...
Any city over-run with brainwashed, lefty, virtue-signalling students is going to turn to shiiiit sooner or later..
did anybody notice that the tap water tastes like crap here? Mention this to any Berliner and he will go apeshit about how GOOD the Berlin water is and what HIGH QUALITY but it freaking reeks, and every lake and whatever water you encounter stinks as well.
Had a washing machine replaced once. Unhooked the old one after it broke and it stood there for about a week before the new one was delivered. When they were taking the old one away for me some water from the hose splashed out and got on the floor. Smelled just like extremely rotten eggs just from sitting there for a week. So gross. Ever notice how often coffee machines in offices here are broken? It's because the idiots are too dumb to properly filter the hard water here and it clogs everything up. There are also naturally low levels of lithium in the water here, which makes people more depressed and more aggressive.
YES! The water here stinks like stagnant pond water.
Add white vinegar to your rinse cycle in place of fabric softener. It will remove the smell and improve the crunchy lint-encrusted texture that fresh laundry gets here.
The only water filters that work are those that use a chamber of ceramic beads and brine to remove the minerals by ionic charge. Don't waste your money on chlorine/metal/charcoal filters.
was berlin always this bad or did it get worse
I can't help but think they engineered Berlin to be extremely annoying. Everything seems about 25% too small. The roads (especially now that they've effectively reduced the size of many roads to 50% their normal size to accommodate bikes), the ovens, the refrigerators, the kitchens, the bathrooms, the supermarkets (they are more like 50% too small), the thickness of the walls/ceilings. If I wanted to I could put my ear to the floor in my apartment and hear every word my downstairs neighbor is saying when he's speaking at a normal volume. Feels like a powder keg just waiting to blow. No wonder it was so easy to recruit Stasi informants during the GDR. If I could've gotten my upstairs neighbor locked away in a political prison and wouldn't have had to hear him walking around for a while I would have done it.
I often get the impression many people don't mind, but to not mind, they have to be crazy and very thick-skinned, which then causes them to bump into you, be mindless, loud, and in general just annoying pricks. I used to arrive for work at Potsdamer Platz U2 and the whole subway station is a bad joke, especially when you want to leave it, with some giant colums in the middle right before the exit to block your way, and turtle and snail people everywhere, further blocking exit and stairs. Whenever I see nice houses they are on huge, noisy streets. Everything that could be nice in Berlin is ruined by something terrible next to it.
Yeah I have also noticed the same thing. Had a gf for a while and when I'd sleep over almost every night the neighbor would play really loud techno music. For the longest time I never heard her complain and when she finally did one day, she didn't even say like "fucking annoying asshole" she just said "oh, is someone playing music?" and didn't seem mad at all. On the other hand she would slam doors and stomp around all the time for no reason, not because she was mad or anything, just because that's how she was. Which is kind of weird because she was little and skinny.
You're also right about everything good here being ruined by something terrible. There's no way up in Berlin.
They have this very weird mentality here, they call it being tolerant, but to me it's just being an ignorant arsehole. Why? Because first, how can you NOT be bothered by the levels of noise that are normal here? How can you THINK a clear thought with constant bam bam bam bam bass in the background and door slamming and floor rattling and so on? How can you read a book, maybe a book that requires you to think as well, with the constant noise? I wonder how is a person that does not get bothered by such noise at all. Maybe I envy that person, but I don't trust this level of being ignorant.
Than there are the people who admit they are bothered but then act like this is something bad. Because you have to be TOLERANT all the time. You can not admit something sucks and you would prefer your idiot neighbor NOT to slam the door or listen to poop music all the time so loud you have to hear it. BUT: You want to be loud yourself. That is why you tolerate it.
It's surely fine to a certain degree. When my neighbors talk loudly in front of our windows, I remember the times when I am loud, and it does not bother me so much. It helps with living together like sardines in a tin. Then on the other hand: Why do some people have to be such brutes?
I had to bear a little, skinny girl in a student cafe, we were trying to study there, she was walking up and down barefooted and the floor sounded like a drum. There was so much weight in every step. I had to leave because I can't concentrate with this ffucking BONGO SOUNDTRACK and ground shaking all the time.
One of my friends used to sit in her kitchen with the windows open. Every few seconds her kitchen door would slam with a loud noise. She didn't even twitch and was continuing to work on her laptop. I watched this for a while, confused, then asked her why she does not close the door. Can't she hear it's slamming into the doorframe every 30 seconds? She said she doesn't mind.
WELL NICE. MAYBE YOUR NEIGHBORS DO MIND THOUGH. FFUCK YOU.
In this part of the city there is a really nice library. GUESS WHAT. People are talking loudly, children and teenagers are screaming on topf of their lungs and running around. There is so much ruckus. The library even has bad reviews because it's so loud but nobody cares. I'm not someone who schhhhhs everytime someone whispers a word, I don't mind conversations, but those people talk really loud as well. BLABLABLALBLA. It echoes through the giant hall. High pitched laughter follows. Then elephant footsteps. Excuse me??? I am trying to concentrate in this effing LIBRARBY here. Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I wonder if it is a form of torture. Like seriously. Because in this city I feel like I have to be constantly on edge. Especially when I leave the apartment. On every corner could be a crazy person. Someone screaming. Something terrible. A bottle flying through the air. Someone pissing. Someone bothering me. Yesterday I was out and told a friend that here people call Berlin Belchlin and Burplin and what do we hear in front of us? BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURP. Yes. Some bum walking in the middle of the street. Slowly enough we have to pass him, no chance to change the side of the street. Of course the moment we pass, he gets agitated about the fact other people also live in this darned city and starts shouting in our ears and complaining about our existence. Well, nice dude. So you come home to your apartment and have to keep being on edge because your neighbors are super tolerant imbeciles. The fact that loud noise bothers you means you are in the wrong for being bothered. I once asked some old neighbor lady if she doesn't hear that EVERY NIGHT directly in front of the house firecrackers explode. Literally every night you would see a bright flash and then see the explosion. Nah. She doesn't see or hear anything. Yeah sure. Maybe they're all long dead already. Who knows.
*hear the explosion I mean.
We thought hey, maybe we gotta move to a more expensive neighborhood to avoid those alternative I am oh so tolerant idiots. But nope. The people who can afford the a tiny tad more expensive apartments (not that more expensive because it's not like you find a well paying job in this city, ever) in the a tiny tad better area (not really that much better, just not total slum) are even WORSE. Solid middle-class german families - egoistical assholes. Think the world moves around them and behave likewise. Travel to the USA for a big vacation but live with 4 people in a tiny apartment and let their children scream freely outside at before 7 am because God beware you tell your spawn to behave. Behave in Berlin. Hahahaha.What a joke.
I need to leave this country as soon as possible. Berlin left me broke. Any tips how to get it done as soon as I got Money again? I'm thinking of going to the netherlands or spain
m.youtube.com/watch
He says at the end the punishment for evading taxes in Germany is higher than rape and murder.
But the ceo or Volkswagen makes 800,000 a month and Merkel makes 23,000 an month before tax?
Fuck this place
Get out of Europe, the EU has destroyed it. Italy and Spain used to be on top of the world, now they're struggling to keep their heads above water. The EU favours France and Germany. Get out of Europe, there is no value there, unless you go east, if you have money, but you won't earn good money in the east. Jsut go back to where you came from and make life work with your own culture and network contacts, you will never get ahead in Europe, it's all tied up in monopolies. Europe is over and that includes the UK. Just go home like I did, and now things are working very well for me.
To the post above. You’re right, Europe is done. I looked at other European countries but then I thought you can’t make money anywhere. I love Greece, Italy and Spain and I thought about looking at Portugal. But in all these places you can’t make any money. Europe is just shit! When I have my money together I will leave Europe for another Place.
Median personal wealth is higher in almost every other EU country, just like home ownership (the two are obviously intertwined). In Germany I can barely break even with my costs and going on a modest vacation twice a year. I'd never be able to own a home here. I'm going back to the U.S. Q12021.
Want to make a German's head explode? Ask them why Germany offers free college education. If they answer with something emotional like "it's the right thing to do" then keep pressing. Ask them what makes it "the right thing to do". If they tell you it's because everyone deserves access to education then remind them that Germany is 32nd out of all 37 OECD countries in terms of higher education attainment. If they say it's how they've created such a prosperous society then try not to laugh and ask them why then median wealth in Germany is lower than every other European country to the west except NL. If they say it's so everyone can earn a living wage then ask them why their percentage of people living below the national poverty line is so much higher than most other EU countries (except, of course, Greece, Italy and Spain). They can't answer it because they've never ever thought about it.
You can also ask them why social mobility and intergenerational education/earnings are so bad in Germany compared to other EU countries: www.oecd.org/social/broken-elevator-how-to-promote-social-mobility-9789264301085-en.htm
Seriously, the more I look into facts about Germany the more I am inclined to think that this country is a complete shithole.
Thanks for the info. I kinda knew this before looking at the data. It’s clearly obvious if you come from the States. I started asking questions about social mobility giving my situation and other foreigners, and natives. But I would say that Europe as a whole has a problem with social mobility. As American you take the freedom we have to be what you want for granted. It’s only when you start to live in other countries you notice a biggg difference. Again, we are not talking about free health care, free education, or 25 days paid vacation. But we are talking about being in the position to elevate yourself and your family. Here in Germany you are constantly pigeon-hold here it’s unbelievable. America has a lot of problems, including racism, and violence. Yes, you will encounter people who will try to stop your progression on race or whatever. But, at least you have the freedom to change careers anytime you want. This place is shit!!! The natives are rotten jerk to their core.
Coming from the US, the German mentality is just weird. Example: The heating/air conditioning (or should I say lack there of). These dumb radiators with individual knobs with completely meaningless numbers feel like they're from the 60s. Why can't I set a temperature or, better yet, set times when my apartment needs to be heated? Instead I have to either just leave the heater on all the time or always alternate between off and the highest setting because it takes like 2 hours to warm up a room with this inefficient garbage. And those little electronic adapters you can screw on the heaters suck so much. And then "air conditioning" i.e. opening a window. Who the hell thought that up? Again, no real temperature control plus in summer all these mosquitoes and spiders and flies and moths fly inside because Germans have never heard of screens on windows. All the Germans just say "it's only hot for one week a year here" but that's such a lie. If you have an apartment where the sun shines into the windows then you're going to sweat for the whole summer basically. Why can't Germans just man up and fix ONE SINGLE ANNOYANCE? I am honestly surprised they use refrigerators here.
Coming from the US, the German mentality is just weird. Example: The heating/air conditioning (or should I say lack there of). These dumb radiators with individual knobs with completely meaningless numbers feel like they're from the 60s. Why can't I set a temperature or, better yet, set times when my apartment needs to be heated? Instead I have to either just leave the heater on all the time or always alternate between off and the highest setting because it takes like 2 hours to warm up a room with this inefficient garbage. And those little electronic adapters you can screw on the heaters suck so much. And then "air conditioning" i.e. opening a window. Who the hell thought that up? Again, no real temperature control plus in summer all these mosquitoes and spiders and flies and moths fly inside because Germans have never heard of screens on windows. All the Germans just say "it's only hot for one week a year here" but that's such a lie. If you have an apartment where the sun shines into the windows then you're going to sweat for the whole summer basically. Why can't Germans just man up and fix ONE SINGLE ANNOYANCE? I am honestly surprised they use refrigerators here.
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!