What to Do 7 Days Before You Arrive in Germany: A New Arrival's Final-Week Checklist (2026)

Last checked: June 2026. Appointment systems, course-registration dates, and prices vary by university and city and change over time. Treat this as a personal playbook, not official guidance, and confirm anything time-sensitive with your own university and the German missions before you fly.

When I flew from Vietnam to Germany, I spent my last week at home doing exactly one useful thing: I kept asking AI, "What can I do in the 7 days before I arrive in Germany so I don't waste my first weeks there?" I got generic answers about packing and adapters. What I actually needed was the stuff nobody tells you: that course seats fill up before you land, that your first German winter will quietly flatten your mood if you come from a sunny country, and that you can start applying for jobs while you are still at home. This guide is the answer I wish I'd been given, written from having lived it.

The last week before you fly is the highest-leverage week of your whole move. You still have stable Wi-Fi, your home SIM, your documents in one place, and time to think. The moment you land, all of that fragments. So the goal of these seven days is simple: arrive connected, arrive ahead, and arrive well.

TL;DR: your final 7 days

• Connectivity: install an eSIM at home so your phone works the second you land.

• Transit: look at your arrival airport's map and book your airport-to-city route in advance.

• Money: open a German IBAN before you fly, and carry some euro cash.

• Studies: check your university portal now — attend orientation (Ersti) week, and register for courses early before popular seats are gone.

• Work: build your CV and start applying before you arrive, because interviews take time and a week is enough to line one up.

• Wellbeing: if you're arriving in autumn or winter from a sunny country, pack vitamin D. This one is personal.

• Documents: put passport, admission letter, blocked-account proof, and insurance into one folder, plus copies.

Should you set up an eSIM before flying to Germany?

Yes — install a Germany or Europe data eSIM at home on Wi-Fi so your phone works the second you land. It takes about ten minutes and saves you the airport queue and premium price.

The first thing that goes wrong for new arrivals is being unreachable. You land, you need to message your landlord, find your train, or confirm a pickup — and your home SIM is either roaming at painful rates or switched off.

Fix this before you leave, on your home Wi-Fi, where setup takes about ten minutes. If your phone supports eSIM, install a Germany or Europe data eSIM so it activates the moment you land. Two well-known options:

Buying at the airport costs more and eats time you won't want to spend jet-lagged with luggage.

Treat the eSIM as a bridge for your first weeks, not your permanent plan. Once you have an address and ideally a German bank account, a local prepaid or contract SIM is far cheaper per gigabyte for the long run.

How do you get from the airport to your city in Germany?

Before you fly, study your arrival airport's terminal map and book your airport-to-city train or bus in advance — it locks in a cheaper fare and removes one decision on no sleep.

Most international students land at Frankfurt (FRA) or Munich (MUC), both of which are large enough to be genuinely confusing when you are tired. Spend twenty minutes this week doing two things.

First, open your arrival airport's terminal map and trace the path from your likely gate to baggage claim, to the train station (Frankfurt and Munich both have stations directly under or beside the airport), and to the ATM and toilets. Knowing where you're walking before you walk it removes a surprising amount of arrival stress.

Second, work out your airport-to-city journey and book it if you can. Long-distance trains and buses across Germany can be reserved in advance, and locking in a route — and often a cheaper fare — before you fly means one less decision on no sleep. You can compare trains, buses, and times in one place on Omio*. If your city is reachable on regional transport, also read up on the Deutschlandticket, the flat-rate monthly pass for regional trains, trams, and buses, which is often the cheapest way to get around once you've settled.

One more thing people forget: book somewhere to sleep for your first nights if your dorm room or flat isn't available on arrival day, which is common when move-in is tied to your later Anmeldung. A few nights in a hostel or short-stay rental beats landing with nowhere confirmed to go. If you're still searching for a longer-term place, the guide to finding an apartment in Germany covers what to check at a viewing and how to qualify as a newcomer without a SCHUFA record.

Should you open a German bank account before you arrive?

Yes — open a mobile account that issues a German IBAN from your phone before you fly, so you can pay rent and a deposit on time instead of waiting weeks.

Paying a deposit, receiving a salary, or even buying a SIM contract is far smoother with a German IBAN. The problem is the classic chicken-and-egg: many traditional banks want your address registration (Anmeldung) first, which you can't do until after you arrive.

The clean workaround is to open a mobile account that issues a German IBAN from your phone, with just your passport, before you fly. I used bunq* for exactly this — it gave me a German IBAN with no Anmeldung required, so I could pay my first rent and deposit on time instead of waiting weeks. For a full comparison of the options, see the best bank accounts for working students in Germany and how to open a German bank account without Anmeldung.

Also carry €150–300 in euro cash for your first day — Germany is still a cash-friendly country, and you'll want it for a locker, a Bäckerei, or a kiosk that doesn't take foreign cards. Tell your home bank you're travelling so it doesn't freeze your card on the first foreign transaction, and make sure you have your blocked-account access and health-insurance confirmation ready to show. If you arranged insurance through a provider like Expatrio*, save the confirmation document offline so you can reach it without signal.

Can you register for German university courses before you arrive?

Often yes — log into your university portal (usually Stud.IP or Moodle) this week, note the registration dates, and be ready to grab limited seminar seats the minute your window opens. Wait until you've landed and the popular courses can already be full.

This is the section I most wish someone had pushed on me. Your degree doesn't start on day one of lectures; it starts in your university portal, and the work you do this week decides how good your first semester actually is.

Check your university portal and course system now. Most German universities run a system like Stud.IP, Moodle, or a campus-management portal where you register for lectures and seminars. Log in this week, before you fly, and learn how it works.

Register for courses as early as your phase allows. Here's what the official emails undersell: many seminars and lab courses have limited seats, and registration often opens during or just before orientation week — sometimes with a lottery or a first-come window. If you wait until you've landed and unpacked, the popular and well-timed courses can already be full, and you get stuck with an awkward timetable for a whole semester. Plan the modules you want, note the registration dates, and be ready the minute the window opens.

Plan the semester itself. Map out which modules you'll take, roughly how they fit into a weekly timetable, and which ones have prerequisites. A little planning now saves you from a chaotic, badly spaced schedule later.

Put orientation (Ersti) week in your calendar and actually go. Ersti-Woche (freshers' week) is where you meet your cohort, get walked through the systems, and pick up the unwritten rules of your department. It feels optional. It is not. The students who skip it spend the next two months asking questions everyone else already had answered on day one. Go to all of it.

Can you apply for jobs in Germany before you arrive?

Yes, and you should start in your final week at home. Hiring in Germany runs over weeks — an application, a screening call, one or two interviews — and none of those steps need you to be in the country yet, so applying early means you land already in conversations.

Here's a belief most checklists get wrong: they tell you to wait until you've arrived and settled before thinking about work. In my experience, that wastes weeks. A first reply from a German employer can itself take one to two weeks, so the sooner your applications are out, the sooner that clock starts.

So in your final week at home, get your job search moving:

1. Build a German-style CV. German employers expect a clean, one-to-two-page Lebenslauf. If you don't have one ready, a builder like Resume.io* gets you a tidy first version fast; our working-student CV and cover-letter guide covers what German recruiters actually look for.

2. Start applying now. A week is enough time to send applications and even schedule a first interview, so that by the time you land you're already in conversations rather than starting from zero. Browse English-friendly working-student and internship jobs across Germany and apply to the ones that fit.

3. Brush up your German. Even a little German widens the jobs open to you and smooths daily life. A few focused sessions on an app like Babbel* in your last week won't make you fluent, but they restart the habit; see how much German you actually need for a working-student job.

Just remember the legal frame: as a non-EU student you can work 140 full days (or 280 half days) per year, plus a 20-hour weekly cap during lectures, so line up the right kind of role. The working-student visa rules explain how the two limits interact.

Do you need vitamin D when you move to Germany?

If you arrive between roughly October and March from a sunny country, yes — pack a vitamin D supplement and start it from day one. German winters give your body far less of the sunlight it's used to; in the Robert Koch Institute's DEGS1 survey about 30% of adults in Germany were vitamin D deficient, with levels lowest in winter, and low vitamin D is linked to low winter mood.

I'll be blunt about this one because it hit me hard. I arrived in Passau in winter, from sunny Vietnam, and by about the third week I felt inexplicably low and tired in a way I'd never experienced at home — sleeping in, skipping plans, staying indoors against the grey. It wasn't homesickness alone. German winters are dark — short days, weak sun, weeks of cloud — and your body, used to year-round sunlight, suddenly makes far less vitamin D, which is strongly associated with the low mood of seasonal affective disorder. This isn't rare: in the Robert Koch Institute's national DEGS1 health survey, about 30% of adults in Germany had vitamin D levels in the deficient range, and those levels were measurably lowest in winter.

So if you're arriving any time from roughly October to March, and especially if you come from a sunny country, pack a vitamin D supplement and start taking it. It's cheap, it's available in any German Drogerie like dm or Rossmann, but having it from day one means you don't spend your first low weeks figuring out why you feel flat. Get outside during daylight when you can, and if the low mood is persistent or severe, talk to a doctor — supplements help with deficiency, but they aren't a substitute for real care.

While you're packing the vitamin D, add the items that are slow or awkward to get in your first days — German pharmacies (Apotheken) close on Sundays and require prescriptions for some things sold over the counter back home: any prescription medication with a copy of the prescription, a basic first-week supply of anything you rely on, and a power adapter for German sockets (Type F). If you're landing in autumn or winter, pack one genuinely warm layer (a proper coat, not just a hoodie) in your carry-on — you may step out of the airport into single-digit temperatures before you've had a chance to shop.

Your documents folder

Put these in one physical folder and one offline phone folder, with copies of each:

• Passport and visa

• University admission/enrollment letter

• Blocked-account proof and health-insurance confirmation

• Proof of accommodation, if you have it, for your later Anmeldung

• Passport photos (useful for German paperwork)

• Your eSIM QR code or activation details

For the full picture of what happens after you land — registering your address, getting your tax ID, finishing your bank setup — the Study in Germany checklist and the Anmeldung guide pick up where this one ends.

The 7-day countdown, in order

If you want a simple sequence, here's how I'd run the final week:

Do this and you skip the scramble that eats most newcomers' first month. You arrive reachable, you arrive with your studies and job search already in motion, and you arrive with your health protected against a winter you've never lived through. That head start compounds for the rest of your time in Germany. When you're ready to turn the job search into offers, start with our live listings of working-student and internship roles.