Why I'm embarrassed to be German

Using Britain as a reference to a well-functioning nation from a policy/leadership perspective is kind of wild.

You know Germany has gotten bad when the Germans start joking.

I visited Germany in August 2023. I bought one month train subscription, a mistake happened and it ended up taking from me the price of 2 months instead of one. I emailed the transport company, 4 times and they took 6 months to answer me!! 6 freaking months! The issue got solved and closed in June 2024! Almost 11 months after my first email!! There is something seriously wrong with whatever is going on there!

When your government think Co2 is the biggest issue you know that you are in trouble.

Germans don't accept the digital world. I'm Dutch. I started working for a German company in the Netherlands. I asked them to e-mail my contract so I could sign it in pdf. Wasn't possible. They asked to fax it. But the Dutch office didn't have a fax. So a German employee drove from Germany to the Netherlands handed me the contract so I could sign it and then he drove back. This was 2018.

Calling the UK a “healthy country” was a lesson in the finest sarcasm.

As a german: THX for calling out the idiotic idea to shut down nuclear energy in a situation, where we DONT have enough substitute energy... Its like destroying the own home and then realize "oh, we didnt build the conplete new home yet. Just the basement and half a wall..."

Darling, it’s an embarrassment to be human. Look at the world.

You walk from Germany to Czech through the woods. How do you recognize that you have reached Czech Territory? Your phone has network.

The character pointed at a broken elevator sign and said "this is the empire declining". The person he was talking to thought he was exaggerating, but he went on to explain: if low cost but highly visible repairs are being neglected, what do you think happens to the high cost invisible ones? If infrastructure is decaying, the empire is already falling. From Asimov's Foundation.

I've been working in a German company now for 6 years. The biggest issue is that achieving goals is not the priority, but following a process. And when something is performing poorly, you like better adding more process rather than thinking what is the best way to achieve the goal. At the end you work for the process.

Of course, this is your opinion. My opinion is that I am a Brit who came to Germany 50 years ago and I'm still here. I am shocked when I visit my working-class family because of the stress they live under and the lack of many of the comforts I have in Germany. My brother commented on the fact that all the walls in buildings in Germany are solid and not just wood and plaster. So it is really just a question of where you look and whose company you keep.

I used to work for a German company. They closed 2 factories in Germany and 1 in Poland and opened new factories in India. And they boasted that they "reduced emissions".

As an American, seeing a German referring to the UK as healthy is mind bending.

As others have said it is not just Germany. I am in the UK and with all the delays it took me 11 hours to travel 100 miles on public transport. At one point the bus driver announced he had to stop for 45 minutes as he had reached the legal limit he was allowed to drive for. This of course resulted in missing the next connection and thus another hours delay waiting for the next bus and so it went on...

I half-expected to hear about that recent gang-** controversy, where a woman insulting one of the child ****ists got more time in jail then most of the offenders. I guess cultural rot is too hard to talk about.

I’m American. When it comes to embarrassment, you are amateurs.

We thought that us Italians would eventually catch up with Germany. Turns out they are catching up with us.

If you don' t want to walk alone to home, just don't buy an electric car

I'm from Kazakhstan. I had lived 9 years in Germany before I moved to Poland 2 years ago. Comparatively, Germany has about 10 years behind Poland with respect to almost all the services a private person may get from a shop or government. Kartenzahlung ab 10 euro still makes me mad. But, if you compare all that to Kazakhstan - it's like Aztec civilization meeting Spaniards. Kazakhstan is way ahead of Poland and Europe with respect to internet services, internet government etc. You don't go to the Amt there - you get all the documents anytime online. Same with payments to anybody. You just make a transfer via a mobile phone binded to a bank account. It is instant to a couple of seconds. To the best of my knowledge, Ukraine has the same progress.