How every line at Lidl, Rewe, Netto and Edeka is a slow descent into HELL.
This is the fourth time in a year that a neighbor has volunteered a "helpful" suggestion regarding the placement of my bicycle. Each time a neighbor tries to convince me about the fact that I could just lock up my bicycle in front of the apartment building instead of carrying it up the stairs and inside my apartment where it doesn't do anyone any harm.
I have my reasons, but they are not relevant here. What is relevant is why do these people try to tell me how to do things? Why can't they just mind their own business?
Berlin.(And in a broader sense Germany).Is the land that time forgot.Wheather its dogs or children the desire to control every aspect of life permeates every social interaction.The result is a culture that is totally errelevente.God help the refugees and god help my spelling. I am off to get a bottle of red wine.Peace.xx
I just hate this place,. Mostly for the immaturity and complete lack of soul and inspiration. It is not normal how parents treat their children, constantly telling them to not do something. Like wtf is wrong with these people. There is a child in my yard that cries everyday and every 5 minutes one of his "parents" commands him to stop something or not do something. The child was crying his soul out. So i called 110 so they may take care. Just the guy on the other end started to lecture me about upbringing and acted like I'm some kind of strange person. Emotional abuse is apparrantly a foreign concept here. Then most women do not look/behave like women once they are around 35. Coming back from a holiday in Russia it became very obvious how broken up this place is. I just couldn't believe it was the place. I do miss people there. Oh it was nice. Romantic Plattenbau, friendly warm people, cats and dogs everywhere. People sitting by the river peacefully. I could go on and on about Berlin.
The dogs are actually in Berlin. I confused that. And people don't treat them well. They are constantly shouting at their dogs to come to them. It's so absurd. At times I'm thinking *Just bite him in the ass*. In another way it is sad, truly sad. Yesterday i saw a mother dragging her 4 year old daughter on her bike swearing at her to not bite her again. The child was crying and she was just plain cold towards her. I felt so angry and sorry for the child. It is not normal. The child did the right thing by biting that coldhearted monster. Seriously, lots of mothers are big freaking bullies in this city and they love to show off dominant behaviour.
I feel it is not so contrary. There are actually no contraries :) Things are connected. It is abusive either way. Before you discuss with your child you first would need to neglect their feelings. I think it's the 2 branches of fatherly energy such as encourageing with its negative side being fault-finding and dismissively critical which often gets confused as a solution for not being too lax which is also the negative of the other branch nurture. I agree with you children need orientation and nurture. It is kind of like something you can't really try cause it is natural anyway. That's some thoughts that come to mind, i feel it is not an easy topic.
Today in the Supermarket I get almost in a Fight with a Filthy disgusting Turk/Arab.He threatened me , the reason is laughable he said I took his place in the reverse vending machine,what a Filthy Son of a bitch,seriously the people in this city are the most disgusting people I have ever seen.
whats so funny about this ? lets see if you find it funny when a Refugee steal your pocket or a Arab criminal puch in your face.In fact Berlin is a violent city.
Berlin is too a hole! I walked around and kept wondering...does anyone have a job here????
now with 100,000 + "refugees" it can become a even BIGGER hole, the filth , staring rudeness and rapes and terrorism! super! antiFA!
The only reason to move to Berlin from outside Germany is if you're an art-hipster type in your 20s and want to earn some cool points among your spoiled friends back home or whatever cool city you move to next after you've done everything and get sick of it like everyone else. It's past its peak though, so you may earn more cred living in Lisbon, Budapest, or Bucharest these days since they're less cliche.
If you're hoping to find startup work, check London, Amsterdam, and Barcelona first since you'll likely get paid more and not be cheated. If you're good enough, you can apply for jobs in SF, NY, Seattle and earn a ton more. Even with the higher cost of living, you'll still be able to save more if you're not wasting your money. NY and SF have their own issues, but are also really nice cities.
If you're looking for the stereotypical German cities and culture people think of in English speaking countries, head to Bavaria or Austria.
I'm an immigrant, yes. I come from a developing country, true. But to my surprise jobs here are so underpaid is ridiculous (In Berlin, I usually had customer service jobs picking up phones, desk jobs and similar). I have a college degree but it's ok, I don't expect to use it anyway in a foreign country. But my issue is why should I endure racism, xenophobia and widespread mistreatment for a measly 400$ a month! I literally can make triple easily elsewhere. I don't get why people think Germany is such a rich country, there are more people living in the streets in Berlin than where I come from. Moreover, when other Germans complain that it's only Berlin that is broken up, I have to say: it's not. Other "richer" German cities are the same, no money and all the people living on welfare. Things are even worse in places like Magdeburg, Leipzig, Dresden. Luckily, now I have a new and better job in Spain, yes, Spain. The country Germans love to call uncivilized and poor. In a field actually related to my college degree which is amazing. I am here right now and I am complaining for the first time about Berlin because simply I was too afraid to do so before. Germans and their mind games condition you to be a second class citizen. Luckily for me that time is over. I know that most people in this forum are more prepared, intelligent and educated than me but I have an advice for you all. I encourage, I urge you all to do the same, leave the city, in Germans' eyes you will always be worse than a German no matter how well you do in life. Please reconsider your stay in Berlin and leave as soon as possible.
(I am from Norway btw).
Ok, so I will tell the whole story. I were 3 days in berlin, before I came here I thought people here would be like the people in amsterdam or even happier, why? Maybe because of the beer culture etc. Well, I were so WRONG.
Me and my sister arrived at the airport, Schönefeld. We picked up our baggage and headed for the exit, we tried to find the train station but there were no signs or anything, so we had to ask someone who worked at the airport, the lady didn't smile or nothing, but I did not think so much about it. We did not take out any cash because we thought that our visa cards were accepted here, but no. The machines didn't take card, so we assumed we could by tickets on board. So we tried to find the correct train but that was not easy either, after all of this I became pretty frustrated so we went to get a taxi instead, there were so many taxi's at the airport. Most of started whisteling at us and yelling, I felt the feeling you get when going out late at night with a short skirt, it was a disgusting feeling to be honest. We took the taxi that was standing first in line, he didn't speak good english but we managed to communicate. We showed him the address to our hotell and he started driving without turning the taxi meter on, so I asked him, "How much does it cost?", he yelled "40 euro's" and I was a little stunned by the yelling and said "what?", once again he yelled "40 euros". I thought he maybe he was trying to scam us, but I did not say anything more.
After checking into our hotell we went to primark, but we could not find the entrance (we were on the wrong side of the building). So I tried to ask for directions, I walked to a man and we stared into eachothers eyes but as soon as I said "excuse me...wh" he turned around. Wow, just wow. I went from 0 to 100 I got so angry. I was so shocked on how rude this person was, holy fuck. We just walked until we found the entrance. The casshier did not smile to us either and when we asked for the "special" tax receipt, well she hated her life even more.
Many resturants did not take our visa cards, the people working in general were not nice, they never smiled, there were no service to get at all.
We went to KFC and ordered something to eat. I wanted pepsi light for my meal and my sister ordered regular pepsi, when our order where done i took the food to our table and noticed that the "light button" were not pushed down, so I went back and asked, "which one is the light one?" (Yes, I should have said that they got my order wrong.) The cashier looked at both of them and said "this one" and pushed down the button. (They look totally the same, so how could he have known? Oh wait he didn't! My rage builded again and my hate for this city grew. What if I had diabetes? fornicate sake.
The third shocking expirience happend at the airport when we were leaving. I had gotten some tax receipts that I wanted to get back from the tax refund. In Schönefeld there are atleast 2 buildings, we were in the wrong one and again... no signs. We had to ask, we were directed to terminal a. In terminal a there were no signs, so we asked some guards, apparantly they did not know what tax refund is, they thought I said taxfree and taxi.
So I went to the tourist information and they managed to tell me where to go.
At the tax refund desk I showed the lady my receipts and she said I had to go to a another desk, why? I don't know, there were no good information or service to get. (Also it was my first time trying to get tax back.)
I went to the other desk and gave the man here my receipts and he angry said "open", and I open my map with the receipts and gave it to him then he said "passport" in the same angry way, I gave it to him, then he said "ticket". I did not print out the tickets, so I showed him my phone with the ticket, he said "next time you print out!". He looked at my ticket and said "2 hours!" and again I were stunned by the yelling and I said "what" and he again said, "2 hours!" and I said "what do you mean about 2 hours", he said that I have to come back then. I tried to explain that I arrived early to get this done, he did not care. Apparantly you can't get tax back before it's 2 hours before your flight. So we waited. We checked in and went back.
I got my receipts stampeled and went to the tax refund desk, you know what? It was freaking closed. From this moment I said to myself, fornicate Berlin, never comming back. There was a post box there but I guess I'll never see the money.
I also hate that every freaking channel were in german, dubbed etc. Every person I met were so angry on their life.
I really hate, haaaaate this city!
I thought Norwegians were bad, but wow Berlin people you just took the king of the most pooping people title. Good job.
Sorry to hear about your troubles, but... this is really a great description of everything here. I've had experiences that are so similar to yours that it's funny:
- bad signage (or no signage at all) - check
- extremely unhelpful and rude "helpers" and "assistants" at the airport, mall, etc. - check
- my visa and amex cards not working at 50% of shops and 95% of restaurants - check
- people flat out refusing to speak english when I ask for directions/help - check - ALSO interesting that when the lazy bums and homeless people ask you for money, they speak perfect english.
- people that look like they want to die because their life sucks and they want to take out on you - check
- super freaking rude and weird guy at airport - check - I had the EXACT same treatment during passport control: one word phrases that were hard to understand, guy was almost shouting, speaking half-german (it's a freaking airport, learn english for sexual act sake).
- smell of urine, broken glass, and sweaty people - CHECK - oh god this is so funny, I have a friend who works in a hotel as a cleaner and she says that Germans are the worst guests ever - they always stink and they leave you 18 cents in tips.
Ah, I could go on, but be glad that you're going back home. Some of, as you can see by this site, are stuck here fore a bit longer, but everyone of us is slowly making their escape :).
The thing I totally can't understand. I work hard, I really give my best to make a great job, overwork a lot (my motto: do it good or don't do it at all). And then... none of my colleagues will appreciate it. None will come to me for an advise, none will talk to me about the achievements, ask any thing. Instead they only turn to mediocre people with social skills, and these people are the most popular advisors. What the heck? I feel like people are scared to come talk to me because I work so hard... What the heck???
Well, I won't say I'm boring as a person. I'm rather eccentric, and people from where I used to live never complained that I'm boring. But it seems, that it's not popular here to strive to achieve something. Instead you should imitate work, go drink coffee every five minutes, have your wochenendes and parties, and be bothered with the work whole day long before holy feierabend. And if you show true passion in doing your job, the threat of damping becomes real, and they start ignoring you. It happens involuntarily, you just fall outside the scope of common talks, and people don't want to talk about nothing but parties, anecdotes of how they were drunk the other day, and of course, complains about the job and other co-workers. And those are people making or having PhDs. They engage the same talks as blue-collars. Same, no difference... And their achievements are quite poor to be honest...
Any achievement is frowned upon here. My advice - get out of here. I've heard other German cities are better (Munich, Frankfurt), but in all honest, I'd check out Amsterdam, Paris, London (yeah I know, brexit and all that) or Warsaw, Cracow, Prague.
It took me some time to realize but Berlin is composed of the children of small town folk .Berlin got totalled during the war. So people from the surrounding countryside came here and brought their culture (that's why everything here smells like piss). Sure, they get PhDs, but for them, it's just a piece of paper.
Also, imagine your life if the government pays for everything you do until you finish your PhD. Up until 35 years of age you are, in essence, a child. You never had to work, you never had to risk anything, you never had to make tough choices - just wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, party, and have fun. No direction in life.
If you don't fit to the average Berliner mold then you'd frowned upon, no matter how talented you are and no matter what you do. Just like the comment by the musician from LA posted below. If you do it right and passionately, you are WRONG! You have to be mediocre in every aspect of your life - that's the Berlin way.
I just saw a man walk out of Lidl, root around in the bin in front till he found a carrier bag, tipped out the half eaten done inside and stuffed his shopping in his bag. He then walked to his car, how disgusting can one get to save 10cents
Great advise on this website. Also want to add: if you come from a culture such as Latin American, maybe Southern European, Israeli, etc basically just not your typical Western European person... You might find the coldness here very difficult. If you have decent social skills you can definitely acquire endless acquaintances and casual friends, but to make a real connection, have real warmth, is difficult. Especially if you come from a culture that is far far more warm than what is typical in Berlin. I am experiencing low grade depression right now primarily for this reason. I have made a few pretty close friends, but it's not enough. Everything just feels very cold here.
Also dating German guys: they tend to be good looking, but they lack warmth, personality and nuance. No sense of humor and when they do have a sense of humor, I find it's like a nasty bullying 10 year old child sense of humor. In general I find Germans overcompensate for their insecurities by being passive aggressive and nitpicking at others mistakes or weaknesses. I don't know if this is a German thing or a Berliner thing, but the average person here seems quite insecure. Also German men seem emasculated and this emasculation can make them into douchebags in surprising ways because it breeds this insecurity, where they are not confident in their masculinity. Yet I see the same in women here. The women here seem aggressive, manly and androgynous to me. The dating life here is hard. Many settle for sex and open dating/relationships, because after a while, when you lose human warmth, connections, real friends, etc, you start to become like everyone else around you. Peter Pan syndrome + bad communication + men confused of their masculinity + women confused of their femininity + the sense of endless hedonism, lack of responsibility etc = difficult to create or maintain relationships here.
The expats are all sorts, mainly transient (in Berlin part time or for a few months/years). Difficult to keep up with them.. Many seem to be attracted to Berlin because they think it's just this place they can go to to escape reality. Therefore you tend to find a lot of expats with mental or emotional problems here. Berlin doesn't exactly attract the most talented and brightest... It attracts rejects, for the most part. People come here because they can "be themselves". I still have no idea what that means... What/who was stopping them from being themselves where they were before?
People to the east and north of Germany can be just as warm as you darn southerners :). While I'd say that there's a lot less physical contact in eastern europe, there's a lot more openness and smiling there.
Also, as otehrs have said: your only option is to escape. Preferably before winter because the winter here is a HUGE bummer and if you're suffering low grade depression, you'll fall into major depression. No sun, no expats, just gray, cold, wet (no snow, too!) and very berliner'ish.
I so love Berlin. In fact Im going back in September after a timeout of 2,5 xears which I spent in Cologne. So what does that make me?
people saying they cannot find a job because they cannot find a job IN THEIR DISTRICT! no kidding...so they rather stay unemployed forever ( e.g if they are born in Neukölln they will do everything in Neukölln for the rest of their poor life). Also I hate the drunk drugged beggars in the trains... Seriously this state pays everyone a flat and money for nothing all they have to do is keep their poop together and don't miss the job centre appointments. But they do and decide to bother people on the way to work instead. Totally uncool. But it meets the spirit of Berlin. Being ruthless selfish and lazy is confused with being cool and independent.
There is no opportunity to have a fair salary for experienced foreign professional. You should compete with fresh graduates for salary expectation. Eventually, all those startups didn't aim for RESULT, they just playing in the game named "Find investor-waste all money-find new round". Formally they cut down expenses for labor, but this is the false mirror
80% of startups in Berlin are disgusting... total leeches on society. "Oh but it's the sharing economy...' boll*cks! it is the undercutting economy. There is nothing sadder than seeing some phd (probably studied philosophy...) grad riding a clapped out bicycle delivering pizzas to a load of Instagram models. Don't get me started on the folks who make meal boxes. This is all lifestyle poop with no integrity. There are no Salman Khans, Jimmy Wales here, just a bunch of wankers using interns or people with low self esteem as slaves.
Avoid like the plague. They may blabber on about social justice etc. Ask them how many people they employ or what they're doing to help the situation. The answer 'f*ck all'.
Sorry rant over. Also, happy Friday! may you all drown your sorrows and smile at strangers.
Yeah, startups here works like this:
1. Get money from investors.
2. Buy club mate and computers.
3. Create product no body uses.
4. Buy more club mate. Send people to conferences.
5. Lose those 3 users they had.
5a. (All the while paying salaries with someone's money)
6. Time to close up shop. "Bad market fit". Great resume item.
7. Founders and management get jobs at Big Gray German Companies (probably some automaker that cheats on emissions). Everybody else gets stuck on berlin startup carousel.
> may you all drown your sorrows and smile at strangers.
The locals will hate you for it. The expats will smile back knowingly. I'm ready to head out to welcome to gray autumn evening with some thai and beer. If you see a guy walking and smiling, say hi, that's me.
This is my story, kinda related. I was hired as a programmer in Berlin so I came down to the city to work in one of these over-hyped companies which really was a slightly better organized startup. They offered me 2500€ monthly. I gave them a counterproposal because I thought it was not enough for a coding position but they said that they could raise it after a few months in and gave me the same old argument of "but Berlin is cheap and fun yada yada" and I accepted mainly because I wanted a reason to live in Europe and explore the world. It was a surprise after I arrived in Berlin that: first the salary they offered was fake and second it did not include taxes or insurance but it's ok they offered me a raise, spoiler, it never happened. So let's break it down with some math. Of the 2.5k they offered only 1600€ was the real salary, no explanation. Supposedly, the rest was going to come to us in some form of bonds-stocks-options of the company next year. I guess this has something to do with the culture which until 2015 didn't have laws against exploitation and minimum salary. Approx 50% goes away in taxes which leaves us with 800-900€ of salary. 200-300€ of insurance premium, also goes away which is mandatory of course, as I'm not a EU citizen so I have to pay to one of these private insurance companies. That leaves us with approx 550€ to survive. What! Literally, Hartz 4 losers make more money than me while sitting on their butts all day. With that kind of money you can barely pay rent but that's ok, I've got savings and can do better I thought. So i got another job with a similar pretence, only this time it was actually 2800€ monthly with option of raise within 6 months, spoiler alert, it didn't come. Even though that is a 33k a year salary, if you break it down month by month you get, approx. 1300€ after taxes of which you have to pay 350€ - 400€ of insurance premium which leaves you with 1000€. If I paid 600€ in rent that would only leave me 400€ to eat, dress, transportation and to do stuff in a not so cheap city. To put that in perspective if you had this job you wouldn't have enough credit score to even buy a car. Right now, I literally make more money in an online website I made on weekends and nights while living in Berlin than what my company pays me. After my contract finishes this fall I'm soooo out of here. By the way, the rest of the city also sucks. Party and fun capital of Europe my ass.
I'm developer also. Startups are crap, they're after exploiting employees financially. My company offers 600euro for interns..600 euro for a university graduate engineer??!?!!
If you read exciting tech scene in Berlin etc it's a lie. Nobody knows how to develop software, except American originated companies. Engineering quality is not comparable to London or USA.
I'm also a dev working in startups. Salary is not always a problem I can think of some companies that are known to pay very badly (does incubator ring a bell?) while others seem to pay too well (at least when I see who they hire...) but overall this scene is a myth. It seems they think that "growing" is more important than actually delivering value which results in strange hiring ecstasy where everyone gets hired who did not say no early enough. Which results in big chaos and frustration and finally in firing most of them in the end. It's almost never the case that you have experienced technical people in the management nor that the dev department is really valued. How can they even think that a 20-something year old guy with no real-life experience can be CEO or CTO when all his employees have already more working experience? Also how can it be that someone is hired as Senior whatever who does not know the basics just because he lied about half his resume? I would love to work with some professionals at some point...just not sure where to find them ;)
Needless to say if you're a person of color (my case) job hunting becomes an impossible task. This actually happened to me: interviewer: "wow you look exotic, I bet you know a ton of weird languages?", me: "not really, just english and some German". interviewer: "I know you applied for a technical position but are you interested in customer service? In that way you can use your <<multiple languages>>, we are a company that pays well in the city so we can offer you 400€ monthly". After hearing that I just left. I almost lose it when he said that.
Most HR people here in Berlin are retards. Don't get me wrong, I'm not discriminating people on their jobs, most of the community are living corpses, but really HR people are extra stupid. They ask stupid questions , and they really seem to care the answer?!? Next time, if someone asks "what is your greatest weakness?", I'll answer "your genitals"!