More German than many Germans

Will a little bit of empathy be nicer, sure, but I cannot complain. Speaking of which, a lot of German natives complain and some are even leaving the country (around 100k left last year), but honestly I have visited / lived in nine countries, and people have no idea how good they have it here. I came here with a bag, twenty euros in my pocket and a job offer, a dozen years later I have pretty much all basic comforts and stability one can dream of, my kids have a bright future waiting for them, all this is not possible in many countries.

I could not believe it; but when I told the story to my German friends they too didn't quite understand why anyone would try to board a bus outside of a stop.

Being French, I have a hard time understanding why you wouldn't.

Lately, or perhaps for the last couple of years, I've struggled with negative feelings about the country. I do not like the direction things are moving politically and economically, nor how germans talk about politics, and the biggest reason to want to be in Germany is the very high living conditions one can have here. Culturally, it is hard not feel dettached when Germans themselves seem uninterested in cultural aspects that are normally a reason to want to learn a language (literature, films, etc). I can speak German, but maintaining it or improving it feels more like a chore than something exciting.

Anyway, this was a nice, positive read, and it made me happy to read it. It is often easier to focus on the negative aspects of things, while taking for granted the positive ones. Germany has a lot of good things going for it, and the power to be a better version of itself. A position lots of countries would wish they could be in. Sadly, this does not seem clear to the German political class.

(Part of it is I think we should make it easier and more incentivized to learn the language early so not just people in english-dominated tech jobs can have a positive experience. Cold start problem. It shouldn't be too hard for the gov to commission a RosettaStone like german learning app ((suboptimal, i know)) that works somewhat well and give it out for free, right?)

But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it. It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics. It's probably one of the cognitive "exploits" in the human mind, that finding a scapegoat (the foreigners) to blame for everything being such an effective tool to rally people with grievances behind yourself and slowly turning them into hateful monsters.

Somewhere in the afterlife, Max Weber proudly sheds a tear of happiness while whispering "this guy gets it", hahaha (of course his whole philosophy depends on the rules being as fair as possible, and also that they are enforced uniformly and fairly, but let's not get too lost in the weeds here).

Anyway, lovely article and congrats on finding a place where you feel home!

This country gave me a lot. Moving here from a third world country, the jump in my quality of life was immeasurable. All the rules everywhere were for me a blessing, coming originally from a chaotic city.

Despite never taking any German courses, I had reached C1 level after only three years, and thanks to the (now reverted) law by the traffic-light-government you mentioned, I could get the citizenship in a record 3 years only.

I have never felt at home anywhere in my life like in Hamburg. It is such a stunning city, with the perfect mix of anything. The city's own marketing campaign "why go to country X when you have it inside Hamburg" is so true.

Compared to the rest of Germany, Hamburgers are extremely open and friendly. But the bar is so.damn.low. That is one of the few big problems I have here. I integrated in an excellent way IMO: speak C1 German without an accent, have a German wife, have a stable job, yet feel unwelcome by an ever increasing percentage of Germans.

As much as I adore Hamburg, I do not want to imagine getting old here. Just like a huge amount of Germans, I see my happiness in moving further north.

Hamburg along side with Munich is what Germany should look like. So I think Hamburg has played a role in your perception too.

Immigration has many pulls and with that comes all sorts of immigrants whether great, average and terrible.

Unfortunately Western countries and bureaucracies seem to have committed the usual sin of developing processes that:

- make it incredibly hard for good immigrants to migrate, contribute and naturalise themselves legally.

- at the same time leaving lots of gaping holes of exploitation for criminals and other immigrants who are just looking for a meal ticket or to enter illegally and abuse our high trust societies.

Couple this with a news and media setup that optimises for covering news of bad migrants whilst hardly broadcasting news about good migrants.

> [Rules mean that] someone, or a group of people, sat down and thought about that specific thing and decided on a standard for everyone. When you have to do something, you don't feel lost, because you can just look it up. You don't have to find someone who knows.

I mildly disagree with this stance for two reasons.

First, "you can just look it up" it's like arguing that it's okay if the Linux kernel is badly documented because you can inspect the source code anytime. Try and figure out the rules for opening a GmbH by yourself (and the advantages over a Ug) and let me know if you feel comfortable in doing it without "finding someone who knows".

Second, the problem with inflexible rules is that you can't do anything when someone else breaks them. The case that everybody knows: if you need to renew your residence permit before a specific date you cannot book more than X weeks in advance (rule 1), you have a right to an appointment (rule 2), and the online system is the one and only way to get one (rule 3). So what happens when there are no appointments? Well, you panic, because suddenly your timeframe is very tight (thanks to rule 1) and you cannot reach anyone (rule 3) despite you having a right (rule 2). What happens if you respectfully but firmly demand that which is your legal right? Based on my experience, someone will call security to escort you out. And while I never thought my first time suing someone would be the German government, that was the only way to get them to give me my citizenship after literal years of delays.

Rules are fine, but only when everyone follows them. Once the government starts ignoring them while demanding that everyone else follows them, every rule becomes a potential headache.

Just remember: Kreuz setzen ohne Haken! ;-)

Your article mirrors my own experience 1:1, it’s like I’ve written it myself. Apart from the citizenship process. Even though it was also 14 months long (eerie lol), I had to do a lot of noise about it, because they are processing applications out of order (some people got theirs in two weeks, some in two years, no rhyme or reason) - press, meetings with local politicians etc. Which helped my personal case but didn’t fix the problem at all.

Congrats on becoming a citizen. Having seen many of my friends go through it and accompanying some to their appointment, I know how big it can feel.

I came to Germany with my parents in the 1990s. Both of them had university degrees, but those qualifications did not really help them much when they arrived. They ended up working in low-paying jobs in Germany's Niedriglohnsektor, which was heavily expanded through reforms under the Social Democratic Party.

I grew up in a poor neighborhood and most of the racism I experienced happened during my school years. What was interesting to me is that things changed quite a lot when I moved to a better school to get my Abitur. After I started university, I basically stopped experiencing racism. People were more open, easier to talk to, and seemed less focused on judging others based on where they came from or what they look like.

Today I work in tech. There are days when I do not speak German at all, because at work and in my private life I mostly speak English or my native language. My daily life is very different from when I was growing up.

This has made me wonder whether interpersonal racism is less about people being hard-core nazis but instead connected to people's life circumstances. I am not talking about institutional racism, which is a different issue, but about everyday interactions between regular people. In my experience, I encountered more hostility in environments with more poverty and fewer opportunities, while people I met later in education and professional life were generally much more open-minded.

And also nice to coincide with you on here, your career always bring hope to us, DEU CS grads and students.

True Alman spottet.

No loud noises on Sunday (mowing lawn, home renovations etc) I can get behind. But I truly don't get why Germans collectively dislikes shops being open on Sunday. If you ask into it, something about the fabric of the German family is at risk.

Others have talked about many aspects of the life annd integration process in Germany. But one thing I’m missing from your post is what did you do to your German colleagues and friends? How did you treat them?

It’s certainly interesting to know but I think it’s also an important aspect we often forget.

Purposefully making the distinction between things that are merely peculiar about German customs (old and new) on the one side, and things that are objectively the one true/correct/orderly way of doing things, and thus, must forfeit all claims of being "German". Many of the latter fall into the general categories of "rule of law" or "high-trust society", and once you compare how Denmark and Austria are doing, the most productive strategy is probably to stop attributing them to the peoples or states of Germany. And rather, consider them merely things easy to observe in Germany at this particular time. Use Germany as a spotlight to learn how to recognize how it looks and feels when they work, and more importantly: how to spot signs of them failing to work, then apply it globally. Und es mag am deutschen Wesen einmal noch die Welt genesen! Which is easier without bundling it up with customs that.. well.. would better remain localized to free state of thuringia.

A common complaint I have heard from rule-followers immigrating to Germany is something like "You have to have an appointment in person for minor thing X at the city hall, and there are 7 slots for a date and time 5 months from now" (some exaggeration).

How prevalent was this in your experience, or anyone else you know? Any particular cities that are worse in this regard?

Ah, he really became german. (It seems I ain't anymore by that standard - when there are no cars, of course I go.)

That is - as determined by a German court - something between fake news and severely distorted representation of what happened.

I just don't understand this. It's not about hate or racism, it's about the speed of the change.

We've had too many immigrant, too fast. But since there's no brake on this thing apparently the only option normal politicians seems to have is to be dismissive of negative effects of mass migration so they don't have to admit there's no brake lever.

This then pushes people to a party that will at least admit the negative effects.

All these rules would be way less cumbersome if they didn't come with a bunch of literal paperwork.

Meanwhile in Turkey itself, Erdogan abolished the secular separation and transitioned into a de-facto dictatorship, where religion plays a much stronger role than before. This presents a huge problem because such a Turkey simply does not fit into Europe. It fits a lot more to arabic and persian culture, though Turkey is also a bit different to that; it seems Turkey does have a very strange role, overall. It fits in part to everything but also to nothing else. Erdogan was voted in, though, by a conservative majority, so they wanted to have such a structure for the most part.

> people say Germans prefer Germans when it comes to promotions

That is not really that correct either; Germans are not all Germans. For instance, Bavarians are very different to northern Germans and here the dialect plays a huge role. If you can speak bavarian, even without being from Bavaria, you'll find it is much easier to interact in southern Germany, irrelevant over as to whether you were born here or not. I noticed this when people with a black skin speak perfect/fluent Bavarian. They look different of course but there is no language barrier. So really the advice to be given is to learn german, ideally the dialect if you can (some dialects are horrible, saxon specifically).

> Cem Özdemir, whose parents came from Turkey, has been the prime minister of Baden-Württemberg since May

He speaks perfect german though, so I don't think this can be taken as a comparison. He was also born in Germany (in Urach). You can find many other examples too if you want to; some turkish-germans who support the AKP or grey wolves and what not radical groups. It simply is not a homogeneous mass.

> in a city like Hamburg

It depends a lot on the city too. Hamburg is pretty solid overall. You may find it harder in Berlin; and although I think Bavaria rocks, Munich can be a rather difficult setting. Hamburg is quite nice though, much prettier than Berlin, even though significantly smaller (but still a fairly large city; almost two million people, in fact, second biggest city in Germany).

Also from what he writes, it seems to be as if he has solid social skills. This is not always the case.

> The language is part of that

Indeed. It's IMO the number #1 thing to tackle. The language barrier. English works usually but there will be a huge difference to understanding german natively or near natively.

> So the German came from the decision to stay.

The more important question though is: why isn't Turkey like that? Great that people want to go into Germany, but you only need to look at the recent problems with Ceuta. Spain is not Germany, of course, but something really does not work well here. Wealth and opportunities should be much better spread and distributed than it is right now.

> For me the logical thing has always been to aim for 15 minutes before the agreed time, so if something happens on the way I'm still fine.

He already has german work ethics there. ;)

For me I also try to arrive earlier, but mostly because upon waking up my head needs time to clear up and I am slow, so I try to have a time buffer usually. It's no problem past 10:00 o'clock (I use the 24 hours clock; AM and PM never made any sense to me).

> and I didn't hesitate to complain (with Lärmprotokoll) to my landlord.

Alright I had to stop here, because when someone from outside Germany knows the word Lärmprotokoll, he is now more german than the germans. :P

(I also had noise by neighbours but I never complained, yet alone with a protocol to snitch. Though my neighbours are not causing any problems usually, young kids may sometimes cause noise but I also felt that if I were to complain when kids make noise that does not seem to be super-nice to a kid that may not understand that noise causes issues. And complaining to the parents made no sense either since that would just delegate the problem when it would be a non-problem. I'd be scared to live around something writing "Protokolle" about me. He should tone down his super-german drive really - not everything is great about german discipline. I mean we could have a look at two world wars, how that got started ...)

That is still relatively easy. 5 years is not a long time – various other European countries are longer.

The citizenship test is multiple-choice and has a pass rate of 52%. B1 should be easily achievable after 5 years in Germany. And B1 is lower-middle (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2), and is not fluency.

I'm not sure why paying taxes and having a job is highlighted as making it "not easy" - that should be the bare minimum.

And then he goes onto describe how painless the application process was. All digital. No bureaucratic games trying to trip him up. Seemed very easy

edit: Oh and ~700-800 EUR in total for all the fees? [0] Bargain!

[0] https://reddit.com/r/GermanCitizenship/comments/1q5ij2w/what...

Try the Kö in Düsseldorf! Of course this is a jab at the fact that nearly every nice store there is one where you walk in, get profiled, and then are given champagne and asked to sit down before you can even look at clothes. We have this ridiculous shit, it's just localized to a couple places known for being so posh! :)

> What stayed with me is that this is probably the only country in the western world that faced its own history properly, admitted the worst things it did, and built a lot of its identity around not repeating them.

This however is categorically untrue. If Andrew Tate suddenly starts publicly repenting and then staunchly defends Ghislaine Maxwell, he is not facing his history properly nor admitting the worst things he did. He's just being as awful as he's ever been.

If most Germans had faced their own history properly and truly admitted the things it did, they would never have been such huge defendants of the genocide in Gaza. If they had drawn their lessons, the lesson would've been "humanity can get up to atrocious acts, and we need to act against these whenever they happen". Instead, they drew the lesson "we should outwardly act extremely sorry, and treat acts and people completely differently based on their religion/ethnicity". The "change of heart" in Germany over the last 2 or so years doesn't change this.

There has of course always been a minority of Germans who did already own their history, but in the last few decades that group never exceeded 20% of (ethnic) Germans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynI0gLxA7w

Grep RULES.md, if not in the rules, `return 0`.

Someone gets it. It reduces mental load tremendously which is kinda important when you are a pedestrian surrounded by motor traffic. But of course you think there is no car coming because you didn't see one, right? So why not jaywalk this time? But what if your perception played a trick on you and your conclusion turns out to be false? When you are fatigued by the constant state of vigilance, doubt and self-assurance, in the end you are more likely to overlook the car that is coming round the corner. Jaywalking is for short term gains, but might have bad consequences in the long run. Your attention and vigilance is a scarce and valuable resource.

And what's the rush anyway?

He landed in a relatively rare bubble: an international tech company, an English-speaking workplace, and a professional profile the system values. That experience is valid, but it is hardly representative. Even this bubble is shrinking as companies cut local roles and move more work to lower-cost locations.

The rest of Germany becomes visible once you leave the corporate layer. Try finding an apartment, dealing with a government office, getting a timely appointment, or starting a business. The system is often slow, rigid, inaccessible, and exhausting.

Even a high salary does not automatically translate into prosperity. After taxes, housing, and everyday costs, building meaningful savings can still be surprisingly difficult.

Germany also has a way of pushing you into an NPC life: work, pay taxes, follow the process, book everything months ahead, stay quiet on Sundays, and remain on the approved path.

Meanwhile, the article feels oddly detached from a country facing industrial pressure, job cuts, housing shortages, heavy bureaucracy, economic anxiety, and growing political anger.

   ...What I knew about Germans.. ..who speak a language that sounds too harsh.. ..And of course, someone always brings up the Nazis   

I guess we all need someone worse than us to cope.

"I am German now." - Yeah, sure. For many Germans he can never be German.

It's despicable how the political class has betrayed the natives. Germany has become a big melting pot of shit. It's depressing in many parts. Even many smallish German towns have become a shit show. Some crawling with MENAT people, Muslims, Indians, with the typical accompanying behaviors and side effects.

what a load of 2010s and hamburg vibes but this part stuck out for me.

how can someone, especially from that part of the world, look at germany post oct 7 and conclude anything other than that everything was always a self-stroking lie and propaganda