Like death and taxes, moving house is one of life's necessary evils. Expats, by their very nature, are particularly prone to the curse of the cardboard box. If you move to and from Germany at the start and end of your expat adventure, that's already two moves, and you'll probably end up moving at least once while you're here.

And while the process of transporting a collection of objects from one location to another is pretty much the same the world over, there are certain specifics to moving house in Germany which you should probably know about. Which is where your friends at Expatica come in. So find an upturned beer crate to sit on, plonk your laptop down on a packing crate, and enjoy our guide to moving house in Germany.

Plan ahead

As with many things in life, the key to a painless move is successful planning. The golden rule here is that it is never too early to start planning your move. Ideally you should set a date and start making arrangements at least a month beforehand, otherwise you may find that all the hire vans are already reserved (see below) and your friends who would otherwise help carry stuff have all decided to go to New Zealand for six months.

The first and most obvious decision is whether you want to do everything yourself, or outsource part or all of the backbreaking work. The answer to that one will be obvious if you are lucky enough to have your company pay for the move, otherwise you might be tempted to do everything yourself to save money.

Certainly getting a removal company to handle everything from start to finish will set you back a few hundred (or even thousand) euros. But, as is often the case in life, the middle way may prove to be the best for you: for example, you might want to hire a van with a driver to do the driving, or hire a couple of students to do the heavy lifting (see below), so that someone else is taking care of the most back-breaking work.


Moving on up

If you do want to get a moving company involved, either to handle the whole job or to provide a van and a driver, then your next decision will be which firm to use. At the top end of the scale are companies such as Zapf Umzüge (www.zapf.de), which is one of Germany's better known moving firms and has offices in 11 cities. Big names like Zapf give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing they will do a professional job, but they will probably be the most expensive.

At the other end of the scale are fly-by-night companies whose workers are perhaps not all as documented as they might be. These companies tend to advertise with flyers stuck in your letter box and the like. This is probably your cheapest option but you might be wary of using such shifty operators unless you have a recommendation from someone who has used them before.

In-between are small local companies. Check your local Gelbe Seiten (A-Z Listings) to find a selection--you might find these local players work out best in terms of price and reliability.

As a rough idea of costs, one small removals company in Berlin has prices ranging from EUR 180 for the services of three men with a truck for three hours, to EUR 960 for six men with a truck for a whole day.

Often moving companies do not have fixed prices but will prepare a quotation (Angebot) for you. If you want to get a rough idea of what they charge, ask for a 'Pi-mal-Daumen' (ballpark) price--there's no point in getting them to examine your flat and produce a quotation if their price is going to be three times what you can afford. The website www.umzugsboerse-online.com lets you compare quotations from over 300 moving firms.

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