this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
19 points (95.2% liked)

Germany

1592 readers
1 users here now

The place to talk/ask about stuff in Germany in English.

Wiki: https://lemmygermany.github.io/wiki/

Many thanks to @[email protected] for creating this!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SneakySquid 1 points 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.