-Bidish Acharya
Aayush earns 900 EUR per month working a warehouse job. He pays 450 EUR rent for his room in a basement apartment in Bremen. In the early months of winter, he reported to his landlord about his heater and hot water faucet not working properly, but winter has passed, and he still faces the same issue. He spends 50-100 EUR for the minimum monthly groceries. His health insurance claims another 150 EUR, which leaves him with only 100-150 EUR, which he puts into savings and German language courses. “It seems nothing is possible without language, so that is the main priority.” Aayush arrived in Germany in October 2025, and his arrival has not been without struggle. His health insurance deducted 400 EUR for the time he had not even been in Germany. Things got harder when he could not find a single job in the first four months. “I was only spending money from the blocked account that my parents had put in, and I would feel really bad about it.” Students coming to Germany must deposit 11,904 EUR, which they can withdraw on a monthly basis to support them for the first year. He received his first job in food delivery in his fifth month. His job responsibilities included delivering pizza, cleaning the kitchen, washing dishes, and more. For all that work, he would receive 8 EUR/hr. Minimum German wage is 13.90 EUR/hr. “The owner would shout at us if we were even slightly delayed in delivery and threatened to cut our salaries. I knew it was not a good job, but I wanted to earn whatever I could.” The restaurant owner had warned Aayush that he would not receive his salary if he did not work for a minimum of two months; he left the job after ten days. He is owed 450 EUR for those ten days of work, and he has not yet received his payment. “The owner gives reasons when I ask for the money, and to be honest, I don’t think I will receive it.” At present, his work situation is much better. He found it through a temp agency and earns 14.96 EUR /hr. He leaves home at 3 AM to make it to the warehouse before his 6 AM shift, and returns home at 4:30 PM. His shifts are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Some days, he goes out with his other Nepali friends, sits by the river, and shares a bottle of Helles beer that helps his tangled-up mind breathe a little.
The Physical Toll of The Dream :
Sagar has woken up at 3 AM during workdays for the last three years. He works an early morning shift in a warehouse, where his work involves unloading goods from a LKW truck into a conveyor. He spreads peanut butter onto toasted bread, gulps down two boiled eggs, packs a couple of milk-bread for the break, and walks with a coffee at a time he cannot distinguish from night to morning. His shift starts at 4 AM and ends at 8 AM, the time he thought to be perfect when he signed the contract. He would have “an entire day to focus on his study and work aspirations.” However, in the very first month of the job, he realized that the shift only looked good on paper. Four hours of continuously carrying an average of 20kg packages leaves him tired for the rest of the day, and he constantly struggles to put the spare time to good use. “Some days, especially when sleep is compromised, I struggle at work to keep regular consciousness and have had near-accident moments.” He went on to share an incident involving one of his colleagues, who had a heavy package fall on his head and was hospitalized for over a month. He came to Germany in 2019 and faced the toll of COVID isolation, where he found no jobs to support himself. During the critical time, the German government made it possible for international students to take student loans, interest-free for the first eighteen months, then the standard bank interest would apply. Finding himself in a difficult situation, he had to take that loan, upon which he received 650 EUR per month from the government for 18 months. Though he wishes to quit the job to focus on his aspirations, he “cannot quit without having an alternative job in hand, otherwise the loan repayment would become unmanageable.” “There are phases I strongly feel like returning to Nepal, but I’m not sure how to start again,” he said. The dream of a secure future that could be his own is the hope that makes him continue to choose Germany. Also, the lack of the same in Nepal makes him wary of returning. “The thought returns time and again, but I’m not actively following it; it’s just something on the back of the mind.” For the aspiring students in Germany, he insists that the life portrayed in social media is nothing but a polished surface of a life that is lived through struggle, constant hardship, and self-reliance. He added, “German children are brought up with an extreme sense of independence, and they are taught to solve all their problems by themselves, so if you’re planning to come to Germany, make sure you strengthen your mindset to struggle without relying on anyone and to be able to compete with that set of youth in Germany.”
The importance of Community :
Three Nepali friends have gathered on a Saturday morning in Rajkumar’s shared apartment in Koblenz. One friend is hovering the shaving machine over another friend’s hair in a calculative manner as Rajkumar is preparing a chicken curry and rice for lunch. “A haircut costs 18 EUR, so we come together and do it ourselves. And we have gotten better at it”, he said, running his fingers to shift his hair neatly onto one side. Rajkumar believes the Koblenz community has played a big role in helping him get accustomed to the country. “Before coming to Germany, I had read some posts in Nepali in German Facebook groups about not trusting the Nepali people. But, I feel lucky that I found such a good community of Nepali people in Koblenz.” After his arrival in September, he attended a Nepali Dai’s birthday party as his first gathering and was immediately welcomed into the Nepali community. Soon after, a Tihar celebration with over 30 Nepali people made him feel more at home. “I did not think people could live like this abroad,” he said. “In the first month, it already felt like family.” Rajkumar has also found his way into the German community through his immersive approach to learning the language. Rather than focusing only on German classes, he immerses himself in the language, watching German movies, documentaries, learning regional jokes, and getting involved in social events as much as possible. “I want to learn the language while having fun,” he said. One rainy afternoon in a bus in Koblenz, Rajkumar came across a man who had slipped on the bus, his knee slightly bleeding. He went forward and helped him up. The man, around 35, opened a translator on his phone to make up for his lack of English. “First time someone showed concern for me like this,” the man typed. “I feel good.” They shared contact and kept in touch. The man invited Rajkumar to dinner in his grandmother’s house, located in a remote village of Polch. He recalls the moment as he sat at a dinner table with three generations: the man, his wife, their son, their daughter, and the grandmother. None of them spoke English. He exhausted his immersive, broken German. As they warmed up to him through the dinner conversation, the grandmother felt comfortable sharing, “We had a family discussion about whether to trust you into our house or not.” They are still in touch. 273 kilometers east of Koblenz, Supriya has her own story to tell.
Finding her Voice :
Supriya studies a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction in a small university town of Weimar. In the very first year, she encountered winter sadness and relied on travel, especially meeting her sibling in Sweden and her friend in the Netherlands, to feel better. As she recalls her beginning years in Germany, she puts her experience of working in McDonald’s as one of her toughest phases. She would work 8-hour shifts, and none of her colleagues would talk to her, even when some of them spoke English. “I just had to look at the wall all day and eavesdrop on their conversation while working alone. I used to feel like: I am also a person, why are they not talking to me?” she said. That experience motivated her to learn German, as it made her realize that language was absolutely necessary to build a life in Germany. “I was very shortsighted, so I didn’t prioritize German that much in the beginning.” The turning point came during a phase of her life when she was hospitalized for two weeks. In a hospital where nobody spoke English, she had to rely on every German she could muster to make her requests and perform all the hospital procedures. “It was very intense. I had to push myself to use German for everything.” The discharge came as a big surprise to her, sort of her eureka moment. “I don’t know how, after being discharged, I could speak German,” she said, “like really, I could speak comfortably. My grammar wasn’t perfect, but nobody cared, and people appreciated that I spoke in German.” When asked if German gave her a sense of belonging in Germany, she emphasized that she would probably “never feel she belonged in Germany.” However, she went on to explain the positives, like how she can go and talk with people, make new friends, and that people are more receptive towards her when she speaks in German. “Recently, in a duty-free shop, when I chose German over English, the lady’s eyes opened up completely.” Supriya currently shares her German learning journey on her Instagram channel, lebenalssup, hoping to inspire international students like her to navigate life in Germany.
The Job-Seeking Visa :
Bimal’s student years were also not short on struggle. He worked in food delivery, housekeeping jobs in hotels, and in kiosks in the urban city center of Frankfurt. Having just completed his bachelor’s in Kathmandu, he realized that he must learn some skills to find jobs in Germany. So he enrolled himself in a full-stack development course, and upon completion, started applying for jobs. In his second year, he landed an internship in a reputed company, named Airbus. Upon successful completion of the internship, he was hired as a work-student, which took him closer to a career that he had dreamed of. But given the job market and hiring freeze, that didn’t convert into a full-time role. “My manager supported me to find a position, but it didn’t work out. To know that lakhs of employees are working there and I couldn’t get a single full-time role, I felt really bad.” Bimal recalls the last semester of his Master’s as his most stressful phase as a student. “I was working a 20-hour work-student job, another 15-20 hours side job for extra income, was writing my thesis, and was constantly applying for jobs.” Since completing his Master’s in 2024, Bimal applied to over 400 jobs and received only a maximum of five interviews. “The IT market was much better in 2022-23. I would constantly get interviews even when I had no work experience.” Upon inquiring about the numbers, he said he had received about 15-20 interviews out of 50 applications, some even for full-time positions. That ratio has since collapsed almost entirely. His struggle has recently borne fruit as he found a Data Scientist role in his ninth month of an eighteen-month job-seeking visa. When asked if he ever thought of returning to Nepal, he said, “If I found no job, I would look for a PhD, and even if that didn’t work, I would take another Masters. I had already come here with a lot of dreams, and I would not return empty handed,” he said, pausing, “ I would increase my visa and make sure to find something. I wouldn’t give up in just eighteen months.” He is content with his life right now. He emphasizes that once you get a job, life is much more comfortable. “Germany is good – with health, security, and proper infrastructure; we can have a good life. I would of course like some things to be better, but I am very satisfied with what I have.”According to a 2024 report by The Annapurna Express citing the Federal Statistical Office, Aayush, Sagar, Bimal, Rajkumar, and Supriya are five among more than 8,000 Nepali students currently studying across Germany. It’s a number that grows every year. When Bimal shared about the struggles in Germany with an aspiring student who wanted to come to Europe, he was met with, “Dai, you went and are enjoying, and now you’re telling us the bad things.”
(Some names in this article have been changed at the request of the individuals interviewed.)