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Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

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Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#41

Post by coldtea »

lucb1e wrote: post #37
learnstats2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time. By standards I am familiar with, that's good. Last time I checked, my local train station had trains arriving within 10 minutes only 50% of the time.

75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane... I dunno, that's not really a chance you want to take, so you end up planning for 1-2 hours of delay every single time, depending on how bad it is if you're late due to no fault of your own (a departing plane won't care bu…

>75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane...

If you're gonna miss a plane because a train is more than 5 minutes late (I'm guessing closer to 10 or so, not 30), then you didn't plan your trip to the airport that well...

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#42

Post by ajdlinux »

coldtea wrote: post #40
looki wrote: post #9

Regarding the trains, >They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe. He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying. I also thought the ICE and…

> He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying. Then don't arrange for "tight transfers"? If "within 5 minutes" (or close, I'm guessing the rest of the time would be some "unbear…

I don't know about German train schedules specifically, but in life in general while avoiding tight transfers is generally a good idea sometimes you just have no say in the matter.

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#43

Post by Perenti »

chki wrote: post #14
onreact wrote: post #2

Some fun albeit superficial information. You forgot to mention that Australians are not simply allowed to move here. Having a job or at least money to support yourself is a prerequisite. A friend of my wife is from Australia and she had a hard time to prove she's not a burden to Germany even though she basically lives off renting her house in Australia and selling her art so that she is quite well off. Also Germany l…

>People from Africa or Asia routinely get held at extraterritorial prisons indefinitely. In case you have mixed ancestry and look like "people of color" be cautious. Not regarding anything else you are claiming this is quite an outrageous claim and I have no recollection of such things going on in Germany for the last few years. It would also be a severe violation of the German constitution if this would be happening…

This kind of detention definately happens in Australia, or more precisely in concentration camps paid for by the Australian Government in other Pacific nations.

Makes me ashamed to be Australian.

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#44

Post by fefe23 »

chki wrote: post #14
onreact wrote: post #2

Some fun albeit superficial information. You forgot to mention that Australians are not simply allowed to move here. Having a job or at least money to support yourself is a prerequisite. A friend of my wife is from Australia and she had a hard time to prove she's not a burden to Germany even though she basically lives off renting her house in Australia and selling her art so that she is quite well off. Also Germany l…

>People from Africa or Asia routinely get held at extraterritorial prisons indefinitely. In case you have mixed ancestry and look like "people of color" be cautious. Not regarding anything else you are claiming this is quite an outrageous claim and I have no recollection of such things going on in Germany for the last few years. It would also be a severe violation of the German constitution if this would be happening…

Germany does not have extraterritorial prison colonies.

I think this is a combination of hyperbole and choosing the wrong word. Germany does have housing for refugees and asylum seekers while they wait for asylum to be granted or denied, and the conditions there might be construed as prison-like depending on your political point of view. Technically it's not a prison.

Asylum seekers are not permitted to do paid work, for example, and I think they also cannot exercise freedom of movement inside the EU or Germany (they have to clear moving to a different city with the authorities first and they are generally not given enough money to actually move around).

The EU has made a deal with Turkey to prevent refugees from Syria to come to the EU. That might be construed as an extraterritorial prison camp (the press has been mostly silent about the conditions those people are held in but I assume they are not very nice). Technically, even if that is a prison colony, it's not Germany's.

Greece has also held refugees in camps, one could interpret this as "on behalf of Germany", which I think is technically incorrect but in a sense still true.

German political debate has unfortunately become a shouting match between leftists who use war-cry terminology like OP did here, and right-wing populists who complain that asylum seekers should be sent home straight away and should not be allowed a legal way to protest if they are denied asylum status.

As always in shouting matches and war, the first victim are the facts and the truth.

Personally I think it is abhorrent how the EU is building a fortress to keep refugees out. Compared to most other EU countries however, Germany is by far not the worst of the bunch. Also I think far too little is being done to remove the reasons why people would leave everything behind and flee to the EU. You can't win scenarios like this by fighting the symptoms and doing cosmetics only.

Also, dear American friends, the biggest reasons for refugees from the middle east fleeing to Europe are a) your constant wars and meddling in the area and b) climate change, which from Europe also looks like it is disproportionally being caused by you.

(Prepare for downvotes in 3... 2...)

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#46

Post by somedangedname »

lucb1e wrote: post #3

> [My car is] impractical with only two doors and four seats I like four doors, but only two isn't too bad (drove one of those for five years). Seats though, is it normal to own a bus in Australia? The people I would expect to own a car with more than two rows of seats are families with 4+ kids, which is nobody here. I've recently been thinking about a 2-seater to save on gas/CO2 since I have no kids anyway and you c…

Servo: a petrol station, service station

"In Australian English, diminutives are usually formed by taking the first part of a word, and adding an a, o, ie, or y. Alternatively in some cases no ending may be added. While the form of a diminutive is arbitrary, their use follows strict rules. Diminutives are not used creatively.

For example, an ambulance paramedic is called an ambo, and is never pronounced ambie or amba. The use of the -ie ending, for example in bikie (a motorcycle club member), does not carry a connotation of smallness or cuteness as it does in other English dialects."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutives_in_Australian_Engl...

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#47

Post by lucb1e »

mtmail wrote: post #21
learnstats2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time. By standards I am familiar with, that's good. Last time I checked, my local train station had trains arriving within 10 minutes only 50% of the time.

"In Germany, there are two kinds of "on time". So far [2017], 94.2% of trains have reached their final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time, and 98.9% within 16 minutes." The article also goes into detail how every country measures punctuality differently. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42024020 (Yes, Germans love to complain about the train company)

> 94.2% of trains have reached their final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time

That's a terrible statistic. First off, connections are designed to be just a few minutes, so 5 minutes delay (not included in this stat) makes you miss an average connection.

Secondly, that statistic is about trains, not people: one could manage to have 50% of people be delayed by 30-60 minutes every day and still have 94.2% of trains run on time just by having only the busiest trains between 8-9h and 16-18h delayed enough to miss people's local connection.

Finally, the final destination says nothing about intermediate stops (why not just look at every stop?). Things like switching drivers, refueling, or just introducing some slack in the schedule is most often done at endpoints. Heck, if I know this is the statistic being used, I would be sure to design my schedules to have even more leeway at the endpoints than I otherwise already would.

I'm curious to see how this statistic changes when it includes intermediate stops and counts delayed passengers rather than empty trains running on time. Optionally, counting the full delay (missed connection / actual frustration) instead of the technical train delay would also be interesting.

As one datapoint, my girlfriend takes a train from Cologne in rush hour that is 4-20 minutes late more than half the time, with a connecting bus that goes once an hour that is always on time or even early. She usually misses it.

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#48

Post by cosmodisk »

looki wrote: post #9

Regarding the trains, >They are usually on time and cover basically everywhere worth visiting in Europe. He has a very ungerman definition of usually on time :) There's probably not a bigger laughing stock in Germany than our trains (Okay, there is BER). The long-distance ones only arrive within 5 minutes 75% of the time [1]. If you have tight transfers to make, that can get very annoying. I also thought the ICE and…

Well...The local operators,here in London,solved the stats issue this way: if a train is late, it skips many stations and still arrive to the end station on time. Guess what,all the stats are produced on first- last ststion basis...

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#49

Post by lucb1e »

coldtea wrote: post #41
lucb1e wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane... I dunno, that's not really a chance you want to take, so you end up planning for 1-2 hours of delay every single time, depending on how bad it is if you're late due to no fault of your own (a departing plane won't care bu…

> 75% punctual is good? Because I usually use the long-distance train when I need to go somewhere, not to go for a drink, and having a 1 in 4 chance of being late at a customer's or missing a plane... If you're gonna miss a plane because a train is more than 5 minutes late (I'm guessing closer to 10 or so, not 30), then you didn't plan your trip to the airport that well...

Right, so you have to build in slack yourself, i.e. you can't rely on the "high punctuality" of 75%. They might as well be 1% punctual and, unless the amount of delay also increases, it wouldn't change a thing.

Re: Moving to Germany as an Australian (2016)

#50

Post by incompatible »

FabHK wrote: post #30
onreact wrote: post #2

Some fun albeit superficial information. You forgot to mention that Australians are not simply allowed to move here. Having a job or at least money to support yourself is a prerequisite. A friend of my wife is from Australia and she had a hard time to prove she's not a burden to Germany even though she basically lives off renting her house in Australia and selling her art so that she is quite well off. Also Germany l…

Immigration can be a bit unfriendly (like in many countries), and your treatment might depend on your origin or citizenship (for obvious reasons), but it is quite a claim to insinuate racism or racist motivation. The claim that people “routinely get held at extraterritorial prisons indefinitely“ is wrong, I’d say. Do substantiate it.

It's true in Australia, in any case, at least for people who arrive by boat or are on the way to deportation.

I assume most Australians who work in Germany would have an EU citizenship by descent from their parents: not so unusual given the number of immigrants in Australia.

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