I made this thread for everybody to pile it on Germany, the BRD.
Feel free to vent your spleen about Germany
Been back now for seven years and I am finding life here exasperating.
My frustration is rooted in the endless burocracy and the lackluster and half-assed way everything seems to be done these days, it is in the relative low wages and high prices that dont seem to reflect the value of day to day items.
Yesterday I got the bill for GEZ, the fee you pay to watch ARD and ZDF, 73€’s for three months.
Only I dont have reception for tv or radio in this little corner. I dont have Intetnet, apart from my pre paid cellphone.
I cant get DSL active eventhough the connection is right here in the house. If fibre has been put down, booking copper is not possible and the hook up date has been pushed back from October or November, maybeeee December to January or possibly February.
The first telephone we got back in the seventies took an astonishing five weeks to install and now in 2025 they cant even tell me the year!
And before you start on do this, do that… bern there tried it, there is no other option other that wait.
Grr!
Is it worse than Malta?
Now that you mention it I am beginning to think so.
It was easier, way more laid back and not everything was fined if all the “t’s” were not dotted and all the “i’s” not crossed.
Dont forget I work for the gunmint of Bavaria and I swear that I have never seen so much weaponized incompetence all across the board
Way back, just before I left Germany in 2000 there was a report about the up and coming shakers and makers and just how little they know and god help us all if they gain power.
(Paraphrasing here, but you know what I mean)
Now they ARE in power and… god help us all.
I had not visited Germany in at last 20 years. Much to my (now) despair, I had to go to Munich several times in the last month --and will have to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. The DB experience alone, is enough to put you off from going further into the country, 3 hours delay over a 3 hours trip. Not bad. Not once. Not twice, three times out of five. Always the problem starting in German territories. Not sure if it is the lack of investment on the infrastructure, the lack of investment on people (setting up schedules), or just… general apathy (another feeling that transpired also…).
You have all my sympaties, @Slammer
Somebody has to check each bridge whether it can take yet an other train crossing. That’s time consuming.
I thought you were going to write …’ someone has to check each bridge, whether… there is a person ready to commit an act of self destruction…
I got delayed for what DB euphemistically calls ‘personalschaden’…
Munich decided they need a second “Stammstrecke” meaning a second backbone for commuter trains.
And boy did the, ever screw up, there are quite a few project that have lefr the taxpayer shocked and stunned… Stuttgart 21, or Berlin airport.
It is a seven kilometer tunnel for petes sake, planned in the nineties, projected cost 2 billion €’s and suppoesly finished in 2028.
New price 11 billion and finished 2040.
Meanwhile the main station has been mostly demolished and the whole city is in chaos.
Did you say something about the Gubrist tunnel? I have to drive around later today 
My pain in a certain part of my body for several years… so happy I no longer have to drive that way.
It’s the fun that results of thinking that a meritocracy is unfair to the weak.
It is unfair. Just that the alternative is worse.
Too many people who never held a job in their life holding powerful positions in politics (and too many gullible idiots voting for them time and time again).
Warren Buffet famously coined the “ABC of decay”: Apathy, Bureaucracy, Complacency.
Germany has it all. And then some.
And for a good reason!. Oh man…we’re going extinct…
Germany only? What about France, Austria, Czech, Poland… I don’t know that much all EU countries but my general feeling is that the whole EU is decaying
They‘re so far down the rabbit hole that it’s too late worrying anyway.
Apparently there is a correlation between economic decline and sales of Bratwurst in Germany. The exact cause and effect mechanisms are uncertain. Fortunately the rest of Europe is not really affected by this phenomenon.
Other large countries in the EU are in a worse position and even furhter down the rabbit hole, Germany seems to be running along by reputation.
But that is rapidly running on empty.
Old grievances are rumming high, especially in the Balkans and everywhere you look people and institutions are clamouring for more money, money that is no longer available. The money in Germany is running out and that what is left is being spent on more and more weapons, vanity projects and refugees.
I would say that thr only countries that are not too badly affected are countries like Poland and Hungary, countries that are leaning to the right and have kept the refugees out.
Unfortunately the data does not back up your statement:
Whilst Germany may have taken the most refugees, taking Europe as a whole, the picture is a lot more complicated. Stop the refugees is a right-wing trope that can win votes, it does little to actually solve the problems. Some of Europe’s experiment with right wing governments should answer the question.
Perhaps, but we now have a way to judge.
Right leaning countries who dont take in refugees and others who do and by looking at the data it would seem that the countries who dont take in refugees are in a better position.
Also it is not only about money but also in how the indiginous opulation is content.
The fine balance. You want to be seen as the good guys, all humane and so, but you dont want your own taxpayers all bolchie and revolution-y.
Not all refugee situations are comparable.
Poland taking in one million Ukrainians (mostly women and children) which are culturally similar, is vastly different from Germany taking in 2 million young muslim men. In 2023 for instance, almost 3/4 of all asylum applicants were male.