It’s the 4th day in Germany, I’ve been hit by jet lag and often feel sleepy. Today I finally have the energy and mood to sort out this blog post, and how we spent the first few days when we moved to Germany.
First Step Before Moving – Sell Everything
By the way, I used Mercari, a second-hand trading platform, to successfully sell all the furnitures and most of the items, a total of 108 pieces! Fortunately, several large pieces of furniture can be arranged to be picked up on the last day, and the timing was just right!
In Japan, there is a fee for disposing of bulky garbage. What is bulky? If one side exceeds 30cm, it is considered as oversized garbage (called 粗大ゴミ in Japanese). Bulky garbage is charged according to size. For example, a chair costs 300 yen, and a double sofa costs 1,800 yen. Household appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, etc. cannot be just thrown away. You have to pay, or you sell it. So this time, as a seller, the results were very good, and Curry Boy was very satisfied with his wife’s performance, wow ha ha!
Allow 3 Days Before Completely Retreating
We stayed in the hotel for 3 days before our flight. Why? Because you have to reserve time to get rid of all the sundries in the house, and then you can give the rental agency inspection and hand over the keys, and arrange for the utility company to come up to cut off the energy and pay the final bill. Coincidentally, the Japanese government lifted the ban on Tokyo citizens participating in the Go To Campaign, and Tokyo residents could stay in hotels at a discounted price of 35% OFF, and they could also get shopping coupons, which was a good deal.
Japanese Food I’ll miss
Finally, we emptied our home, so we had the leisure and mood to think about what to eat and where to go before leaving Japan. However, both Curry Boy and I felt that we had been to all the places we want to go, and there was no “must go”, but we still had to eat sushi and tonkatsu. 🙂
Lonely Airports
On the day of the flight, we both had a lot of luggages (2 backpacks + 3 large suitcases) and it was raining heavily, so for the sake of safety, we would rather arrive at Narita Airport earlier and wait at the airport than delay the trip. Safely, we arrived at the airport 5 hours early lol. We thought we could go shopping at the airport, but we were wrong! In the quiet Narita No. 2 Passenger Terminal, there was only one Chinese restaurant and a sandwich fast food restaurant opened, it’s like an abandoned airport! Then we transited in Hong Kong, the situation was the same. In the food court, only one stall was opened. I could only ordered the familiar Thai pineapple fried rice, a pork neck soup noodles and sunshine lemon tea to relieve the pain of lovesickness.
5 mins Immigration in Germany
After 12 hours and 10 minutes of long-distance flight, we finally landed!
Many people think that they have to be quarantined for 14 days after arriving in Germany. The answer is no need, because Europe regarded Japan as a non-high-risk country. Basically, it was the same as usual when entering the country. There was no temperature check, no need to fill in any relevant form or whether you have any symptoms. We thought we would be interrogated during the immigration, so and we had the company recommendation letter, an employment contract, a signed marriage certificate, a certificate of health insurance, and a rental contract… but it turned out that they were all useless. The staff only looked at the visa, and then asked how long would we stay, “I’m here to work, maybe we would stay in Germany forever”, after that you could enter the country, that’s it!
The first step in Germany can be said to be unimpeded. The beginning of this new chapter, not bad!
