

I love not having to drive anymore. Public transit is sometimes a little longer than driving but it’s so low stress and if you do have to drive, the massive public transit infrastructure helps alleviate traffic on the roads and thus speeds things up. Win/win. I realize it’s not for everyone but for me it’s a huge reduction in stress, anxiety, and the extra walking was a contributing factor to losing 25 lbs in my first year here.
I hate that government stuff is painfully slow here. I lived in one of the big cities before I got a job. I booked an appointment with the immigration office in the middle of January and the earliest they could see me was mid July. 2 Months after my visa expired. It took 2 months to get an appointment for my german driver’s license. We’re in a smaller city now and it seems a lot faster but I haven’t been here long enough to get a good idea of how much faster it is for everything.
Something that I really miss is mexican food. If you are from an area of the US with good mexican food, you’ll be missing out on that here. There are some decent taco places around but otherwise I think most “mexican restaurants” here have just seen pictures of mexican food and guessed how to make it. But Döner is awesome and everywhere, so I suppose I traded Burritos for Döner.

There was an art museum that I went to, I think in Cologne that had prints of basically all the paintings. If you really liked one, you could get a high quality print, photo, postcard, etc.