My lovely girlfriend has just received a very good job offer to work in Germany and I’m trying to work how I can join her. But, I don’t particularly want to leave my job in London. I work for a great company, work on awesome projects, it pays adequately and I love my job. I also work in a particularly small and very specialised field which makes it difficult for me to work anywhere but London. I’m trying to work out the practicalities/impracticalities of commuting by plane, spending 3-4 working days in London a week and the weekends and some days working from home in Germany. I’m under no impressions that it’s going to be fun, cheap or easy but needs must.

Does anyone out there have any experience of cross border commuting?

Also, what’s the cycling like in Hamburg?

that’s not going to work. Sorry.

Sorry to say this and I don’t mean it in a cruel way – but are you sure she wants you to join her ?

Seems a fairly efficient way to end a relationship to me. (sorry again)

My thoughts too. Consider where you are in her list of priorities if she’d rather take the job.

Of course, maybe the pair of you are still at the “considering it” stage….

I know a few people who work in the Netherlands Mon-Fri and family is in the UK, it sucks, but they are being paid a lot of money so its worth it.

Are you both ready for a long distance relationship? If not you may be splitting up soon.

Practically speaking it’ll be a right old PITA travelling to and from. Ok you’ll be inspired in the short term with hoping off trains to planes to tubes and such but you’ll be bored in the week unless you have mates, then catchup with the GF at weekends whereby you’ll be so knackered with travelling that it’ll take you 3 days to recover.
It’ll cost a bloody fortune too, thats a proper hard commute and very costly in time and money.

Is your Job worth it?
Is she worth it?

Has to be said..

dear god i couldnt do that… & i spent a year and a half flying over to GVA 2 times a month to see the gf, and after that we decided for it to continue one of us had to move.. in the end i moved here and that was back in 2007. Married with little un now so it can work.

but every week? to do that – not for me thanks!

It can work, but you can also slightly fine tune the way you attack it.

We moved to France. Mrs Mugsy got a job. I said to my boss at the time/ we are moving to France, either we make it work or I am leaving and I will look after our son.

We made it work! I was supposed to work form the office at my cost 1 week in 4, and this is in civil engineering, so not the most modern thinking flexible sector. It worked fine, but it was hard to start with as it was 2009 and I was paid in sterling but living on euros…

I then left and worked for them in the same way but freelance (I am literally an entrepreneur) so I could get full rights in france: healthcare, pension etc. I then carved a niche into international remote projects and haven’t looked back since, only I work overseas more now than I do at home.

Don’t just look at practicalities: look at legalities, health care entitlements, and tax issues, country of domicile vs. residency for tax etc as well.

it pays adequately

It would need to be more than just “adequate” to make it worthwhile surely.

It would cost a fortune travelling every week, and paying for hotels etc.

It wouldn’t be my idea of fun and I think it will get tiring and expensive quickly.

Rather than you commuting every weekend, could you not share the load and have her travel too?

A few years ago I did 3 months of working in the Netherlands while my wife and daughter stayed in the UK – it was rubbish, delays on flights etc. meant I never got home before 10pm on a Friday and had to leave around lunchtime on Sunday.

Recently did it the other way around and commuted for 2 months back to the UK while they were in NL, it was rubbish as well.

From my experience – it’s rubbish!

I move around a lot with work and have a girlfriend in Chile, so to me commuting back and forth from Germany doesn’t really seem that much of an issue!

If you think its financially viable to do so, why not give it a go?

Also why not have a conversation with your employer and see if you can limit some of your time in the office. Remote work and every other week in the office?

The book ‘Remote’ has an interesting take on virtual team and maybe its something you could negotiate. If you don’t ask you don’t get.

Good luck.

From experience, it’s hard work, and a lot depends on the small details of how you get to and from the airports at each end, and where you live during the week.

Where would you be flying from/to?

I used to work in Hamburg at the Airbus site (Finkenwerder). A German company were looking for someone to train up (supposedly relatively short term) who would then get projects back in the UK once trained; well, that was the idea.

I flew from Stansted with Easyjet on a Monday to Hamburg Luebeck; don’t be fooled, it’s nowhere near Hamburg – I think it’s 90km away from Finkenwerder. At the time, buying tickets in advance was pretty cheap – I think it was only about £30 return.
I then had a company car parked up at the airport (16euros for the weekend) and drove to work.
I stayed in a hotel in Hamburg during the week (paid for by the company, of course) and repeated the trip in reverse on a Friday.

In all honesty, it was a ball ache. I only lasted for 4 months before calling it a day. Admittedly the job wasn’t turning out how it was supposed to be, but the travel and constant unpacking/repacking was a pain in the bum. Dread to think how many hours I lost sitting around at Stansted or Luebeck.

It might work depending on how flexible the company are and how much strict they are with working from home etc. From the sounds of it, they might be flexible enough.
Have you considered where you will be flying from/to, how much it will cost in fares? Will you drive to the airport or get the train? How much will that add on?

Easily doable, providing you have cheap, available flights between the cities and good connections from the airport to home and work either end, Did it myself for a year or so, weekdays in Aberdeen, weekends in Copenhagen. At the same time I knew a lot of other guys who were working in Aberdeen with family in London. Most of us would fly in Monday am and leave Friday pm, working long hours Tues-Thurs. Some stayed in cheap B&B’s, some rented a room in a house, others rented a small place.

Was it fun? No. Would you want to do it for a long time? Probably not? Was it a way of letting two ambitious people develop their careers until something more appropriate came along? Yes.

You will be skint though, you’ll spend ages travelling and you’ll be exhausted from squeezing seven days of relationship into two days.

Worked with a video editor who lived outside Dublin and worked in Docklands, City Airport was pretty close so he used to commute from there, every weekend. Worked well until he discovered the other half was playing away.

It can work as long as you are both committed to it.

I’m away M-W in London. I live in The North (but might as well be in another country). Trabvel and accom paid for by work, so it’s easy enough. More challenging for Mrs North who has to look after our young daughter and work full time.

An former colleague’s girlfriend moved to Barcelona for work and he followed her. He commuted back to London on Monday morning and to Barcelona on Thursday, working at home on Friday. I thinmk he’s now doing similar in the US.

The project I’m part of has many contractors, and lots of them arrive from various places every week – e.g. one guy flies in from Belfast on Monday morning and heads home on Thursday. He has a wife and two young children at home. He’s always done this (not much call for his skills at home) – last gig was elsewhere in Europe.

So it can work – just requires effort and commitment to everything you do (work, home, travel).

Its probably quicker, easier and cheaper than getting a train from Manchester

i’ve met people on Flights in and out of Hamburg before, some did it weekly and it worked for them.

However on the more serious point- biking in Hamburg not unless you like roads or canals. It’s flat as pancake as it’s a sea port, though it’s got some interesting places to eat/drink/dance where they’ve done up the old docks. Full of Germans though..

Last time I was in London, I’d wager that about half of the people I saw there were women. A percentage of those were quite attractive, and I’d suspect that a percentage of those were likely to be single.

I’m more than happy with the solidity of the relationship, if it was someone else that would probably have been my first thought too but it hadn’t even crossed my mind.

I’m aware that it’ll be hard, expensive and annoying but it’s not far off the overall cost (£70-£100 return if booked in advance) and time of friends who commute from Brighton to London daily. It’s about 40 fairly direct minutes from Gatwick or Heathrow to the office by train or tube. The additional cost of renting a room (possibly from friends) will also have to be factored in but it’s not insurmountable. It seems doable, just need to work out if the company I work for will accept me working from home 1 or 2 days a week, which could be a potential spanner in the works. Although the only other option is I take my specialist knowledge to a more accommodating direct competitor, but I’d rather not.

Neilco has it right. Two ambitious people (her more than me, I’m pretty relaxed) working in quite small fields, we’ll make it work somehow.

In terms of biking I’m almost entirely road based now (the shame) so I can handle flat. May need an aero bike though (can of worms).

If you’re serious about the relationship, take the hit on not seeing each other every week and stockpile money. Then you’ll be in a better position to be together long term and won’t be destitute if it goes South. Maybe agree to see each other say every other week and alternate who does the travelling. That also factors in allowing you both a bit of free time to yourselves.

The cold reality is that the situation you’re proposing isn’t sustainable. Either you need to move, she needs to move, or you both need to accept that the relationship is casual at best or a casualty of circumstance.

Trust me, I’ve done this two or three times now. A long-distance relationship can survive, probably quite happily, for months or even for a couple of years but not for ever. What happens if one of you wants children, for instance? As a means to an end it’s fine, but if you think you can maintain it indefinitely then you’re going to be looking back on your life in a couple of years time wondering why you’re broke, utterly exhausted and unhappy.

Bottom line is that your careers are more important to both of you than your partners. If that wasn’t the case, either she wouldn’t have moved or you both would have. Which is what I assumed in the first place, hence my irreverent earlier post.

One of my colleagues lives (with her fella) in Ireland, works in Swindon.

She flies to Heathrow Monday morning, hour to the office (ish) and gets in for about half ten. She then gets in early/leaves late Tuesday/Weds, in early Thursday, leaves about three to get to Heathrow, works from home Friday.

She’s been doing it for years. Then again, she’s a freelance SAP Architect, so bills enough to buy a flat here to live in during the week…

Help defray additional costs by offering a bespoke bike delivery service for discerning STW purchasers from Canyon to the UK?

You could always just stay where you are and spend all the money you would have spent on flights on coke and hookers instead?