Essen / Steele (Germany)

[Aboutaugust]

Dd, 20, is currently due to have her year out as a teaching assistant in Germany in September and needs to find accommodation in Steele or Essen.

Everything I've read about Essen doesn't paint a particularly nice picture. She'll be working in Steele which looks a bit better.

We're totally at a loss here to find accommodation. Most places seem unfurnished. She's only going to be there for 5 months and won't be able to furnish a place herself. Furnished flats seem very expensive so ideally she'd like a furnished room in a shared house.

Anyone living in Steele or Essen who could help us navigate how to find accommodation or what areas are safe for her to be in? I'm getting really worried now about where she'll end up.

Dusseldorf is closeby and is nicer

Can you approach the school she’ll be teaching at to see whether they have any suggestions or could put her in contact with previous TAs for advice?

In case it helps with searching, a shared house in Germany is generally called a Wohngemeinschaft, or WG - you may well already know that if you’ve been looking around.

I don't think Düsseldorf is closer to Steele than Essen. At least not according to google maps.

I guess she could try the school and ask them. If she were a student in Essen, there would be so many more options available but she won't be registered as a university of Essen.

B*lauVogel
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Sorry misread your post. Düsseldorf is showing up as an hour's train ride away which is too far really

I don’t know Essen personally. However it seems a bit sad that you’re already biased against it! Isn’t the whole point of going abroad to have an open mind and be curious about a place?

Essen is an ex-coal mining town in the Ruhrgebiet, the former industrial heart land of West Germany. It’s known for how well it has turned this heritage into something new. There is a lot of culture, green spaces, innovation, young people.

Living and housing standards in Germany are generally much higher than in the UK, especially in the rental market. So I wouldn’t worry too much.

It’s definitely worth asking at the school. The teachers might know someone who has a spare room or granny flat to rent out. If they’ve had British TAs before they might know where the previous one(s) lived.

Does your daughter speak German? Words to search for are WG-Zimmer (room in flat share), untermieten (sub-let), kurzfristig (short-term). Here’s a website with some flat share offers for example: www.wg-gesucht.de/wg-zimmer-in-Essen.35.0.1.0.html

I live in Essen, and have some expat friends in Steele, I'm not in that part of the city. Essen has an undeserved reputation, bit it's actually a lovely place to be, lots of green spaces, cultural opportunities (normally) etc.

There's good public transport so you could look at some of the more hip places or live, Ruttenscheid is probably the best known, but there's also areas around the centre and university which might suit DD better.

A WG is a flat share type arrangement and that's probably what she ought to be looking for. Most flat rentals are unfurnished and long term as you've found.

I would agree that Essen really is not a bad place to live.
For furnished look for möbliert, or teilmöbliert

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=m%C3%B6bliertes+zimmer+essen&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

Lots comes up here

We stayed in Essen for a couple of months for my daughter to have medical treatment and had a furnished flat rented for us - think it was Rooms Deluxe who did it. No idea what prices were like as we didn’t have to sort that side of things.
There are some lovely parks in Essen, it’s a very walkable city, centre is pleasant, Ruttenscheid is nice. There’s also art and culture there if your daughter would enjoy that (art gallery, ballet, opera etc) It’s not somewhere you’d pick to go on holiday probably but very livable. Major train hub too so easy to explore at weekends - we went to Holland one weekend.
I know nothing about Steele!

We know people who used Air B and B in similar circumstances.

You can rent for a month or so and then move once you have a better idea of exactly where you want to be.