[InfinityByTen]

It's interesting how quickly any discussion about immigrant/expat life in Germany becomes about language. That has to account for something.

After my tenure of 11 years in the country, my impression is that there is a deeper sense of "us" v/s "them"; the language is the most PC way to express it.

If you're in the category of "us" you don't complain about the taxes or things being closed on Sundays, because you're supposed to "understand" that there's a welfare state (which has been a myth for a while now and cracks are showing up since covid). If you're in the "us", you don't claim bureaucracy is treacherous, because the language should have equipped you to fight it. You might be in the "us", if you believe with every bit of your being that rules and regulations is the best way to ensure everyone behaves properly and everything works efficiently.

If you dare challenge (m)any of these and you don't speak German good enough, it's the language. If you speak the language, then you're not "integrated". Maybe that's immigration everywhere, but I feel in Germany, there is a rather narrow band you get to be in "acceptably".

[DStiego]

There's two things at play here:

1. Defensiveness; one could describe it as "Stockholm syndrome"

2. What outsiders don't understand about the language thing is that it's not about how much German you need to get along in daily life. That's a similar challenge everywhere in the world.

The crux is that in Germany, correct use of the language is a social status thing, more so than in other places. Any person, whether German or foreigner, who appears to have difficulty with the language, is easily looked down upon.

[fallingbananna]

The point about correct use being a status thing is such a good point, that you almost never see mentioned, but definitely feel it.

Recently I saw a discussion on Reddit where the author made a minor mistake in the title, that sounds perfectly fine and understandable to me, as a non-native speaker. They used "Mit was" instead of "womit". And more than half the comments were people pointing out the mistake and making fun of the person due to it, rather than engage in the topic that was raised in the first place.

[DStiego]

Yes. I don’t want to invalidate people’s bad experiences, but I think it’s a more general problem and not specifically xenophobia. What you describe can happen to anybody!

The same is true for speaking English, which is considered very high status in Germany. If someone has a strong German accent, they’ll be made fun of. I always find this ironic because the people laughing usually don’t speak much better. (Not that I would care; I love people’s accents.)

[rf15]

I have like a dozen different german friends, and it's nothing like you say: everyone in the country curses the bureaucracy, every sunday is like "oh let's quickly get something from the shops oh no wait it's sunday uuuugh"

The taxes seem largely fine relative to the cost of living there, with people living in poorer regions at an advantage even due to the Freibetrag.

[InfinityByTen]

Complaining about the bureaucracy is sure everyone's favourite trauma bonding exercise, but I never hear about the solution to it. It's in the political agenda, but the solution is almost always, let's form a committee to decide the agenda of the report about it that would be 1500 pages long and be done in 72 weeks from the day of conclusion of committee's proposal. I feel the issue is the mentality towards problem solving.

Taxes are fine till Herr Merz isn't busy proposing a rug-pull on half of the things you learnt were supported here. Many of our "expat" friends faced this first hand when they lost their Kindergeld unplanned. There was a sudden hue and cry about dependents' insurance being scrapped, not sure of what's latest on it. And the English speaking, tech and finance working expats are not in poorer regions.

I don't know all Germans and maybe it is my circle, but in general I felt if I didn't mirror their hobbies, opinions, and preferences, I wasn't going to have a chance to be on the same table as them or have a heart to heart conversation with them. It's almost like it's too inefficient use of their social time and I'm pretty sure I ain't alone.