Posted by mertbio 5 days ago
Here are some of the highlights for the one I live in.
AI image recognition on garbage trucks. -- Yes you've heard right. You do still need a fax machine in Germany to interact with the government. But when it comes to the garbage: Bring in the f##ing AI!! -- If you get the separation or packaging wrong, they won't collect the ton, and will instead leave a note to chastise you. You can meditate on your love for the green party, as you rummage through your weeks-old biodisposables to re-separate, and thank them next time at the polling booth.
Some kinds of garbage can go in the collections, others need to go to a recycling center. Just load up your car with everything you need to get rid of. Drive to a recycling center. Find out that it's closed (opening hours are maximally inconvenient; plan on burning several vacation days for visits to recycling centers that are open during your core working hours only). Once you make it to the recycling center, someone will take X, but tell you they don't take Y, and to try the recycling center several towns over. Of course they are closed. Plan on having your car serve as a garbage truck for several weeks, before it's finally empty.
Of course, some things you can't get rid of at any recycling center: They need to go to a collection. Do you have several cubic meters of styrofoam to dispose of, after re-furnishing your apartment from IKEA? Well tough luck. Find a place to store them for several weeks until the next collection. Then cut them into pieces so they fit in the yellow bag, which is only available in a single size. Then put the many many bags out into the street. If it's a windy day, collect that stuff from all over the street several times. If you're lucky, the garbage truck actually arrives. More likely: You miss the collection several times, because the pickup times are maximally inconvenient and unpredictable. In the meantime, the storage problem is all yours.
Do I need to continue? Because I could continue.
Germans are very nice, Germany is very nice, and I applied to be German finally last year after getting the 30th "come on be German already" letter (I'm lazy af). They told me (us, together with my wife) that they need 30 months to process the application, lol.
There are many things to complain about, many things to love, lots of tolerance, AfD is scary (very similar to AKP, the party that made me leave Turkey in the first place) but these days I think more positive. I'm trying to be one of those people who try to keep things going for everyone. Adlerian stuff :)
I think staying here was one of the best decisions of my life. Here's to the next 17 years in this land of the meckerei with love.
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?
It really depends on where you are. In some parts you can do a lot online, in other places you have to do everything in person. Sometimes you can book an appointment online and something will be available today; sometimes no appointments are available at all. Sometimes you just show up. I'm from Berlin and it was absolutely awful for years - nowadays you can usually book an appointment within the same week.
Best city: Leverkusen. Easy to get appointments, incredibly friendly personnel. Honorable mention for Potsdam.
Worst city: Saarbrücken. I was undocumented a couple months because they couldn't get hold of my documents and refused to give me anything saying it wasn't my fault. They called security to bring me outside, too. When I pointed out that without documents I could be deported they laughed and said "that almost never happens".
Worst delay: Köln. They sat on my documents for two years - not because they had to, mind you, but partially because they decided to proof from scratch documents that had already been vetted by Leverkusen. In the end I had to sue them.
Most improved: Berlin. By the time I left they went from overworked to quite okay. They also used to offer a queue for those who needed an appointment right now but couldn't get one the official way.
Generally speaking big cities are a nightmare and small cities are a delight.
It's true that finding appointments can be difficult if you just open the website once and see a calendar with no available slots for months; _but_; there are very frequent cancellations and some offices releases slots for the same day at midnight/7AM/etc; so if you're determined and flexible; it's quite doable to get an appointment ~soon.
For some things (apartment registration) you can also just show up on the day and just wait.
(My last interaction with a Bürgeramt was in Berlin in October 2023 though and was pretty similar for the previous ~8 years; things could have changed in the meantime!)
It is as with all bureaucracy: you got to be crafty to navigate it. For instance they will tell you exactely what you need to bring for each type of appointment but it still requires you to carefully read and do the work of preparing those things.
But for anything else? Kind of? If you want to move, you have to make an appointment in person to tell them. But it is also retroactive, so you can move and then make an appointment in 5 months and it's fine. The paper that says where you live is very important but it's also easy to get, you just have to show up. Not any time but the times for that are plentiful enough that it works out.
What makes my blood boil is the paperwork for when your kid is born. It feels like they should just be able to retrieve everything from their database but you have to submit a load of documents anyway and it has to be original.
Also, don't try to get married in Germany. Just go to Denmark, much easier, despite the delays if you get something wrong. You can do the whole thing in English and you don't have to translate anything for Germans after, if I recall correctly.
If you don't have to deal with the immigration office, it's fine. If you do, then good luck. I heard it's a pain. For example, in Bremen, it takes at least 2 years to process a citizenship application. It should take a year at most. So I guess if you ever wanted to sue someone and win a slam dunk case, you could do that in Bremen. In Berlin, the citizenship application takes only a few months.
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.
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.
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.
My experiences with German bureaucracy have been similarly positive. The rules are the rules… but the rules are the rules, and can be contemplated at home in one’s own time, on one’s own private computer.