Have anyone seen similar articles about other countries?
More German than many Germans
121–130 of 545 posts
Re: More German than many Germans
#122[flagged]
Would be the same.
Re: More German than many Germans
#123I have a question for you, or any other immigrants. 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 r…
Depends a lot on the period in the year, and which office you’re going to. You often have more than one location where you can go to, and the ones in less busy areas don’t have those long wait. But sometimes they do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: More German than many Germans
#124The first time I was in Berlin I had to take a bus. It was just leaving the stop as I was getting there, but stopped at the next red light. So I ran to the bus and knocked on the door. The driver looked at me with a concerned look to see if something was wrong, and once he understood I was just asking to come onboard outside of the regular stop, he laughed. Not ironically or in a mean way: it was a genuine laugh like…
The driver is not allowed to open the door anywhere but at a bus stop, the company running the bus forbids it. Quite strictly, actually. I think it is mainly because of insurance things. It is the same in a traffic jam when you are on the bus and the next bus stop is just a few meters away, and the bus is stuck and nothing moves -- impatient people will get angry because they want to leave the bus, but the driver is…
Is it typical for a company to run the busses? Somewhat interesting as that's one thing in the US that is rarely privatized. The driver, etc. will be a direct employees of the municipality.
Re: More German than many Germans
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you get run over by a car or bicycle while trying to board a bus outside an official station, or if you trip, the bus company is liable, and the driver will be in very big trouble. Also, wehret den Anfängen! If they started doing this, it would set an example: it would make it very difficult to keep the schedule, and would invite people to just walk into traffic to busses stopping at a red light.
> it would set an example No, it wouldn't. This type of logic only holds if we consider that drivers are automatons who can not analyze risks by themselves. Give the drivers autonomy to judge whether it's safe or not to deviate from the scheduled route. I rather have a driver signaling me "No, I will not open the door now because I don't think it is safe" over "No, I will not open the door now because I can't break t…
You need to understand that Germany is not logical. It is systematic.
Re: More German than many Germans
#126What a nice and heartwarming read! I'm german, and really hope we can pivot away from the rise of the far right. How that can be done, I don't know. I just hope we can do so before we start scaring away people like him who would otherwise come here, decide they like it, become germans, and end up making it a better place for everyone. (Part of it is I think we should make it easier and more incentivized to learn the…
> 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?) Deutsche Welle (DW) is funded by German taxes and has materials for learning German: https://learngerman.dw.com/ as well as regular new materials aimed at learners, such as the news spoken slowly https://learngerman.dw.com/de/langsam-gesprochene…
Also promoting German language and culture (I think technically an independant charity but I guess there's a lot of government financial support):
Re: More German than many Germans
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey newbie, I'm sorry my comment hurt you. But you don't have to be able to read German to apply the charity principle [1] and be a decent human being. Love you, too. [1] https://principle-of-charity.net/
What kind of person comes to an English speaking forum, drops a quote in a foreign language without any translation and pretends to not get called out?
What kind of person new to a community (account created today) tries to police more established members of that community in their very first comment?
Re: More German than many Germans
#128A very nice read and pretty much my experience. I have been here for a quarter of my life now, I do not think I can live anywhere else now. People may not like me being here because of my skin color or whatever but I do not mind. I keep to myself and follow all the "rules" I can. In fact, I like most of the rules, rules are good because they ensure order, fairness and equality. Will a little bit of empathy be nicer,…
> 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. The grass is always greener on the other side ... until you actually dare to find out. Having lived and worked in many a country, I second your opinion that it is often about trade offs. Prob…
My opinion (immigrant for the 2nd time, currently in Germany since 2013- so I've lived in 3 countries when counting my native one):
Basically, all rich/"western" countries are pretty decent. Some better than other, but they're all 'ok' or rather they all have plenty of 'ok' options for people able to work at somewhat in-demands fields (despite the financial situation of the last couple years a career in tech or tech adjacent generally still fits that category).
If you go somewhere where there's "real" problems, countries like Egypt, India, Ethiopia (altho of course there are nice areas in these countries too) you realize most of the time you'd rather live in any rich country than in a poor country. And there are more people worldwide living in countries ± like India than in countries ± like Germany.
Re: More German than many Germans
#129The first time I was in Berlin I had to take a bus. It was just leaving the stop as I was getting there, but stopped at the next red light. So I ran to the bus and knocked on the door. The driver looked at me with a concerned look to see if something was wrong, and once he understood I was just asking to come onboard outside of the regular stop, he laughed. Not ironically or in a mean way: it was a genuine laugh like…
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Re: More German than many Germans
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make a good point about cultural things that would make one excited to learn a language. But I really struggle to imagine what could be done to fix that? Injecting more money into the film industry would just lead it to the same people at the top of it where they'll produce the same mediocre output as they have for ages. hmm
German films are mostly not great, but if one wants to get immersed into the language, music and literature are much better places. And also comedy. The language allows for some great puns.
All foreign films are also dubbed, something I'm not a huge fan of, but at least you don't have to watch an actual German film to hear German...
Also, BTW, there are some very good German films, but to enjoy most of them, you have to be able to relate to the cultural background.