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The phases of moving to Germany
Phase 1 - Naiveté: Eager, curious, motivated. You jump through the bureaucratic mess to get a job, a visa, an apartment, a bank account, health insurance, an account with the TV tax authority. It's a lot of work but you managed it. You start learning German. You feel like this will be good.
Phase 2 - Denial: You've been here a while. You've improved your German a lot. You've stagnated in your job but it's probably your fault. You're just not German enough yet, i.e. you still occasionally apologize for mistakes and accept guilt when you've not been perfect. You begin to notice the small annoyances in Germany but dismiss them as trivial: the tiny supermarkets, the unfriendly locals, the lack of privacy, the poor soundproofing in apartments
Phase 3 - Maturity/ Acceptance: You have now noticed that everything about Germany is nothing but advertising/brainwashing and cognitive dissonance. You accept that nothing in Germany works efficiently. You expect everything to go wrong unless it is extremely carefully planned and you now understand why Germans are so against any form of "Vorfeiern" - because nothing ever turns out right here. You realize that the people here are incompetent and yet somehow arrogant about it. You notice the filth in this city. You notice that the German internet is heavily censored. You notice things will never get better. You realize that none of your expat friends (because you still won't have any German friends) has lived here longer than 5 years. You notice all the weird 40-something year old in milling about parks with no real reason for being there. You notice the real need for public toilets. You notice that somehow you appear to be the only person in your apartment building with overpriced rent who actually has a job. You don't feel like trying to talk to anyone about this anymore because most of your expat friends are defending Germany. You'd lock yourself in your apartment all the time, but you can hear your neighbors watching TV and peeing and sneezing and the sound begins to drive you insane. You look at real estate prices outside of the city and realize that the cheapest home on the market is still the equivalent of 35 years' worth of a median German salary. You grow used to opening your mailbox to find random surprise bills. By this point, day to day life feels pretty much like closing the "accept cookies" popup on every single webpage now for 18 hours a day.
Germans* even gaslight other Germans. Check this:
www.spin.de/forum/msg-archive/3/2017/04/680362
There is no such thing as a "privacy curtain" in German hospitals. If you've ever had the misfortune of being treated in one, you know that no hospital in Germany has a track for privacy curtains. Literally zero hospitals here have them. But that won't stop Germans from bullying anyone here who has somehow managed to survive childhood with any remaining desire for privacy or modesty.
*Just to clarify, I am not even sure that these weird kinds of people in online discussions are "normal" people. I am about 99% sure that there's a leftover program in the German government that pays ex-Stasis to discredit anyone criticizing Germany by any means possible.
www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/nylqw4/i_am_leaving_germany_after_3_years_to_return_home/
Read the comments.Typical.
"I was actually laughing and dismissed everything you said, because I can not believe someone living in Germany for three years studying business science saying German is a socialist country."
That must German equivalent of Godwin's Law. Maybe we should call it Stefan's Law.
“As an online discussion criticizing Germany grows longer, the probability of anyone not blindly praising German to be labelled as American approaches one.”
Also this:
" Literally all your problems can be solved by learning the language. Are you at "deutschkurs B2" or a TRUE B2 level? Those two are worlds apart."
When I had only been here for 2 years I also believed this. After 5 I thought that maybe it was just my accent. After 10 I realized it's just part of German culture. I speak German at C2 level and people often tell me that they can't even hear that I have any discernible accent anymore. But any time I ever say anything that isn't 100% in compliance with an opinion you would read on Spiegel.de I am reduced to my nationality. During reviews at work supervisors say I am good at my particular line of work because of my nationality.
If you're a foreigner in Germany you completely cease to be an individual because the German psyche simply cannot accept that not everyone is a xerox copy of every other member of their identity group.
Noticed this one guy from that thread. He is a freaking boss at humiliating Germans RE: their own country. I am surprised he hasn't been banned from r/Germany yet.
www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/o0psab/can_someone_eli5_how_the_school_system_in_germany/h1y2ugm/
Can't help but notice a LOT of people complaining that the guy called Germany socialist. It's actually creepy to me that so many people are saying "GERMANY ISN'T SOCIALIST!" while at the same time saying "AMERICA IS 100% CAPITALIST". Not really sure how one can have such a nuanced understanding of what socialism is but still consider the US capitalist when taking into account pretty much every economic and fiscal decision in the US over the past 20 months.
This is exactly why I want to leave Berlin. I know that life in another city and another country can be good!
m.youtube.com/watch
it took me a while to get my head around this and i am still shocked by it but Germans are basically.only interested in you when you serve a purpose to them. Everyrhing they do has a logical purpose to it and people are objects to be used in that goal. People also have very defined roles to them like classmate, work colleague or teammate. There is no real mixing between these contexts and usually you stay in that context and never enter the context of "privat" which is almost exclusively for family and people they have known forever.
This is a great insight.
Also they are not genuine at all. They would hang out, act friendly and everything solely in the context it serves them still. Such as for example, work colleagues asking to hang out, will still be focused on gaining something from getting close, but never a friendship.
More likely, if they’re into you, might try to get laid… but that’s about it.
As someone who has genuine friendship from all sorts of contexts, including former work people, I find it super weird.
I stopped going to social outings… with Germans from work.
All comments are on point.
I have realised this fact when I was master student in Germany. If you make a team with Germans they become like the most friendly people on the entire universe (they even pay for the coffee for the whole team. Can you imagine how generous they become? :D) because by being teammate with you, they can benefit from you to get better grade. The rest of the time, they don't even say hi when they see you on the street
You wrote: the private room is almost exclusively for family and people you've known forever. I don't think this is just a German problem. I've been experiencing this phenomenon for a long time across Europe, and I've felt it most in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Poland, and so on. Do people in Europe like forced solitude? Do the Europeans think that this is the right way? Where did this behaviour come from? I'm sure they don't get it from the USA!
I am European, but no, this is not a common thing on the whole continent.
I had a healthy way of connecting with people, making friends, staying away from the ones that did not float my boat etc.
Here I think it’s also a forced tolerance, if I may say, super hippie but fake.
Where I am from we make friends with likeminded people, we don’t hinder the ones we don’t click with, no hate… we live and let live. If I find you’re not my type of person, I will probably be meh, but not try to force you.
For example, I am not religious. If someone is to much into their faith, I respect that as it’s not my business, but if every conversation is “missionary talk” I strive to let them be… not go into a debate and bad mood. Most likely, I’ll just avoid hanging out too much not to waste my energy.
We owe nothing to anyone. We can curate the people we like to hang out with…
Here it’s like they want to bring the anxiety and conflict. They like connecting with different people with different views and start polemics to fulfill their need of being always right and superior, guilt and shame and bla.
That’s not a thriving, nice way of socialising.
I also think it’s hypocritical as fuck…
"I remember when a German invited me to the dinner party and then asked us all to pay. Ridiculous"
It seems to be normal here to invite people over to your flat and serve them bad food and then try to guilt them into paying you 10 € for the displeasure. I have experienced this and heard others talk about it several times. I usually just try to avoid social gatherings with Germans.
Even if the clubs reopen. I doubt that they would accept my vaccine passport as it’s not German. Just another excuse to be xenophobic for them
Berlin doesn’t agree with me because I am play hard / work hard. Berlin is play hard / work minimally or not at all. And then there are some cities that are work hard / no play. What is a good work hard / play hard city for me to move next ?
Germans whose parents sent them to an international school and bought their flats are all “fuck capitalism” bc they never once worked for anything
Doesn’t bErlin seem rather narcissistic? Everyone is constantly focused on identity, themselves, us v them, germans v non Germans..... they seem to miss the bigger picture
I'd like to know what keeps you all in Berlin? I moved to Berlin for a relationship and if I knew what was in store for me, I'd rather choose another city. Not everyone lives in Berlin for the alternative scene. This culture has never been close to me and never will be. I know a guy from Syria who told me that as soon as he gets a German passport he's going to move to Spain. If you're young and nothing is keeping you in Berlin and you're from the EU like me, why are you wasting your time here? I live in Berlin for my wife and two kids but we are planning to move to Slovenia. I will be glad if you write why you are in Berlin.
In time this city makes you doubt yourself, crushes your self esteem leaving you to believe you might fail further…
By now you’re probably lonely, probably think it’s a pandemic and things should wait out… that you might struggle, that you might be in a crisis, etc.
For most of us is the doubt and fear…
But the only crisis is Berlin itself.
I came here because my partner is here. I never loved the city, in fact I hated it almost immediately. I hate the weird culture, Germans are so negative and argumentative and not normal at all. It feels like they only have extremes- either constant excessive shaming or degeneracy, either never grow up or get old very fast. I feel like every day I wake up here the world is getting smaller and bleaker and trashier and I have to pay a penalty for actually feeling emotions and having a soul.
Has anyone experienced being shamed for optimism or positivity here? If so please share your examples so I know I'm not losing my mind.
Im in Barcelona right now. It is so much better than Borelin/ Gaymany . Everyone here mind his own Business. No one Stare. No passive aggressiveness. What a fuckking Shitthole Country Chermany is and how fucktards Chermanz are. Lol
OMG, today a woman asked another woman what sex her dog was and she answered, wait for it, "it's non-binary". My guess is she is am SJW, virtue-signaling, lefty phuckwit. What I'd give to be a dictator for one year.
who the phuc is this idiot always asking about little girls and Helga/Alexander?
You’re becoming phucing annoying… and you‘re acting like a kraut.
Other than that, a non-binary dog is … interesting, until it’s mating season and there’s either bisch period everywhere or a wursty dog dicc humping everything…
www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2021/06/berliner-statistik-einwohner-zugezogene-berlin-2020.html
How German lol