Bed Hopping in Berlin: Surviving on a Work Exchange Visa
Job Hunting in Berlin and Battling Bedbugs
August 2015. Running out of money, with only two months left on my work and travel visa in Germany. I am changing gaudy polyester bedsheets for no pay at Paula’s Comfy Little Corner — a big apartment in a residential building styling itself as  a ‘hostel’ in Alt-Moabit. Cash only.
The Work Exchange arrangement allowed me to stay there for free in exchange for running the place. I never met Paula or Anastasia, the two managers across the pond in Blackpool, the UK. They preferred to communicate exclusively through writing in a shared Google document, where the only way you could tell them apart was by the color they were typing in. Paula’s green for rough-and-tough no-nonsense ‘Who’s checking in today?’. Anastasia’s violet for passive-aggressive interrogations about why I ‘chose’ to yet again forget to get separate receipts for the household supplies and the groceries, and if I really was as smart as I seemed to be. Followed by smileys.
What was not mentioned in the work exchange description was that I would be sleeping in the same rooms as the guests. This meant that after welcoming the guest in, taking their cash, and showing them to their room, I would then have to explain that I was also their roommate. Depending on the guest roster, the other work exchange staff member and I had to switch rooms almost every night.
I was 31, with two degrees, and a profession that I could have made an easy living off of back in Canada. And in the here and now, I was just glad if the green and violet texts weren’t deridingly abusive about my choice of which muesli to buy for the guests’ breakfast, and if I hadn’t acquired new bedbug bites from the previous night of bed-hopping.
I counted my euros every day. I rode black and didn’t pay for my ticket on the subway, standing close to the doors to slip away from ticket checkers if I could time it right before they checked me. I sent applications and CVs in broken German to more hostels than I can remember. Nobody in Berlin wanted me as an entry-level receptionist, or for any other kind of work I was willing to do to stay in Germany.
I went back to hanging the bedsheets out to dry, inspecting the mattresses for signs of bedbugs, and ruminating over how I had gotten myself here, and how the hell I was going to get myself out.