I moved to Germany and regret it. I've felt unwelcome by the people, and not even the great healthcare can convince me to stay.
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Stephanie Vollmer said that her healthcare and safety were better in Germany than in the US, but she said that she often experienced microaggressions.

Figured this might spark a discussion, seeing how this seemed to come up every day on our subreddit…

  • @[email protected]
    33•1 year ago

    Interesting. As we need immigrants we should listen to people complaining.

    The big points I see: 1. Unfriendlyness with government agencies: I can second this. She mentioned living in Otterberg. I know that place, it is close to the Ramstein US military base, roughly 40k Americans live under an hour away. I know other immigrants who have also had bad experiences.

    1. Unfriendlyness from people on the village. Yeah, I heard it is hard to connect. If we don’t change we will not get the immigrants we need.

    But à lot of her points are plain ridiculousl.

    1. Learning the language is hard. Yeah, no shit. Was it easier in south Korea? That is always hard, and it is a full time job if you want to do it fastly. But this will happen everywhere. I see the point that it should be free to attract people, but I know that there are courses cheaper than 500 euros.

    In-person shopping takes forever because there aren’t big-box stores, and online purchases — excluding Amazon — take up to a week to arrive. Coming from the US and South Korea, where same-day or next-day delivery is more common, this has been an adjustment

    And this is ridiculous. There are big box stores. 15 minutes away is Globus. This shop used to be a real, Walmarts try to start in Germany. This is big enough to find all you need. And in the street it is located you find every other store just as in US stroad utopia.

    And boxes don’t take a week to arrive. Bullshit.

    • @[email protected]
      23•1 year ago

      Honestly, she sounds like a stereotypical American.

      I was in Germany last September for a few days (yes, not the same). We had a great time with everyone. We even had train ride out to the country…still no problem.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•1 year ago

        Although I see your comment having value in this discussion, the sample you’re from in the world and the sample you interact with in Germany have a massive effect on your experience.

    • @[email protected]
      6•1 year ago

      I’d say that just like there are people that just aren’t suitable for certain jobs, there are mentalities that aren’t suitable for living in certain places. In this particular case, she obviously tried to live a lifestyle that could work maybe in Berlin, but probably not anywhere else in Germany.

      Her mentality regarding the language probably also works better in South Korea and Japan. These countries find it very hard to learn English, so they are more wishfull. Germans on the other hand needs to be a bit more insisting regarding language or they would create all sorts of issues.

      No crtique, but she made the right call to move somewhere else.

    • @SneakySquid
      1•1 year ago

      I moved to the Czech Republic from the US 9 months ago.

      The isolation is so hard, as well as learning where to go to buy things because things like Walmart don’t really exist here, or aren’t very accessible without a car. While that is frustrating in some ways, I’ve learned to appreciate the fact that shops aren’t monopolized and there’s so much variety in the many different shops around you. You’re not just limited to Target/Walmart for shopping and 7eleven/whatever-cornerstore-monopolizes-your-area for convenience stores.

      Not having access to next-day shipping for SOME things has literally not been more than a minor inconvenience at most. What are you needing to order so often that you NEED immediately?? This sounds like laziness/unwilling to figure out where to go locally to find the things you need.

      The language is SO HARD. But I’ve found most people are willing to try to help so long as I’m trying to talk to them. Some people are just assholes, sure, but that’s true anywhere. I think the perceived “unfriendliness” is mostly just a lack of being able to communicate, which is the author’s fault. You moved to Germany, you need to learn German and stop expecting everyone else to know English or to WANT to communicate in English in their country.

      I want to have sympathy for this person, but it sounds like they’re wanting the culture to change for them, rather than them changing for the culture that THEY decided to migrate to. It’s actually really upsetting because US expats already have a reputation for being entitled babies, and this doesn’t help. Also to the point of government agencies not being helpful, it’s not like any agency in the US is particularly known for being friendly.