[mvcatsifma]

Learn (some) German. Admittedly not an engineering skill - but it will be greatly appreciated by your German colleagues. Background: Dutch engineer who lived in Germany for 3 years, and worked for one of their largest engineering orgs.

[dandrew5]

Thanks for the tip. I've enrolled in an A1 class with Goethe Institute starting in April. In your opinion, how difficult would it be to rent or potentially own a home on a single engineering salary? Looking at prices on https://www.immobilienscout24.de/, it does not seem possible after accounting for taxes. A salary of 60k ends up being about 3.2k net per month. If renting a home takes 2k of that, I may need to reconsider my country of choice.

[mvcatsifma]

It’s 20+ years since I lived in Germany (Berlin). At the time it was pretty easy to rent a high quality property for a reasonable price. I know a lot has changed since then, and the “global housing crisis” is also affecting Germany. Sorry can’t give you more details than that.

I am confident my language skills advice still applies.