Programmer in Berlin: Culture
wickedchicken.github.io
wickedchicken.github.io
Some examples:
- Sunday shopping: Totally a thing here in the Netherlands.
- Smoking: A lot of people smoke here, but it certainly does feel like a lot less people than in Germany, and it certainly is allowed in fewer places.
- Alcohol: Yes, in the Netherlands you can also drink on the street. In Germany and Berlin specifically, it is also part of the drinking culture, it seems. Certainly Germany has a different drinking culture where there is much more strong liquor available in supermarkets where in the Netherlands you need to go to liquor stores or a special closed section of the supermarket.
Again, mostly nitpicks but worth enough to point out imho.
I guess it varies significantly by city then, because until a year ago or so the main shopping street here in Leiden was 90% shut on Sundays. More recently I have seen more and more shops stay open on Sunday too, not sure why they changed, but I am glad they did :)
Yes, of course that requires people working too. Perhaps not fair for the many that need to work, but there are a few advantages.
For me the issue is that those same shops are usually open 10:00 to 17:30 or so. Which is also the time I work, which means I was forced to go on Saturdays (like most other people). If I had other plans for Saturday, tough luck.
Even in my country where shopping is only closed on pub holidays the gas stations now serve as grocery stores and bake fresh bread on those days. It's just populism.
- "I know that this is your day off, but everyone will be requested to come to work this Wednesday because the team is about to miss the sprint goal"
- "Now that banks and stock markets open on Saturdays and Sundays, we will have to have everyone on call rotation, all week long."
- "We do not have the budget to increase our team by 2/7, so everyone will have to pick up the slack"
- "Sorry Jane, your refusal to continue on a strict Mon-Fri schedule is hurting your chances of making progress on this company. Yeah, I know you have children and that schools are not open all week long, but Mary has been showing up whenever asked and she seems to be more reliable".
This idea of "individuals should be free to choose all the time" is also another good example of cultural differences between North Americans and Europeans. Look at the American companies that claim to offer "unlimited PTO", but when you probe it a bit further and ask how many vacation days employees took on average, the recruiter will tell you "oh, about 12 days".
This idea of "freedom to choose" works mostly to get in favor of the system to get peons pitting against each other. The only way to have the majority of people benefiting from a community-level policy is to apply it at that level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#/media/Fi...
if you are forced to work on a day off you have a right to get a free day within two weeks. the maximum worktime in a week is 48 hours.
same goes for the mother with children. childcare is an absolute right that can't be denied or lead to a disadvantage. the above behavior would be illegal, and it would be quite easy to put a stop to it.
so none of your scenarios would come to pass. except the first one maybe, because that can be compensated with extra days off after the sprint.
> maximum worktime in a week is 48 hours.
Ask anyone in a competitive industry, regardless of seniority, if there was ever a time in their career if they didn't work more than that.
> childcare is an absolute right that can't be denied or lead to a disadvantage.
Just today I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman telling the story of how she came back from maternity leave to find out how her report was promoted to do her job and she was offered the lower position but kept with the original pay/benefits.
It's a shitty situation and the woman claimed she had the privilege to tell them to shove it, but there is nothing illegal about it.
What do you think that a company should have done instead? Take back the promotion of the employee that stayed? Keep two employees as the "boss" and be forced to hire a third one?
yes, because the employee should have known that this was a temporary promotion. that is how this is supposed to work.
This is the typical Protestant/German absurdity, trying to reduce every interpersonal problem into a systematic process that can be blindly applied to everyone, like we were all disposable cogs.
having children is important for the future of our society, and this needs to be protected. in this situation it is the mother vs the temporary replacement. if i can't keep both, then in the interest of our children i must give preference to the mother.
Except it is not. You are probably very well aware that maternity leave in Germany protects the mother's job up to three years. There is never certainty about when the mother will come back.
Look, I am not saying that extended maternity leave is not important. What I am saying is one can not put someone else's career growth on the line over this.
> having children is important for the future of our society, and this needs to be protected.
Correct. Yet fertility rates keep going down and women keep delaying their pregnancies and favoring work over kids. Why is that?
Couldn't it be that we have been optimizing for economic output (dual family income becoming mandatory, the school system that is basically tailored to allow parents to work full time, laws that try to keep women working during the childbearing years) instead of optimizing for a system that keeps a nuclear family living well enough on a single income?
To go back to the original discussion: for Christ's sake, we are talking here about the idea of getting rid of weekends. Isn't that further propagating the idea that pushing our society to more work is a good thing? Where does this madness stop?
Except it is not. You are probably very well aware that maternity leave in Germany protects the mother's job up to three years. There is never certainty about when the mother will come back.
that's irrelevant, because there is a certainty that she will come back, and the contract for the replacement should be worded accordingly.
What I am saying is one can not put someone else's career growth on the line over this.
what is the alternative? force the employer to hire both? how is that reasonable? this is no different than getting contracted to work on a project, when i don't know when the project will end. i know the end will come eventually, and i can prepare accordingly. as i said before, this is a conflict between the needs of the mother and the needs of the replacement. protecting the mother (or the father, since they can take time off as a parent too) is simply more important than protecting the replacement who knows from the start that this will be temporary. they can plan their career accordingly.
Couldn't it be that we have been optimizing for economic output instead of optimizing for a system that keeps a nuclear family living well enough on a single income?
that is true, and i agree with you that this is a problem. but the solution is elsewhere. part of the problem is that raising children is still not supported enough. and not working is stigmatized. my dad was in this situation. as a single parent he could not work and had to rely on state support with zero income. once we got older he had to switch careers because he could not work in his old job due to health problems. that's basically the situation that any single mother faces who did not work and thus had no qualifications for any decently paying job.
and that's the problem right there. by only allowing one person in a family to work, we are greatly disadvantaging the other person. and that is the reason why living on a single income will never be popular. instead we need to address this problem in other ways. one way would be to reduce everyones (not just parents) work hours to 20-25 hours per week, so that parents can split the time raising children evenly and both parents have an equal chance of having a career at the same time. the other idea would be to provide stay-at-home parents with resources to earn qualifications that they can use to work once the kids are old enough.
what we can't do is to expect stay-at-home parents to remain without qualifications for the rest of their lives. that would create a large segment of unemployable people, leaving them dependent on the state, or on their divorced earning partners, (which has the secondary effect of making divorce much more difficult because the earning partner would have to continue to provide for their ex, which means they possibly can't marry again)
especially among women this would create two classes of people. those that have a career and those that don't. you ask why the fertility rates are going down? this is one reason.
getting rid of weekends. Isn't that further propagating the idea that pushing our society to more work is a good thing?
we are not getting rid of weekends. we are adding flexibility. the maximum time to work in a week doesn't change, nor the right to a day of rest after working 6 days. (not sure if such a right exists, but i think it should.) added flexibility would also be beneficial for those who are not christians. the jewish day of rest is saturday. in islam traditionally people take a day off work on fridays. locking the day of rest to sunday is a very christian centric practice, and not compatible with a multicultural society.
also, in times where companies experiment with 4day work weeks i see absolutely no risk that allowing work on sunday will lead to people working more days. and making a day of rest mandatory is a simple protection against any abuse of that. allowing shops to open longer will also create more jobs. the only ones at risk are those who are seelfemployed. but they are already at risk. noone stops me from working on sundays, only my health, and my family.
> what is the alternative? force the employer to hire both?
The alternative is to do exactly what the company did. Parent-to-be gets the job secured but not the career prospect.
> we are not getting rid of weekends. we are adding flexibility.
If the line of where the work week begins and ends becomes blurry, you are by definition getting rid of weekends. You are arguing that "flexibility" is the only outcome of such a proposal, but you are ignoring the fact that all these schemes are introduced with the idea to benefit those who want some type of exception, but it doesn't take a long look at historical evidence to show that these "flexibility" usually gets exploited by employers to pit workers against each other and to push the price of labor down.
> locking the day of rest to sunday is a very christian centric practice, and not compatible with a multicultural society.
The only requirement is to have at least one day where the majority of society can not be compelled to work. If a Seventh Day Adventist does not work during Sabbath because of religious observance, fine. If a Muslim does not want to work on a Friday, also fine.
so having children will hurt your career? and that is good why? the only effect we will get out of that is even less people who choose to have children. this is not what we want.
historical evidence to show that these "flexibility" usually gets exploited by employers to pit workers against each other and to push the price of labor down
is that really the case? i don't see anything like that happening in the US or other countries where sunday work is already a reality.
It already does.
> the only effect we will get out of that is even less people who choose to have children. this is not what we want.
Combine with proper social policies that make it possible for families to live on a single income, and you can bet that most women will choose children over career.
> is that really the case? (...) where sunday work is already a reality.
Tell me what types of jobs have people willing working year round on the weekends. You will see that most are not doing by choice, but because of circumstances.
i very much doubt that, for reasons already explained. most women will not want to be dependent on a man or the state to be able survive. they will choose independence over having children.
it used to be possible for a family to live on one salary. and for work in IT or other high paying jobs it still is. if you were right then most families who could afford to live on one salary would do so, but they don't, and those who could not would protest.
no matter what policies we enact, women do not want to stay at home. they want a career just like men. and i see no reason why they shouldn't.
people do not want to live on a single income. besides the independence for women they also prefer the extra wealth.
if we want people to have more children we need to allow everyone to combine working and raising children.
You will see that most are not doing by choice, but because of circumstances
ok, i have to concede that point. if we allow sunday work we do need to have some strong protections to allow people to refuse, and it's probably not easy to work out what is needed to do that, and i don't know if we want to explore that in this discussion.
in the US btw people can demand the sunday off to practice their religion. it's not enough, but it is at least something.
In Berlin, depending on where you are, you even got your friendly Späti around the corner which is open around the clock, where you can get food, drinks, bread and some hygiene products.
It really varies regionally.
I see myself as 1. A Schleswig-Holsteiner (The norhernmost state in Germany) 2. European 3. German. There was an interesting map posted on reddit a while ago [0], showing which of the three different things people feel most attached to, I am apparently in the majority with my #1 pick up here.
I do feel European, but it’s just too abstract to be a primary identification.
I feel more connected to americans and their way of life than Germans.
The sentiment I personally hear when talking about the US (and, again, I don't speak for everyone) is more akin to the kind of sympathetic concern you might have for a friend who's become an alcoholic: It pains you to see them hurt themselves like that, but their temper flares when you suggest that maybe they drink just a little bit too much. But they can't be helped until they're ready to admit that they have a problem, unfortunately. So until then, all you can do is pray they don't crash when drunk driving.
Feels pretentious, and not what the person is probably asking!
But this is anyway not the same question as "what do you identify with" (at least I would not interpret it that way). You might want to expand by answering that as well though, depending who you speak with.
I am not even sure how I feel, and less of trying to objectively decide what I am. I definitely feel stronger ties to Munich and Bavaria than to Germany (let's not speak about politics though) and I 90% agree with the concept of being European, but it's indeed so very abstract that I am not sure if I really feel European. Maybe it's more of a superficial look at cliches and seeing yourself in them.
while i lived in germany, when i traveled abroad telling people i live in germany the reaction was noticeably different compared to later when i moved to austria.
people outside of germany assume that germans are as patriotic as they are for their own country. combined that with hate crimes in germany making headlines and you can easily see how people think about germans.
when angela merkel welcomed all refugees during the syria crisis it was the first time i felt proud to have lived there. (officially recognizing dual citizenship was the second. you can say what you want about germans, but at least their laws in this area are developing in the right direction. they recently made it easier to get german citizenship too)
This national delusion and inability to separate the harsh reality from wishful thinking, is why Germany is going to shit and why many skilled Germans are emigrating to places like Switzerland and the US with saner policies and stricter immigration laws. My current boss is the third one I'm seeing emigrate to the US where they're happier than in Germany and get better healthcare. And I lost track on how many colleagues I saw move to CH in the last 10 years.
I expect the politicians I vote for and pay half my salary every month to take care of their own citizens first and foremost and not prioritize outsiders who aren't their citizens/voters using my tax Euros.
Has every homeless and starving citizen of Germany been taken care of with a roof over their head and food? No? Then where are you going to house and feed all those foreign refugees you're bringing in? With what money? If you have money for refugees you should have for the locals as well first and foremost.
Has every citizen of Germany received timely healthcare in the public system and easy to find a place in kindergartens/school/Hausarzt? No, because you have a shortage of doctors and teachers? Then how is importing more unskilled foreigners gonna make these public staff shortages better for the local citizens?
This is not "right wing extremism" take, it's just basic economics and survivorship common sense based on availability of limited resources by respecting democratic principles of the citizens.
So politicians, please don't use my tax money to care for foreigners when you haven't yet taken care of the locals who pay your wages and fund the public systems we need. Please perform your virtue signaling on how generous and welcoming you are using your own private money and properties, not the taxpayers'. Because it's very easy to be generous with someone else's money.
the problems you mention are not unique to germany. and yes, it baffles me why no country can recognize that the only way to solve those problems is to put more resources into education. but denying refugees a save harbor is not going to improve your life one bit. those two issues are completely unrelated to each other.
the question is that of a general attitude towards others. people who favor their own over refugees tend to also favor them over their neighbors, and when that happens we have a problem.
let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves the world.
I don't know and I don't care since it's not a problem I created and I don't want my taxe Euros to be used on global charity, I want them used on the local citizens first and foremost. Why didn't the wealthy neighboring countries that are similar in culture like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. take them in? Why must it be always the liberal European countries far away in charge of charity?
Imagine the local native American/Australian people seeing the British/European colonizers arrive on boats on their land and welcome them saying "where should these people go to instead?" instead of fighting them to kick them out. Or the Why would you ever welcome invaders? Hasn't history shown what happens over and over again? The culture with the most valance dominates the others. Why do you think random parts in the middle of Africa speak French?
> but denying refugees a save harbor is not going to improve your life one bit. those two issues are completely unrelated to each other.
How so? Less people coming to compete for access to limited healthcare and housing will definitely improve the life of the locals. It's just the basic economics of supply/demand. Do you think arithmetic is wrong? Denying this would be some advanced form of cope/delusion.
If those refugees would be such valuable human resources like skilled doctors and teachers with a great culture of assimilation, then all their wealthy neighboring countries I mentioned above would be fighting over them to bring them over instead of rejecting them. You don't want to import the dross that nobody else wants, so then why is Europe doing it?
> people who favor their own over refugees tend to also favor them over their neighbors, and when that happens we have a problem.
Maybe this kind of gaslighting and guilt tripping works on some people with luxury beliefs, not on me though. I like to be realistic on the economic realities and scarcity of resources. Noting personal against anyone or any group of people.
>let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves the world.
Luxury beliefs and virtue signaling. Feel free to engage in them as much as you like, but on your own dime.
but it's a problem we all have to live with, so the only way out is to do something about it. we can't just ignore it.
Why didn't the wealthy neighboring countries that are similar in culture like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. take them in?
most of them actually went to turkey, followed by lebanon and jordan as distant second and third. germany only took half a milion from a total of more than 5 million. the countries you mention are separated from syria by a large desert without a practical way to travel there, so it's not surprising they didn't go there.
Imagine the local native American/Australian people seeing the British/European colonizers arrive
sorry what? how does colonisation in any way compare with being a refugee? while it is true that at there were many escaping religious prosecution, the problem was that they overwhelmed the natives by the numbers and with greed. not to speak of what happend in africa. noone went there to escape anything. to compare colonization with refugees seeking shelter is quite frankly insulting.
Luxury beliefs and virtue signaling. Feel free to engage in them as much as you like, but on your own dime.
you bet i am. but it's not a luxury. it's an absolute necessity. only if we improve conditions everywhere in the world can we improve our own lives too. the worlds countries are way to interdependent for any country to be able to go on their own.
I'm not legally nor morally obliged to provide them shelter, not do I wish to with my tax money. "No taxation without representation." It should be the voters' choice what to do with their tax money and I vote to provide shelter first to the local EU nationals. When there are no locals struggling to afford shelter, then we can talk about helping strangers from other places. No matter what you do, there will always be people suffering on the planet. It's not my job to help them all with my tax money nor is it realistically possible.
>only if we improve conditions everywhere in the world can we improve our own lives too.
Kneecapping our economy and our working class' standard of living in the noble pursuit of fixing the world's issues is not the choice most taxpayers want (see the swing in election results) nor is it realistically achievable no matter how much you reduce your heating/AC and how many paper straws you use when another Exxon oil tanker dumps its waste in the ocean as we speak and the likes of Nestle keep destroying the planet for profit and China and India are burning more cheap fossil fuel.
As long as the global economy revolves around greed of destroying the environment and privatizing the winnings in the pockets of a few multinational corporations and socializing the losses to the governments, environment and the working class taxpayers, your individual actions and sacrifices are in vain, while you're proposing the European working class should pay for this damage when it's not their fault nor responsibility since they're not profiting from this.
So squeezing the European working class further into poverty, in the name of some virtue signaling for the sake of the world (which the US, India, China and the Middle East aren't doing), is how you get another Adolf elected in Europe.
i beg to differ. morally we absolutely are obliged to give them shelter.
When there are no locals struggling to afford shelter, then we can talk about helping strangers from other places
most of the germans who are homeless failed to take advantage of available support to get it, not because they couldn't afford it. otherwise if they didn't get support then the problem is a failure in the bureaucracy, not a lack of available space or resources. it is a fallacy to think that refusing help to refugees would improve the situation for locals. if it was that simple we could have solved those problems a long time ago.
this is the kind of rhetoric that stirs up xenophobia and plays into the hands of the kind of politicians that according to your last paragraph you also don't want to see elected.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
>most of the germans who are homeless failed to take advantage of available support to get it
What if the system is poorly designed getting people slipping through the nets? I don't agree being so dismissive and throwing all the blame onto them.
> it is a fallacy to think that refusing help to refugees would improve the situation for locals
It's not a fallacy, it's basic economics.
>this is the kind of rhetoric that stirs up xenophobia and plays into the hands of the kind of politicians that according to your last paragraph you also don't want to see elected.
Then maybe the politicians should fucking listen for once and actually do what the people want them to do instead of doing something else and being shocked people don't like it.
i am not, see my next sentence: "otherwise if they didn't get support then the problem is a failure in the bureaucracy, not a lack of available space or resources."
the point is, what ever the reason for being homeless, it is not because refugees took away resources.
do what the people want them to do instead of doing something else and being shocked people don't like it
but that doesn't work if the people are being misled about the cause of the problems they are facing.
Who says people are being mislead? You? Isn't it how democracy should work? If Mainstream politicians refuse to listen to the people why are they surprised when they elect an autocrat who promises to do what the others don't want to listen to?
our problems are caused by greed, selfishness and ignorance. we need to learn to care for others if we want to solve our problems. the homeless aren't being helped by sending refugees away. if we want to eliminate homelessness we need to actually investigate and address the causes that make them homeless. we need to treat them with dignity. the same goes for unemployment. "creating more jobs" isn't enough.
education is really the only way out. in our country and anywhere else. education will improve peoples lives and it will stop wars and conflict. and it will help us learn how to solve our problems.
why should we care?
Unless it's soccer time, then they're clad in flags and screaming "'SCHLAAAND!"
Nah, not exactly. Source: Am Austrian.
and austria's reputation in the world is also quite different. people talk about austria being a country of music.
you do know austria's two greatest achievements? to make the world believe that beethoven is austrian and hitler is german
Germany is using the "we are all Europeans" agenda in their own interest.
Normal folks just don't care that much about politics tho and embrace their own culture.
Is there anything left of some true national cultural heritage that hasn't been made into a tourist attraction or some kind of mockery of what it once may have stood for? Probably, but not in a way that would bring me to identify myself with it.
And why would I even feel "European"? The EU is just as democratic as most of its member states. If you're not part of the wealthy upper class you don't matter.
The European Commission is calling the shots, members are forced to favor European interests and it's currently chaired by Ursula von der Leyen of the Albrecht family whose track record features internet censorship, incompetence in running a national military, plagiarism of her dissertation and being a NATO hawk and someone being investigated for corruption due to shady deals with Pfizer during the pandemic.
Crime: Berliner's tell me "don't put your backpack between your legs while sitting at a restaurant, someone will sneak up behind and steal it". I don't know where in the USA that kind of theft is common.
Washing: While I do have a dryer, my American apartment has a Whirlpool HG washer. It's quiet and spins the water out to the point I often feel I don't need the drier
Service: My experience has been if there's a problem that clearly the fault of the company the person you talk to will immediately not take responsibility "Not my fault". It might not be their personal fault but as a representative of the company they should take responsibility on behalf of the company IMO.
Dating: I've been told my many Germans that dating in Germany is more serious than is at least depicted in US movies/tv-shows. I don't have specifics except being told that it's not as casual.
Alcohol: Claims it's better in Europe but is making a generalization. Sweden you can only buy Alcohol from government stores. It's super expensive and they close early (3pm IIRC). So if you wanted some beers for party or a bottle of wine for dinner you're S.O.L. if you didn't buy on your lunch break.
Bread: Claims the choices are limited where as Germany claims to be the bread capital of the world with over 3000 kinds. I'm not saying I agree or disagree that Germany is the bread capital. Only that apparently the author is in a bread desert if their bread choices are limited.
I think the article makes the mistake of generalizing things that doesn't generalize across Europe, or even the EU. It's a common mistake among Americans to think of Europe as a very similar area and not wildly different countries. Germany and Sweden I'd say are much less similar than say Canada or the US in most respects. Not least when it comes to bureaucracy, the use of paper, formal titles etc. Completely different. Alcohol can be bought in store until 7pm or 8pm in Sweden (but closes earlier on Saturdays and is closed on Sundays). Weird rules are everywhere though. Americans don't tend to find it strange they can't drink in bars at 18, for example.
> Berliner's tell me "don't put your backpack between your legs while sitting at a restaurant, someone will sneak up behind and steal it".
I think this is more a representation of how cautious people are of a particular crime, than how common a particular crime is.
Source: went from Paris to Amsterdam to Berlin to Warsaw this summer, and thought Paris (obviously) had the best bread, followed by Warsaw and Amsterdam, with Berlin way, way behind.
The Economist about Germany's economy: "a national business model build in part on cheap energy from one autocracy and abundant demand from another (China) faces a severe test". Combine the cutting off from Russian gas with shutting down all nuclear power plants, and you do have something like a collapse of the economy, at least a significant decline in its industrial output.
Point of the author being, higher gas prices can't be directly compared between economies and all that so shouldn't be used to paint EEA members as these economic hellscapes (which always get a chuckle from me), though sudden and severe upward or downward movements could hint at a wider trend.
As someone from one of the DACH countries, it was honestly a nice read and I get their points on concepts like Überweisung, though I will say, if the author was surprised how one opens a Ritter Sport, they should take a look at the official way to open Haribo [1]. Then there is Mannerschnitte [2]. Also, yes, publicly founded mental health care requires significant improvements.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0511/how-gas-pri...
Yes but that's about industrial (natural gas) prices, not consumer (natural gas) prices. They can be very different.
> with shutting down all nuclear power plants
With shutting down the last 3 (I think) nuclear power plants. The nuclear shutdown process started in 2000. They had plenty of time to invest in enough replacement capacity, but didn't. And it was quite clear at least since 2009 that Russia is not a serious partner, so again, they had plenty of time, and did nothing.
The average person in Europe absolutely doesn’t think of themselves as being a member of Europe first and [country] second, and I think people would be surprised how actual little interaction and cross-language discussion there is between say, France and Poland, even though both are in the EU. There is much more of a French cultural universe, German cultural universe, Polish cultural universe, etc.
The current structure of the EU pretty much caters entirely to that first group identifying as European first (at least in an identity-forming sense - I don’t mean economically) and so the prospect of a bloc-wide identity like “American” is in America seems extremely unlikely to me. In fact I think they are closer to being Americanized culturally than Europeanized.
In a smaller context: Being German and NRW'ler and in the Ruhr area are not a hierarchy. I don't have to choose between them. Similar to European: Although I'm not well-off, it's just part of the pudding.
In Computer terms: Identities seem for me less that a directory hierarchy, more like labels or tags.
There is no overreaching European media that could form stronger bonds. Cultures and languages are too diverse and that is probably the main difference to the US.
Ah yeah, the "Trust Fund, 6’5, Blue Eyes" blokes and their fiancees. Hopefully they'll choke with Masdaamer during techno party on their yachts.
In Denmark we currently have a government formed of what has been the two major political parties in Denmark for the past few decades + a third. During the election one would be leading the “blue side”, the other leading the “red side”. So it was sort of hilarious when they joined to form a government and the media graphics didn’t work. Of course after a couple or days they just kept the “red” vs “blue” thing and started talking about when it would fall apart and how they were still “enemies” despite being in a joint government.
That being said, it is sort of true to say that most European countries are much more “left” leaning than the US. In Denmark the US Democratic Party would be to the far right of 94% of the votes for political parties cast here.
Of course what the political tribes are, and what their actual positions are changes. Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump.
In The Netherlands the media solved this by calling it a "purple government". They ruled from 1994 to 2002.
It depends on the country though. France is effectively first-past-the-post. Technically (rarely in practice) you can even get 3-4 candidates in the second round if the turnout is very high.
Two-round is not fundamentally a huge improvement and de facto is what US has with party primaries (of course unlike in France third parties can't really survive in such a system).
Arguably of course having a three way stalemate might be occasionally preferable than 1 party having near absolute control because of controlling 50%+1 seats.
Thankfully US has all sorts of checks and balances and it might take a while for a single party to get control of the House, Senate, White House and the Supreme court (for instance in the UK where there are basically no checks an balances and the parliament has absolute power if a pseudo-Fascist party somehow managed to win they could more or less do anything they wanted and they'd only need 30-40% of all votes for that).
IMHO electoral systems matter but extreme polarization is the real problem. Back in the 70s even a Republican president like Nixon could somewhat effectively work with the Democrat controlled congress. Yet now a split congress can't even pass legislation that technically both parties support (e.g. the border billy)
The fact that "it is good when government is deadlocked and ineffective" is an actual argument people use is baffling to me, but for the sake of the argument and out of assumed mutual respect, I'll do my best to stay objective for following:
> IMHO electoral systems matter but extreme polarization is the real problem
I absolutely agree that extreme polarization is a major issue.
I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization, when given enough time: FPTP inevitably converges to a two-party system (due to strategic voting), and a two-party system inevitably leads to extreme polarization (due to strategic politicians playing into strategic voting).
The argument for the latter goes something like this: Disenfranchised voters can be coaxed to vote for a least-worst option when the most-worst option looks worse enough. So it becomes more politically effective to demonize your opponent rather than argue your own politics.
Additionally, it is politically beneficial for you when things stay bad while your opponent is in charge, and especially so if things get worse. You can use their perceived incompetence as ammunition to further demonize them. So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's attempts at improving things, even if what they're trying to do is something you agree with and would yourself do if you were the one in power.
Depending on your preferred political party, I'm sure you can think of examples of the above.
There isn't much difference in practice. German politics is extremely polarized, far moreso than in the UK where there's FPTP. Look at how the older political parties have reacted to the rise of the AfD and you won't see any of the famed coalition building that's supposed to make PR fair and reasonable. Instead you see bizarre dysfunctional coalitions, lots of illegal suppression tactics and a level of hysterical rhetoric that makes the USA look relaxed by comparison. Nor is it different elsewhere in Europe.
The left reacts badly to conservative pushback in any system, any country, any culture. These things transcend national boundaries. It doesn't matter what voting system you use. The results are always the same.
I mean.. I don't think its good per se. Just better than the alternative in a society that's already extremely polarized and more or less evenly split. Unless that changes IMHO ideally we'd at least want as much decision making to move to the state level.
> I believe that FPTP inevitably leads to extreme polarization,
There aren't that many datapoints e.g. it hasn't yet happened in Britain (it sort of did in France, although it's more complicated) and I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either. So I think its hard to prove empirically.
> So it becomes beneficial to use what government power you might have in order to hinder your opponent's
Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.
I wonder how effective would the Northern Ireland consensus/power-sharing based system if it became more widespread. On one hand it did seemingly led to a huge reduction in political polarization. On the other hand it's not particularly efficient and it's unlikely that any country would implement outside of extreme circumstances/being force to by a third party (unlike in Lebanon where it has failed entirely the conflict in NI was entirely political rather than religious)
Granted, I don't follow it closely, but from what discourse I've observed things on the other side of the pond don't seem quite harmonious to me.
> I'm not that sure it was entirely true even in the US between 1940 and 1980 either.
Which does not necessarily disprove the argument. Things were arguably less polarized and better working in the past, but my argument is exactly that the political incentives of a two-party system will eventually cause things to degenerate. The fact that things were once "reasonable politics" but have, over the course of decades, degenerated to "our policy is whatever is the opposite of their policy" is exactly the issue.
> Is it radically different in multiparty systems, though? If you are outside the government coalition you have similar incentives.
Similar, yes, but not necessarily the most effective political move.
If a disenfranchised voter can vote for a third (or fourth) party without their vote "being wasted", a strategizing disenfranchised voter no longer "has" to vote for a "least-worst" option in order to avoid the "most-worst" option.
In that case, painting your opponent as "even worse" does not necessarily win you votes. If it does, it likely also gives votes to the other parties in your political sphere, and if they get enough votes to make a coalition government without you, why should they bother to include someone whose primary policy is being a troublemaker?
---
To be clear, no system is perfect. I don't know what the best is, I just know it's not FPTP. The primary argument I am trying to make is that the polarization we see now is the inevitable (long-term) outcome of a two-party system, and that a two-party system is the inevitable outcome of winner-takes-all FPTP.
In France, the main change occurred during the 19th century that started with the right being more Monarchist and the left staunchly Republican and ended with basically everyone being Republican.
But overall, right and left do mean something and that is still the case throughout Europe and the world and the difference are mainly relative to the centre.
In Europe "left" mostly means socialist, and "right" mostly means nationalist. But socialism and nationalism aren't opposites, and can often go together, so you see things like the author of this article pointing out that the "right" doesn't want to completely dismantle the social safety net.
The US is, however, in the process of realigning to the European style.
Traditionally in most continental countries you usually had two major (social-capitalist/paternalist) Christian Democrats and some Social Democrat style parties. But in reality they often shared more with each other than with various fringe left(Communist, radical-socialist), right(reactionary conservative but almost (pseudo-modernist) Fascists) parties all of which usually had some weird-missmash of traditionally left and right policies.
e.g. Weimar Germany was an extreme example republic where it was Christian Democrats + Socialists + Liberals vs everyone else regardless of exact social/economic policies. But modern France, Italy and Germany are kind of similar (of course both the fringe and the centrist parties are still thankfully a lot more moderate).
I guess you can fit all of the on a single left-right axis if you squint hard enough but you'd really need 2-3 axes to get a somewhat accurate/meaningful picture.
Then there is S&D, or center-left, with their members typically calling themselves social democrats or socialists. They are another big traditional mainstream group. And even the ones who call themselves socialists are more like social democrats.
The third traditional mainstream group is currently called Renew Europe, which consists mostly of various centrist / social liberal parties. Some of which are socially quite conservative.
Then there are usually two center-left to left, mostly progressive / liberal, mostly environmentalist parties. The differences between them vary from country to country. Their current groups at the EU level call themselves Greens and The Left. Some actual socialists exist within these groups, but they tend to be mostly harmless weirdos who didn't get the message that the 80s already ended.
The conservative / nationalist right mostly emerged in the last ~15 years. They often resemble US Republicans. Their EU level groups tend to split and merge all the time, because they often make very different conclusions from the same ideological positions due to historical and geopolitical reasons. Such as whether Putin is a good guy or a bad guy.
Things I am a bit surprised which were not talked about: "right turn on red" is a totally American thing that used to trip my (US resident, car loving) mom, and the amount of cars parked on the curb.
In tested the hypothesis that Dönner is larger when visiting a place where I tipped before and measured 10%-15% increase in weight ( 5 places, 3 Döner each, weight difference between fist and third).
But still, do not promote tiping culture. It sucks.
There is so many ways the quality of what you get can be modified:
Is the meat fresh from the spit or is it already cut off at the plate below or even in the little box at the side ?
Do you get the tomato slices from the from or the back?
Hot sauce from the shelf or from the side stash?
The funny thing is, it really only works if the tip makes you stand out positively.
So, yes please don’t tip, so my little hack keeps working.
Disclosure: I had the displeasure of being forced to work at a kebab Imbiss.
If the sign says one price, the cashier says a second, and the cash register says a third? You've found the best kebab in town.
No. Tipping is bullshit and you won't convince me otherwise. When I go a restaurant I want to have a nice experience, not deal with a pushy waiter begging me for a tip like a Syrian refugee begging for a coin because he hasn't eaten in days. "But if I tip I get a bigger kebab" yes, and you ruin the experience for everyone else because you teach service providers that displaying one price but actually charging another is a good business practice. If you want a bigger kebab, why don't you just pick it from the menu?
Tipping culture is horrible.
Really comprehensive post, great material for exploring cultural differences.
One thing I missed maybe was calendars, that here in Europe the week starts on Monday instead of Sunday.
That's why the machines are very different in design between Europe and North America (and the space available).
Miele-Waschmaschinen sind die besten der Welt!
Car chargers, electric stoves and sauna heaters work off 480V when possible.
Having said that, the drum of our Miele dryer disintegrated after ten years, which was a bit disappointing.
The right title would be something like: "an expat/a foreigner in Berlin/Germany"
In the end we had about the same disposable income.
Also: It’s free money?
You are legally entitled to childcare for kids 1-3 and can sue for loss of income.
Also consider a “Tagesmutter”, finding the right one can be difficult but for high income people it’s usually not too much of a problem.
If you have lots of space an au-pair might be sensible, the costs can again be tax reduced to some extend.
tech workers rarely are "middle class". not even "upper middle class".
We tend to have a contorted idea of real income percentiles.
The average/median person was always dirt-poor and struggling to survive. Of course in the developed countries that has changed quite a bit in the last 60+ years. Still, since it feels like we are slowly reverting to the pre WW2 status quo, I'm not sure we shouldn't entirely base it on population percentiles (instead of using some more "arbitrary" wealth/income cut-off that's adjusted by inequality)
Your idea of decent might be a bit off...
That's not to say that buying in Germany is absurdly difficult and expensive. It absolutely is. But if you think 4k net doesn't make you well off in average Germany you're really extremely bubbled.
You won't be buying in downtown Munich, but that's very far from average Germany, and you could definitely be buying within half an hour of decent public transport to downtown munich.
The mortgage is estimated at 1600€ / month, S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof is 22 minutes.
It's not super comfortable (as you'll be paying bills on top) but absolutely doable on a single 4k€ net income.
It took me about 2 minutes to find this.
Edit: To note, I claimed it's easily doable in the Berlin area, not in the Munich area. In the outskirts of Berlin 4k Net is more comfortably doable. Berlin is also geographically larger, so travel times will start being significantly above 30 minutes, too, though.
The Good:
- Virtually no medical bills. For a family of four, with two pregnancies behind us and now two kids, that is no small thing
- When my daughter snapped her femur in two at the tender age of 2, the system sprang into action, put her back together, and looked after her until she was fully healed.
The Bad:
- Receptionists see it as their job to turn away any new patients. They can be very nasty.
- The pediatricians offices are overrun. Good luck getting an appointment. If we need our child to be seen that day, we have to spend up to an hour calling on the phone trying to get through to the reception so they can give us a time slot for that afternoon. Our pediatrician also doesn't offer services that usually should be offered, such as checking pin worm strips for signs of pin worm.
- When I got seriously depressed last autumn (yes, people, sh*t happens), I couldn't find a psychologist or psychiatrist. They were all full. The problem festered for months. Eventually I got into a group therapy for depression. I now pay (a lot, 100%) out of pocket for a psychologist in California (via zoom). The psychiatrist I found to subscribe me an antidepressant (my primary care doctor refused), is the aunt of a friend of my wife. She is retired, so there is no insurance coverage - I pay 100% out of pocket for our consultations and the medication, and she lives 4.5 hours away. I drove once to see her, so that she would take me on as a patient, and now we do phone consultations as needed. I still call psychiatrists practices now and then, only to be told they are full, and I don't have a chance of ever getting an appointment.
- I wanted to make an eye appointment last week, and at a practice that is closer to where we recently moved, and where my wife goes to. I dreaded calling them up and trying to convince them that they should take me on as a new patient, or that since my wife already goes there, I'm not really a new patient, etc etc. I instead opted to get the next available appointment at my old eye doctor, far away in Berlin, and that appointment is in mid January.
- When I first was in Berlin years ago, my eye was hurting me. I called the eye doctor to make an appointment, and got one for 4 weeks out. I told them it was urgent, and they said that I should go to the ER if that is the case. I went to the ER, and they sent me away, saying it wasn't urgent. When I finally did go to the eye appointment 4 weeks later, after 4 weeks of discomfort, the eye doctor said I had an eyelash stuck under my eyelid and scolded me for waiting so long to take care of it.
So - yes, there is universal healthcare in Berlin. And maybe if I had private insurance rather than public insurance, I would be more able to get care. Yes, I speak the German language fluently, but I don't know how to be an assertive bully in German who can barrel through the wall of "Nein" that you always get. I'm grateful that the system helped my wife through her pregnancies and my children through their problems. I'm resentful about how I have fared in the system. In the United States, my access to care and quality of care was much better.
I am in the UK and dryers are getting more common. Now I have one in the house but rarely use it. I have moved on to using dehumidifier. Do the laundry in the evening and hang it with dehumidifier at 50% humidity auto. But morning most clothes are well dried without them going through the heating cycle of a dryer. Clothes last longer and retain their natural colours better.
As EE is getting richer they embrace technology at must faster rates than DACH. Dryers, ACs, payment tech is much more common and widespread here.
To my knowledge for at least last few decades all countries from Poland down to Bulgaria have been happily corrupted and pillaging their own populace and pushing out their working age populace into emigration. Now with their demographics there no one left to even emigrate anymore.
German here. Kinda surprised to hear that, it hasn't been my experience at least. I never had any trouble asking for a specific product. What they do pretty systematically since a few years ago is to ask you whether you're familiar with a medication, if you understand how/when it's supposed to be used, etc. I suspect this is some new directive/regulation to prevent accidental misuse of off-the-shelf medication.
You can usually cut this discussion short by just answering that you already know how to use the medication and are aware of the risks.
> With most non-freelancer jobs, if you get sick you’re allowed to take off work for a few days, but on the third day you’re required to go to a Hausarzt and get krankgeschrieben (“written off sick”). That process itself is kind of annoying – most practices won’t give them out over the phone, so you usually have to go in person while having a cold, just to get a piece of paper saying you have a cold.
Getting the note by phone should currently be possible - but it's completely unclear if it will stay that way.
This is regulated by law, not a thing the practices can decide individually*. There is also no technical reason for it, it is 100% political.
During Covid, the government (grudgingly) permitted sick notes to be issued by phone to reduce infection risk. Since then, the regulation has been rolled back and reintroduced several times. The issue mostly follows the same trajectory as the "work from home" debate in the US, with progressive parties wanting to make the rule permanent and conservative parties being on an eternal crusade to abolish it. We'll see who wins in the end.
(* at least with current legislation, practices are allowed to do it, I'm not sure how required they are. So maybe OP's practice was opting out)
If you look at the spending of the countries' governments, you partly can explain why these social services, health and public transport are considered better by the author.
One outlier worth mentioning is the big spend on "Defence" by the US. Of course, Europe benefits from that to in terms of protection in NATO.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/general-government-s...
1. Disable Contacts app.
2. Install OpenContacts app from f-droid.org.
WhatsApp continues to work without having access to either Contacts or OpenContacts.
Instead of typing a number in WhatsApp, create a new contact in OpenContacts then start the conversation from OpenContacts.
It is easy to export and import as .vcf from OpenContacts. The .vcf files can be created and edited with a text editor.
When seeing specialists it was even less so that I felt they had no time.
Not saying there aren't problems, if it sounds like you're not dying you might wait for an appointment for weeks or months, but after that it was fine for me. (This is all in Munich, we have a lot of doctors)
Americans really do not understand sarcasm; no matter how much you may claim to do so!
But one thing struck me as very odd:
> One thing I found unusual was how many people regularly smoked in Europe. [...] I guess that’s one of the few downsides of universal healthcare.
The idea that people living in a country with universal healthcare would more easily indulge in risky behavior because they would not have to pay for medication or hospitalization is, frankly, nuts. It's hard to imagine Americans smoke less not because they are scared of dying painfully of lung cancer, but because they could not afford the medical expenses in case they do get cancer; but maybe this is the case?
All I know is that the idea of not having to pay for healthcare is not at all reassuring when I think about the risks associated with something I'm doing - be it smoking, driving, drinking or anything else.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
vs
https://news.gallup.com/poll/509720/cigarette-smoking-rate-s...
I never thought of this fun fact. Then again 60 mph = ~100 kmph, when then saying 100 km corresponds roughly to one hour makes it just as easy.
There are people that want to make a militia for exactly this reason. Just very few of them.
In general, the country feels like a modernized fragment of Holy Roman Empire. The feudal system was painted and polished, but the divide between nobility and serfs is still visible under a proper angle.
Just one nitpick, in regard to the pronouncement at the very top:
One thing about Germany, and Europe in general, is that it’s relatively left-wing when compared to the US.
Europe's pragmatic social policies constitute what America thinks of as as left-wing. But really that's a statement more about the US than it is about Europe.
To most Europeans, these policies are basically common sense, the outcome of decades of political consensus (give or take certain differences about exactly how to tune the dials).
Also it tastes shit. Just buy regular milk, it easily lasts a week.
Source? All the extended shelf life milk I've ever seen was just coloured water...
Nobody said that Germany's economy is collapsing, but it's certainly underperforming. It had a recession in 2023 (-0.3% GDP growth), stagnated with 0.1% in 2024, and is expected to grow by just 1.0% in 2025. https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-surveillance-e...
> The trains, despite all the ineptness of Deutsche Bahn, are generally pretty good!.
They're awful. "In 2023, just 64% of long-distance trains reached their destination on time" "Germany accounted for six out of the 10 worst stations for passenger convenience in Europe" https://www.dw.com/en/how-does-deutsche-bahn-compare-with-eu...
> Promoting Nazism is banned. It’s not a slippery slope, and the country hasn’t devolved into authoritarian groupthink. You just can’t publicly support Nazism.
"No national figures exist on the total number of people charged with online speech-related crimes. But in a review of German state records, The New York Times found more than 8,500 cases."
"After Mr. Grote later made remarks admonishing others for hosting parties during the pandemic, a Twitter user wrote: “Du bist so 1 Pimmel” (“You are such a penis”). Three months later, six police officers raided the house of the man who had posted the insult, looking for his electronic devices." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...
According to these two graphs, German GDP fluctuations are pretty evenly matched with those of the US (and in some years, such ast 2016-2017 they did significantly better than the US):
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth-annual
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual
Germany has been hit worst in the past 2 years, but there's an extremely obvious reason for that -- again, largely due to the war. Not because of the country's social system or how it manages healthcare or fuel prices.
They're awful.
True, but (1) only in the last 10 years, and (2) Germany's "awful" is still an order of magnitude better than the land-based public transit system most anywhere in the US.
Go back 20 years - Germany's train system positively rocked, while the US was still going around invading random countries for no particular reason other than to distract its population from its decaying infrastructure, rising inequality and its own slow drift toward fascism.
Another solution (to the minimal amount of daylight in winter) is to simply not change the time (DST) in October. Let the sun set later, not at 3pm FFS!
on the shortest days of the year, sun sets 1552 and it's still good daylight until 1630
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/germany/berlin?month=12
also if there is no DST, sunrise will be _really_ late.
still the light was okay until 4pm and the gas lights were turned on then or later not before...
But it is and it has. E.g. Germany is cracking down on the Palestinian solidarity movement. Banning slogans, symbols, events wholesale. Currently trying to sign IHRA Antisemitism definition into law and shut out groups critical of Israel from cultural funds every body else has access too (including right-wing extremist Israel solidarity groups).
And tbh, especially West Germany has turned a blind eye towards extremism from the left for far too long (there's this weird fascination and solidarity with the RAF in West German intellectual "Alt-68er" circles).
That Israel has a bit of a special status in Germany shouldn't come as a surprise considering Germany's history between 1933 and 1945.
It absolutely must. That history involved concentrating, starving, murdering people en masse, and blaming them for it in huge media campaigns, after all. Genocide isn't about about Germans that to Jews, and it's not okay to treat it this superficially.
Taking German history seriously and trials for Netanyahu and the people who supplied and supply him with weapons are inseparable.
Society position on COVID-19 and (more recent) Israel-Gaza situation (the word is deliberately wrong, but this is not the main point here) really walks and quacks like groupthink.
doubt
First there are some societal standards just settled. Universal healthcare as an example which is mentioned in the article, but also the broader spectrum of social democratic policies as mentioned in other comments. While that gives you some stability in society, it could be seen as “groupthink”
Second, there is a tendency to (informally) label right-leaning policies, libertarian ideas and patriotism as Nazism. That’s not a problem of the “far right” but also the “far left” as criticism on Israel’s current policies could be labeled antisemitic. The slippery slope here is that outlawing one thing (nazism) is socially accepted but assigning the label of what actually constitutes “nazism” is the actual problem.
At least OP seems like a good fit for Berlin. Happy for them.