10 Years in Munich, No Driver's License. This Is the Year I Fix That.

I have lived in Munich for 10 years.

I do not have a driver's license.

I do not have a German certificate.

Both have been on the list the whole time.

The thing about avoidance

That is the thing about avoidance. It does not feel like avoidance. It feels like priorities.

There is always a launch. There is always a feature. There is always a partner waiting. There is always something more urgent than the slow, boring, not-quite-me thing you have been putting off.

You can be moving hard in every direction and still not moving toward the two things you actually said you wanted.

Two thresholds

When I think about a Tesla — or one of the Chinese EVs about to flood the European market — I get blocked at the same place: I cannot drive.

When I think about being fully present in German in the room that matters — a conversation with a landlord, a lawyer, a doctor when something actually matters — I get blocked at the same place: I never finished the certificate.

Both gaps are ten years old.

Both keep getting deferred.

Both sit on the list.

What I have been doing instead

I have built something like thirty products and startups over the last ten years. Code, apps, companies, landing pages, half-products, full-products. I have shipped a lot.

Most of what I built required exactly the kind of work I am good at: writing code, designing products, making decisions, moving between stacks, talking to builders in English.

Very little of it required me to do the two things that have been sitting on my list.

You do not need a Führerschein if you live and work in central Munich, take the U-Bahn, and travel by train. You do not need a German certificate if your job is in English, your friends are international, and your relationship is in English too.

You can build a whole life in Munich without ever crossing those two thresholds.

I have been crossing thresholds I am comfortable with for ten years.

The commitment

This year — 2026 — I am going for the Goethe B1 certificate and the German driver's license.

In parallel. Not "one and then the other." Both.

My friend Kurt and I have been doing weekly German lessons for a while now. This morning we tried our first Goethe listening test. Next Sunday we do conversational. I will book the exam this week.

I have not signed up for a Fahrschule yet. That is the next step. By the end of this month.

I am writing this here because I want it to be expensive to back out.

If you are in the same place

If you have been in Germany for years — five, eight, ten — and the same two boxes are unchecked on your own list — Führerschein and the certificate — I would like to hear about it. Reply, write me, send me a message. There is something useful in admitting it out loud with someone else who has been carrying the same.

We can do it together.

The question

What is the obvious thing you have been avoiding?

(I think I know the answer. I am asking anyway.)