🫣 Sometimes I’ll overshare and/or rant a bit.
On Saturday evening, as one of the most joyous and loving celebrations this city offers was drawing to a close, a vehicle drove into the crowd near the Brandenburg Gate. CSD is a day people come to in their fullest, freest selves, to dance, to love openly, to belong. That it was turned into a place of grief is a heartbreak that words struggle to hold.
There is no place for hate against anyone, ever. Not for who they love, not for who they are. We cannot let religion, politics, or fear be turned into weapons that tear us apart, because the answer to a day like this is not to retreat or to hide. It is to stand closer together, to care for one another, and to keep building the kind of world where this does not happen.
Ampli shared a similar message in their note this week, along with support resources worth passing on: Schwulenberatung Berlin for counselling and mental health support, Sonntags-Club for community, and MANEO for anti-violence and victim support.
And because defiance is its own kind of love, as one Berliner put it: “The best thing about Berlin is that it is gay as f*ck and it always will be, no matter how many whackos are gonna try to scare us into hiding our identity.” That spirit is exactly what refuses to be frightened into silence.
This openness is something Toronto, where I’m from, holds dear too. Twenty-one years ago this week, Canada became one of the first countries in the world to recognise same-sex marriage. Growing up in a city that made room for everyone teaches you that the freedom to love openly is worth defending, wherever you end up.
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📊 Results of our weekly polls.
⁉️ Our last poll asked: Does Germany make you feel wanted here?
Germany is facing a growing contradiction. While businesses continue to struggle with skills shortages, net migration has fallen sharply and more than half of the country's top earners have considered moving abroad in the past year.
Given this information, we asked whether people feel wanted here. 154 people voted, and the results paint a sobering picture. Nearly one in three (32%) said they don't feel wanted at all, and another 29% feel wanted only for the taxes they pay. A further 21% feel wanted but unsupported, while just 19% said they mostly feel welcome.
Given the country's ongoing need for skilled workers, these results suggest there's still a significant gap between attracting international talent and making people feel like they belong.
If you’re actually thinking of moving elsewhere, consider this list of where you should move for higher pay.
🫂 Take part in this week’s poll. From 2027, Germany is loosening its Sunday rules so bakeries and libraries can open longer, and retailers are pushing to have the whole sector follow.
It's a small change that touches something bigger, the “German Sunday” has long been a protected time off, a day for family, a walk in the woods, or simply doing nothing, and not everyone agrees it should give way to convenience.
Whether you treasure the quiet or simply wish you could just grab groceries after a long week, there's no wrong answer. And if you're stuck this Sunday, don't miss my guide to Sunday shopping in Berlin.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏽 Connect with others: Join our chat on Substack.
🇩🇪 5 German companies hiring right now.
Building on last week’s resonance, here are 5 more German companies on a mission beyond profit.
ARMEDANGELS (Fair, sustainable fashion)
Cologne | 20 jobs
Senior controller, frontend developer, retail working student.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | HybridChoco (Reducing food waste across the supply chain)
Berlin | 5 jobs
Senior software engineer, enterprise account executive, workplace & culture intern.
🇬🇧 | HybridClue (Reproductive & menstrual health)
Berlin | 4 jobs
Junior CRM manager, director of data & AI, VP of product.
🇬🇧 | Hybridtraceless materials (Plastic-free, home-compostable biomaterials)
Hamburg | 9 jobs
Head of commercial strategy, project director, product development working student.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Onsite/hybrid mixVytal (Reusable, deposit-free packaging)
Cologne & Berlin | 2 jobs
Head of finance, senior strategic sourcing manager.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | Hybrid/remote mix
👋🏼 That’s not all: See our weekly-updated database of 400+ Berlin companies hiring right now.
🤑 German startups that recently raised new funding.
119 reasons to update your CV. Last week, 13 funded startups across 4 German cities raised about €238 M, and 11 of them are hiring:
Aampere (Used EV auction marketplace) - €4.2 M
Munich | 11 jobs
Head of engineering, sales executive, talent acquisition intern.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid/remote mix.Augustus (Cross-border banking API) - $180 M
Berlin & New York | 6 jobs
Senior software engineer, growth associate, office & events working student.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteBeatSquares (Newsroom content automation tool) - $2 M
Berlin | 6 jobs
Senior backend engineer, account executive, team assistant.
🇩🇪 & 🇬🇧 | HybriddeltaVision (In-orbit satellite refuelling systems) - €10.2 M
Munich | 24 jobs
Spacecraft avionics and software lead, CAD/CAM programmer, robotic mechanisms intern.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteDeutsche Sanierungsberatung (Energy renovation advisory) - €10 M
Berlin | 8 jobs
Head of marketing, energy consultant, founder's associate intern.
🇩🇪 | Onsitekausable (Causal AI research lab) - €12 M
Heidelberg | 1 job
Team assistant.
🇬🇧 mainly, 🇩🇪 a bonus | Work model unknownOmio (Multi-provider travel booking app) - €8.7 M
Berlin | 1 job
Head of expansion marketing.
🇬🇧 | HybridPassionfroot (AI creator marketing platform) - $15 M
Berlin | 3 jobs
Senior/staff product engineer, finance lead, creator partnership manager.
🇬🇧 | HybridSereact (AI for warehouse robots) - €6 M
Stuttgart | 37 jobs
Mechanical engineer, director of people & culture, product manager.
🇬🇧 | Hybrid/remote mixSpread AI (AI for engineering teams) - Undisclosed
Berlin | 6 jobs
Senior product marketing manager, sales development representative, senior delivery manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybridtelli (AI phone agent tool) - €13.1 M
Berlin | 16 jobs
Design lead, deployment strategist, AI venture development intern.
🇬🇧 | Onsite
What last week's funding tells us:
A US-sized round hides a quiet truth about who Berlin builds for. Augustus raised $180 M, three-quarters of the week’s money, as a Berlin-New York company hiring in both. Passionfroot, telli, and Spread AI are also Berlin-built but chasing US or UK markets. Increasingly the engineering team sits here while the customers and money sit abroad, so the role is in Berlin but the mindset is transatlantic.
“Head of” and “Lead” are everywhere, which tells you the stage. Nearly every company is hiring a department head: engineering, marketing, design, finance, people. These are seed and Series A firms building their first management layer from scratch. If you’re a strong individual contributor wanting a first leadership title, this is the rare window to leap a rung, with no incumbent above you.
The robot company out-hiring everyone isn’t in Berlin. Sereact in Stuttgart has 37 roles, triple any Berlin company and a third of the week’s jobs. Stuttgart’s automotive roots give it a deeper robotics talent pool. If you’re an engineer fixated on Berlin, the biggest hiring push is 600 km south, where rent is lower and competition thinner.
💸 Job hunting? See our weekly-updated list of 333 funded German startups, and who's hiring now.
🙌 Weekly career tips to keep you sane in Germany.
One thing that catches newcomers off guard: in Germany, salary often comes up in the very first interview, sometimes right on the application. Don’t dodge it. Do your research and give a range you’re comfortable with, plainly.
The bigger shift is tone. German interviewers trust clear, factual answers backed by real examples far more than enthusiasm or a polished story. Keep it to a couple of minutes, and if you don’t know something, say so, “I don’t know yet, but I learn fast” beats bluffing every time. It reads as honest and self-aware, which is exactly what they’re looking for.
I cover all of this in real depth in my full guide to German job interviews, start to finish, every stage of the process, the questions to ask, the red flags to spot, how to handle salary and career gaps. It’s the guide I wish I’d had when I started interviewing here, drawn from years on both sides of the table as a job seeker and a hiring manager.
Bonus article: The three phrases highly successful people use at work, and why "I don't know" is a strength, not a weakness. It’s not just me saying this. 😉
If you want help improving your CV or job applications for the German market, I’ve got you. 👉🏼 Learn more or book a session here.
🥨 Things to make life in Deutschland (a little bit) better.
Hot tip: Meet Frank, your new bodyguard. Frank geht ran is a free stand-in phone number you can give out whenever a shop, form, or persistent stranger demands your digits. Anyone who dials it reaches Frank, who politely tells them to get lost.
Recommended newsletters: 20% Berlin & Smart Living in Germany.
Weekly deals: Get groceries delivered to your home in minutes with Flink. Download the app & use promo code FLINK-3TDV5T to get €5 off your first order.
🔊 Guides to help you settle in Germany.
Three guides for wherever you are in your Germany journey:
Newly updated with more schools this week, German-language schools in Berlin helps you cut through the options and pick the right fit for your level, budget, and schedule instead of guessing.
When you need a night off from the admin grind, how to watch English movies in Berlin decodes the OV/OmU/OmeU labels so you never get stuck watching Tom Cruise dubbed into German again.
And the one I want you to actually click this week, the guide I’m proudest of, my real cost of living in Berlin. These are my real 2026 numbers, not estimates, rent, insurance, groceries, and all the smaller costs that quickly add up. I keep it honest because deciding whether to build a life in Berlin is a big decision.
ℹ️ More where that came from:
60+ guides on living and working in Germany.
We also have a podcast. See our past episodes.
🎟️ A weekly event round-up.
This week keeps the slow-summer, picnic-blanket energy going:
Jul 30: City Daze Walking Club Lates is an after-work nature stroll ending in a social, with conversation cards and a short breathwork pause along the way. Walk 19:00–20:30, then social till late. Pay-what-you-can.
Aug 2: Cake & Picnic Summer 2026 at a Berlin park is a bring-a-cake picnic where everyone shares homemade bakes, dietary options welcome. Bring a cake, your picnic gear and your own drinks. Limited to 40 spots. €5.50.
Aug 20: Silent Book Club, Session 44 at Viktoriapark is an evening of quiet reading on the grass, then chatting about what everyone’s reading. Meet 18:30 at the waterfall pool, bring a book, drinks and snacks. Free — waitlist only, currently full.
📅 Subscribe to our calendar to receive event alerts from The Berlin Life as they happen.
🗞️ The inside scoop on what’s happening in Germany.
For the first time since 2002, the euro is getting a full redesign, and the ECB is letting the public vote on 10 shortlisted note designs until 21 September, so you get a say in what's in your wallet.
With a second 40°C heatwave heading for Berlin in early August, around 80 German towns are already limiting pool-filling, garden-watering and car-washing.
Berlin summer is heating up, as the Volksbühne is opening a free 25-metre outdoor pool on its square from 7 August, just as some clubs bring in "no shirt, no service" rules that have Berliners gripped in an intense debate.
DB will ban alcohol at all 5,400 German stations by mid October and starting September 1, it will come into effect at Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof and Gesundbrunnen.
Berlin recorded more deaths than births for the fourth year running in 2025, even as Germany hit a record 593 cars per 1,000 people and Berlin stayed the least car-heavy at 330.
From death strip to biodiversity haven, the former border where people once died fleeing is now a protected 1,400km Green Belt. And Berlin now has a supermarket with Germany's largest rooftop farm growing salads.
Chancellor Merz is reshuffling his government after CDU group leader Jens Spahn resigned over a surrogacy controversy.
A wealth tax is back on the table, with the SPD set to push for it when parliament returns in the fall.
With Berlin's 20 September election approaching and Die Linke leading at 22% just ahead of the CDU's 20%, here's who among us can actually vote, including a record 250,000 EU citizens and, for the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds.
Some rare good news for Berlin renters, rents actually dipped 0.8% last quarter while Cologne jumped 6%, and the city's first "rent scan" found nearly half of listings asking illegally high rent, something it now plans to check monthly.
Good signs for anyone job-hunting in tech or defence, as startups pulled in €5.3 billion in H1 with Berlin leading, the government set up a fund to back defence startups directly, and big firms pledged over €800 billion to revive the economy.
Because ofc, Germany's pension gap is stark, with over 60% of women retirees falling below the poverty line on their state pension last year, more than double the rate for men.
If you're freelancing in Germany and feel like you never clock off, the data backs you up, with freelancers making up the bulk of those working 49-plus-hour weeks and employees averaging a cool 40.
Following last week's poll on whether Germany makes you feel wanted, a new survey ranks it the 2nd-worst country for internationals to move to, yet 60% still say they're happy living here, which is the contradiction so many of us know well.
Enjoy now: VisitBerlin’s pick of the best rooftop bars, from Klunkerkranich to the Hotel de Rome. Someday maybe: Kinzo’s bold 100-metre swimming “canal” for Tilla-Durieux-Park, still just a proposal with no backing yet.
Berlin’s century-old Zehlendorf “Parrot-Estate” just made the UNESCO World Heritage list. Further afield, WorldAtlas rounds up 8 German towns where time stands still, from Rothenburg to Beilstein.
Haven't we all been here? One newcomer hit every Berlin cliché in one go, the all-black Berghain "uniform," the queue, the Soho House stop. It's a rite of passage, even if the black outfit was never the secret.
📩 What landed with readers last week.
Last edition: Dive into our last newsletter, where we covered how more than half of Germany’s top earners are thinking of leaving the country, the value of professional titles on CVs, and a pro tip about paying the so-called “TV Tax”.
Most read: Our most clicked links were why Berlin’s airport is hopeless, why tenants need better protection from heat, and my new About page.
🙊 Those times I just mess up.
Last week I cited a migration statistic with the confidence of someone who had definitely read the Destatis table correctly. Turns out Reader Simon actually did. The correct net migration figure is 97,000, not 288,000.
Build your professional network in Germany the easy way. Join LinkUsUp, free and built for internationals like you.
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