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Good God, how STUPID I was, when I moved to f*cking Germany. What a hell of a country? Seriously, WTF is wrong with them?
- NO beautiful women
- NO sense of humour
- NO emotions or warmness
- NO politeness
- NO culture (except "creative-party-dj-vegan-yoga-underground-techno-punk" trash, which, of course, isn't a culture, it's rubbish)
BUT:
- Dirty homeless punk butt b*tches with their dogs everywhere
- Tons of ugly radical feminists and broke permanently drunk lefties
- Middle-East immigrants with their cave habits (not all of them, but the majority)
- Plenty of old deviants, perverts, freaks, who think, that being a crazy person is so "cool"
Really, what I was thinking at that moment? It's a doomed place. Dear Lord, give me the strength to earn some money and run away FOREVER.
Since you have over 2 active users a day, which is more than most Berlin startups. Please make some merch. I will gladly buy a t-shirt with one of the following slogans:
- You are not David Bowie
- Thank you for funding my Phd in Gender Studies
- I work in media *cough €100 a blowie.
I'm sure you'll cover your server costs.
I'd gladly buy a t-shirt like that too. I would out-hip the hipsters for sure! I really like idea no. 2.
Anything really to stave off the feeling that winter is approaching fast. I'm dusting off my sun lamp to keep my brain from falling into deep depression. It's healthier and cheaper than alcohol.
- Hermit
Is Berlin a giant negative morphic resonance field ? It feels like it. Everywhere-almost all the time.
I hate how everything tends to be a sqare even the ways in woods and playgrounds have no ways in the middle but are seperated. No natural river like ways unless it came with the landscape but surely looks like tried as much as possible to make it a square.
How every line at Lidl, Rewe, Netto and Edeka is a slow descent into HELL.
This is the fourth time in a year that a neighbor has volunteered a "helpful" suggestion regarding the placement of my bicycle. Each time a neighbor tries to convince me about the fact that I could just lock up my bicycle in front of the apartment building instead of carrying it up the stairs and inside my apartment where it doesn't do anyone any harm.
I have my reasons, but they are not relevant here. What is relevant is why do these people try to tell me how to do things? Why can't they just mind their own business?
Berlin.(And in a broader sense Germany).Is the land that time forgot.Wheather its dogs or children the desire to control every aspect of life permeates every social interaction.The result is a culture that is totally errelevente.God help the refugees and god help my spelling. I am off to get a bottle of red wine.Peace.xx
I just hate this place,. Mostly for the immaturity and complete lack of soul and inspiration. It is not normal how parents treat their children, constantly telling them to not do something. Like wtf is wrong with these people. There is a child in my yard that cries everyday and every 5 minutes one of his "parents" commands him to stop something or not do something. The child was crying his soul out. So i called 110 so they may take care. Just the guy on the other end started to lecture me about upbringing and acted like I'm some kind of strange person. Emotional abuse is apparrantly a foreign concept here. Then most women do not look/behave like women once they are around 35. Coming back from a holiday in Russia it became very obvious how broken up this place is. I just couldn't believe it was the place. I do miss people there. Oh it was nice. Romantic Plattenbau, friendly warm people, cats and dogs everywhere. People sitting by the river peacefully. I could go on and on about Berlin.
The dogs are actually in Berlin. I confused that. And people don't treat them well. They are constantly shouting at their dogs to come to them. It's so absurd. At times I'm thinking *Just bite him in the ass*. In another way it is sad, truly sad. Yesterday i saw a mother dragging her 4 year old daughter on her bike swearing at her to not bite her again. The child was crying and she was just plain cold towards her. I felt so angry and sorry for the child. It is not normal. The child did the right thing by biting that coldhearted monster. Seriously, lots of mothers are big freaking bullies in this city and they love to show off dominant behaviour.
I feel it is not so contrary. There are actually no contraries :) Things are connected. It is abusive either way. Before you discuss with your child you first would need to neglect their feelings. I think it's the 2 branches of fatherly energy such as encourageing with its negative side being fault-finding and dismissively critical which often gets confused as a solution for not being too lax which is also the negative of the other branch nurture. I agree with you children need orientation and nurture. It is kind of like something you can't really try cause it is natural anyway. That's some thoughts that come to mind, i feel it is not an easy topic.
Today in the Supermarket I get almost in a Fight with a Filthy disgusting Turk/Arab.He threatened me , the reason is laughable he said I took his place in the reverse vending machine,what a Filthy Son of a bitch,seriously the people in this city are the most disgusting people I have ever seen.
whats so funny about this ? lets see if you find it funny when a Refugee steal your pocket or a Arab criminal puch in your face.In fact Berlin is a violent city.
Berlin is too a hole! I walked around and kept wondering...does anyone have a job here????
now with 100,000 + "refugees" it can become a even BIGGER hole, the filth , staring rudeness and rapes and terrorism! super! antiFA!
The only reason to move to Berlin from outside Germany is if you're an art-hipster type in your 20s and want to earn some cool points among your spoiled friends back home or whatever cool city you move to next after you've done everything and get sick of it like everyone else. It's past its peak though, so you may earn more cred living in Lisbon, Budapest, or Bucharest these days since they're less cliche.
If you're hoping to find startup work, check London, Amsterdam, and Barcelona first since you'll likely get paid more and not be cheated. If you're good enough, you can apply for jobs in SF, NY, Seattle and earn a ton more. Even with the higher cost of living, you'll still be able to save more if you're not wasting your money. NY and SF have their own issues, but are also really nice cities.
If you're looking for the stereotypical German cities and culture people think of in English speaking countries, head to Bavaria or Austria.
I'm an immigrant, yes. I come from a developing country, true. But to my surprise jobs here are so underpaid is ridiculous (In Berlin, I usually had customer service jobs picking up phones, desk jobs and similar). I have a college degree but it's ok, I don't expect to use it anyway in a foreign country. But my issue is why should I endure racism, xenophobia and widespread mistreatment for a measly 400$ a month! I literally can make triple easily elsewhere. I don't get why people think Germany is such a rich country, there are more people living in the streets in Berlin than where I come from. Moreover, when other Germans complain that it's only Berlin that is broken up, I have to say: it's not. Other "richer" German cities are the same, no money and all the people living on welfare. Things are even worse in places like Magdeburg, Leipzig, Dresden. Luckily, now I have a new and better job in Spain, yes, Spain. The country Germans love to call uncivilized and poor. In a field actually related to my college degree which is amazing. I am here right now and I am complaining for the first time about Berlin because simply I was too afraid to do so before. Germans and their mind games condition you to be a second class citizen. Luckily for me that time is over. I know that most people in this forum are more prepared, intelligent and educated than me but I have an advice for you all. I encourage, I urge you all to do the same, leave the city, in Germans' eyes you will always be worse than a German no matter how well you do in life. Please reconsider your stay in Berlin and leave as soon as possible.
(I am from Norway btw).
Ok, so I will tell the whole story. I were 3 days in berlin, before I came here I thought people here would be like the people in amsterdam or even happier, why? Maybe because of the beer culture etc. Well, I were so WRONG.
Me and my sister arrived at the airport, Schönefeld. We picked up our baggage and headed for the exit, we tried to find the train station but there were no signs or anything, so we had to ask someone who worked at the airport, the lady didn't smile or nothing, but I did not think so much about it. We did not take out any cash because we thought that our visa cards were accepted here, but no. The machines didn't take card, so we assumed we could by tickets on board. So we tried to find the correct train but that was not easy either, after all of this I became pretty frustrated so we went to get a taxi instead, there were so many taxi's at the airport. Most of started whisteling at us and yelling, I felt the feeling you get when going out late at night with a short skirt, it was a disgusting feeling to be honest. We took the taxi that was standing first in line, he didn't speak good english but we managed to communicate. We showed him the address to our hotell and he started driving without turning the taxi meter on, so I asked him, "How much does it cost?", he yelled "40 euro's" and I was a little stunned by the yelling and said "what?", once again he yelled "40 euros". I thought he maybe he was trying to scam us, but I did not say anything more.
After checking into our hotell we went to primark, but we could not find the entrance (we were on the wrong side of the building). So I tried to ask for directions, I walked to a man and we stared into eachothers eyes but as soon as I said "excuse me...wh" he turned around. Wow, just wow. I went from 0 to 100 I got so angry. I was so shocked on how rude this person was, holy fuck. We just walked until we found the entrance. The casshier did not smile to us either and when we asked for the "special" tax receipt, well she hated her life even more.
Many resturants did not take our visa cards, the people working in general were not nice, they never smiled, there were no service to get at all.
We went to KFC and ordered something to eat. I wanted pepsi light for my meal and my sister ordered regular pepsi, when our order where done i took the food to our table and noticed that the "light button" were not pushed down, so I went back and asked, "which one is the light one?" (Yes, I should have said that they got my order wrong.) The cashier looked at both of them and said "this one" and pushed down the button. (They look totally the same, so how could he have known? Oh wait he didn't! My rage builded again and my hate for this city grew. What if I had diabetes? fornicate sake.
The third shocking expirience happend at the airport when we were leaving. I had gotten some tax receipts that I wanted to get back from the tax refund. In Schönefeld there are atleast 2 buildings, we were in the wrong one and again... no signs. We had to ask, we were directed to terminal a. In terminal a there were no signs, so we asked some guards, apparantly they did not know what tax refund is, they thought I said taxfree and taxi.
So I went to the tourist information and they managed to tell me where to go.
At the tax refund desk I showed the lady my receipts and she said I had to go to a another desk, why? I don't know, there were no good information or service to get. (Also it was my first time trying to get tax back.)
I went to the other desk and gave the man here my receipts and he angry said "open", and I open my map with the receipts and gave it to him then he said "passport" in the same angry way, I gave it to him, then he said "ticket". I did not print out the tickets, so I showed him my phone with the ticket, he said "next time you print out!". He looked at my ticket and said "2 hours!" and again I were stunned by the yelling and I said "what" and he again said, "2 hours!" and I said "what do you mean about 2 hours", he said that I have to come back then. I tried to explain that I arrived early to get this done, he did not care. Apparantly you can't get tax back before it's 2 hours before your flight. So we waited. We checked in and went back.
I got my receipts stampeled and went to the tax refund desk, you know what? It was freaking closed. From this moment I said to myself, fornicate Berlin, never comming back. There was a post box there but I guess I'll never see the money.
I also hate that every freaking channel were in german, dubbed etc. Every person I met were so angry on their life.
I really hate, haaaaate this city!
I thought Norwegians were bad, but wow Berlin people you just took the king of the most pooping people title. Good job.
Sorry to hear about your troubles, but... this is really a great description of everything here. I've had experiences that are so similar to yours that it's funny:
- bad signage (or no signage at all) - check
- extremely unhelpful and rude "helpers" and "assistants" at the airport, mall, etc. - check
- my visa and amex cards not working at 50% of shops and 95% of restaurants - check
- people flat out refusing to speak english when I ask for directions/help - check - ALSO interesting that when the lazy bums and homeless people ask you for money, they speak perfect english.
- people that look like they want to die because their life sucks and they want to take out on you - check
- super freaking rude and weird guy at airport - check - I had the EXACT same treatment during passport control: one word phrases that were hard to understand, guy was almost shouting, speaking half-german (it's a freaking airport, learn english for sexual act sake).
- smell of urine, broken glass, and sweaty people - CHECK - oh god this is so funny, I have a friend who works in a hotel as a cleaner and she says that Germans are the worst guests ever - they always stink and they leave you 18 cents in tips.
Ah, I could go on, but be glad that you're going back home. Some of, as you can see by this site, are stuck here fore a bit longer, but everyone of us is slowly making their escape :).
The thing I totally can't understand. I work hard, I really give my best to make a great job, overwork a lot (my motto: do it good or don't do it at all). And then... none of my colleagues will appreciate it. None will come to me for an advise, none will talk to me about the achievements, ask any thing. Instead they only turn to mediocre people with social skills, and these people are the most popular advisors. What the heck? I feel like people are scared to come talk to me because I work so hard... What the heck???
Well, I won't say I'm boring as a person. I'm rather eccentric, and people from where I used to live never complained that I'm boring. But it seems, that it's not popular here to strive to achieve something. Instead you should imitate work, go drink coffee every five minutes, have your wochenendes and parties, and be bothered with the work whole day long before holy feierabend. And if you show true passion in doing your job, the threat of damping becomes real, and they start ignoring you. It happens involuntarily, you just fall outside the scope of common talks, and people don't want to talk about nothing but parties, anecdotes of how they were drunk the other day, and of course, complains about the job and other co-workers. And those are people making or having PhDs. They engage the same talks as blue-collars. Same, no difference... And their achievements are quite poor to be honest...
Any achievement is frowned upon here. My advice - get out of here. I've heard other German cities are better (Munich, Frankfurt), but in all honest, I'd check out Amsterdam, Paris, London (yeah I know, brexit and all that) or Warsaw, Cracow, Prague.
It took me some time to realize but Berlin is composed of the children of small town folk .Berlin got totalled during the war. So people from the surrounding countryside came here and brought their culture (that's why everything here smells like piss). Sure, they get PhDs, but for them, it's just a piece of paper.
Also, imagine your life if the government pays for everything you do until you finish your PhD. Up until 35 years of age you are, in essence, a child. You never had to work, you never had to risk anything, you never had to make tough choices - just wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, party, and have fun. No direction in life.
If you don't fit to the average Berliner mold then you'd frowned upon, no matter how talented you are and no matter what you do. Just like the comment by the musician from LA posted below. If you do it right and passionately, you are WRONG! You have to be mediocre in every aspect of your life - that's the Berlin way.
I just saw a man walk out of Lidl, root around in the bin in front till he found a carrier bag, tipped out the half eaten done inside and stuffed his shopping in his bag. He then walked to his car, how disgusting can one get to save 10cents