Welcome to Deutschified!
My name is Daniyal, founder of Deutschified, a website with the goal of providing the most informative and least-fluff articles based on personal experience in order to help you succeed in either getting to or settling in Germany.
Story behind Deutshified
The Problem
After completing my A-Levels while living in one of the most beautiful cities I’ve lived in, Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, I, along with my 2 other friends decided to pursue our bachelor’s from Germany.
With our reluctance to avoid paid consultation and little to no information available on the internet either, we ended up applying to 5 universities.
Guess how many of them accepted us?
A grand total of ZERO – except for a conditional acceptance one of us received! It was a bit baffling since the two of us had better profiles than him, yet we weren’t even afforded a conditional letter – The fact that the letter was in German didn’t help our cause either.
It took us a lot of time, energy, research, and back and forth with the Universities (Thank you Google Translate) to zero-in on the reason.
Apparently, one needs to give a language exam during their A-Levels (Abitur) in order to be accepted in a German Institute.
This was just the tip of the iceberg of our problems, but all 3 of us managed to secure admissions and complete the visa processes.
Success? Not so fast there..
In 2015, I landed at the Hamburg Airport. I had achieved what I wanted and now was the easy part, right?
I was a naive little boy to think that.
No soon had I slept my first night under a German roof, I was introduced to terms like Anmeldung, Ausweiß, Steuernummer, Bescheinigung, etc.
It was one thing to not know what needs to be done, but it was equally horrifying to imagine the language barrier that awaited me.
Luckily, I had the help of my friends to guide me, but not many do. I’ve heard too many horror stories. In fact, 2 months in and I got an email that confirmed the cancellation of my visa, but that’s a story for another day.
Duisburg – A new home!
Due to the TU Hamburg’s rejection of an extension for language certificate submission, my conditional admission was canceled. The University of Duisburg-Essen was lenient and afforded me a chance to study and that meant moving states.
In October 2015, I started my bachelor’s degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Duisburg Essen.
The Internship dilemma and Daimler AG
You might know it from personal experience, but allow me to reiterate it once more;
Getting an internship in Germany is HARD!
I started the application process at least 2 semesters too late, wasted too many applications using generic CVs and Cover Letters, and had to extend my degree by a semester at least.
The good thing is that I got accepted at DAIMLER AG at the start of 2019!
I had always dreamt of working there and never thought I’d get the chance to do so – especially because my application to Daimler was sent with the least amount of expectation.
Covid 19 – Everything comes to a stop and Deutschified was born
On a personal note, 2019 came to a good end. I was done with my internship, subjects were almost finished and I had the chance to enjoy a 2-month vacation to Pakistan.
Unfortunately, Corona happened, and everyone got restricted to their homes. This gave me a lot of free time and as a result, I decided to launch this website.
Why did I create Deutschified?
The million-dollar question; or is it?
Ever since I moved to Germany, I’ve been contacted by people from different walks of life who’re either interested in or are planning to apply to Germany and therefore, have a bunch of questions.
After the first few conversations, I noticed a pattern that the person at the end of our conversation changed, but the topics never did – I was being asked the same questions repeatedly.
Moreover, people who were already in Germany reached out and asked for help regarding situations that everyone must face, and this pattern kept on repeating as well.
Finally, I decided to create a catalog of all the questions and their answers and thus, this website was conceptualized.
My plan is to make Deutschified the most comprehensible guide on the internet on anything on the subject of Foreigner-German problems and I make sure to publish heavily researched, in-depth and informational guides.
If you have any questions, content ideas or updates that need to be made, feel free to reach out to me using my contact page.
Beste Grüße,