Apartment manager not responding, should I panic (more)?

You've still got over a week, and the Zwischen den Jahren period is real here. Most things in Berlin slow to a crawl between Christmas and Neujahr, and I've had Hausverwaltungen go completely dark for two full weeks during that time. Your contract is signed and legally binding, so you're not going to lose the apartment just because he's not answering WhatsApp during Feiertage.

Send him one clear email and one text saying you're confirming the key handover time for the 1st, then leave it alone until the 28th. If you start scrambling for backup apartments now you'll just stress yourself out over nothing, and you'd be tying up deposits elsewhere for no reason. On the 30th if you still haven't heard anything, that's when you contact Wunderflats support directly to see if they have a protocol for this.

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honestly don't panic yet, it's totally normal for managers to go MIA around christmas and new years in Berlin, lots of people take the whole week off. try calling again on the 27th or 28th, and if nothing by the 30th then maybe start looking at backup options just in case, but you've got a signed contract so legally you're in a good spot

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The holiday slowdown is real here. Most property management companies in Berlin basically shut down between December 23rd and January 2nd, so your manager being unreachable right now isn't unusual. I'd send one polite email and one WhatsApp message saying you just want to confirm the handover time on the 1st, then leave it until the 28th.

Since you haven't paid anything yet and have a signed contract, you're actually in a fine position. If he doesn't show up on the 1st, that's when you start documenting everything and maybe check if Wunderflats has a backup process. Looking at backup apartments now wouldn't hurt, but you'd be giving up a deposit on the new place before you know if this one falls through, which it probably won't.

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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.

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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

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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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