Like so many travel-bugged Australians before me, I moved to Berlin on a crazy whim. After becoming smitten with the city during what was fast becoming the obligatory Berlin party holiday, I decided to split from my incestuous flock of beloved Melbournians and jettison our plans of living together in London.

When I arrived in Berlin in the summer of 2006, the city was still glowing with post-World Cup euphoria. Sunshine bounced off the pastel facades along Schönhauser Allee and impromptu bars served half-litre beers on overgrown, abandoned lots.

‘Lifeswap’ is an online animated series that explores the cultural idiosyncrasies and differences between Germany and New Zealand. And in the upcoming episode, Australia is added to the mix. Our 'Bicultural Urbanite' blogger Brianna has talked to one of the two creators of the series in Berlin.

If there’s a flip side of Berlin’s captivating essence, it’s the difficulty of finding the right home base in a city positively crawling with freshly captivated arrivals. With the sheer volume of applicants the renter of each room receives in Berlin, the ‘casual’ get-to-know-you chats that take place at the viewings often feel like you’re a contestant on some cringeworthy reality TV show.

Berlin’s low cost of living is one of its major drawcards. Creative young people flock here from all over the world to enjoy reasonable rent and 50 cent kiosk beers. But the property boom has made life tougher for tenants, so our blogger Brianna decided to get out of the rental game and into massive debt – by buying a flat.

Sometimes it is not as simple as it seems to pick up a parcel from a post office. Especially if you aren't a German citizen. A trek through the bureaucratic intransigence of ‘Servicewüste Deutschland’.

After facing a few years of adversity, a family of six embark on a rock’n’roll international move, braving the Berlin bureaucracy, language barrier and only eight weeks of summer a year, to live a whole new life filled with wonder and curiosity. 
 

Treasured for so many of its intangible qualities, Berlin often gets something of a bad rap when it comes to the reality of its visual character. And at first touristic glance, perhaps the reputation isn’t entirely without reason. ‘My’ Berlin is a heady, affecting mixture of all these visual elements — an unlikely muse for magic and mischief alike.
 

In Australia, December marks the beginning of the ‘silly season’: a busy time of Christmas shopping, boozy socialising, TV re-runs and frivolous news stories. But while Aussies are slopping on sunscreen, Germans are slipping into thermal underwear and lighting Advent candles as they countdown to Christmas.

Being an Australian living in Germany who doesn’t really identify with anything quintessentially Aussie can lead to some rather trying conversations with strangers, writes our not-so Aussie Aussie Luke in his latest Bicultural Urbanite post in which he examines his identity in conjunction with Berlin’s winter weather.

It’s 6pm on a Thursday and I’m hopping mad. I’ve just been ‘controlled’. I’ve been fined for taking the U-Bahn without a ticket (allegedly). I’m indignant because I had a ticket but couldn’t access it. My lengthy protest, delivered in level A2-B1 Deutsch, falls on unsympathetic ears.

One of the major drawbacks of being an Australian expat in Berlin is the egregious distance between yourself and your loved ones. This likely explains the twinge of envy I feel whenever my European friends tell me they’re casually popping home for quick a visit. And as December rolls around each year, and the popping home to Italy or England or France or Sweden starts unfolding as casually as ever, the twinge becomes a protracted spasm.