MicahPaul

So you’ve just arrived in Berlin. You’re living on Döner Kebab, still getting smug satisfaction simply by reading signs and advertisements in German to yourself, and generally having a good time walking the streets of one of the greatest cities of Europe. Great!
But of course, your temporary living arrangements are just that: temporary. Like a patriotically-striped popsicle clutched in your hands on a hot day of halcyon summers past, your time is markedly fleeting, all the while putting a sticky mess in your hands.
Yes, you are endowed with the distinct pleasure of finding a room in a Wohngemeinschaft in Berlin.

There is a well-engineered, streamlined, and many times practiced protocol for your journey. Allow me to introduce you to it.
First, you will browse several different websites catering to students looking for rooms in Berlin. These sites will allows you to search specifically for places in the neighborhoods you are interested in, and present you with endless lists of potential places of shelter.
You find one that looks nice. Decent price, good neighborhood. If you are lucky, you may be able to email them, but more likely there will be listed a phone number by which you may inquire further. Prepare the following: German phone; pad of paper; handkerchief; and a deep sense of humility. Take three deep breaths and dial.
No, you didn’t accidentally dial confusion - that came of its own accord, as if by uninvited conference call. Unfortunately, confusion has better reception than you, so you will just have to talk louder. Somehow, you will get the important points across and will be given a time for a Besichtingungstermin - a visitation meeting. Wipe the cold sweat off of your forehead with the handkerchief.

A better term than visitation meeting might be interrogation, though there will be no man in a fedora smoking in the corner - he won’t be wearing a fedora. After being shown the apartment, you will be sat down in the kitchen with the other inhabitants of the apartment. The ringleader, armed with pad of paper and retractable pen, which they will incessantly click, will ask you many questions. They will begin simply - your name, where you’re from, why you’re in Berlin and so forth. Then they will segue without warning to more challenging ones, both in language and in content. (Have you heard of this obscure German band? No? Schade.) Having so destroyed your will and confidence, they will ask you if you have any questions for them. In all likelihood, owing to your crippled dignity, you will not. However, having been asked, you will feel obligated to come up with something, thereby forcing you to come up on the spot with the most asinine imaginable question. (Well, yes, I suppose we do like spaghetti.) Don’t worry, you’re right on track. Having broken out again in a cold sweat (you forgot your handkerchief, didn’t you?), you will write your name, phone number and address on a list of 20 others who have come before you, and you will be shown to the door.

And now the final phase. I hope you kept your deep sense of humility handy. After waiting several days, you will receive an email. Your heart will leap. Could this be it? The answer, my friend, is no. Likely, it will say something like:

hi Leute,
unser kleines Zimmer hat ab jetzt einen neuen Bewohner und leider ist es keine/keiner von euch.
grüße,
so und so.

Translation:

hi people,
our little room now has a new inhabitant and unfortunately it is none of you.
best,
so and so.

Head up, my friend. You’ve got three more Besichtigungstermine today.

-Micah

Footnotes:
1. I might be exaggerating a bit. And I’m honestly having a great time. A more conventional update will come later - perhaps when I’ve found a place.
2. If something seems to good to be true, it probably is. For example, if you get a reply to your wanted ad (suspicious in itself) offering you a furnished room in Kreuzberg with several others, when you go to visit you will probably discover that the three people living there are between 40 and 70 years old, will fit the stereotype of “eurotrash” unbelievably well, and will then sit you down for tea and not let you leave for over an hour, discussing how intelligent they are, while one of their dogs insistently tries you eat your pants and bite your hand off.