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I regularly read topics on r/germany/ (Reddit) and Germans seem to be very much out of touch with reality when It comes to their culture / country.
What bugs me most is that, they treat B2 level of language proficiency is something like no brainer. With B1 level proficiency, you can get German citizenship (= EU citizenship) by the way. Additionally, If we look at the people worldwide who do work in English, the overall proficiency is most likely B1. But of course in this holly land, you can't find job with B1 proficiency because "It is not good enough for Germans / Germany"
I don't understand what they expect from Ausländers. IT people come and work, they get slap on the wrist that they don't speak German. People do get B1 level of language and get citizenship and leave, then "The Ausländers come and go without contributing our country" Healthcare people do come here to work and of course they het critisized for their language level and they do ask so many questions... etc
The best thing you can do in Germany to care of yourself and your life only. It's impossible to satisfy Germans as "Ausländer". Just try to benefit from living in Germany utmost for yourself and decide what you want to do next with your life.
Not that I defend Germans, but if you are a high skilled worker, maybe you should get a slap on the wrist… They need you, not viceversa. Should be easy and appealing…
If you have no skills or low skills and you want to live here…you want to be a citizen? Why? There’s a housing crisis, most don’t want to do lucrative jobs, everyone wants to be a career guru while wasting time on social welfare…
A lot of unemployed people in Berlin would rather leech off than work in a Bäckerei while finding their purpose… why adding more people that take and not contribute to your country “payroll”?
The different language threshold depends on your record and ngl, it should be like that…
I'm not really following what the 2nd guy wrote, but I'll say this: if a country gives you a work visa and the only job you get is delivering Lieferando orders for minimum wage then why the hell would you learn German and, more importantly, why would you care about some dumb German's opinion? And if you're some AI engineer maverick with an illuminated poster of Jesus on your office wall, why the hell would you waste bandwidth on learning German? Constant German henpecking does one thing really well, namely reduces the effect of German henpecking to zero. You think I care when some Krautcunt "tsk tsk"s me at the supermarket? I smile and pack my bags extra slowly and pay in exact change. Also most reddit posters are fcking German government AI bots or retard shut-ins. Just sort by controversial in the threads to read sane comments.
Time for two difficult confessions:
1. I've been in Berlin a long, long time. Pathetic is what it is.
2. I moved here from the U.S. when I was still a teenager, so I assumed I would assimilate in Germany like the many naturalized Americans I knew growing up had done in the U.S.. I learned German to C2, I went to university here, I worked in German companies, had German friends, ate German food. I even went on a few "all inclusive" German vacations. But after years of trying, I realized you can never "become" a German. Every conversation always ends up being about America in one way or another and it's usually because of some German asking loaded questions. It used to make me mad. Then it made me sad. In fact, it really affected my confidence for a long time and I seriously thought I was the problem. Eventually I stopped caring, I try to only spend time with other non-Germans now. QoL improved immeasurably. If you're like I was, please realize you are probably not the problem. Germans are just weird and tribal, which is strange given how much they hate themselves but that's the reality.
Funny thing is that once I really started to believe it, everything started to fall into place for me. Better job. Better relationships. Even the minor annoyances in stores or on the street, what I like to call the Hysterical German Phenomenon, they almost entirely stopped happening. Rarely do these nasty middle aged German women try to boss me around anymore and on the rare occasion they so I just laugh at them. In summary, don't even try to integrate here, it makes absolutely no sense.
I'm polite and respectful with them (and everyone else, even the 13th-century Arab manlets) by default but if they act up and start being cunnnty I just laugh at them like the retarded autistic children so many of them are. But mostly they're respectful and polite too as long as they don't sense any weakness. If they do, the sadism comes out fast.
Thanks for your honesty, OP. I've been here for 12 years! Arrived while still in love and full of hope for the future. I sometimes question why I'm still here. My working theory is that I have business relationships here and that I would have to overcome inertia to move back to my home country. Last month, I barely had enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. I mostly keep myself to myself as my work allows that.
My few German friends are intelligent enough to see through the self myths that others spew (I.e. efficiency, well organised, dour is more genuine than friendly etc etc). I was down voted to oblivion on r/askagerman for daring to suggest that a fellow Brit should use facts and reality to inform Germans about current British culture instead resorting to cheap tropes about British bread being terrible compared to the Yeasty Land of Amazing Deutsch Brot in order to curry favour with his German mates. Tbh, I couldn't stand this kind of "stuff in our country is best because it's from our country" attitude in Britain either. Morons are morons no matter what it says on the passport.
I sometimes wonder if there's a country/city/town/village/hovel that would suit my personality. Probably not. As long as I get to spend a lot of time on my own, anywhere reasonable would do.
I no longer hate Germans or Germany. My life is my responsibility and as soon as it's financially viable I'll be visiting other places to assess if I want to move there. Sorry, bit of an unfocused ramble. Needed to get a few things off my chest.
One thing I noticed is that some people in Berlin reacted with visceral disgust if I displayed emotional vulnerability. This was mostly in East Berlin. They must have utterly mind broken by the STASI. Bless their polyester adidas shorts.
I was going to move here fall of 2003. Came for a visit and was shocked how assholey everyone was. Watched Bowling for Columbine in English at some theater and everyone in the audience laughed mockingly when some American woman was interviewed and said (paraphrasing) "I own a gun for self protection. If I had to call the cops and wait I would be dead". Realized people here are just idiots in that moment. Fast forward 18 years and I get sent here for work. Luckily only 8 more months.
www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/exklusiv-straftaeter-kommen-frei-polizei-berlin-faehrt-nur-noch-zu-dringendsten-einsaetzen-li.2215302
No money for safety. Where is all the Tax Money going? So glad I dont live in idiot Berlin anymore what a hellhole it is. Germany is over.
I hate Berlin and the shitscape reality this place is, but that article is just a lobbying piece painting out a scenario of exaggerations of what will happen if the budget cuts go through. It's public negotiation. I also agree that for the amount of tax you have to pay here (including income tax, mandatory contributions and then the ridiculous VAT basically everyone actually working pays more than 50% tax) is in no relation to public services. But this is one article that doesn't worry me. Even if the budget cuts are bad, surely even the braindead German bureaucrats would cut the "online insult task force" before the one surveiling terrorists. Also Germany is still building the world's largest secret police HQ in Berlin, and I am 100% sure there's a German version of FISA courts that just doesn't have any whistleblowers to talk about it in this spineless hole. Finally, extremely weird that the article leads with describing a fictitious scenario where they cannot convict a terrorist due to lack of evidence - the literal baseline of a "Rechtsstaat" Germany pretends to be.
Contrary to popular belief, Zersetzung isn't an east German invention. It's an inherently German things passed down for millenia and deeply ingrained in the German. It's why you must never get close to these oafs.
There was a popular German parenting manual that was available until the 1970s that was mostly a rehash of Nazi material. Included the advice that crying infants should not be picked up or comforted in order to breed self reliance. As soon as I heard about this I thought, "that explains the miserable faces."
Which way, German man? On the left we have energy rationing, increasing taxes, insult laws, endless refugees and trannies as far as the eye can see. And on the right we'll soon have slavery. Time to leave bros.
www.zerohedge.com/political/shocking-headline-day-germany-re-introduce-slavery
Pardon my French, what what the F*CK kind of political party is the FDP if they support this? They fancy themselves the most palatable form of libertarianism possible in Europe and then they publicly support this, which by the way will 100% be enforced by imprisonment just like the Germans did up until about 10 years ago with forced military service for men. This is so tragic it isn't even funny.
Kind of a catch-22 for German authorities though, they aren't going to naturalize any of the post 2014-era refugees ever and they aren't going to apply these rules to foreigners either. Maybe they'll do like the US post 9/11 where they'll FasTrack your citizenship if you serve in the military, but I am pretty sure no one really cares about getting German citizenship. I work with a lot of people here in tech who are considering getting it but only for the EU free movement thing. Germany is like the retarded redneck Appalachia of Europe except with more incest and state sponsored pedophilia.
Why doesn't German media post any positive statistics? Like the growing apostasy rate among muslims? Seems it will or already has surpassed their birthrate. I thought Germany loves diversity, why no love for no love for ex-muslims?
There's an iconic reddit post, it's probably 10 years old by now, where a guy rants about how Germany sucks. How everyone is an asshole. How no one can drive. The classics. But one genius insight he mentioned is that Germans are very aware of the German stereotype of being assholes, but they all think it doesn't apply to them. They all think they're magical unicorns that grew up exclusively in this abrasive society and somehow managed to be normal. It's just the OTHER Germans. What a joke.
Peak German
www.reddit.com/r/Ratschlag/comments/1cq25ru/wie_entspannt_man_richtig/
If you're a parent of a baby or a toddler, you'll have spent some time in one of the several playgrounds scattered in this city. When you do, pay close attention to those toddlers names. It's either an Emil, or a Leon or a Matteo or a Noah. All of them. Thousands of Noah's, Emils, Elias at a push. All of them, rich poor black white yellow green, will be coming to the playground on their shiny new Woom bicycle, pink for the girls and orange or green for the boys. All of them. And you tell me this is a city of free thinkers and anticonformists?
"Tag der Befreiung" is an absolutely bizarre holiday to have in Germany. It reeks of learned helplessness and avoidance of any accountability whatsoever. And from a German perspective, it wasn't liberation from anything, obviously, both because Germany was the aggressor in the War AND because the Russians were quite cruel occupiers once it was ended.
TF is wrong with the tap water here that for public drinking fountains they have to run the water constantly for a month with big warning signs not to drink it while it's being "disinfected"? And then after all that they're so afraid of the water getting lukewarm that they don't even buy buttons for the fountains, so they are all on 24/7 for the six months of the year that temperatures are on average above freezing, which wastes so much water that they only install like 10 free drinking fountains across this whole 3.5M city? How braindead do you have to be to devise this plan? Are Germans really this retarded?
One strange thing imparted on me by a German during a impressionable period in my life was that beauty is somehow to be distrusted. We all know the irrational German fear of shallowness and superficiality, but the somewhat more hidden corollary is that ugliness is authentic, real. It's reflected in everything here from the standard design of residential areas (Raufasertapete over concrete walls) to municipal buildings (color pallettes chosen to literally invoke disgust) to the trains stations, walkways - really almost anything except a few things built by foreign companies and then only rarely.
The fact is that Germans HATE beauty more than anything because it's imprecise, ambiguous and, I'll admit, subjective. Architecture aside, simply watch a youthful woman in a nice dress here as she walks the streets. Germans, especially older women, look with absolute scorn. The same old German women who themselves inexplicably chop all their hair off at age 40 and dye it weird shades of red/orange, who are physically unable to form a smile, who wear formless bags of cotton which smell like a teenage locker room.
It took a lot of conscious effort for me to realize that beautiful people are usually much more pleasant than ugly ones. For one, beauty is only possible with an inherent understanding of individualism as a positive force, i.e. I am me, I can maximize the self, and I must form voluntary alliances to reach self actualization (or at least work in that trajectory). Instead Germans hate individualism as well, and rely on a coercive system of collectivism that has killed all incentive to aim for any target. Germans seem to just see themselves as being moved by the invisible current of the world. For example, I know many Germans with "friend groups" that consist purely of people that don't like each other, but attended school together from age 6. Not ever mixing classes makes a deterministic world seem likely and reduces any feeling of autonomy. We all know the German concept of "Freund" - a very serious and solemn word reserved only for people you have known for at least 50% of your life.
I'm thinking about this today because there are so many truly ugly people here. People with zero spark in their eyes for anything at all. You see it in their posture, their mannerisms. It's easy to be sucked into this imaginationless nation of postmodernist materialists, but please resist. Berlin has taken it's toll on me, but the one way to win is to stay positive, take care of yourself, and relearn how to smile.
I don’t think many even know what determinism means, but… there will always be an explanation or someone, something else that is to blame…
Germans know no accountability, saying sorry and asking for forgiveness when they‘re wrong or they have wronged people is - culturally - seen as a weakness, which -paradoxically - makes them very weak people.
Had to go to some event space today. Doesn't really matter why. In the foyer, there was some kind of communist/Marxist even taking place. They were giving away free used books on typical leftist topics for donations (fine, I don't care). They were also selling tshirts and sweaters and bags with Karl Marx's picture on them (cringe and ironic, but ok whatever). Weirdest part was they taped "all gender" signs over the men's bathrooms (but left the women's bathrooms alone). I really wonder who that is supposed to benefit. I don't think women or even trannies really want to see guys in the bathroom pissing at the urinals. Do they just pull these stunts for exhibitionists who want to shock unsuspecting visitors? The number of guys I have seen jerking it in public bathrooms leads me to conclude men should definitely be segregated. German men are just nasty
The people there truly looked like you would expect communists to look. Like American Apparel models only hairier and sort of slack jawed, vacant stares -blue hair, piercings, tattoos. Why they decided to have this event on ascension day? Well... In the first draft of the communist manifesto retard extraordinaire Karl Marx said communism would "supercede the need for religion and family", so today offered a unique opportunity to attack both simultaneously.
These retards trot out the hammer and sickle every weekend now which is a symbol of hate and death under which probably 200 million people were killed. Just reading about the holodomer gives me nightmares. I don't want it banned (because banning symbols is simply retarded and typisch deutsch), but I don't really see an argument for treating it any different than the swastika. But Germans are "blind in the left eye".
You can immediately sense men in these spaces are evil. They pretend their supportive of the absolute Trainwreck of women are attracted to communism and totally abuse their trust. They're the same white men they themselves hate with passion, but use made up genders or dye their hair green or get hooked on drugs or act completely autistic to feign harmlessness. But they're not harmless. And I know this because I used to be one of them. Funny thing is, the moment you realize you're smart enough to be a normal person, you become a normal person. I thank God every day for helping me escape this psychotic ideology.
The Marie-Thérèse Kaiser case is a hilarious example of Germany's impotence, stupidity and enthusiastic self-culling. Got fined 6000 euros for citing government statistics about rape and gang rape by Afghan migrants (Afghans commit 70 times more gang rapes than your average white-blooded Jurgen or Stefan).
"Those who attack human dignity cannot invoke freedom of speech," the judge in the case proudly proclaimed.
No one really seems to care about all the women getting raped by incest-ridden grown toddlers with brains and souls and cultures warped beyond repair by Islam. More important not to say anything bad about Allah.
Also pathetic that only stupid AfD kkkunts like Kaiser are the main ones talking about how handing Europe to a bunch of migrant men with the most despicable religion on the planet and from the most backwards countries on the planet might not have been a great idea.
It‘s because they ARE racists as fornicate and need to hide it… Their brain cannot compute unless there’s a rule about it.
A non-racist person has the capacity to assess a person by their actions, while still acknowledging that there are certain cultures that are not compatible.
You can meet ultra decent people from all cultures that don’t necessarily represent their culture and others that do. The secret is to judge the person in front of you for what it is and how it acts, the ethnic background, race and all that shouldn‘t bias you if the person is likeminded. Sure, some are simply divisive from the get go, but you get it.
Germans need clear indicators on whose good and whose bad, and there can be no in-between.
If you say all Muslims are bad, you‘re xenophobic (and you are, tho) but also… if say all Muslims are good, you‘re equally moronic about it.
The layers of the topic is too complex for a bunch of inherently racists.
Don't celebrate the nascent exodus from leftwing populism too early. Germans are a lot of things, but moderates they are not. Wouldn't surprise me if there were new concentration camps built before the end of this decade.
When Germans behave moderately it's mostly because they don't understand something new or happening around them (because they're pretty dim tbh) and are afraid of it so they just slam on the breaks, like a senile old man who thought he saw a opossum 300 meters down the road in front of him.
"Ahhhh, die Beutelratte!!!!"
But after a few more times he'll accelerate and run the poor thing over, cackling giddily, because that's what Germans are really like, they're just too slow on their feet to do it the first few times around.
Turns out there aren't really opossums in Germany though, which actually aids the metaphor, because whatever the senile old German thought he saw wasn't even there and the next time he probably just accelerates to run over some poor Indian medical student who thought he'd have a bright future by coming here.