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move to Berlin or Vienna?
i didn't explore Berlin so much only stayed there for two months in summer and winter, that was a short time and couldn't let me find the charming part of this city but left the first impression is dirty and chaos, and frequent sexual harassments, but i have to say those galleries in Berlin are amazing.
i want to settle down for long period and its time for me to clam down and think where do i want to live and work, also importantly which city is better for my job ( my study filed suits for art gallery and visual communication, cartoon, and publishing those kinda )
im not aimed to immigration but just wanna avoid those long paper works and bureaucracy and get long stay working visa, so considering about all those( environment, salary, culture.....) so what would you like to suggest me? what would you do in my case?
vienna's bureaucracy is real, but honestly berlin's ausländerbehörde is its own circle of hell. i've had friends wait 8 months for a termin. if paperwork stress is a dealbreaker for you, neither city is exactly smooth sailing.
for your field though, berlin just has more going on. the comic and illustration scene is pretty active here, places like oma nagel up in prenzlberg or the comic library near u-landsberger allee. vienna has some nice spots too but it's a smaller pond.
the dirty and chaotic thing doesn't really go away though. you just get used to it or find your pockets. i'd say come for a year, work in a gallery or publishing house, and if it doesn't click vienna will still be there. it's not going anywhere.
ngl i think you're overthinking the cleanliness thing. vienna is prettier on the surface but berlin's grime has a kind of honesty to it that a lot of artists end up liking. the sexual harassment stuff is real and you should take it seriously but it's not everywhere, mostly concentrated around certain ubahn stations and nightlife zones. you learn to navigate it.
for publishing and visual comm specifically, berlin has more small presses and indie mags that actually pay. vienna's scene is more state-funded and gallery-focused, which can feel restrictive if you want to do commercial work. check out places like mian publishing or the comic launch parties at oma nagel, that energy doesn't really exist in vienna.
visa-wise they're both a headache but in berlin you can at least find a job first and let the company deal with the paperwork. in vienna the employer usually expects you to have everything sorted already. that alone might tip the scale if you want to avoid bureaucratic loops.
honestly, if you're already dreading the visa paperwork, Vienna will prob drive you nuts again. the Austrian bureaucracy is famous for being slow and rigid, especially with student-to-work transitions. Berlin's Ausländerbehörde is a mess too but at least in Berlin you can find english-speaking lawyers and artist collectives who've dealt with it a thousand times.
your field is the bigger factor here. for art galleries and publishing, Berlin is just on another level. there's a reason so many illustrators and visual comm people move here despite the chaos. the dirty and chaotic parts are real, but you learn which streets to avoid (avoid Kottbusser Tor late at night, stay out of Warschauer Brücke on weekends) and suddenly the city opens up.
Vienna is cleaner, prettier, and more romantic but for creative work it can feel a bit sleepy. Berlin's roughness is part of why the art scene is so alive. if you want calm and beauty, go Vienna. if you want career opportunities and a scene that actually hires, Berlin wins. i'd pick Berlin for the next 5 years and move to Vienna later when you're tired of the grit.
What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.
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