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Why phone lines have queues! Call the doctor, get an engaged tone, call 115 for the burger amt, get a "everyone's busy please call later". I even got the engaged tone calling 112 once. Wtf, automated phone lines are not a new thing!
It drives me insane, it's so easy to get through to the tax people, driving licence people, either by phone, online or in person in the uk, yet it's impossible here.
Phoned up the dvla to renew my British licence this morning, took two minutes to find out I couldn't. So I try to call birgeramt 10 times. Engaged each time.
Try to make an online appointment, but they are booked out for as far as the calendar allows you to book, tried to go in person, but there were so many people waiting that it's not possible today. Of course, only after a queueing at the "information desk" for an hour and a half did I discover that.
They said if I come tomorrow an hour before it opens and start queueing, I'll probably be able to get a "spontaneous" appointment.
Weird thing is, that in the birgeramt they can do everything, even print and produce a passport on demand. They just do it slowly.
I cannot believe these people have a reputation for efficiency.
I called the private health insurance line for the best clinic in the city for the illness I had (it could have been worse. I would have had public insurance. Then I could only call for one hour a day). I waited on hold for 50 minutes. I waited on hold for so long I actually got on my bike and biked to the office to make an appointment in person, all while still on hold. Someone finally answered while I was at the front door. When I told the appointment lady that I had been waiting 50 minutes and then biked while sick, she pretended that I didn't even say it and proceeded with the appointment. I then went to my appointment, and they agreed I should follow up in two weeks. Fine, but the next follow-up appointment they would offer was in six weeks.
What is the point of luring so many young professionals if you're gonna make them clean dishes at a restaurant. Yeah Berlin is a city with prostitutes with PhDs no wonder why. Run away from that place.
It's not that they're _making_ them clean dishes, it's because There's a Place for Everyone and Everything. Auslanders are not to be trusted and are to disrespected. People with anything less than a PhD are not good enough - they can sweep the streets.
I do speak fluent German and have thousands of Euros. A German company hired me to grow capabilities in Germany that the country doesn't currently have. I'm a walking example of the type of person cities try very hard to attract.
I still get hate, because I do have money for a decent apartment in a fun area, and I spent some more doing nice things like getting good health insurance and buying luxuries like a plastic spoon rest for my stove (I was genuinely told off for the excess of getting a little plastic spoon rest rather than just put the spoon on the countertop and then wash the countertop later).
You can't win, whatever you do become, they'll hate you for whatever you aren't.
Oh joy, the kid is playing football again upstairs and there is nothing I can do. I'm not angry, I'm rather saddened, due to his Hartz IV parents and weight problem. 95% chance he becomes one of those incoherent people on the U Bahn who pissed their pants.
Don't forget - they're Germans. Whatever it is they're doing, it's The Best Possible Way of Doing Something. You, silly Auslander, cannot comprehend the full utility that their activities bring to their glorious society.
Sarcasm aside, I've got some glorious care free Berliner youth putting German hip hop and I too cannot do anything about it. Too bad these kids will never work a day in their lives until they're 30 years old.
I think I figured out the customer service thing, or lack therof.
Germans learn a series of processes required to get things done. Step b follows step a, step c follows b and so on. This is then and henceforth the ONLY way to accomplish said task. The German way.
Customer service is the art of dealing with situations that don't fit a standard template.
This is not possible here.
So if you go into every situation expecting to do it in the standard way you will not be disappointed.
I, unfortunately, and most expats also, am used to bending rules, thinking for myself and finding new ways to achieve a goal.
That's why I am always annoyed. Not the germans fault. Just their education and culture.
For me Berlin is an epitome of senseless regulation, laziness, decadence, ineffectiveness, depression, asexuality, refusal to accept reality, immaturity and urine. It is some sort of enriched concentration of everything that is bad and rotten in Western Europe these day. Just go over border and compare it to Polish people in their mostly well kept, beautiful cities, occasionally smiling people, things and persons that actually might work.
I too have had only good experiences with the funny people across the eastern border. It's ridiculously cheap and close to get to Breslau or Posen. Most fairly young people had no problems with speaking English and helping me out when I got lost. The old people there do look kinda mean, but hey, that's how you probably look after 40 years of communism, amirite? Also - yes - lots more smiles and much more open to talking about stuff.
Berliners may be rude and unfriendly, but Poles are worse. Also I wouldn't recommend a person of color to go there. They especially hate Germans, but from my impression non-whites even more (they basically don't have non-white minorities except some Vietnamese people). Also what is wrong with those ugly haircuts and trousers men wear? And the downvotes: You people plus Hungarians and Czechs are basically the biggest reason why the EU is imploding - you take and take yet are not willing to contribute anything. Have a guess why your country is getting so unpopular.
You people? I am Scandinavian, not Polish. Poles are not particularly unfriendly. People might shake hands with you - other customer - when they enter a shop. Do you really wonder why they hate Germans? I am sometimes feeling the same, even though my country wasn't pillaged by them. About minorities I can't say, it might be some truth in it with is a shame. What comes to EU, I couldn't care a less how people are dealing with it in particular country. They are not gonna change their mind whether or not I boycott them and if EU is stupid enough to pour money to them then it is surely fault of EU, not their.
All the poles I've ever met were amusing witty and friendly. Also I don't think the eu is going down because of the budget distribution favouring the east, it's mostly investment in infrastructure and culture etc and improved polish transport links etc is good for moving goods around cheap.
If you had to ask me why the eu is going down (if it is, brexit aside) i would say it's because of problems with the euro (some inherent in the model, some as a result of the behaviour of banks) and the inevitable difficulties of trying to tie 27 states with different histories, cultures and values into a single entity, without communicating to the people why this is good for them. Seeing your politicians unable to deal with problems in their own land that are important to you, because of the eu, time and time again really isn't a good thing. The eu is attempting to tie together all these countries, but as you show with your attitude toward poles, Hungarians and Czechs, it's difficult to overcome people's national identities and tendency to look for an external entity to blame
What does it even matter where I am from? Ad hocs usually tells someone has ran out of arguments. Funny thing is that I am opposing here a view that all eastern Europeans are bigots, ugly, parasites etc and you are preaching me about tolerance. :D Try to grow up and accept there are no paradises, that way you can eventually be happy somewhere. Not in Berlin as that place is poisonous, but somewhere.
Berliners (Germans and Immigrants ) are the most Disgusting people on earth,they are deformed and act like dogs,there women are whores and the men are Bastards.
Left berlin, moved to dublin. I was initially shocked by the fact that strangers were smiling to me on the street, then i got used to that and suddenly the anger i felt in berlin disappeared. Listen to me, run away. You will appreciate the value of human touch again.
Yep, this will place will wear you down until you... become a Berliner! You will become gray, sullen, angry, humorless, probably stink like piss, come to hate tourists and foreigners. Save yourself while you can!
Btw, I would be dead here if not for the expats. Man, love them guys from NZ or IE, always make me rediscover the art of laughter.
Thank you for giving me opportunity to vent my anger!
No sane person should move to Berlin. If you however do it, prepare for:
-Even the most simple task, let's say getting a prepaid SIM, will take you hours, maybe even days.
-No one who is hired to a job where customer service is needed speaks English. They are almost always +60 senior citizens.
-Everything except drinking beer in public is banned or heavily restricted. No AirBnB, no real Uber. Don't expect to find food at Sunday from entire metropolis.
-Drug addicts and Turkish immigrants fighting on every street corner (either among their own groups or against each others).
-Most women doesn't seem to care about their looks at all. Neither they are the most friendly or warm.
-Long distances and relatively expensive public transport.
-Credit card is not accepted pretty much anywhere.
Maybe this is not all fault of Berlin. Who knows, maybe this is just a German way to do things. I don't expect very bright future for Germany. People have essentially stopped breeding, and with that attitude it is nearly impossible to get foreign professionals to immigrate there.
Hahaha, holy crap:
"-No one who is hired to a job where customer service is needed speaks English. They are almost always +60 senior citizens."
This bit me so bad so many times! You will go to the central train station and try to figure something out and you'll only get some 60+ woman who _knows english_ but will refuse to speak it to you because you are a foreigner. They will also lie to your face and the only time they light up is if they can lose you money.
"Even the most simple task, let's say getting a prepaid SIM, will take you hours, maybe even days. ". This is not even funny. People just focus on "hey, you can drink beer on the street, that's great!", but totally miss the part that everything else is like running through a pool filled with jell-o. You wanna get a job? You gotta have a bank account (1-4 weeks). Wanna get a bank account? You gotta register first (2 months). Everything here is just so freaking hard.
Oh, also forgot to add that Berliners are the laziest people I've ever met.
They have these numbers about productivity and how Germany is da best and all that, but I think they're massaging those numbers in some ways. I mean everything here works extremely slow, the bureaucracy is slow and is open for like what - 4 hours a day? Customer service is non-existant (you will have cashiers be too busy talking with their friends to actually check you out, I mean, it's not like you're giving them money, right?). Delivery people will routinely fornicate you over - they'll just skip your house and leave your poop at the depot or theyll try and cram poop into your mailbox. Trains and buses aren't really more punctual than in other places.
Maybe theyre doing this by the magic of full employment? I mean I haven't seen this many poop jobs since ever. You got people hired for collecting coins at restrooms, you got people charged with paving streets and sidewalks with cobble stones (yeah its awesome until it's winter and it's slippery as fuck), they got people who study until their early 30's.
So theyre slow and service sucks, but is the work they do high quality? Not really - neither their public infrastructure nor housing is really good - rather "just good". Their cars destroy the environment and they refuse to do anything (the epic VW saga) and the worst thing is...
No one cares. If you talk with them, when the US or the UK are caught spying, it's a disaster! But when the same happens to Germany - they shrug it off as "hey, spies are spies, right?". Or that VW car thing - "Hey, GM/Ford/Toyota ALSO did X and Y". Sure.
I guess this is part of the whole thing when the country takes care of you from birth until death. No sense of responsibility. Just adult babies.
"They have these numbers about productivity and how Germany is da best and all that, but I think they're massaging those numbers in some ways."
I agree. One thing that helps is that they managed to scam the rest of Europe with euro currency, which is highly favorable for their exports but disaster for everyone else. Another thing is that when no one is making babies, huge amount of money is saved and people have seemingly high standard of living (kids are bloody expensive if someone didn't know). Of course in the long run this makes as much sense as peeing in your pants in winter to keep warm. Feels really good, for a short time.
"Oh look honey they are having riots in the center of Berlin..Lets go to Madrid instead for our holiday." (Bad press = NO tourists = NO MONEY FOR YOUR DUMP OF A CITY ) fornicate these Germans are smart.
A word of warning to any Brits thinking of relocating here Post-Brexit
the warnings on this site are real. Unless you're in to a squalid techno/electro party scene and only interested in superficial aquaintances, you may really dislike life in Berlin, and would be better advised to either stay home or try elsewhere.
In all honesty the people of this city have the warmth of an ice cube,.
The city itself has little to offer once you've exhausted the museums and tourist attractions (you'll manage that within the first week or two),
The parks are large, but featureless and poorly kept (you'll find them repetitive after one summer, and useless in a winter).
The clubscene - it's pretty homogenous and either you like it (for a couple of years) or you don't, but as there's only really one flavor of night life and if it's not your thing, you're screwed.
You cannot get out either, unless you enjoy spreewald and lakes, you are hours (at best) away from any other landscape, cities or cultural attractions - I guess as far as experiencing life outside the city goes, the best thing Berlin has going for it is it's airports.
If you're planning on staying at home, the tv is awful, but spotify is ok. Netflix has a pretty miserable catalog, amazon prime is mostly available in erman only, and an awful lot on youtube is blocked by GEMA. You'll certainly need a proxy.
Don't think being wealthy will save you either - it is totally wasted on berlin and even frowned upon, there are so few bars, restaurants, country clubs or anything that compare to other major cities, and good luck finding a comfy mansion in the suburbs. London this is not.
And lastly, for christs sake do not underestimate the difficulty of a foreign language. It's fairly easy to learn it, but bloody difficult to convey your personality, charm, wit or authority in it.
Think twice before relocating here, because it may make financial sense, but you only have one life, and you most probably do not want to squander it in this idiot (especially if you are the sort of person who appreciates things which make financial sense)
Oh, and if you're the sort of person who likes a laugh, you might not struggle to make people laugh, but you'll only have the favor returned very rarely (unless you're laughing at them). People don't expect humor here, they will take you seriously unless it is blatently obviously a joke, self deprecating humor will just get yu genuine looks of pitty, and humor at work will just add you to the list of "unprofessional foreigners not to be trusted with serious business". I'm not joking, it may look like a similar culture on the surface, but it is not!
Ditto on the "eat like pigs" and "they dont like humor" parts.
The first one is plain disgusting. I would extend it to the observation that they behave like pigs in every area of life. You know how a Berliner blows their knows while theyre cycling? They plug one nostril with a finger and shoot snot out of the other. You will have Berliners sneeze, cough, or belch mere inches away from you. It's also considered perfectly normal to bellow senseless poop at 5 am on a Sunday because Saturday is Party Day.
But what really gets me is the humor. There is none. People on here compare Germans to robots, but that's not a good comparison. It feels like humor has been beaten or bred out of them. They cant get any except the most obvious jokes. If you make a non-obvious joke (aka. a joke that's funny for the rest of world), you become "the freak". Oh yeah, I totally had that "unprofessional foreigners not to be trusted with serious business" thing happen to me. I quickly became the black sheep at a German company I worked for (not long, thanks God!) because of such abominable acts like "laughing", "smiling", or "joking". This will wear you down over weeks and months until your friends back home ask you what has happened to you? Are you depressed? Did you start doing drugs? No, I just moved to a pooping city.
People who describe Berlin as the best city in the world are?
The kind of guy who has a penis tatoo and is addicted to ketamine and who overtly believes that he's better than you at everything despite having literally zero skills while secretly believes that Germany will rise once again to conquer the world.
Looking for apartments to rent
Came here on the recommendation of several friends (who, in retrospect were probably just impressed with the city's offerings of all night partying) and could not have been more disappointed. Where to begin with what to hate? I'll start with Berlin's awful "street art" which in any other city would just be recognized as basic vandalism by unwashed hipsters looking to further deface whatever wall they happen to be pissing on (more on the urine later). You'd think the citizens of Berlin would have elected a mayor solely on the platform of promising to rid it's public spaces of this visual leprosy, but no, not in Berlin. In the backwards world of Berlin this is deemed "art". How about Berlin's miserable joyless population? At first you pity them and assume their horrible attitude is just the result of being born in the gaping jerk of the world, but then you interact with them and discover that they somehow think they are far superior to you in every way. You wonder to yourself: "do they own a mirror?" They must not sell mirrors in Berlin because every self-satisfied living frown here has simultaneously mastered the look of "I don't have indoor plumbing" and "I dressed myself/cut my own hair while blindfolded". Now for the piss: it's EVERYWHERE. Within an hour of walking to one of Berlin's many feel-good historical sites (more on that later) you begin to notice that city somehow actually smells worse than it looks. Just when you thought the communist architecture was enough to make you want to eat a shotgun you realize it's also soaked in piss. Anywhere you go, you're stepping in piss. Only a sado-masochist would ever dream of wearing sandals in this fish scented city. Now let's get to the much bragged about historical sites in Berlin. After visiting the "Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe", the "Memorial to the victims of war and tyranny", the "Topography of Terror" and the memorial at the Berlin Wall, you start to notice a trend: the Germans have murdered A TON of people. It's not like their bloodbath of a national history was a surprise or anything, but spending hour upon hour visiting sites solely erected to honour the innocent people killed by this miserable unwashed population, it really ruins your day. To rub salt in the wound, the intended 'sobering' effect of these memorials is completely squandered by surrounding them with piles of litter (my god do they LOVE litter here), Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's. The memory of the holocaust has never felt more futile then when you look to your right and see a sandwich board advertising a jelly donut. Want to escape the oppressive buildings, street piss, horrible people and depressing historical sites? Set aside several hours of your life because this shit-filled adult diaper of a city is absolutely MASSIVE. It literally never ends. You will walk for an hour and yet somehow still have more of your life to waste passing block after block of grey, filthy streets and faces before you get to where you're going. Want to dine at one of their four decent restaurants? Get ready for the hostess to try and seat you in the janitor's closet reserved for anyone who speaks English. If you aren't German, they instantly treat you like poop the second you walk in the door. Want to pay for that sub par meal you just choked down? Get ready to find an ATM because apparently the cold war never ended when it came to credit car payments here. You've got a 50/50 chance that someone tells you they only accept cash IN THE YEAR 2016. Great transit system however. 0/10 would not recommend.
Ah, I hope you're here only temporarily.
Totally spot on about the sense of superiority, urine, anti-foreigner sentiment, and accepting only cash money.
When I moved here, all I had was my Visa card, which is accepted almost everywhere, except for those nice stores in GERMANY that only accept the GERMAN EC card. The number of ATMs is so low that my Polish friends complain that you can find an ATM in Poland in 5 minutes, but you're stuck wondering around city center in Berlin for 30+ minutes because ATMs are apparently an extinct animal. And you're poop out of luck if want to pay with card at a restaurant. This also translate to how you can do shopping at stores - enjoy waiting 10 minutes behind some Mr. Good Berlin Citizen who takes out a separate coin purse and begins laying out 5 and 10 cent coins (in rows, no less!) for the cashier.
Another thing that I want to touch on is the sense of superiority. At no time is this more evident than now - during the football games. There are flags everywhere, even on those tiny street cleaning vehicles. Children have face-paint flags on their faces. Look at the comments after they lost yesterday's match to France: "Very disappointing. France played extremely poorly and cynically all the way through, had the referee on their side, ". I get a feeling that while other nationalities celebrate their nation's values, Germans can only celebrate their "superiority".
Take one.measured step back and watch with glee how they fornicate themselves up with their god given superiority.
these people are going down big time.Sit back and enjoy the pain they have put good people through,A dead people .A dead culture.........And one that despite all the best good will of nations of the world continues to be a bunch of Nazis. This time nobody is going to come and save you.
I've used mastercard and visa in every country in South America, Morocco, all cities I been to in India, Japan, Korea and Thailand. But when I came to Germany they didn't seem to accept it and the only time they did they even asked for my ID and made me sign twice to make sure the transaction worked. Serioulsy wtf Germany it's 2016 ffs.
I lived the nightmare of being in a relationship with a german who lived in Berlin for way too long.
I've never experienced such coldness, inability to share feelings, and constant patronizing/belittling from anybody else.
They will walk out the door and let you wondering what the hell just happened, they will refer to you as being a *stranger* the day after they broke up with you. Like the relationship never existed in the first place.
Jeez, those people would make very efficient robots but they really suck at being human beings.
Basically, the coldness you experience in your everyday life with your follow citizens of Berlin, you will experience with a partner who spent a big part of their lives here. Traumatized. I'm so glad I'm leaving soon
It was mediocre at best - in some places, like West Berlin. Now even the state itself horribly fails! If you need a paper from the state you have to first play lotto with their online system to get an appointment. When I first came here, I was told so much about how nice it is, how things work nicely and that their bureaucracy is tolerable. Almost 5 years later, I can regrettably say, Berlin sucks big time! Nothing works, and by the looks of it, change ain't gonna happen (except for the rents, they'll just keep getting higher). Which reminds me, like, seriously, immobilien agencies treat you like crap, building management is only worse (actually it's shameful), and the rents are extreme! They seriously expect you to pay 700-800 euro ++ for a idiot with no sun, in a pooping area that stinks miles away. And now that I mentioned stinkiness... wtf do the garbage trucks collect trash during launch time? Who the f*ck runs this city? Did he even finish elementary school or something? They say and they say so much, but to work in Berlin, from the looks of it, the only viable solution is to live in Brandenburg! Which of course you can't really do (unless you have a car) since with the first snow or heavy rain, SBAN starts looking paralyzed and sorry for saying that but using the bus and taking 1h on top to get home is not something you can use as an excuse for being totally destroyed the next day at work.
Please, don't forget about the piss. Piss everywhere.
For a whiff, just go on to the kulturbraueri near Schonhauser Str. It's a food market on the weekends. Just a normal wee food market.
ZING! If you try to enter it through the eastern gate that looks out onto Danziger Str. you will be overcome by the smell of stale piss. Same story every single darn weekend.
I have never experienced this anywhere. Are you spending a day at the park? Well, enjoy bathing in the site of men's penises or women's bottoms when they just take a piss anywhere they please. Oh, they were standing by a bush so it's ok to piss. Or by a car in a parking lot.
Why don't other places have this problem? Why don't places like Tokyo, NYC, or Mexico City, places that are packed with humans that you can't stretch your hands, have this issue? You'd think that with so many bladders, they'd be drowning in piss.
But they don't. Maybe because it's unacceptable in their respective cultures to piss where you live? On the street that you walk to work every morning. Or in the park that you spend time with your kids.
What the flying fornicate is wrong with these people?
Piss and shite everywhere, that oughta be Berlin's motto. I no longer live in Berlin but I had to return to Europe to Prague specifically and what a contrast.You can also say that Prague is poor but sexy but they mean it. it's not even overpriced there, I could afford to stay there for some time without having to pay a small fortune. Needless to say, people there are much much nicer.
Oh the piss... oh dear!! I've witnessed the unimaginable (in Berlin). Drunk guy from Durum shop wanted to pee. It just came natural to him instead of going to the toilette he ventured to the garages of the building next to it and started peeing there! It's no miracle that many of my connections (highly educated and skilled professionals from distant lands) after 2-4 years are all planning on leaving as soon as possible (that includes me of course)!
