More visa questions

I am looking at moving to Germany in roughly a year and I know from research that my long-term visa options are the SWAP or PAD visas as I am no longer enrolled as a student. However, I recently spoke with a fellow Canadian who lived there for the first 1.5 years of a 2.5 year stay by continually renewing his tourist visa on "bulls--t excuses" as he called them. I am also currently outside Canada and hoping not to have to go home to apply for a visa.
1. Is it that easy to renew a tourist visa?
2. How long do the YMA visas take to process if I applied from within Germany? Can they be renewed easily?

Cheers

Just wondering, OP, if you ever found some answers to your YMA question? I'm currently in Germany, but just as the 90 day tourist visa, and am hoping to switch to YMA, and am also wondering if it will require a trip home.

Visa for Canadian citizens

See : www dot ottawa dot diplo dot de/Vertretung/ottawa/en/04/visa/visa__can__Seite dot html

The pdf at the bottom of the website says it can only be issued within Canada and takes about 1 week. If you're in Germany it would be worth going into Immigration to see if there are any ways around going home. I'm in Korea and haven't managed to get to the German consulate yet to ask them if it's possible.

If you have to go home you can try to apply for a residence permit while in Germany instead but that will also depend if you have enough time left on your tourist visa to allow for the processing time of a new visa which apparently can take up to several months ...so you might not have the time anyways.