“We changed the order of our housing search”
Nadia and Thomas were moving from Dublin to Munich with children aged four and seven. They initially planned to choose a flat, then contact schools and childcare. During the Roadmap, they compared the registration dependencies, likely primary school route and the older child’s transition date.
“The useful part was not being told one neighbourhood was ‘best’. We saw which questions depended on an address and which calls we could make before signing. We still had a frustrating Kita wait, but we had arranged temporary care and did not have to delay both jobs.”
“The German terms stopped blurring together”
“Gymnasium, Gesamtschule and international school had become tabs in a browser. The adviser connected each route to our son’s current year, German level and possible return to the UK. We left with three school conversations to arrange, not thirty websites.”
— Ben, Frankfurt
“Direct about what could not be promised”
“Our move was only six weeks away, so I wanted immediate answers. Some of the advice was necessarily ‘ask the Schulamt after Anmeldung’, which was disappointing at first. The written call script and document list meant we got a clear response quickly once registered.”
— Sofia, Düsseldorf
“A calmer Kita follow-up”
“We had applied through the Berlin portal but had no idea whether direct contact was appropriate. The check separated the provider types, corrected our start-date assumption and gave us a respectful follow-up rhythm. A place was not guaranteed, but our search became much more deliberate.”
— Camila and Jorge, Berlin
What these stories do not claim
Experiences vary by city, provider, school, arrival date and family circumstances. Testimonials describe individual planning support; they are not promises of admission or childcare availability.