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Moving to Germany: Berlin, Munich or Frankfurt?

If you want to travel to Germany and are thinking of moving there permanently, here’s a short guide about what to expect from the three major cities of Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. Hotels in Germany are often very affordable, so you can take a few days’ or weeks’ break to explore your desired destination and see if you’d be able to live there for longer.

Berlin

Described by its own mayor as “poor, but sexy,” the flipside of the capital’s very real unemployment issues and shrinking traditional industry is cheap rents and a booming creative economy. With more than 250 clubs, a thriving music scene and art galleries springing up in any and every abandoned space in the center of town, Berlin is perfect for exploring your own creative interests and is one of the most affordable places to live in Germany.

If you’re still deciding whether you want to move, get a cheap hotel in Berlin and spend a few days getting a feel for the city. One of Berlin’s most famous reclaimed spaces, Tacheles, in Berlin-Mitte is a former 1930’s department store-turned-arts center and night club. Check out its program of exhibitions, theatre productions and club nights. Eat out Berlin-style at White Trash Fast Food, also in the Mitte neighborhood. “WTFF” serves Tex-Mex upstairs and hosts DJs in its basement Diamond Lounge. Or shop at Berlinermat in Friedrichshain for everything from fashion to furniture. If you choose a hotel Berlin in the city’s central Mitte area, you should be able to explore the city very easily.

Given Berlin’s evolution from a small Prussian enclave to the center of a world power, its meteoric rise and precipitous fall, and now its renaissance as a center of international fashion, culture, manufacturing, national capital, and the largest metropolis of Europe’s leading economy, Berlin offers visitors and locals central Europe’s fastest paced lifestyle. Amazingly, its spacious system of self-contained connecting parks and lakes incorporating a vast waterway formed by the Havel and Spree Rivers lend a rural, bucolic aspect to the densely populated city providing recreation for its 3.4 million residents.

With two major airports and a super-sized main rail station and an elaborate subway and rail system, Berlin is the travel hub of north-central Europe and surely the most sophisticated, contemporary venue in Germany.

Munich

Germany’s IT center – more like a Bavarian San José to Germany’s “Silicon Valley” which encircles Munich -- offers comfortable living standards in a location filled with grand older residential buildings and hip new constructions. Frequently ranked as the top destination for domestic migration and foreign expatriates because of its high-degree of “livability”, Munich still has an intact jobs market. Aside from pure science and R&D, Germany’s second or “secret” capital is home to BMW and other automotive manufacturers and defense industry companies.

Stay a few days at a hotel in Munich to road test day-to-day life in this smart and sophisticated city. München’s Old Town stretches between Karlsplatz, known as the Stacchus, and Marienplatz, with its Neo-Gothic Rathaus (City Hall) and its famed Glockenspiel or Carillon Belltower. Looming above it all is Munich’s oldest church, St. Peter’s, the Alter Peter, adjacent the Viktualien oper air food market at its heart. Climb St Peter’s tower for lovely panoramic views of the city. The main shopping street, Kaufinger Strasse, directly beneath, is clogged with shoppers, in countless indoor malls, both upscale and bargain basement.

Naturally, its universal earmark is the so-called “fifth” season of the year: the last two weeks of September when Munich hosts the world’s most famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest which celebrated its 200th birthday in 2010.. During the course of that year’s fest over 6.5 million visitors and locals alike crowd its Theresien Meadow, putting away again that many liters of beer, hundreds of thousands of roast chickens, ham hocks, sausages, and giant pretzels, in 10 mammoth tents accommodating 3,000 to 10,000 guests each, both indoors and outside.

Munich is home to six world-famous breweries and half a dozen smaller ones. Escape to one of Munich’s many fine beer halls: The Loewenbraeukeller am Stiglmairplatz; the Spatenbraeu opposite the National Theater Opera house; the Nockherberg for Paulaner beers in Haidhausen, the Hofbraeuhaus or HB-Keller, and the Augustinerkeller across from St Michael’s, on the main drag.

With three big league soccer clubs, FC Bayer, the 1860 Lions, and the Unterhaching team, Munich is a “fussballer’s” paradise with two world-class stadiums right in town.

Frankfurt

With the second-largest airport in Europe, as well as intersecting autobahns and railway lines, Frankfurt is Germany’s transport hub. It is also Germany’s financial and banking center. It’s the main gateway to Europe for non-European visitors, with some 70,000,000 passengers debarking from or transferring to flights at Frankfurt Airport connecting to their final destination.

If you want to spend a few days in the city, figuring out whether it’s the destination for you, choose a place to stay from the numerous available cheap hotels in Frankfurt and get exploring. The skyscrapers in vibrant, fast-tempo Frankfurt’s business sector next to the river Main have earned it the nickname “Mainhattan”. Enjoy panoramic views of the scene from the terrace at the top of Main Tower. If you want to escape the high-rises, head to the Stadtwald city forest in southern Frankfurt – at 48 acres, it’s the largest city forest in Germany, and is dotted with playgrounds and ponds.

A contrasting skyline of skyscrapers and historic buildings certainly makes the city feel like a dynamic place to be, while a steady program of international trade fairs like the World Book Fair and the Automotive Show are an indication of the city’s strong economy. As well as healthy commercial development, Frankfurt has an artistic side. It’s the birthplace of Germany’s greatest poet, playwright and author, the all-around genius Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Its many museums line the River Main for a full mile. A beautiful Gothic cathedral has been recently renovated. Many handsome squares and spacious parks make this heart of the Rhein-Main metropolis with its smaller residential neighborhoods highly livable. Yet this ancient crossroads and trading center of Germany entirely reconstructed following total destruction in WWII still centers on the Roemerberg where the Romans encamped and where all the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned throughout the Middle Ages until 1806.

Many of Germany’s most famed vineyards and wineries are a mere half an hour distant. The towering Taunus Mountains enclosing the town to the north offer thousands of acres of recreational space and trails for hiking and biking. These are just minutes by subway from the Hauptwache and the Zeil shopping mile. Given all of the plentiful theaters, concert halls and clubs, the city’s traditional neighborhood apple wine gardens and Sachsenheim entertainment quarter hangouts, Frankfurt is truly habitable, vibrant and totally international.