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I left Berlin last year. Best decision of my life. Never felt so incredibly unhappy living in a place. Berlin has a weird energy I guess, a collective depression... a demon that has grown over centuries of horrible things that happened there... I don’t know. It is weird... as soon as I left, I came back to myself again. And still today when I tell people how bad it was, most people don’t believe me. “But it’s so great! Such a creative city! So progressive...” Yeah - try to live there and fornicate off!
Yes exactly , it has a very destructive and negative vibe when you are actually sleeping night after night with your head next to where the Berlin Wall was or in the houses where people were abducted or on the sbahn where people were shipped off to the camps. And the aggressive cumulative experiences towards you just for being foreign don’t help that.
Berlin made me asexual
My favourite flirting technique is walking into a dark room where nobody can see my STDs and are so high on drugs that they would never know I have herpes. Oh and of course I never use a condom. Who uses condoms in Berlin? I also don’t pull out either, and give the girl a fake phone number after because I don’t have money to buy the morning after pill for her, even tho I tell her to call me.
(These all happened to friends in Berlin, parts of this story per respective person)
Doesn't surprise me. STDs are so common here that there is no comprehensive STD panel offered at German doctors offices. Like, if you tell them you have a new partner and you want to make sure you don't have anything before having sex without a condom THEY WILL LITERALLY SAY IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY SYMPTOMS THAT YOU DON'T NEED A TEST. The free clinic back in my hometown in Buttfuck, USA even offered a comprehensive panel FOR FREE.
That’s because they have no money to do the test. And yeah I forgot about that. Lol. Everything is so backwards.
A doctor once screened me for
“What race” I had sex with because she said and I quote “blacks and south asians have more aids” I wrote an email to the clinic saying it was racist, I also told this to her, she denied it. They send me an official document back the mail saying “we are not racist”.
They literally have zero idea what racism means in Germany. They think racism = holocaust or attacks someone. Idiots
Germans are like pitbulls. Even second or third generation immigrant German blood has an icy demeanour and moral corruption
The ONLY good thing about Berlin is an early spring compared to NY. But the pooping winters really cancel that out.
Germans don’t realize we wouldn’t bash them if they didn’t continuously act so darn arrogant and ignorant as if THEY ALONE have the answer to life.
If Berlin was a font it would be comic sans
One of the major reason why I want to leave this country is salaries in this country. They are extremely low and It does not make sense If you are doing high skilled job. You would not get any pay rise more than %5 per year and there is no career progression. If you excel at your job, you keep staying at that role forever.
I am almost ashamed of the money I earn after all those years of studying and efforts
It pisses me off when people here in Poland say that salaries in German are better. The pay in Germany is nothing to write home about. You get taxed to hell and back. Most Germans don't own anything beyond a second-hand car. Quite a few families share a house. Imagine that. One family on one floor, the other family on the upper floor.
The country is so populated that most people live in small flats.
I know people in Berlin who worked in excess of 200 or even 220 hours a month and only got 2000 euros. Imagine that.
The home ownership rate in Poland is 64% higher in Poland compared to Germany. Look it up.
It's really shocking when you look at people who are 40-50 years old and own nothing of value. It's completely normal here to live in the same apartment for 20 years and never even consider buying it. Sure, financing an apartment would be a little more expensive in the short-run - maybe 15% more per month but after 20 years if you decide to move you'd be able to sell it. It's ridiculous that people here don't even consider that but then complain about the poor old grannies who are driven from their rent controlled apartments. And then there is weird stuff like Wohnungsberechtigungsschein that you apply for when you are a poor Student or HarzIV recipient that opens the door to subsidized housing. And then they will never take it away from you, even if you become a millionaire. Every apartment within the Berlin ring that has 3 or more rooms and costs less than 1.5K/month requires one that WBS. People earning 20k/year are literally paying for people who earn 2-3x more to live in subsidized housing. Clown world.
And the weird shared homes phenomenon is truly worrying. Even in tiny little 500 inhabitant villages you'll see that kind of home here. It's as if Germans need to be less than 5 meters from each other at all times. Why the hell would you build a house that shares a wall with another family? How much does that save you? 10% of the total price?
In the end, even if you make 100k/year here there's no endgame. Home ownership is prohibitively expensive even at that kind of salary. You'll still be stuck in an overcrowded area with annoying neighbors. You'll still have to send your kid to a weird school full of dumb, undisciplined Germans. You'll still only be able to eat out at weird restaurants that look like they scavenged their furniture from street corners at night. There's no real luxury in Berlin no matter what your income bracket.The only way you'll be able to enjoy life here is by buying a plane ticket and flying somewhere else every chance you get.
At the beginning I had no clue about young Harzt4.But niw yes.It is better be unemlpoyed instead of earming so less after hard work.I dont have any dgree but some skill I got decent money out of Germany.But I was stupid made misyake to come Germany.Low wage and govermenr do notjing to protect workess.Here still 6 days week.No public holiday pay.Who wants to work har like me and always less momey and not having publicholidays?Now I want to be Harzt4 too hahahaaha.But my contract end in this year I leave !
My life in Berlin was falling apart. I was broke as fuck, complained constantly, and didn’t see an easy future ahead. So I left Berlin. Now that I’m getting my life together, nobody reaches out to see how I am. What gives? People would rather have had me not complain and pretend life was perfect, when it was shit? People would rather be friends with a chronic complainer... than someone that wants to not make Berlin half of their daily conversations? No I don’t give a fornicate about anmeldung and documents to live there, why would I talk incessantly for YEARS about partying and the issues I had there ? Can’t people just be happy that I figured it out and moved on? Or does my moving on just reflect leaving “the cult”, so I must be forgotten about? Is it because when I left, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone? I don’t get it.
I also felt this way when I decided to take a break from partying !! Nobody reached out to see how I was ! Because I didn’t want to go to a party. My relationships were based on nothing? There is nothing individualistic about this place. I wish people would respect my decision more to make something of my life and not live in a place that was draining me.
Kind of hard to be happy in a society that's so broken at every single level. The ONLY thing Germany does decently is keeping ethnic Germans from living on the street. If you're not in the bottom 10% of society then you're better off pretty much ANYWHERE else.
Jason, 35. American Expat. Works a startup job and doesn’t mind paying 40% in tax to “live in a functional society”. Thinks Berlin is so cool. Wants to live In Berlin forever. Posts photos on Instagram with German phrases, even though can’t speak the language properly. Tries to be German. Germany is the best. Germany is sooooo cool.
You forgot to mention that Jason rides his bike to work because he'll never be able to afford a car and the 600 EUR/year for a train ticket is 5% of the annual salary. But of course he tells himself every morning he's a good person for reducing co2 levels and climate change despite the fact that he has to run the heat in his apartment 9 months of the year.
Reading about the brain. Starts talking about consciousness being generated in the mind, but the brain is a computer. Immediately thought of Germans having an underdeveloped mind. They function like computers. Would be interesting if German doctors had experimented on themselves more
Expats in Berlin really have this stupid attitude in the first year... get back to me in 5 years you’re in for an awful surprise
I just had to look up what a “mettigel” was. I wish I hadn’t.
If you mention that you think it's gross and happen to be American then they'll freak out and go on long tirades about how German hygiene standards in Germany are soooo much better than in the US and that in Germany it's impossible to get trichinosis from raw pork but supposedly super common in America. Which is a huge lie. Look up the stats and Germany has a higher per capita rate of trichinosis per year. Not only that, but nearly all cases of it in the US are from wild game that hasn't been properly prepared whereas in Germany nearly all cases are from commercially bought pork. Somehow Germans have a gripe about everything that isn't based in reality.
Use your IBB and jobcenter payment to say Sayonara to Berlin. Nows your chance
Most Germans don't rinse off the dishes when they're washing them. They just scrub them in soapy water and then put them in the rack with oil and soap residue all over them.
No I will not be the third in your open relationship
When I went to uni here I actually happy once when I was sitting in the cafe studying and a German girl I had a few courses with randomly sat down with me because I thought she wanted to be friends. Then she asked me if I wanted to go to Berghain with her... gross and no thanks.