Up until this week, I was at the mercy of the German benefits system. Losing a job is bad enough. Losing a job in a foreign country can be a nightmare. But the state usually does want to help, even if they’re not forthcoming about it.

I found myself in a bit of a pickle, as I had been part-time employed at a company, the rest of the time freelancing. No matter what, though, if you’re not making enough to live on as a full-time freelancer, you need to register as unemployed straightaway.

In the end, I never actually received any unemployment money, through a combination of certain organisations not cooperating and then finding a new job quickly anyway. With so few resources around, it’s all extremely overwhelming.

Here are some tips I hope will be helpful if you, too, find that unemployment is your full-time job for a spell.

1. Register as soon as you get your Kündigungsschreiben.

I really can’t emphasise this enough. Your Kündigungsschreiben is your letter of dismissal and you need it to be in your hand when you go to your local Agentur für Arbeit. You have just three days to do it, otherwise you will potentially do yourself out of money! Whoops! You’ll also have to fill out more scary forms — such as the Anhörung zum Eintritt einer Sperrzeit bei verspäteter Arbeitsuchendmeldung to say why you dragged your feet.

The main point of registering at the Agentur für Arbeit is to find out whether you are eligible for unemployment benefits. I’m an EU citizen who’d been paying into the German social system for upwards of 12 months, so I was. I’m no lawyer, though, so I don’t know if you will be. You need to go there and ask.

2. Figure out the difference between the Agentur für Arbeit and the Jobcenter.

The Agentur für Arbeit (btw, aka Arbeitsagentur) is where you should report first. They take care of all the admin. Simply google it + the name of your district. Depending on the size of your district, this could actually be pretty far away; for example, I technically live in the western parameters of Mitte, but my office is near Checkpoint Charlie (i.e. I think actually in Kreuzberg). Annoying.

Anyway, as a general rule, the Agentur für Arbeit also helps you look for more “career”-oriented work.

If you are looking for “unskilled” jobs (I think that word is classist rubbish but it’s so widely accepted), then the Jobcenter is probably where you will be going, when not doing your admin at the Agentur für Arbeit. Generally, the criteria for deciding which place is gonna be your haunt is whether or not you hold a degree (Germans love qualifications! The more the better!). Frustratingly, the two institutions do not overlap and obtaining one piece of paper from one is often contingent on cooperation from the other.

Can we take a sec to appreciate the fact that so far, this is all so characteristically German but the word “Jobcenter” is two English words pushed together? (Related: I love seeing job titles like “Servicemanager”.)

3. Bring the right stuff to that first Agentur für Arbeit appointment.

Otherwise, you’re going to get turned away with a letter that compels you to be back within a week, otherwise your claim will be rendered void. The right stuff, in case you’re wondering:

• Your Kündigungsschreiben;
• Your current Meldebescheinigung for your place of residence;
• Your passport, or whichever form of ID has been working for you up to this point when dealing with German bureaucracy.

If you don’t have your Meldebescheinigung yet then things get a bit tricker, but not impossible. Trust me, I know. I changed my address and lost my job at roughly the same time. If this is you, you need to bring the following instead:

• Proof of Anmeldung appointment. Yup, I know. However, here is what I did. I booked an appointment over the phone (in Berlin: 030 9024990), whereby they give you an appointment number. You can then go to the info desk of the Bürgeramt in question and explain the situation. They’ll then print out a confirmation, which is your proof — even in the very, very plausible eventuality that the appointment is at least one month away.
• Einzugsbestätigung. A new Berlin law decrees that your landlord (or whoever is subletting you your room) must fill out a special form confirming you’ve moved in. In case yours is clueless, this can be downloaded and printed off here.
• Rental contract. Probably not totally necessary if you’ve got the Einzugsbestätigung handy. But from cold, hard experience, You Never Bloody Know is now my credo.

4. Have a German CV at the ready — and clear your schedule.

After you have registered yourself as arbeitslos (or arbeitsuchend, if you like that more euphemistic twang), you’ll be summoned to a group computer session that will closely resemble your high school IT lessons. You’ll have brought along a copy of your CV and will have to manually type your experience and career goals into the online Jobbörse.

I’ll be honest, it is rather soul-sucking, but I tried to see the humorous side.

If you have a limited grasp of German, you will definitely have to bring someone with you to help because, shockingly, the whole system is in German. This is the case even if you are looking for a non-German-speaking job.

By the way, probably best not to book any big holidays or anything for a couple of weeks. You’re gonna get some surprise optional

[Ron Howard voiceover]: compulsory

invitations to the Agentur für Arbeit to discuss your career prospects.

5. Shed the shameful feeling of being unemployed

This might actually be harder than any German bureaucracy. You have to look within yourself and realise, à la Good Will Hunting, that it’s not your fault. Being let go can depend on so many factors and layers, often not at all connected with your individual competence.

So, by accident of birth, I suppose, I was eligible for money. What this did entail was contacting my last three Berlin employers and asking them to send back forms from the Agentur für Arbeit confirming they’d paid my social insurance — which meant admitting I was unemployed. Since I’d left two of those places of my own accord, it did make me feel a little bit… well, what’s the word for being on the receiving end of Schadenfreude?

One of these former employers sent me back my Arbeitsbescheinigung like a month later than the others, which was most inconvenient because it meant my claim was incomplete. Don’t be afraid to badger them, because there is so much resting on being officially accounted for by the state — not least your health insurance. If you do a bit of freelance work, be prepared also to submit a tax declaration (via Elster — you will need to allow a week for your password to arrive by post after registering) and give weekly or monthly breakdowns on what you earn.

You might want to cry a lot. Maybe you will cry, too, and that is absolutely fine. But I surprised myself, because I consider myself a crier… and I didn’t cry once. There have been evenings, soundtracked by melancholy band du jour, where I scrawled angrily into my diary that nothing was working out in my life (yeah, yeah). But for every moment like that, there have been many mornings where I get up at 7:30am, make sure I get my exercise and coffee, then start making the future happen. If you do that, you never have to feel guilty for the time you do spend enjoying life.

Other than that, set aside a day or two to draw up a plan for how you’re going to get a job. I don’t know how qualified I am to give you advice on that one. But I can only reiterate that personal boundaries — between hustling for work and getting on with the rest of your life — are very important. Spreadsheets are also powerful.

When you’ve escaped from the slimy grip of unemployment — because you will! — don’t forget to whack this on and party.