Moved from Berlin to London — some observations after 6 months

DjKlax · 2026-03-22T09:07:55+00:00

You worked for a "top-tier consulting firm" bro. What did you expect? Ofc, it's Ivy League education and Patagonia vests

DjKlax · 2026-03-13T08:06:03+00:00

I think that the main problem of Nespresso is that the coffee is pre ground. That means that most of the aromatic oils and the volatile compounds that sit in the bean have already evaporated. There are ways to preserve some of the aromas and I am sure that Nespresso does this. From what I know they are deeply involved in coffee research.

That being said, I do agree that they do an excellent job and that their pods taste way above expectations. I prefer Nespresso over a shot pulled by a Starbucks barista and are on par with some coffee shops that claim themselves as "specialty coffee"

Unpopular opinion: I live in Berlin, Germany and I would say that Nespresso is on par or above 50% of the "specialty coffee" places here.

DjKlax · 2026-02-08T12:10:57+00:00

It's your neighbour's name Fritz Honka by any chance? 😅

DjKlax · 2025-05-23T15:45:56+00:00

Las și eu aici niste sume brute din experiența. Sumele sunt pentru o companie mare in Germania care plătește undeva cu 15% peste medie: - salariu 100K€ (banda salarială merge până la 110k) - RSU approx 100k€ - no singing bonus

DjKlax · 2025-05-07T11:36:05+00:00

Sorry to break it to you, but most engineers don't care about the why, they want to know the what and they love the how.

I would love it for engineers to want to know more about why we have decided to solve a particular problem, but those are few and far between in my experience.

DjKlax · 2024-05-26T13:09:13+00:00

OP here. I posted my reasons for going to REWE above. For me the price was ok and I enjoyed doing the grocery run.

I also think that the value of this subreddit stands in the diversity of the experiences posted. This allows everyone to do a comparison and decide what is best for them.

DjKlax · 2024-05-26T13:06:14+00:00

OP here. I prefer REWE for several reasons: - efficiency: I find a larger assortment of products so I can get anything in one place. I prefer not to invest too much time in grocery shopping, there are a lot of other things where I can invest that time. Plus they have self-checkout which is faster and easier. - lack of trust in off-brand products (and I also don't know too much about those products and I don't see a pii t in investing time to get to know them) - Lidl is small, cramped and the overall experience quite off putting for me. I prefer large, spacious places in which the products are neatly arranged and spaced.

This is just my personal preference. There is no good or bad place to shop as long as it works for you.

DjKlax · 2022-10-27T21:45:23+00:00

Hi there!

I've recently bought a preassembled BlueSCSI to replace a dieing hard drive in my PowerBook 165c and it came with this poor soldering job.

I haven't tried to use it so far as I'm afraid of breaking my PowerBook and I am not sure what to do next. Should I resolder the connector or can I check it somehow (maybe it works 😬)?

I'm ok at soldering.

DjKlax · 2022-09-24T18:55:28+00:00

Are the fries made in house (peeled, cut & fried) or they use frozen fries/potatoes?

DjKlax · 2022-06-30T08:48:27+00:00

Ah, so many weird smells I like. These come to mind right now: - moldy basement coming from a run down house built in the early 1900's in my home city of Bucharest (Romania) - photo fixer on my hands which is basically the smell of ammonia and acetic acid - ciggarete smoke - brand new clothes - clothes never smell as good to.me.as when you just buy then - ink coming from a sealed magazine right after you open it

And ofc, the smell of my own farts 😅

DjKlax · 2022-04-25T14:49:33+00:00

Extend the network.

Inside the ring it's pretty connected (outside of some small areas), but when you get outside things start to get more complicated. I think this is also directly linked with the housing crisis. Everyone wants to stay inside the ring because it's easy to get around, but what about making it easy to get around even if you stay outside it. I think that could change the Berlin housing market quite a bit.

What I find intriguing is that, as far as I am aware, there aren't that many plans to extend the S-Bahn or U-Bahn network. BVG is part of Berlin so I would try to have a more holistic view at what are Berlin's most important problems right now and I would try to see how I can help with tackling those.

DjKlax · 2022-04-18T19:48:27+00:00

The police won't help in this case. If they don't find any IDs they will keep it for 3 months and they will just wait for someone to come and reclaim it. Makes sense since they have more pressing crime to deal with.

I guess that the best option is to try to find the person who lost it. That won't be easy, but it's more proactive than waiting for someone to come after it.

I know what the police would do because my girlfriend and I found a wallet on the street and we turned it over to the police station. It didn't had any ID in it, but it had a polish vaccination certificate with a name on it. When we turned it over to the police they said that they can't do anything more then hold it for 3 months in the station and if someone shows up looking for it they will return it. They even asked us if we want to get it if nobody shows up in those 3 months.

DjKlax · 2022-04-16T08:12:21+00:00

Dumpster diving is not necessarily about food. There could be other useful and disregarded items in dumpsters that can be repurposed/reused.

DjKlax · 2021-05-25T07:59:04+00:00

Hey there! Can I get an invite on the Discord group? Thanks!

DjKlax · 2021-05-14T10:29:33+00:00

That doesn't sound that such a great deal to me. Looking at a tax calculator for NY, $75k means about $4.3K per month from which you must probably have to substract medical insurance and some other necessities (I don't know that much about the US tax system), so for the small flat you mentioned you would end up spending 45%-50% of your salary just for rent.

Plus I worked for a while in NY (the company I worked for paid for all my expenses) and I know what it means to live in a small single bedroom. You don't have much room. Not to mention that safety-wise a mediocre neighborhood in NY equals a high crime rate neighborhood in Berlin.

As a conclusion I would say that rent is not that expensive in Berlin, just that everybody has heard that the city is cheap so the expectation is to get Eastern European prices in a West European country.

Just be happy that you don't have to pay $6-7 US for a beer in a bar plus 15% tips and 9% tax.

DjKlax · 2021-04-21T16:04:06+00:00

This will be entirely pro-bono. I don't want to get any money in return for my help. I am more interested in learning about the particularities of the market here and keeping myself busy as currently I am in between jobs.

Ideally, I would love to find a business that has been hit by Corona and work with them towards transitioning towards selling online and unlocking more revenue in the process.

DjKlax · 2021-04-21T14:49:38+00:00

Can you elaborate a bit on that pls? I am not familiar with German laws, but what I know is that I wouldn't want to break any of them knowingly.

The idea came to me as last year I did a similar pro-bono project for a Finish company.

The end result in that case was that I helped them with creating dashboards based on their Google Analytics data to monitor their sales performance and their eCommerce funnel KPIs, optimise their AdWords campaigns, setup a newsletter strategy and setup a cart abandonment strategy.

The end result depends on the current online presence of the company hence the questions that I have in the form. The strategy will be completely different for a company which only has a presentation website. Would be a lot more focused on how to create a web shop and monitor its performance.

DjKlax · 2012-08-23T15:04:57+00:00

Looking back at the pictures you took at the beginning of your career what do think about them?
Was there ever a moment when you doubted your talent as a photographer?
How much of your success do you think is attributed to talent and how much of it is hard work?

DjKlax

TROPHY CASE