I’m not Indian and I’ve never lived in Canada, but I can comment on Berlin as a long-time foreign resident from the US.

Berlin has an amazing cultural scene. If you care about things like art, music, theatre — then Berlin will never, ever bore you. Also if you like bars! And South-East Asian food!

The tech scene in Berlin is very startup-focused, and the pay is not great. There are people who move to Berlin to make money, and there’s a lot of money to be made, but those people don’t have 9-to-5 jobs slinging code. You will be ludicrously underpaid compared to Frankfurt, much less London, much less San Francisco — but aside from the high rents, which can be really tough and require a lot of flexibility which you hopefully have at 25, you will have a very high quality of life.

Berlin is also a working-class city behind the vibrant cultural scene. If you like that, and you learn German, you can easily make friends from the “real Germany” or you can hang out with hipsters all the time if you prefer that. Berlin has both.

As others have noted, immigration is very straightforward, but you do need a lawyer and (obviously) a job offer. The path to citizenship is also straightforward.

Interestingly, there aren’t that many Indians in Berlin, or at least I would say I see more Indians on the street in Budapest than in Berlin, and I would probably have expected the opposite. There’s probably an “Indian scene” in Berlin but there definitely isn’t good Indian food. In Berlin the “Asians” are mostly from Vietnam.

One thing you should think seriously about if you’re looking at settling in Germany is Munich. Munich is where the higher-paying tech jobs are. Less startup culture, more good old fashioned German profit-making actual legitimate business culture. Google, Apple, Microsoft — these companies have a much bigger presence in Munich than in Berlin.

There is still quite a bit of specialization in German cities. Publishing? Hamburg. Finance? Frankfurt. Cars? Munich, or Stuttgart and environs. Basically if you want to live a dynamic and interesting and vibrant life, and are cool with making less money, go to Berlin. If you want more stability and professionalism go somewhere else. And it’s really easy to travel around Germany by train, plane or automobile, so you can always start in one place and explore others. Check out Darmstadt for example! Amazing art museum! Very very serious tech research scene! Minutes from Frankfurt!

Another thing to consider is that German employment culture revolves around stability. There are lots of opportunities to do weird risky things, but in principle almost everybody thinks the best way to live is to have a good job, do your work, and by the time you’re 30 you have a pretty good idea what your life will be like when you retire at 67. If that’s attractive to you, you’ll probably really love Germany.

And as long as you’re in Berlin or Munich or Hamburg you don’t have to eat German food! :-)

Finally, one thing I think German “tech” doesn’t get enough credit for: there is a lot of very serious engineering done in Germany but it’s not the “Uber for X” variety — it’s mostly based around existing, real-world technical challenges, usually involving physical machines of some kind. If things like self-driving cars or factory automation or building a better hammer attract you more than “Social network for cats” then you’ll probably really like German engineering culture.