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I have a college degree, but I'm working in Berlin as a janitor, part-time. I am a social worker. When I looking for a job here, they will say always, that I do not have sufficient qualifications. I have a partner in Berlin, because of which I live here for ten years. I love my partner, but I hate Berlin!
I think it's absurd to have a college degree and at the same time clean fat Germans' poop for a living. Living in this crappy city is not worth it. Being janitor offers no future, no resume headline, no savings....no future. If gf is worthy of this, then she will understand how absurd to work as a janitor and agree to move, so both can have decent jobs. Otherwise she's just another fat German girl :)
OP maybe comes from a poor country where he earns less as a social worker compared to a german janitor.
Or, OP committed a crime and can't go back to his own country. Or, OP is an american and has a medical preexisting condition that's cheaper to treat in Germany.
Why work as a misrable janitor in a misrable city? Love alone cannot keep someone in Berlin for 10 years.
OP: been there, done that. I came to Berlin because of a (now ex-) partner and believe me: it is NOT worth it! Talk with your partner about it and try to find a solution. If your partner refuses to leave Berlin: let go! You will find someone new somewhere else. Life is too short to live at a place you hate, sooner or later you will deeply regret it. Make changes now!
It's funny when Germans and Germophiles pretend that German healthcare is 1. affordable, and/or 2. adequate. I pay much higher insurance in Germany than I ever did in the United States, only here I have to wait for weeks to get an appointment with a specialist, have to share a hospital room with strangers and am subject to lower medical standards in both practice and training. And also, by almost all measures, the United States makes a mockery of German healthcare - cancer survival rates being a prominent example. Oh, and BTW: the ACA is still in effect, therefore pre-existing conditions still cannot be grounds for excluding coverage except in states which have formally petitioned to exclude them - a provision that was introduced during the Obama era for instances in which the financial burden was too great for certain counties to subsidize hypochondriacs. And, of course, stabilizing care is always available regardless of insurance coverage and ability to pay. But continue to enjoy your failed socialist state where where a higher percentage of people live in poverty.
I stayed here in misery for years because of a girl. I'm now here in misery because of a child, but the relationship with the girl (and later, accidentally mother) long died. For your own sake, don't sacrifice your life for love- they don't appreciate it, and it may not last (especially as you spiral downward as an unfulfilled janitor resenting life while she matters on in German with her better employed friends - you'll drift apart. Almost every expat I know here that didn't come for the debauchery came for love. And I don't know a single one that's happily together with the same person 10 years later). Look after yourself first, your relationship second.
I'm not german and I came and stayed in berlin because of love for 3 years. I regret wasting my youth in Berlin because of love.
Love cannot last for 10 years if one of the partners is miserable.
Obamacare was not there 10 years ago so preexisting conditions were an issue especially for a poor student.
German healthcare is far from perfect but as a janitor he is covered by a public health insurance which typically charges based on income and provides a full coverage. At least I did not have to pay 20k euros for a hospital stay and a surgery. I was only charged 100 euros.
I ended up sharing a room with a crazy German woman but I am alive and debt free.
More stupidity above. Obamacare covers fewer than 3% of the population in America, i.e. about 1 in 6 who are living below the poverty line. It's a tiny number of people. And as a janitor in America, you generally will also be covered by your employer's healthcare. In fact, in most bigger cities janitors and custodians are union workers who earn pretty well and have undeserved benefits.
And if you are so concerned with living debt-free, consider the difficulties imposed on people declaring bankruptcy in Germany versus basically any other western country on earth. They are fine when the public is forced to consume your debt for health insurance and not working, but if you make one poor business decision then you are screwed for at least five years. Not so elsewhere. Germany is a country for people who are lazy and don't want to try at life.
Same here!! Got my bachelors degree in sociology and education from a public ivy in California. In the US I worked in education and I felt appreciated. Here, they told me, that this degree isn't enough to qualify working with children. They told me: "Da könnte ja jeder daher gelaufene mit Kindern arbeiten! Sie müssen zuerst 3 Jahre eine Ausbildung machen!"
Nice!! So lovely!! I feel my old life (and accomplishments) is worth NOTHING here...
Is it possible that the weather is fighting back against the Hipsters?
All this rain is really going to make lounging around in the various "parks" quite difficult.
Western parts of Berlin is pretty nice; East Berlin is an utter shithole.
Berlin is a great place if you want to escape reality. If you're content with not having a real job, real friendships or a real relationship, Berlin is for you. It's the ideal place to coast and to live in an escapist bubble. But if you ever want authenticity, you will likely not find it in Berlin. I find most people in Berlin fit this description to a T. a city full of broken lost soul types. Berlin is to be avoided.
Wanted to do business with a Berlin company today, worth thousands of Euros, only to be told they can't put me through, I'll have to send an email to make my enquiry, I thought fck this, so I rang a company in the USA and got straight through on the phone and solved what would have taken 10 back and forth emails in 5 minutes.
Hans: "Customer service, what's customer service, hey Klaus, you ever heard of customer service".
Gorlitzer Banhof
Brilliant economy of words.
Those junk-selling freaks make Berlin police look like Keystone Kops. I avoid Gorly B-hof because of them, because they piss me off so much, I get a feeling to I want to punch their creepy lights out, the problem is, the lights aren't even on. If this is the the end product of "tolerance", then brand me a racist, much better than being a pseudo-tolerant Lefty sheep.
Met a friend in the U-Bahn. Having a good time while chatting and catching up. I took a look at a person standing next to me while she was rolling her eyes and was speaking to her partner about ausländer and their weird german accents. Waves of hostility hit me, but all of a sudden I reminded myself, hey, that's normal here, move on and enjoy life :).
Exactly, it's the only way to survive in Berlin , just have to feel empathy and compassion for the poor souls who were unlucky enough to be born and bred here.
Especially the Left-wing losers who are going to wake up one morning in the future and say to themselves "what was I thinking, why did I tattoo my neck and face and scar my lips and eyes with a row of studs, and grow my ear lobes to saucer size holes, what have I done, now my life is totally fcked, I have no hope of getting a job to support my family, and can't even beg because there is such a glut of other losers just like me, begging as well and no one cares anymore, they are all jaded and cynical just like us".
It's inevitable. As soon as the new generation of centre right conservative kids moves up the ladder, the Lefty losers will be pushed into dingy little kneipes and begging on the U8.
Gotta feel some form of pity for them.
Second comment seems legitimate to me. The city is full of "open-minded individuals" who pretend to respect all cultures, but secretly love to bash them with other ethnic Germans. These are the kind of people that love going to demonstrations and parades that celebrate equality, homosexuality, refugees and the like while having zero friends who aren't German and liking homosexuality only in theory. The city is full of these people.
:o))) You got a taste of the Berliner rolling eyes treatment :o))) Did you also get the sneaky shaking of the head, for the most minuscule inadvertent social infractions of the encyclopaedia of Berliner rules.
"Sorry" doesn't cut it with Berliners, they want to get every drop of guilt they can squeeze out of you.
I was there too with feeling empathy and it is true. The only problem is when you force yourself to feel certain way. Berlin causes rollercoaster emotionally. Key is surely to express yourself. The way I do it is by singing, sports, then intonation also is a good idea cause you get these intonation fleas. Inspiration for this is movies simply. For me Columbo is quite handy but also generally something with humour. Or overacting things. It is a good idea to note poop people said and then let something come up that you feel you wanted to reply. As for empathy is rather a selfassertive expression just like being kind because it might seem absurd to be kind to people here but it makes sense for your own emotional health. Another such thing is respect and it goes well with anger. But as for all that what i realized is once i sang, not to sound well, but to just feel and then sing such way or shout, it is like going to toilet. Things affect you less then and some energy is out of your system. If you can't sing you'd be surprised what enough poop people gave you can make you sound really well as a side-effect.
Berlin is what hicks think a big city should be like: hicks who watch Tatort and who've never spent more than 48 hours in a real metropolis like NY, London, Paris, Rome. Most of the people here, "locals" included, come directly here from a small town and begin to reenact various scenes of misanthropy, antagonism and cynicism exactly as they saw depicted in some crappy film / TV show about a big city, once upon a time. As a result, they get it completely wrong. Berliners are so proud to be snarky, pretentious and arbitrarily rude to other people because they think it puts them in the same league as London and New York, where people can SOMETIMES be snappy due to unremitting stress. WRONG. I've lived in both cities and the thing is, when people in NY lash out, it's due to real stresses that are beyond their control - out of control crime, say, or unregulated employers who are making their lives hell, or open trash laying in the streets. They are lashing out DESPITE their better selves, and feel BAD about it afterwards... you know, like an emotionally stable human being would? Whereas Berliners, who have it all (a clean spacious city, cheap enough rent, pretty well regulated employment sector) and are lashing out by CHOICE because they think it's COOL. Basically this city is filled with kids who are just play-acting at being in a big city, and it's sad, sad, sad!
The other thing about real big cities is that they have a sense of community and civic pride that holds things together below the frantic, impersonal surface. They have regulars' bars, local's spots, squares, unique scenes and so on... which everyone gravitates toward to put things right after a hard day, and reconnect with one another. Big cities may look like they're aggressive on the surface but what holds them together is civic LOVE. This is the one thing that's never shown in any of the 2nd rate TV shows or movies that Berliners base their performance of civic life upon - love - so they bend themselves completely out of shape trying to enact pure HATE instead.
I have never ever met a single Berliner who feels love for the community around them, have you? I mean a real, generalized, "God I love the Village" or "Dalston's such an intense scene!" kind of love. I only hear that in NY and London (and other major Western capitals). The only "love" that anyone here seems to feel for their city is about superficial details "I like that park, it's got great trees" "check out that architecture! It says so much." This is a psycho-narcissistic way of valuing a city. It's not REAL. It's not HUMAN. And it's NOTHING like how people feel about living in a real metropolis, where they feel like a valued and necessary part of the social fabric.
The only love that anyone here seems to feel is for his or her own tiny, hand-picked clique of mates - which is exactly the sort of exclusive BS that most people move to big cities to escape.
The unfiltered, small-town naievete which people bring to Berlin has trashed a perfectly good big city with a lot of promise. It's a f*cking shame. If it weren't for the people and their juvenile preconceptions they have about big city living, this might actually be a nice place to live.
If you want all the drawbacks of living in a fast-paced city but none of the bonuses, though, then hey this is the place for you!
The only form of civic duty here is blindly opposing any semblance of progress in the city whether it's new industries (uber and airbnb), new companies relocating (google & co), respect of property rights (Rigaer strasse), phony Mietpreisbremse or just stupid things like Tempelhoferfeld. A country that doesn't run on innovation, but rather on hindering innovation coupled with convoluted protectionism.
A real BERLINER sitting at the Bar by himself and wants to be left in Peace! If you are looking in the Pub a free Seat at the Table, where they sit just one Person, he always refuses to let you sit down. If you do not belong to any Social-Bubble, than you´re doomed to eternal solitude. How sick is that?!
Can someone explain to me what Ayran is?
Ayran is a word that one could easily look up on Google :o) But I know what you mean, I see it everywhere in Little Turkey, otherwise known as Berlin. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayran
Good read on Germany and the main terror attacks in 2016. Central theme seems to be unwillingness to consequently deport declined refugee applicants.
www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2016/272231.htm
And thats why I would not befriend any parties lefter than the FDP (the Libertarian counterpart).
It's not paranoia and it's not lies spread by alt-right trolls. German society, what existed, is falling apart rapidly.
www.thelocal.de/20170719/left-wing-assassination-attempt-on-political-opponents-no-longer-out-of-question-berlin-authorities-warn
Only morons fall for Lefty propaganda, the greater majority of people see through their imbecilic actions and worthless words. You can smell these scum in the air in Berlin, the heaviness, the negativity, the doom and dread and the pessimism that oozes out of them, like putrid, raw sewage. .
Stinking as if you didn't have had a shower for weeks, neved brushing your teeth or having sh*t still warm in your pants seems to be a completely normal and socially accepted thing here. F*ck Berlin!
Oh, poor little snowflake, can't handle the smell of shtty pants on the U-Bahn, upset about seeing guys pissing in the open in front of his girl friend, can't handle the putrid smell of an alcoholics breath as he bends down to harass you for money-for-nothing, little diddums can't handle imbeciles who feel a need to party for 48 hrs straight, in dens of depravity and delusion, to escape their lost lives, he probably hates the Kafka-esque bureaucracy as well, what a fcking wimp, you're probably one of those people who hates dog sht all over the streets, and vomit every 200 metres, not to mention having your bike stolen every 6 months. I bet you even complain about all the human camels spitting every 10 seconds on the footpath and platform you are following them on.
I have a feeling you are a fascist racist who thinks that people who come from other countries shouldn't be selling drugs in the open on street corners to young people, to fck their minds up as well, you are probably against so called anarchists taking money from the tax-payer funded state that they so vehemently hate.
What a pusssy.
How every person in a shop asks you back, knowingly what you wanted and thinks nobody realizes. They can't freaking just give you what you wanted, just like that. It's like you can't freaking do such thing, when you know what it is, you can't freaking ask as if you wouldn't. It's completely face up and embarrassing. Like an idiot who steers the car in the dirt and all you can do is look at it in awe wtf he just did. It's such a shame social wise.
I got what you were saying, you were alluding to the mixed metaphors of the quantum juxtapositions of the fallacious signatories to the accord of astro-physist transcendence of the ethereal soul pattern of Jupiter's rising coinciding with the convoluted excesses of alcohol and drug induced stupor. Any fool could work that out.
Oh ok, I meant lets say you buy cigarettes. You say the brand and the colour and they ask back everytime which colour or act like somehow they didn't get it. It goes like this
Hello, I'd like one pack of *brand* the blue ones please. ...Blue??
Hello, one pack of *brand* blue please ... Which ones?
It rails the conversation into artificiality whereas otherwise something natural from life might come up. Other than that it is just plain stupid. You stand there knowing the person already knows all the info needed but out of habbit has to ask you back perceiving it as an okay thing to do socially when it is complete brainfart.