>If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason.
I'm not German, but you can't complain there's no affordable housing when there actually is, but you just don't want it. Just because you only want to move only to a specific city you like, that has the "right vibe", where others also want to live, it's not society's fault you're too picky and you think you're too good for other more affordable cities. Beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining about starving with a plate of Big Macs next to you because it's not what you like to eat.
>Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language.
That's total nonsense. Plenty of foreigners who don't "pass as German" live in East German cities just fine. And why is it so bad that you have to learn the local language when you move somewhere? Do you not need to speak English when you move to the UK/US? The official language in Germany is German, not English. Best learn it if you move there out of respect for the host country and to integrate and become part of society.
If you're lazy about integration and learning German, and only want to move somewhere just to make money and party in expat bubbles secluded from the German society, in cities where English is the majority spoken language, then you can't complain they're unaffordable when everyone other white collar yippie expat wants to do the same. Again, beggars can't be choosers. That's like complaining there's rush hour traffic jams, when you're part of the traffic jam.
And I got news for you (not you specifically, but others who have this mentality): whenever you move to a new country as a foreigner, you'll always be at a disadvantage for housing, especially if you don't speak the language, and just because you got a visa for a white collar job at some startup making the fifth best food delivery app, doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you. It's still your job to integrate in the country you choose to move including dealing with the unpleasant things.
You(We)'re not special. 99% chance you were given a visa and got hired there not because you've got some super rare skills nobody there had, but because of wage dumping. You moving there puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on rents, meaning the government, landlords, and business owners can profit from your presence there. We're basically cattle in the economic machine. You should be aware of these facts and factor them into your decision when it comes to immigrating somewhere, as it's never a free ticket to El Dorado as many delusional white collar expats (tech workers especially) think.
"Plenty of foreigners who don't "pass as German" live in East German cities just fine. "
Are you one among those non germans living in a eastern german city, or know some of them personally?
If no, how can you judge then?
I am german and I happen to live in eastern germany and I can attest there is a very high level of anti immigration sentiment and action.
There are some bubbles in the bigger cites, where you can get by without much trouble while only speaking english, but move out of that bubble and you actually have to fear for your live in some areas as a non white person. Ask my girlfried who is not really of color, but the little color her skin has because of latin american roots, is enough for hatred and threats towards her. Even in "hip" places like Dresden.
I'm definitely not white "BIO-Deutsch" looking if that's what you're asking.
But you still haven't told me exactly how the hate has manifested towards your half latino girlfriend in East Germany.
From my findings I find a lot of people are just snowflakes that exagerate the perceived hate towards them, for example if the waiter, service worker, bus driver, etc. was rude or mean to them, they immediately assume people are being racist and are hate targeting them for their race/skin color. No, bro, that's just the traditional East German "friendliness" or they're just dicks to everyone, nothing to do with hate or racism.
Or in another instance blocking it, from going out: "You cannot go out here"
Children in rural village: "you don't belong here"
And then we have spitting. Bad looks. Cashiers being friendly to me, but very unfriendly to her (when they don't notice we are connected, but she speaks a very good german). Etc.
That is just racism and not "east german friendliness"
East german friendliness would be the sentence on a shirt I saw in Görlitz (very eastern city):
"I don't have prejudice, I hate everyone"
That's the "normal" friendliness in some areas, but in most areas (especially also Görlitz), they canalize that hate and frustration towards anything different.
So not everything is bad here, otherwise we would not still live here, but we explicitely live in a no nazi village, so kind of in a bubble. But we do regulary think of moving away, so no, in general foreigners do not live here just fine.
And most, especially those with a really dark skin, have it way harder than we. For example we didn't got any death letter yet.
This is just the just world fallacy in a post. If you lived in Germany you would understand that statements like this that you wrote:
> doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you
are utterly, utterly ridiculous. There is absolutely no risk whatsoever of Germany "rolling the red carpet" for immigrants. It's a fairly hostile place to be if you're not German even if you're white. It can also be hostile even if you're German but not white. Among "expat" destinations (so plausible expat destinations, so excluding, e.g. DRC), it regularly tops the rankings as the worst place to live (harder to live in than Japan or China, and no disrespect to those two countries, but they are traditionally considered benchmark definitions of exclusive countries).
> Best learn it if you move there out of respect for the host country and to integrate and become part of society
Let me tell you as someone who lives in Germany right now: the vast majority of 1M Syrian refugees will never, ever, ever integrate into German society. I had no opinion on this before I moved here, now it's obvious. Your idea that integration is purely a one way street is nonsense and only leads to broken societies. Even if you change your name to Winfried and got C2 German, you'll still never be accepted here. Maybe your children will be, but maybe not if they're not white. But the fact is that if countries want immigrants to pay for their boomers' pensions, they need to actually be a generally more welcoming and friendly society. "Fuck you, learn German, and go and live in Chemnitz" don't really pass muster these days. I mean for example this is nonsense:
> make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet
As if Germany is doing everyone a favour by letting people move there. If there was no demographic crisis then immigration would be practically impossible. I am doing Germany a favour by moving here at least as much as they are doing me a favour by letting me.
> there not because you've got some super rare skills nobody there had
I'm an academic in a fairly obscure branch of physics so in this case I can categorically say that I do have those rare skills. Everything you said about the country is wrong. Their advice: "don't move here unless you speak German" is absolutely on point, and what I myself tell people. Living in Germany mostly makes no sense if you're not German or not a refugee.
> the vast majority of 1M Syrian refugees will never, ever, ever integrate into German society. I had no opinion on this before I moved here, now it's obvious.
The parents maybe won’t. But their kids. Watch out in the real world or on TV for the children of Syrian refugees that came here in 2016. In the mean time many of those graduated from German schools now and speak German very well (schools invested quite a bit in making sure of that) and learn a profession or even enroll in a University program.
While Germany is certainly not a classic immigration country like the US is, as a German I really got the impression that we became much more open minded. Personally, at my work place we started out as a prototypical mid-range company financed by Bavarian entrepreneurs and were pretty much speaking German only. Nowadays (10 years later) we‘ve got many Indian, Turkish and Eastern European colleagues and speak almost only English in meetings. Even our CEO is non-German now. I don’t think that would have worked 10 years ago nut younger co-workers nowadays tend to be much more proficient in speaking English.
Of course, living in Munich and Berlin won’t give you quite the same experience like living in Rostock-Lichtenhagen… but parent mentioned she or he plans on founding a start-up. Office space is less expensive in smaller cities like Rostock (or Wismar or you name your favorite less world famous German city), too, and with remote work it is much easier these days to setup an international team in a German company located even in more obscure places. And it gives neighborhoods a chance to develop and rise from their obscurity.
Anybody reading this from the city of Neubrandenburg? ;) (I just learned about its existence a couple of years ago as a German native.)
> It's a fairly hostile place to be if you're not German even if you're white. It can also be hostile even if you're German but not white.
BS. If Germany were that hostile it wouldn't attract the biggest migration waves from non-white African and Middle Eastern countries in all of Europe. And now home to over one million Ukrainians.
>Let me tell you as someone who lives in Germany right now: the vast majority of 1M Syrian refugees will never, ever, ever integrate into German society.
Again, BS. Most Syrians I met spoke much better German than techie expats who were entitled enough to think that learning German is something beneath them, only mandatory for the lower classes of immigrants doing blue collar work, while they should be somehow exempt because they're special snowflakes who push code to git in English at work so the whole society should switch to English for their ~2% demographic of SW devs to accommodate their laziness of not bothering to integrate and learn the local language of their host country they choose to move into.
>Even if you change your name to Winfried and got C2 German, you'll still never be accepted here.
Again, more biased BS. I did my best to learn German and mostly hanged out, dated and socialized in German circles instead of English speaking expat circles so I could integrate better, and was always accepted and never discriminated by the Germans because I was a foreigner. I even became friends with people working at the German Government in Berlin or with kids of upper class Bavarians who owned vacation homes in Sylt or Austria. Of course you will find bigoted racists everywhere, but I found the Germans to be very friendly and inclusive if you show willingness to integrate.
How far do you think you'd go without English fluency as an immigrant in US or UK?
>As if Germany is doing everyone a favour by letting people move there. If there was no demographic crisis then immigration would be practically impossible. I am doing Germany a favour by moving here at least as much as they are doing me a favour by letting me.
Germany is a democratic country responsible to provide to the German citizens with voting rights. It's not a country founded by immigrants, like the US, who focuses on pandering to non-German immigrants. If Germany has decided it wants to commit demographic suicide then so be it, it's well within their rights to do so, what gives us foreigners the right to complain about it when we voluntarily chose to come here? Their country, their rules. No like? Vote with your feet and choose another country. Expats make the mistake of expecting Germany to be like Europe's USA.
Let's be real here, you didn't benevolently move to Germany to save their demographics like some superhero, but you did it because you found a good economic opportunity in doing so for yourself. Germany didn't kidnap you and bring you here against your will to save their economy, you voluntarily decide to come because it benefited you. Then it's our responsibility as guest to integrate in their society, and not vice versa.
Again, how far do you think you'd go without English fluency as an immigrant in US or UK?
>I'm an academic in a fairly obscure branch of physics so in this case I can categorically say that I do have those rare skills. Living in Germany mostly makes no sense if you're not German or not a refugee.
Then why are you staying in a country you feel doesn't like you? If you're such a special immigrant, why aren't you voting with your feet and moving to a country that is more accommodating to your kind?
Question: if you'd leave, would the German GDP or company you work for collapse in your absence? If not, maybe you're not as special as you think and the country is doing fine without you as well.
The problem is your argument boils down to: you are a guest in Germany and you are completely disposable so shut the fuck up or fuck off. It's a take one hears loudest from the AfD and old German Boomers, the same sort shouting at you in the street for some perceived infraction. I found this sort of attitude objectionable and xenophobic when I was living in my home country (the UK, where your argument is again mostly held by old racist boomers or EDF types), and I find it as bad now I myself am an immigrant. If you want to live in a society where immigrants opinions are widely accepted as worthless "because they should just leave", then great, maybe that's why Germany worked out well for you. But I just don't agree with your idea of how a country should integrate and welcome newcomers, because it's bordering on fascist and plainly inhumane. In any case I can speak German, but I don't use my own German proficiency as a tool to beat other immigrants with (as you're doing now, which is quite sad). Just one further comment:
>Again, how far do you think you'd go without English fluency as an immigrant in US or UK?
Which is precisely why I said: don't bother moving to Germany if you don't speak German already or are not a refugee, which cover both your points "why do refugees come here then" and "learn the language", but it seems you cannot read.
I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions from my comment based on your need to vent because you have a chip on your shoulder because you feel like Germany didn't roll the red carped enough for you.
Whether you like it or not it's always the immigrants who should integrate into their new country, not the country to change centuries of culture and identity around for the immigrants. Germany is already welcoming enough to immigrants as it is. The best in EU I'd say, as other countries are much worse.
And each country has their own mentality and national identity developed over centuries, and as flawed as they may be in your viewpoint, these don't change overnight just because you decided to move in and don't like it there.
Blaming my viewpoint and calling it racist, for your personal (maybe flawed) life choices in immigration and your lack of success in integration, won't really help you, because yes, it's just like a relationship. If you don't like it somewhere, then pack up and leave. Simple.
If you want to change things in your favor then get citizenship and vote, or walk somewhere else that fits your personal view. It's not a racist viewpoint, it's just the cold hard truth of how all societies work in real life, and refusing to integrate somewhere is just rude and counter productive to everyone.
Venting on the internet that the country you voluntarily moved to doesn't give you the special treatment you were expecting, is just laughable and pointless.
People keep bashing Germany that it's the worst welcoming for expats, yet they won't stop coming to Germany:)) So because people won't stop coming, anbbecause nobody walks away, Germany will never see the need to change anything. Simple.
I don't regret my choice, I met a nice woman here and I have a good job. But I don't adopt the unambiguous slave mentality that you advocate and I have my eyes more open about the country's problems than you.
>Venting on the internet that the country you voluntarily moved to doesn't give you the special treatment you were expecting, is just laughable and pointless.
Yes, and unrolling the red white and black in defence of the Reich online is also quite laughable, especially as you claim to not even be German. In the end we are both wasting our time, but I'd rather be on the internet trying to seriously discuss something than aping this strange ultranationalist performance piece of yours. Better still would be to not engage at all.
>But I don't adopt the unambiguous slave mentality that you advocate
Sorry, but equating integrating and being assimilated into a developed country to having a "slave mentality" is complete horeshit and makes you look completely out of touch with reality if this is how you see things.
>unrolling the red white and black in defence of the Reich
Where the hell did you come up with this? I never said anything like this. You must be tripping.
So strange to meet a German ultranationalist who claims to not even be German. Truly a unique experience, you may even be the only such person who exists on the planet. Thank you for sharing yourself with us.
