...
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.
hi all.
i was just thinking about writing my thoughts in here.
People i know living in Berlin or just came there to live are long life Peter Pans. this makes me sad. im still in germany, but in another place. The thing is, all of my (not Germans) fellows don't even want to think critically about their lifes and move somewhere else.. i feel sorry for them to stay in this eternal peter pan state of mind. i wanted to help and expressed my thoughts about the situation and of course i was the bad one.
the problems are actually deeper, the people are depressed and their problems are rooted in the childhood. i think there are not even enough therapists in this hole called berlin. life in denial. i did the same mistakes and was running away from myself, but i recognised it and accepted the help. its a long way to go, but even if i would go back to berlin because of my job, the society would make it worse for me. so no berlin in the near future. nonono.. no man is an island. one needs to be in a healthy society to be healthy.
I understand this completely. I left because of coronavirus, abandoned my apartment . as soon as I came back to canada I discovered berlinhater and suddenly my time in Berlin made sense. I tried to express these things when I was there to a few people, but I couldn’t figure it out why I was upset and how my life had essentially gone backwards in Berlin. Some of my friends are older than me. I am 33. I want my life to be like it was before here in canada, stable income, nice apartments, no worries about government coming to fornicate my life, ability to travel, a relationship.
I worry about my friends there but some even got angry or shunned me for pointing it out. But it’s their lives, I will still miss them, but my LIFE is more important than community .... I cannot starve and suffer over there
It’s the “groupthink” . The Germans have it on the extreme level, but so do the expats. There is a lot of tunnel vision there, Berlin is like an island. It’s good that you had the job and opportunity to get out. You can still stay in touch with people, just know that you’ll advance faster than they will. I’m looking forward to stability again myself, and not the daily worries of that place.
You also have to realize some people don’t want help. That’s the only place they can live. They want to escape the “mainstream” expectations of the world. But the reality of their futures will not be good. I know many complain of wasted years, who spent ten years there even, and they didn’t really do anything with that time. Just save yourself.
“Why don’t you learn to speak german”
Learned to speak German.
Still the auslander
After many years of living in Germany I managed to reach a fairly high level of proficiency in that language. If a German reads my messages they wouldn't figure out I'm a foreigner.
It all changes in real life (I have a neutral accent and exotic looks, which gives away my origin). It doesn't matter how well you speak the language: if you are not from Western Europe AND wealthy you will not get any respect from Germans.
If you want to learn German, do it for yourself, not to integrate. There is no society there worth integrating into.
I miss my friends in Berlin but I DO NOT miss Germans and their dumb butt jail of a city
Berlin is racist and xenophobic and the German system is oppressive, you make no money. Please tell me how that is freedom, where you can be what you want to be. Unless you are in the confines of a nightclub, you get judged by Germans constantly. This promise of freedom is bs
I'm from a small, conservative town in from in the South (USA). I used to dress kind of gay/eccentric. Never once did I get attacked or even threatened while I was still in the US. But in Berlin it happened about once a week. And yes I've since grown up and stopped the cheap signalling but that's not the point here.
I feel I will have to go back to Berlin to get the rest of my belongings back. Just praying nothing bad happens during the time I am there.
There is a lot of propaganda going around saying Germany is dealing with coronavirus better than USA. Excuse me, there never was a lockdown like Spain /Italy / China. Germans were not confined to their homes and even just played outside w their kids and filled the parks.
Not only that, but Germany also hasn't contributed any at all with novel treatments in clinical trials. They have 1/4 the number of ventilators per capita. Social distancing regulations in Germany are laxer (1.5m vs 1.82m distancing). If by some weird cosmic fluke Germany indeed fared better than the US then it was entirely coincidental OR they're keeping the secret to themselves. I can only see it being one of two things: Either Germany's one of the only countries reporting covid deaths where covid was the main contributor OR half a population with mandatory tuberculosis vaccine and another half where most people probably willingly got it (it's a standard vaccine in Germany but not in the US because tuberculosis happens only in the third world).
Either way we know for a fact that statistics are completely useless at this point since every single random testing study has concluded that the true number of infected is much higher - probably 20x-50x more. Farr's Law alone tells us that Germany's infection numbers are statistically impossible.
The real media narrative is that female leaders are handling the pandemic best with most praise going to NZ. just weird that their per capita deaths are identical to those of Australia. Not hard to have fewer deaths when you're dealing with a virus that's unstable in warm, humid weather when it's been summer during the entire pandemic so far. What a load of shit.
“The case definition is very simplistic,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains.
“It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death.”
Unlike other countries, “if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,” as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, recently noted.
That isn’t just a theoretical issue. On April 21st, when New York City’s death toll rose above 10,000, the New York Times reported that the city included “3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive” – a more than 50 percent increase in the number of cases.
But the problem is worse than this broad definition implies. Birx and others believe that the CDC is over counting cases. The Washington Post reports they are concerned that the CDC’s “antiquated” accounting system is double counting cases and inflating mortality and case counts “by as much as 25 percent.”
There are additional reasons for concern. Some doctors feel pressure from hospitals to list deaths as due to the Coronavirus, even when they don’t believe that is the case, “to make it look a little bit worse than it is.” There are financial incentives that might make a difference for hospitals and doctors. The CARES Act adds a 20 percent premium for COVID-19 Medicare patients.
www.zerohedge.com/health/us-dramatically-overcounting-covid-19-deaths