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American here. One time I had to pick up a package from a neighbor. Some dude I'd never seen before (or since, luckily). I have a very English-sounding name. Showed up at the door and some big, chubby German dude answers. I say "Hi I'm X, did you accept a package for me?" (in German) and the guy responds (obviously drunk) with "I don't believe you." presumably because I can speak German. Then he continued "So you are X from Texas?" and starts laughing. It's always the same thing with these knuckle draggers. And I lived in Mitte at the time! I really wish people who pretend Germany is an international city could spend a day watching that guy. This city and its inhabitants are such a cruel joke.
Why are Germans constantly chiming in to give us their opinions of Germany or the city? Are they paid by the state? Do they never realize they have as completely different experience as a German than any foreigner ? www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-and-worst-things-about-living-in-Berlin
And again.... asking about Berlin being safe for a young black woman... only Germans chiming in
www.quora.com/Is-Berlin-Germany-safe-for-a-young-black-woman
“We’re not racist. And if you experienced it then it didn’t happen
Well, Germans have no personalities so on Quora they all enter "Germany" as one of their interests and so the questions are pushed to them. They'll answer with a qualifier next to their names that say "I'm German" or something similar as if that lends them credibility. The Quora system is completely stupid though, and they will also ban you if you say anything bad about Germany. Look up the question "What's the most German thing ever" for some things that slipped through the system though.
Wow. The measuring of the waste bin
www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-German-thing-ever
LOL so many obvious lies in the question. A cabbie taking you somewhere for free in Berlin? Germans who drove a bunch of people to the airport for free because there was a public shooting that stopped the trains? Why's it always people with Indian names claiming Germany is so great? Almost all of the top answers are not believable at all.
German media is so weird. Just looked at spiegel.de and the first 10 articles are about Donald Trump. Today is one of the most important German public holidays and they don't even devote a single article among the first 10 to that? What a massive joke.
You’ll only love Berlin long term if you come from the third world, if you are a rich kid pretending to be poor, if you are gay or if you are a drug addict
I'm also gay. There are way too many completely messed up gays here. 50 year old, leathery men who hang out in the parks and try to lure you over. Or at the gay pride parade last year I saw so many men having sex in full view of everyone else. There was some guy completely naked just walking behind the floats with a massive boner. No one did anything, not even the MANY police that were everywhere. If anything, Berlin gays make people hate homosexuals even more.
See stuff online about Berlin. ? Cool, if you don’t have rich parents or work cash (illegal) you will not be able to afford to have a fun life sorry to say . Pretty much only possible if you come in with capital to invest
in the end all of this sh1t will have been worth it. You just have to believe it.
Really? I left and I don’t see the point, I feel like I wasted my time trying to adapt to a society. Someone mentioned on here before Berlin was like a RPG game where you have to get the sword before you can enter the next chamber/level and get the key, but to get into the chamber you need the key. Those are my feelings exactly. It’s a bunch of jumping through hoops and in the end you really get nothing and nowhere
no i dont mean berlin is a long term option, i just mean even if it is sh1t right now and u have to wait before getting away, there are still reasons why a tough experience can be beneficial. And berlin is highly unique and does make you realise how capitalistic other places are in comparison.
After 10 years I am leaving this place. And thinking about what I have learned here that might help somewhere else. Maybe only one thing: If I was able to make it in Berlin, I can make it anywhere.
I hope it is true though. I lived most of my adult years here so far, no idea if the situation somewhere else will be better, but I think so, because people in other places are much friendlier, there will be less dirt, less stress, and those terrible service people. I speak German fluently and I am nice towards strangers but those elderly service women are tough. The most unfriendly people I have met in Berlin. Can't get worse than that. F*ck Berliner Schnauze!
Living in Berlin helped me realize that a city can vote in radical leftist politicians for decades and still not make any social progress. The number of people living in poverty in Berlin only goes up. The number of homophobic attacks in Berlin is higher than in all other German cities combined. The murder rate in Berlin is higher than anywhere else in Germany. People in Berlin would be happy to earn 1500eur a month as long as their company has a workers council and the company claims it conserves electricity or something.
15% home ownership in Berlin. 1300 eur is a median salary in Berlin. Can't find an apartment here for less than 350,000 EUR. You couldn't live long enough to ever afford real estate here. And the Plattenbauten. Jesus, how do people live in those for years? You can hear your neighbors flushing the toilet, walking across the floor, sneezing, washing dishes, etc. Feels like living in cheap student housing.
Or another example. Berlin has all of these female empowerment initiatives but they don't do anything for anyone except the people who lead them. Anyone with half a brain can tell you why women in Berlin are more likely to be poor than men: because almost twice as many women are working part time jobs. The lefty politicians here think they can "fix" that by guaranteeing everyone with children a Kita spot but that's just stupid. First of all, there are too few Kitas and they can make you take your kid to one that is up to 30 minutes away (i.e. 1 hour travel). Second of all, Kitas are like 4 hours of childcare each day so they don't help shit, unless you just want to give parents a break from their children. 50% of children born in Berlin are from parents that are not married (the % is highest in all of the former GDR). I wonder which political ideology led to that...
Anyone else notice how much all of the big English-language Berlin/Germany communities online are completely afraid of any criticism of Germany at all? Every single group on Facebook and Reddit will ban you without warning if you are able to make an argument against Germany with reasoning and by providing sources. Is it just German fragility or something more sinister?
@OP yes I've noticed and it drives me nuts. It's almost as if the expats on reddit have angry germans watching over their shoulders as they write their comments. I was absolutely hating it here and couldn't figure out why. I came across this site and all was explained.
Things used to be different. As I understand it, Tencent (a huge Chinese company) unofficially purchased Reddit last year for 300 million dollars. Look through the trending topics on any day on Reddit with that fact in your mind and it all makes perfect sense. If the English-language subreddits are infiltrated by Chinese I do not know, but an important thing to always remember about Germans is that they'll go to the greatest lengths possible to see post-1990 Germany as a force for good. Just look at the massive support for bringing in refugees even after it became 100% clear that many of the people who got here as refugees went on to commit heinous crimes. It's why when you look at any poll on Germans' views on immigrants you'll see they hate them but in every poll about allowing more refugees they're over 90% in support. It makes no sense unless you accept that Germans hate themselves ONLY for their past and are constantly afraid of being reminded of it. If you want to hit a German where it hurts then explain to them with numbers why modern Germany is not a good place to be.
If they hate foreigners then why do they talk to people! Anyone find it creepy some Germans in Berlin ten years and they make friends with the new foreigners ? So where are all their other friends? Just wait a bit for the random freak out over something trivial to get blocked and yelled at and creepily stared from a block away because they fried their brain one decade on drugs
They are weird. Ex of mine had only two types of friends and kept them strictly divided that way: Germans she had known since first grade and foreigners she knew from traveling. The friends from school she would speak to once or twice a year but pretended their friendship was so deep I couldn't ever understand it. The foreigners she also saw only once or twice a year when on a trip somewhere and they changed frequently becauss it is easy to cut off a person you barely know. Other than that her only friend was a wine bottle.
I’m so happy I realized my program at a German university was crap in the first semester. Imagine if I had ploughed through 12-14 hour days with attendance, and with the result of just landing some internship or mini job? Still remembering my prof saying 2k a month was a great salary...
Haha... I also remember something similar. I went to the bank and was asking about getting a small loan to help start my business and I was teaching english at the time for poop wages and I was barely surviving.... the guy at the bank asked me how much I took home per month and I told him 1500 Euro and was embarrassed... he said.. Wow, that's really good! I was like??? no it isn't.. it is crap!
Wish I would have noticed. 14 hour days for me with uni and part time job. Always eating lunch while walking or riding train because no time to sit down. Never enjoyed student life because always busy in class or at work. Finished and I am earning less than before I had a degree. You can't even get a career type job here without 5 internships and a traineeship so even if you do everything right you are at least 30 before you can even think about shopping at Edeka rather than Lidl.
The university education in this country is a massive joke. I completed my masters here in English.
Classes were only covering theoretical knowledge and all I had to do in order to pass classes was writing 5 pages of paper with book references. The final exams were another joke. I remember a question on a final exam which was asking for missing parts (words / terms) from an image shown in the class. Those type of questions should not be asked on masters level.
The "good" side is that, Germany has unfair good reputation abroad so for other European countries, having masters degree from Germany can be used as valuable asset.
I did some law classes here. One of our exams was based ONLY on about 5 pages from an English-language book on German legal company forms (GmbH, KG and all that stuff). No cases. No paragraphs or statutes. It was seriously just four pages of questions that were all answered in five pages in a book. Questions like "Who much capital is needed to found a GmbH?". And the worst part? It was an OPEN BOOK EXAM.
A city full of cunts - the perfect blend of confused self-loathing idiocy and a cheesy 90s hippy nightmare, all disguised as "openness". Moving to London to live in a grown up city.
Sending a big hug back to you! If you are an EU citizen, try to move to London by the end of 2020 as it will be more complicated afterwards. That is what I will be doing in November. I am not expecting it will be easy, but there is so many things I could do over there that do not even exist in Berlin. Wishing you all the best with your plans!
How do I recover from the negativity of berlin
just remember it wasn't you... tell yourself that every day and hopefully someday you will believe it again!
I hate the word Handy for mobile phones! Who the fornicate came up with this word? Yea its handy, but wtf name it Handy?
Mandy Handy German cunt!
Supermarket full as hell because tomorrow is a holiday. Nice (foreigner) security guy tells me I can use express lane and the end because the line simply isn't moving. All aisles are blocked because so many people out. Get to the express lane and wait. Finally make it up and the cashier leaves. Wait and wait. There are two cashiers in the express lane so I ask him if the other one is on break. He doesn't know. Keeps scanning stuff. Eventually realizes I am waiting like an idiot. Asks some old Berliner couple if they'd mind if he scans my stuff because I have been waiting longer than them. They give that passive-aggressive German "dann mach doch" grunt but refuse to move their poop from the darn band. I say wtf man and they say "there's another hole in the plexiglas over there". Too sick of daily life here I can't even explain to these grunts that the cashier can't keep track of what he scanned and what not if it's all in a single pile. Say fornicate it and get ready to leave. 2nd cashier finally comes back and is surprisingly nice, even kind of flirts with me in a really non-berlin/feminine way. Can't stand Germans so I pretend not to notice. Why is it always like this here?
Why are they even celebrating reunification? Wessis still understandably hate ossis. Ossis still wish there were a protectionist wall along the Elbe where they can pretend command economies work. I don't understamd who this holiday is for. At the very least, Berlin needs to be fenced in with razorwire and electrified chainlink. Escape from New York should have been set here and instead of convicts just have the psychos you see on the streets here everyday.
Germans like making fun of you to your face, a joke that only themselves are in on. Psychopaths
People here either wear rags or blow their money on impractical fetish gear. It’s as if people purposely try to look as bad as possible when they leave the house.
No. It's just in Berlin you realize you do not need to give a darn anymore about how you look. You could be lying on the street dead or take a dump somewhere without people caring, so why bother? Also in Berlin many people are somewhat aggressive and inside their bubble most of the time. When I go out, I hate the whole city and every person because Berlin sucks and everybody I meet sucks. So why dress up for people whose opinion I give a rat's butt about? They can kiss my badly dressed ass.