Originally Posted by
bankops
You do not "arrive" in Germany officially. That doesn't happen until you have a place and you present yourself down at City Hall. You will then register as being a resident of that address (not a concept that exists in the US) and they will sort you out then.
No real limit on luggage on the train, but with kids, they tend to not be able to handle much luggage on their own. Have the company ship your stuff if possible.
Of course you can visit before. You are a tourist for 90 days. I HIGHLY recomment that the both of you go appartment hunting together at least 30 to 90 days before you are planning on moving. You can google moving to Germany and find absolutely masses of information. Most will target the military but it is easy to weed out the parts that are not related to you.
I must admit, your hubby's employer doesn't appear to be very on the ball about informing you what you need to do. Where are you planning on putting the kids in school? What town are you planning on living in? Where is the end-client for your husband? Banks are downtown but their IT departments are north of Frankfurt. Not sure why your husband would get local medical coverage and you not, but this is often and arrangement between the company and the host country. Make sure his contract includes tax equalization coverage and assistance doing your German AND US tax returns becuase you are going to have to file both.
They are helping us with the tax thing and our personal CPA has other clients that work overseas so she is pretty familiar with the process and rules.
Basically they want hubby to go over for the YEAR ---alone---and we are supposed to stay here and he is to visit us every 2 months. We asked for an exception for the family to accompany him so basically it is all on us for anything extra needed because of that. They don't give him any additional money or assist me and the kids at all. It would be different if he had a 2 yr assignment and everything including us and our personal goods/housing etc...would be included. Since they consider this temporary they are limited in what they offer.
The way the contract is worded--they don't want the overseas assignment to be a big boost in $. So money/taxes/COLA should equalize things comparable to living here in North Carolina. As they put it no LOSS and possibly a gain but it would be negligible.
His job site is either Eschborn or Schwalbach. They have offices in both places and engineering is in Rodelheim but he probably wont have any dealings with that site. I have researched the schools and since they will not offer any financial assistance --I am going with German public schools. It is just for a year and my son can make up his 2nd grade material easily. My daughter would be in Kindergarten if we can find an opening. If not I will just do some homeschooling and reinforce what she has been learning. I have plenty of online resources. I plan to have the boy work on 2nd grade a few times a week just to keep familiar. His current principal felt confident that he would easily catch up once we get him back him US schools. Fortunately they are not that far in their schooling.