Moving to hamburg all Advice needed Work language & so on

Since 2005 when my Anglo American/German gf moved here to work,
things have not worked out brilliantly here in the UK and we now are planning to move back to Hamburg, hopefully before Jan 2010.

She is now over there for a week going to job interviews and staying with family.

We also hopefuly may be getting her brother's old apartment as he and his wife have just bought a house.

My girlfriend is very highly qualifed and speaks perfect German and English as her family moved from the US to Hamburg when she was 8 years old.

Now I on the other hand know only a few words of German and do not realy have a lot of qualifcations. I spent most of my working life in a family antiques business,  most of that in furniture making and restoreng for about 20+ years. I am now 43.

Due to family moving away down to Cornwall and a bad downturn in overseas markets I had to give that up in summer 2004 or lose everything.

Since then I have worked in full time employment for first Kerrygold Dairy product Ltd distribution, mainly cheese.

I now currently am employed by DHL/Sainsburys distribution.
I have also undertaken added learning courses. I now have NVQ level 2 in warehousing. I have also done some maths stuff and I'm working on entry level IT, mainly Office suite 2003, Word, Excel & the likes of these, provided by my work for free.

I also had more maths planned & an English course planned but I do not think those will happen before we move which is looking like only a few months away.

After just this moment getting off the phone to my girlfriend she has had a very good offer for a job in a Kindergarden with good pay starting in Jan next year.

So at least I have a bit of a buffer on finding work there and they may be able to offer me some work there as a handyman type thing.
So now I need to find out what the best route is to take on learning German.

1 - Is there state help with language learning ?
2 - Would it be better to be married or not in regards to course fees or better to be single & just living there?
3 - What is the best angel to look into for work in the short and long term?
4 - Medical Insurance...any info would be welcome, thanks.

I know the basis of their public transport system S Bahn, U Bahn and so on.

At least I won't need a car, something I won't miss. I have a bicycle or two here, those will be moving with us.

Though she has a large family and friends network there it would be nice to meet up with fellow English speakers as well.

I look forwards to replies.
Thanks!
John

Last edited by Spoons (2009-08-31 13:25:02)