My wife and I lived in Hamburg for a few years. Nice place and I often miss our lives there. However, I know many other foreigners do not share this experience - even I had to get used to people being hostile to someone stumbling through German. Ultimately we found happiness was being back home (SA) where things were a bit harder, but "nicer".
More German than many Germans
361–370 of 545 posts
Re: More German than many Germans
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> If you like how a country does things, why not change the country you originate from instead of going to that other country? Because it's neigh impossible for an individual to meaningfully change parts of the culture they dislike which are ingrained for hundreds of years. How am I supposed to change one of the major issues plaguing my home country: corruption? It's ingrained at all levels, from politicians to the p…
> I cannot change that, it's part of the culture, it annoyed me to no end, and my individual actions didn't matter at all while making my life harder.
That's never true, countries changed extremely, also cultural-wise. If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society.
If talking corruption, my own country has progressively became far less corrupt over my lifetime
Re: More German than many Germans
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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"More german than many germans" is a figure of speech in the German language and, even overlooking that "German" is not a race, I can't conceive of any German considering it racist, in any way derogatory let alone extreme misbehavior warranting expulsion.
I can only imagine you are a troll, but in case you're not, I'm very sad you are not mature enough to realize the extreme privilege you received in the lottery of life by no effort of your own. Maybe it's time to move out of your parents' house, provide for yourself and change things for the better in your community, maybe travel a bit and generally learn to have some compassion and empathy for those less fortunate than yourself.
Re: More German than many Germans
#364What percentage of your productive capacity is used for proper recycling and garbage disposal? ...that's the real metric to measure Germanness by, and yet it never got mentioned once!
Re: More German than many Germans
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you like how a country does things, why not change the country you originate from instead of going to that other country? Because it's neigh impossible for an individual to meaningfully change parts of the culture they dislike which are ingrained for hundreds of years. How am I supposed to change one of the major issues plaguing my home country: corruption? It's ingrained at all levels, from politicians to the p…
> I cannot change that, it's part of the culture, it annoyed me to no end, and my individual actions didn't matter at all while making my life harder. That's never true, countries changed extremely, also cultural-wise. If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society. If talking corruption, my own country has progressively became far…
> If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society.
I seem to recall that this was not the result of Germans staying put and changing things for the better, but rather due to external forces reducing the majority of their country to rumble and and spending 2 decades reeducating them.
Not sure what "your country" is, but here in Germany that's the general consensus of Germany's progression to a "rather" pacifist society. You might want to take pacifist with a grain of salt though, considering how excited many Germans were about being able to deploy the Army for non defensive reasons in the Balkans, Afghanistan, etc. and how giddy everyone was that we were once again allowed to export arms to Ukraine. Not to mention the current rise of far right, xenophobic parties.
Fighting corruption is very difficult. A good way to go about it is to sent some of your young people to countries that don't have massive problems in order come back home viscerally convinced it's not a necessary evil you need to put up with.
Re: More German than many Germans
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I cannot change that, it's part of the culture, it annoyed me to no end, and my individual actions didn't matter at all while making my life harder. That's never true, countries changed extremely, also cultural-wise. If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society. If talking corruption, my own country has progressively became far…
> If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society. I seem to recall that this was not the result of Germans staying put and changing things for the better, but rather due to external forces reducing the majority of their country to rumble and and spending 2 decades reeducating them. Not sure what "your country" is, but here in Germa…
The way I see it is the cultural change happened after the Prussian elites lost power and the general German public understood their recent history as far from the eternal victory they were promised. That's a major cultural change however you want to spin it, and there are enough examples in history where countries haven't gone through the same changes in similar situations (Weimar Republic also comes to mind)
Regarding the current day pacifist state of Germany, in my mind it is still very drastic anti-militaristic compared to the vast majority of the world.
Regarding corruption, countries changed drastically during the 20th century due to ideologies and individual action, sometimes resulting in disaster but also often not. Trying to say nothing can change is a defeatist deterministic attitude that has no anchor in recent history.
Presuming we are talking about migration, most of these source countries were able to fight and win European colonization in the past, why do you think that's easier than fighting corruption?
Re: More German than many Germans
#367congrats on the citizenship, have a potato party
Re: More German than many Germans
#368The 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…
In London the driver looks forward and pretends he didn't see you.
Re: More German than many Germans
#369Good read. I was enjoying until that moment about men peeing sitting down.
Re: More German than many Germans
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is... what about the german culture do you know? Do you know the "functional" Brother Grimm's tales? Or the "dry" humor of Dieter Hallervorden if you're a bit older? (okay, Christian Ehring from extra3 is perhaps really dry ...) Do you know the rigid songs of, say Nena or Einstürzende Neubauten? Or is the music of BAP functional to you? Are the books of Andreas Eschbach dry? Or the lyrics of Ingeborg Bac…
It's not a matter of not knowing the language. I grew up in Brazil but studied in a German school from grades 6-12. I used to watch Deutsche Welle more than I'd watch canned US sitcoms on cable. I can understand a joke, and I can even (most of the times) understand the intention of the joke. But it doesn't mean that I find it funny . As for "culture", I don't think we are using it in the same way. I mean in the sense…
Being German who lived in other parts of the world myself, and someone who likes food and considers the typical German BBQ an abomination I can feel your pain.
But is this not more of an example of you wanting to do things the Brazillian way rather than German's unwillingness for you to integrate? At any rate, the Nackensteak guy is a total dick!
Also don't forget, a lot of those Italian, Turk, Greek, Spanish and Polish coworkers may well be Germans...