moving back to Australia and how I would go about that.

It was also, I think about six months prior when I had started to learn programming and that kind of seemed like the only option for me at that point. I mean, I was very much enjoying learning that and I thought, yeah, in the future, in a couple years and maybe I could get a job doing it. But, I kind of felt like I was just getting pressured into, okay, you have to really buckle down and do as much work now as you can otherwise you’re going to have to go home.

David McNeill: So it became more of not just a situation of, hey, I’m enjoying this and maybe I could see myself doing this in a few years to, I’ve got to amp it up right now if I want to make a… want to try to do something here in Berlin. How did you go about learning and what about it was, you know, interesting to you in terms of, you know, the job level but also, you know, intellectually and something that you were excited to work on?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah. So, I guess I was never really that into computers and technology when I was younger, and I think it was just like one afternoon, I was this, kind of bored, just like scrolling through my Facebook feed and I saw an ad for Khan Academy. And they were, I think the ad was like, oh, learn how to make animations. And I was like, oh! okay, I’m not really doing anything. And these were JavaScript animations.

David McNeill: Right!

Matthew Jordan: So, it was just like a free like 30 minute course. And I kind of did a few things and I was like, oh, this was kind of interesting, and I also had some friends in Australia that were doing web development and software engineering. So, I just kind of gave it a go and… but quite relaxed, yeah, I just started doing this and kind of got more into it and the deeper I went, the more interesting I found it.

So, I was… I’ve always been quite into math. So, I kind of found using logic and numbers kind of intrigued me quite a lot. But I can’t stress enough how much I didn’t know when I started. So, I mean, I didn’t even know what an OS was. Yeah, really starting from the bottom level at that point.

David McNeill: Yeah, so how did you take your studies from there? Did you continue on with Khan Academy as that was your, you know, first intro to it or did you start, you know, using books or taking courses?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I pretty much used every resource. I mean, if that’s something that you want to learn, you can find it for free on the internet somewhere. I mean, it might not be the best level of education, but there’s information out there. So, we’re quite lucky in that regard. I didn’t stick with Khan Academy, I did this 30 minute course on JavaScript animations and then I actually, I don’t know how much you know about programming languages but I then kind of just did a bit of a Google what seems popular now, what should I learn first and Python seem to be the thing that everyone was talking about back then, which is more of a backend language.

And so I did some of this, I did this course that I think it was through Coursera; I absolutely understood nothing throughout the whole course. When I finished, I was still interested, kind of did a bit more research and seemed like frontend technologies was something that I might like. So, from there on I did some more courses through Coursera in HTML and CSS with some basic JavaScript. And this kind of just led on to more advanced courses and I eventually decided to go with Udacity, I then had another friend who had done something with them and really enjoyed it. And this was a… I think the course goes for about a year, which obviously I didn’t have that much time, I think I finished in four months.

David McNeill: So you were just totally buckling down at that point.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I was putting in some quiet long hours at that point where I was just doing the course for like 10–12 hours a day, every single day and then after the four months I ended up graduating the course and then from there it was just straight on to job searching.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, how did you manage to motivate yourself that much in terms of working on your own? I mean, I suppose it’s just based on your personality on some level, but I think a lot of people find it difficult to work outside of a class scenario, or was this actually an online course that you were interacting with other people or purely video? How did it work?

David McNeill: Yeah, it wasn’t online course. So, we had… they had pre-recorded videos, but there was also exams where you would write pieces of code or build certain UI features and they would give you feedback on these. There was also some really great forums and different community groups that… where you could interact with other students.

So, I guess this kind of makes it feel like you’re not by yourself, because there’s thousands of people that are going through this at the same time as you. It can be quite isolating though sitting at your desk 12 hours a day at your house all by yourself.

David McNeill: Right, I can imagine.

Matthew Jordan: I mean, it was something that I really loved. So I was enjoying doing that.

David McNeill: I think that’s the key, right? If you’re doing that, and especially in such an isolated scenario and for many hours a day, for months at a time and you’re still enjoying yourself, then it’s probably a good path.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, definitely. I think if I wasn’t enjoying it after the first few months, then it just wouldn’t have been worth it. I mean, I wasn’t purely doing it just because, “Oh, my God, I need a job, I’m broke!”

David McNeill: Right!

Matthew Jordan: It was more, wow, this is really fun and this could be something that I would like to do.

David McNeill: Right! So were you doing this while you were on the musician’s visa or did you get another visa in the interim?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, so that was an overlap between these. So, I had started these courses while I was still on the working holiday visa, while I was writing for Foodora and running these music workshops. Once I went on to this musician’s visa, I had about another month or two on this course left and, then from then on, that’s when I started looking for jobs. So, within those two months it was, yeah, quite tough.

David McNeill: What was it like to go from, you know, learning this on the side to taking it quite seriously and day in and day out focused on learning and studying, and then to go straight into, you know, interviews for being a front end developer? Was that intimidating? How did you prepare for the interviews?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, that was… It was actually quite a massive jump, I was really surprised. So, I mean, the course does a great job of training you and teaching you these sorts of things but when you’re interviewing for jobs, it’s drastically different. I mean, there’s not really that define line, I guess, between junior developer and like mid-level developer. When you’re also searching for jobs, it’s very hard to find stuff where a company wants to hire someone with no experience.

I hadn’t really worked on any big apps or big sites or anything like that, just personal projects that I had done either for the course or for myself. When I was prepping for the interview, I was putting in the same amount of hours as I was doing on the course. So, it was still 10–12 hour days of just reading through interview questions, just diving as deep down into the language as I could and…

David McNeill: And how were the interviews in terms of, you know, what was the process? How did you find the companies that you want to take interviews with? And how long did it take for you to actually secure that position?

Matthew Jordan: It took a really long time; easily four months of just solid job search, especially being on a musician’s visa, I needed a company to sponsor me, which appeared to be a little bit of a roadblock. Some startups here in Berlin didn’t really want to take that chance on sponsoring people outside of the EU, so that kind of presented some challenges in and of itself.

David McNeill: Did you find that out up front, or that came later in the process after you had already had the first conversations?

Matthew Jordan: It depended, I mean, some companies would specify that in their application, other ones I would do an interview with and then I would mention I’d need this and then I just wouldn’t hear anything back from them. I mean, I’m not saying that that was the reason but, I mean, you never know.

David McNeill: Which tools and resources did you use to actually find jobs in Berlin to apply for? Did you go directly to company websites or did you use other sites that aggregated job listings?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, so I pretty much used everything that I could find. So, berlinstartupjobs.com, I think was my kind of like first point of entry. They have a quite a solid listing of jobs there, especially some entry level jobs as the companies that are advertising there are smaller and maybe can’t afford to hire more advanced people at senior level positions. So, I had used that but didn’t have quite as much luck as I was kind of hoping.

I think there’s a lot of people using this platform, a lot of people applying to jobs and I just kind of wasn’t getting the responses that I was hoping for. I actually had most of my luck through LinkedIn, just kind of subscribing to different groups on LinkedIn and then I was getting targeted job searches for these specific fields. And eventually the job that I landed now, I had applied through LinkedIn.

David McNeill: Good. How important was it in most of the jobs that you looked at, to be able to speak good German? Was it really just, you know, English speaking being their main thing with maybe it’d be nice to have to speak some German, or was it not even on the table or were there positions that required native German that you found?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I think about 10% of the jobs mentioned German at all. So, and out of that 10%, I think less than half you had to speak fluent German; the others were just kind of, you need your basics. I mean, when you’re in a tech world, everything’s done in English, that’s just the way that it is. I’m not aware of any German programming languages. So…

David McNeill: True. True. But, I mean in terms of team communication, what’s spoken around the office? But it sounds like you didn’t have any issues whatsoever finding something that was, you know, purely an English speaking role.

Matthew Jordan: No. I think Berlin’s quite a unique city in the fact that they do have so many foreigners here and such a diverse range of people. So, all the companies that I was applying for had teams made up of people from all over the world and English just kind of seems to be that common language that people can connect with.

David McNeill: Definitely! So, how have things evolved for your girlfriend Natalie as well? Is she still doing music or, you know, how has she managed the visa process as well?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, so she’s still on that same visa. So, she’s running more of these workshops and working more with the shelter and this has been enough for her.

David McNeill: And in terms of your visa; so you were on the musician’s visa, you obviously got a full time job as a, I believe front end software developer, so… you know, what did you do with your visa from that standpoint after you… so you needed sponsorship?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah. So, when I actually got the job I was obviously extremely excited, and then I think it was about a week later when they called me and they said, actually, we don’t know if you’re going to be able to work here. And that was due to the visa. And that was because they needed to put me on an employment visa, but in Germany people outside of the EU can only get this employment visa if there’s actually a need for that in the job market.

David McNeill: Right!

Matthew Jordan: But, luckily the tech field there was a need for that. So that wasn’t the issue but the issue was, you needed to show a qualification to the foreigners office who would grant you the visa and I haven’t actually been to university, I mean, I went to university for one year but didn’t graduate. So, I didn’t have a degree. So, the only qualification I had from this was actually the online course that I had done. And the company was quite certain that the visa office wasn’t going to grant me the visa. So, that was a very long process; that was another, I think month and a half of when I had handed that application into the visa office of just kind of waiting. Seeing what they would say.

David McNeill: How did you deal with it? Did you follow up with more documentation? Were you just lucky or… How did it work out?

Matthew Jordan: I pretty much just swamped them with documentation.

David McNeill: Going back to your old strategy…

Matthew Jordan: Yeah. I gave them like a huge folder just full of papers like, I mean, screenshots of like websites that I have built. I even have like snippets of code in there, just as much as I could possibly think of, and I just gave it to them. And then maybe this was another instance where they were like, well, we’re not going to read all of this, so here you go. Yeah.

David McNeill: Yeah. Well, it seems to have worked. So, congrats to you man. That’s fantastic.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah.

David McNeill: Did it… So you basically didn’t hear for about six weeks or so and then all of a sudden you got the good news or were there… you know, did you have to go in for meetings during that time? How did it work?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah. So, it got to about… I mean, they said it would take a while, they… I think they’d said, we’ll give it about four weeks. It got to four and I was like maybe I’ll give it another one, I gave it the other week and I was like, Okay, this is like a bit ridiculous. Now, I’m just kind of waiting in limbo, like what am I going to do? I wrote some letters to them and an email asking what the status of that application was, and they pretty much wrote back right away just saying, “Oh, yeah! It’s already here, like waiting for you.” And they had obviously forgotten to tell me.

David McNeill: Is this the blue card or another type of visa?

Matthew Jordan: This is just the employment visa for the purpose of work.

David McNeill: Okay.

Matthew Jordan: I think they actually call it…

David McNeill: Okay. Cool.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah. Which I am quite sure is the same actually as the Blue Card.

David McNeill: Okay. Yeah, it’s… It was funny to me because also, I think the first time I applied for the Blue Card through my first company here in Germany, we waited a number of weeks, I guess it was only supposed to take four but I had so much going on I didn’t know the process here at all, was sort of leaving it up to my company to figure it out. That I was going home after two months and, you know, going back for Christmas for a little bit and realized as I looked into my passport that my visa was expiring in the time between when I was leaving that day and then when I was coming back.

So, I was suddenly on the phone, you know, or emailing and doing whatever I could to figure out what was going on but at least I could come back and quickly go to the administrative office where they complained that we had not reached out to them to let them know that it was late and that actually, you know, it was… The problem was that they forgot to turn in the documentation. And they forgot to process it. It was completely on their side. But they turned it around, so that became our problem. And it was kind of amazing that way.

Matthew Jordan: It’s never their fault.

David McNeill: No, it’s not. And I love that… I mean, there’s some beauty in being able to hear other people’s stories about Berlin and living in Germany and seeing some parallels to your owns that you realize you’re not an outlier. This is actually just normal life here.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah.

David McNeill: And this is, you know, what you have to come to terms with and deal with.

Matthew Jordan: I think I’m yet to hear a smooth sailing story of getting a visa here in Berlin.

David McNeill: Yeah, absolutely. So, how has your life changed here since you got the new job and since you’ve settled in, I guess? How long have you actually been in Germany now?

Matthew Jordan: So it’s been about two years now. Yeah.

David McNeill: Nice. So how, yeah, how have things changed for you?

Matthew Jordan: Having money is definitely nice. Yeah, but obviously, there’s a bit less free time. But I think just my general outlook on life here in Berlin has drastically changed. It’s not the funnest city when you’re worried about work, or you’re worried about theses, or you’re worried about apartments but now kind of having this all in order, things are finally feeling like they’re falling into place and I can just kind of enjoy the city more.

David McNeill: Yeah, definitely. I feel the same. It takes a while to get set up but once you do, it’s a lot more smooth sailing. And how have you seen your friend group change while you’ve been in Berlin, in terms of, you know, how have you made friends? How have you… Has it changed between, you know, locals versus foreigners? And now that you also have a proper workplace, how has that adjusted sort of your friend group and who you hang out with?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, so when I first moved here, I absolutely didn’t know anyone in the city. So, it can be definitely quite isolating trying to make friends, it’s quite different when I was younger and you’re going into a school environment and everybody just kind of make friends easily but just trying to make friends on the street is never the easiest thing to do.

So, like I met quite a few people through volunteering who I’m still friends with now, which has been really great. And also just attending regular events, either music events or volunteering events or just anything that I think I might even remotely be interested in; it’s a great way to definitely meet people here because a lot of the people in this city are in the same situation as you where they’re just coming to Berlin for the first time, never been here before, don’t know anybody and they’re just kind of trying to make it work.

So, there’s definitely a lot of networks like that to make friends. So, I’m quite lucky that actually the people that I’ve met here early on haven’t left yet, because I know that’s also quite a common thing, is that people might stay for a year and then move on. But I think in terms of like the friend groups here, it’s definitely a large mix; there’s a lot of foreigners here but also I’ve made quite a few local friends here and even have the rare Berliner, which is hard to find.

David McNeill: Yeah. Definitely! So, you mentioned being very lucky that your friends haven’t left in some sort of large exodus after a short time here. Do you feel like, looking at your friend group now and where you’re currently situated that you will be that friend that leaves early or that you’ll be actually here in Berlin for a while to… I mean, as you can see it right now?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I think maybe early on I thought I would have been that one to break first but now, you know, having the job here and the apartment here and the group of friends, it definitely feels like home. So, I envision that I’ll be here for quite a while.

David McNeill: Awesome! Fantastic to hear. Do you have any other advice for people that are interested in living and working in Berlin, and perhaps going the coding route as well?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, I think that’s… In terms of the coding route there’s definitely a lot of opportunities out here. I mean, it’s one of the tech hubs of Europe, like… for the world in general, and such a booming industry. I don’t think finding a tech job here is that difficult; maybe it’s slightly more difficult not having the experience as I did but if that’s not the case, then I think it’s just about finding the right fit for yourself.

I think one thing maybe that I would have changed when I first moved here was learning German. So, that was definitely a bad move on my part and I know a lot of people come here not speaking German and I really didn’t want to be that person but that ended up happening. I mean, now I know enough German to get by, basic German. I mean, even though it is a city that’s very accommodating to English speakers, and you’ll go to bars where people at the counter don’t even speak German…

David McNeill: Right!

Matthew Jordan: It’s still something that you need in your day to day life, just the basics.

David McNeill: How have you been able to pick up the basics?

Matthew Jordan: I actually did a two month intensive course when I first arrived here. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something that I continued to do but I would highly recommend doing that. There’s quite a few good language schools around here, especially through Volkshochschule, which offer a quite cheap courses, five days a week for I think four hours. And it’s definitely a great way to learn because you’re also interacting with other students that are at the same level as you and also another great way to make friends here.

David McNeill: Fantastic! How can our listeners find out more about you and what you’re doing?

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, if anybody wants to get in touch with me or ask me questions about living in Berlin or what I’ve been up to, they can just reach me by email, its mjordandeveloper@gmail.com.

David McNeill: Fantastic! Well, thanks so much Matt. It’s been fantastic hearing your story, looking forward to seeing how things develop in your job and life here in Berlin and hope to have you back on the future.

Matthew Jordan: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Outro

Thanks to Matt for sharing his story with us. You can find the full transcript for this episode at expatempire.com.

If you are interested in sharing your story on Expat Empire, please consider submitting a user post about your expat experiences on expatempire.com or email us at podcast@expatempire.com and let us know more about your international background.

Music on this episode was produced by Eli Hermit, please check him out on Bandcamp and Spotify.

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Originally published at expatempire.com on February 18, 2019.