I think there are probably towns in the US where she will feel the same btw. Is it really about Germany as the title suggests? Feels like a generalization.
The villagers probably have been dealing with all sorts of issues from that, then comes a new American, same as all the old ones, wanting to chit-chat and talk about the weather... Newsflash: Germans might not be into that kind of small talk.
We germans publicly joke about the fact that visiting the older part of your family in those "nice small villages" is always one hell of a culture shock, to put it friendly. Which starts with not saying anything about what they have for political opinions and questions regarding your choice of clothes, sexuality and job.
They probably even have their own town slang. Not any "high german". This is 100% comparable to the political landscape that you have in America (city vs farms outside).
I recently heard a term for this, forgot what it was. It happens when young people move into a large city, live there for a while, become quite liberal (what else is there to do, when so many very different people live close together, than to respect everyone's differences) and then interact with their very conservative parents. It is indeed a culture shock, some conversation topics become so sensitive they are best avoided. I guess it happens everywhere.
Maybe she's never been stationed near a small town in the United States? I used to be stationed at Camp Lejeune, which is located in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The locals are downright hostile to the Marines. One day I lost it on a shop owner who treated me like dirt and muttered some comment about those goddamned marines upon which I spun around on my heel and pointed out he sure doesn't mind taking their money! When I got back to base I told the NCO authorizing leave passes about it and they put up a sign warning Marines to not visit that store. After losing a substantial amount of business the guy started singing a different tune.
Anyway, all that is to say small towns are different and they're not as accepting of outsiders. Even in the United States.
There's an entire demographic who votes green simply because they want nicer forests to drive their BMW through, and if you want to go for the oversimplification route, die Linke are boomers who want the USSR back and AFD are zoomers who want the third reich back.
They don't have first past the post so they're not tied into an us vs them dichotomy
I'm not left wing though, that's probably 90% of it. There are reasons that these people choose to live far away from metropolitan centres, it feels completely reasonable to respect that.
In many places zwarte piet now has charcoal smudges over the face, because she or he climbs in and out of chimneys to deliver presents to kids.
Strange fact, on Curacao zwarte Piet is painted extra black and Sinterklaas is painted white [0], at least on some occasions.
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=curacao+zwarte+piet&iax=ima...
Original black face will go away (which makes me happy), but not over night.
And honestly, how is California so much more easy and welcoming? When I tried to move to SF, it felt pretty damn unwelcoming to me with multiple people telling me the city was “full,” even old friends.
News flash, moving to a new country takes curiosity, patience, flexibility and hard work.
Compared to when I lived in Zurich essentially all government officials were willing to even just entirely speak English after briefly suggesting we speak German and only rolling their eyes slightly that I wasn't competently able to. Navigating the system there as a "first year resident" was zero problem by comparison.
I'm rather pale myself though and am there as an engineer, so maybe there's some bias or racism built in that you experienced which I wouldn't know that much about :|
Switzerland has 4 official languages in a very small territory and even more dialects variations so there is that.
The best approach with the most evidence for sucess is Comprehensible Input[-1], which requires nothing more than access to content you want to consume in the language of your choice
Ironically this was the most helpful youtube and twitch ever were for me, since I find mainstream German TV to be pretty bad (I find the same, or worse, with American TV to be fair)
God forbid something isn't done like in California, even if much easier/rational.
Harsh. And also misleading. I hope it comes as no surprise that some countries are easier to migrate to than others. In fact it has been measured.
Title: Where Expats Struggle Most to Get Started
https://www.internations.org/press/press-release/d-40346
Quote from page: "The Expat Essentials Index reveals the 52 destinations that make life abroad easiest and those that make life most challenging for foreign residents. The index is based on data from the Expat Insider 2022 survey by InterNations, the world’s largest expat community with over 4.5 million members."
Source: Been living in Berlin since '19
Berlin is the worst place that you can land in germany. Germans who come to berlin get a complete culture shock. There is "Berliner Schnauze", it describes that people just hurl slurs around on the first occasion. Someone from berlin told me that it is "Not holding back your emotions and being truthful" - he phrased it very positively. Berlin is one of the few citys in germany where a large organized crime scene exists and is considered massively unsafe by german standarts. Young people are even worse since they have normalized all of this.
Try going to Karlsruhe, Göttingen or other univerity cities. They are the big modern cities of germany and you will feel accepted there as an obvious foreigner. ("big city" by german standarts).
In addition, being obese is a good way to make a bad impression on germans. Since one of the biggest national virues here is (self) discipline.
Hope that this helped some people form a better understanding.
It is goddamn atrocious and often times worthy of a Little Britain skit.
> Each course in the sanctioned six-course program can cost upwards of $500 apiece and requires almost as much time as a full-time job.
Why are you doing a 'sanctioned' course if you don't intend on staying? Just go with Duolingo? But if it has a high number of hours per week then $500 sounds ok
> In-person shopping takes forever because there aren't big-box stores
> certain products, such as electronics, cost considerably more than in the US.
That's... weird. I never got the 'considerably more' unless you're importing something directly maybe, or maybe it is the kind of Walmart knicknack
One random example (randomly choosen manufacturer, first product the shop displayed):
https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
Displayed price of 2229 € (includes 19% VAT) vs. $1391.40. Big enough to be called "considerable"?
The US site says "Starts at USD1391.00"
If you scroll down and see the different modules, see the 1st column, the 2229 EUR and the one in the US site
EU model: i7 3.7GHz, 16GB ram, 512GB ssd, Windows PRO
US model i5 3.4GHz, 16GB ram, 256GB ssd, Windows HOME
It's also mentioning the US site is on sale Est Value $2,319.00 to $1,391.40
So you see this seems to be an exception
You're kidding, right? Just look at literally every time a new Apple product is announced on HN, people complain about how much more expensive it is in than in the US. For example, the base model Macbook Air M2 is $1299+tax (on the HIGH end, that tax could be 10%, so $1429) and 1599 Euros in Germany, which is $1730. $300 difference, that's pretty significant. And Apple isn't the only company that prices things that way.
Now when you consider that eastern Europe has these prices too, where salaries barely crossed 1k euros per month (that's gross, in both senses of the word).
And generally reading how people make 200k and similar salaries seems just unfathomable to me xD it's not like we have cheaper stuff here, there are cases when groceries are cheaper in Germany and Switzerland than in eastern Europe. Same goes for rent, at least outside big cities.
Odd the military doesn’t have spouse/family programs as they’ve been moving people all over the world for decades and facing similar problems. There’s a whole lot of rules and restrictions to live as an expat and that’s also where the military should help out. Can’t retain if the family’s dissatisfied.
Are there frustrations when moving to a new country? Absolutely. If you go in expecting every local government agent to be grateful for your USD shekels, you'll be sorely disappointed when you find out they'll make 10x as much effort to speak English as you do to speak their language - but 0 x 10 is still zero.
But if you're polite, persistent, and committed to integrating - I've never failed to find a welcoming community in at least three different countries now.
In truth, my least favorite people to meet now are "American Expats" or instagram influencers - at least fresh ones. You've been abroad for ten years? Let's talk, you probably have some perspective. You're still trying to figure out where Trader Joe's is? You're probably not that interesting.
If you're traveling - enjoy, be polite, you'll be fine. If you're _moving_, it's on you to make the effort and be a part of the community, not the communities job to acclimate to you. Join a few meetups, facebook groups or whatever the latest trend is - meet people with like minded interests, and it works fine. If you're surprised to find occasional micro-aggressions in small towns, well... bless your heart.
If you've moved here and stayed at least through the winter, you're probably pretty great compared to the average.
My cheatcode was to listen to well enunciated German Hiphop/Rap. You learn to parse sentences quickly and you get so much god damn cred from youngins by knowing K.I.Z., and so much respect from your cohorts by knowing Deichkind and Peter Fox.
There's reasons plenty of people prefer cities over large towns. At least in the city, people will have the decency to just directly tell you to go fuck yourself. Saves time.
Us flyovers would span the gamut more from "Wow It's so clean" to people who might just be massive neo-nazis..
Anecdotally but I have a lot of expat friends here (large city which isn't Berlin) and the only ones who spoke of racism from Germans were the Turks (which is quite ironic, since the people they look down upon are more kurds than turks.. but this is another can of worms)
I live in a smaller chicken-shaped country two countries down from germany, and the situation here is the same, especially with americans. While some older generations have issues with our language due to.. well... yugoslavia issues, young people (new..ish immigrants) usually at least try to learn the language as fast as possible (with maybe one group excluded). But americans? Five, six, ten years here, and unable to order a beer in any other language than english. Yes, I know all waiters in the touristy city center know english, but come on, you came here, at least try to adapt.
Beyond that, many of the older peoples, especially in villages, speak their dialect of german. for them "German" may even be a SECOND language (albeit very similar to their dialect for the vast majority..)
Languages are dying every day, but these are some of the last bastions of a Sprachbund.
- There are typically base services that support spouses in ways that she griped about — taxes, language instruction, health insurance, cheap gas, big box stores (PX, AAFES), etc.
- She and her husband get a substantial stipend for housing near the base — that is, they don’t pay rent for what will likely be a very nice place by local standards. Plus they can buy stuff at US prices at the base stores. Complaining about prices seems odd.
- She seems to have a shitty attitude. It’s not a surprise that folks aren’t responding well to her.
- Side note: I wonder if she’s actually having marriage problems, and she’s projecting it onto Germany. Her husband does not seem to be helping her much with being a military spouse (e.g., by telling her about base services), and that’s a culture shock of its own.
My German was terrible but I tried, however many people also wanted to try speaking English with me so often we had a broken English/German exchange.
I loved shopping, it was a great time to learn new words and experience people.
Playing table tennis, and sharing beers, with the locals, and going to the lakes and parks, also helped a lot.
The cheap beer combined with the deposit scheme, oh lordy.
Not to mention no legal closing hours and cornern... always a hoot.
1. https://www.travel.dod.mil/Allowances/Overseas-Housing-Allow...
> I can't wait to feel welcome again in my home country
She's talking about being treated differently based on looks and then suggesting that The United States of America is a better option. Maybe that's her personal experience, but it sounds completely absurd as part of a critique of another country.
She looks like a typical American tourist in the photo, even if we ignore the camera etc she's the largest person in the picture. Of course people look at her, she's novel to them.
"Microaggression" is an attempt to reframe this as being an issue with Germans, not her. As the outsider it's on you to belong, not the other way around.
Basically all of her complaints are classic "American on tour".
Genuinely difficult to distinguish from satire.
"The Culture Map: How to Navigate Foreign Cultures in Business"
https://ahalbert.com/reviews/2023/06/04/the_culture_map.html
HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36190015
"In this chapter she starts with a merger between an American and German financial company. The Americans described the Germans as too hierarchical, with a focus on titles and chain of command. The Germansin turn thought the Americans were too hierarchical - the boss said turn left and everyone turned in unison.
This disagreement happened Germany is more Consensual (Big D) in decision-making - decisions are made by groups in unanimous agreement. Once consensus is reached, it is final. In contrast, the US is a Top-Down (Little d) decision-making culture. Decisions are made by individuals and propagated downwards, but they are not final - decisions are flexible and may be changed."
Not belonging is very much the experience any immigrant faces. Immigrants into the US are no exception.
And if she's complaining about not belonging for her looks, ask how Muslim Americans and Muslim Canadians feel in the early 2000s, or how a lot of Asian Americans and Canadians feel currently with the geopolitics riling up the racists.
I think it's pretty much the same story worldwide, and not only for US bases; anywhere there's a large imposed foreign presence, local residents will not entirely embrace it's members.
Realize there is some level of resentment of servicemen as well. I was a dependent in the 80s abroad.
I am also an American and so sensitive to small unfriendlinesses, but I find them no worse in visiting a far city like Chicago than in most countries.
Have not been to Germany in a while. It used to feel quite straightforward to me and much friendlier than I expected with a modicum of effort. Perhaps more jaded now in the post internet era but who knows.
Still this feels like the snowflake version of the Ugly American viewpoint.
I've noticed that when Americans come here to the Netherlands, they take offence at the things that natives don't. Dutch people don't take offence at those things because there's no need for pretence around caring for people, it's genuine, and a given. Without the _show_ though, it looks like rudeness to Americans.
And big German cities are affordable with a US military salary, but you'll probably have a flat and not a McMansion with a front and back yard. But not working (no relationships with locals) and not having an expat community to fall back to is rapidly depressing.