Life after 5 months in Germany:

It is now quite a while since I moved to Germany back in August 2020. Although it is everything closed, I never imagined that I would like the work at my current employer. In Austria, I had many bad experiences working as an employee. When I lived in Austria, I did not know how restricted my life was in general. Wake up at 6:30, commute to work by train in order to arrive at 7:30, work until 17:00 and then commute home to arrive at 18:00. Then relatives at home are annoying and steal a fraction of the last 4 hours of free time you have as you go to bed at 22:00 in order to get enough sleep. This was the cycle whenever I was employed somewhere in Austria. This completely ruins your motivation. Now let’s examine the improvement of my current situation compared to the situation before:

Austria vs Germany:

When ever you make life choices, it is important to consider advantages and disadvantages which highly depend on your situation and demands. Here is a list to compare all important aspects:

Live:	Old Life in Austria	New Life in Germany
Living:	Living: At home with mom. No own flat as rent is too expensive while salaries are terrible.	Own flat as rent is much cheaper than in Austria even in locations where rents are high.
Friends:	Have friends in Austria.	I have online friends living in Germany. They live very close to me now, and I could visit them. Phone contact with old friends remains.
Relatives:	Relatives live in Austria. Mom forcing me to help with garden work or other annoying stuff.	No Relatives and I are thankful for this. No stupid birthday meetings or other nonsense.
Work:	Long Commute Time of 1 hour. Commute by train filled with toxic people. €100 each month for train tickets. Low Salary: €1700 (€1600) Real Work Hour: 40h + 10(Commute) + 5(Pause Times) = 55h	Commute time of 15 min by bicycle through the forest. Much higher salary. Home Office. Higher income (€3000+) Amazing work environment.
Hobbies	Gym, Iaido	Gym only but huge forest

 

So in summary, the only real thing missing is the Iaido training I practiced in Austria. Everything else is a huge improvement as even the distance to relatives is more a blessing as they were pretty annoying. What I really learned to love is home office as after the first month, I was allowed to do home office for the first time in my life. Back in Austria, home office was very restricted. Now it is the normal thing due to Covid-19 and communication over Teams works much better than in meeting rooms with bad air conditioning.

Back then, I had the choice to stay at home or to leave and relocating is mostly the better choice if you are already pretty unhappy.