Congratulations on becoming a citizen! It’s funny how being an outsider lets you see all the amazing things that locals take for granted.

As a German I am super happy to hear that you are having such a good time in my, or now our, country. So often the news focus only on the bad things which sometimes blinds me on how nice people can be to each other and help each other out as one big community.

What an energizing read!

What a nice and heartwarming read! I'm german, and really hope we can pivot away from the rise of the far right. How that can be done, I don't know. I just hope we can do so before we start scaring away people like him who would otherwise come here, decide they like it, become germans, and end up making it a better place for everyone.

(Part of it is I think we should make it easier and more incentivized to learn the language early so not just people in english-dominated tech jobs can have a positive experience. Cold start problem. It shouldn't be too hard for the gov to commission a RosettaStone like german learning app ((suboptimal, i know)) that works somewhat well and give it out for free, right?)

But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it. It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics. It's probably one of the cognitive "exploits" in the human mind, that finding a scapegoat (the foreigners) to blame for everything being such an effective tool to rally people with grievances behind yourself and slowly turning them into hateful monsters.

On rules - they certainly create clarity and also have the potential to enable NPC like behaviour which is all too common. Since you mentioned Traffic Light Coalition, the chancellor Olaf Scholz (who is a lawyer and was also the ex-mayor of Hamburg) recently said in an interview “Germany was known to be a country of engineers, we are now a country of lawyers”.

Hamburg along side with Munich is what Germany should look like. So I think Hamburg has played a role in your perception too.

The first time I was in Berlin I had to take a bus. It was just leaving the stop as I was getting there, but stopped at the next red light. So I ran to the bus and knocked on the door. The driver looked at me with a concerned look to see if something was wrong, and once he understood I was just asking to come onboard outside of the regular stop, he laughed. Not ironically or in a mean way: it was a genuine laugh like I was doing something so weird and out of this world that it had to be a prank. And when the light turned green, he just left.

I could not believe it; but when I told the story to my German friends they too didn't quite understand why anyone would try to board a bus outside of a stop.

Being French, I have a hard time understanding why you wouldn't.

This mirrors my own journey, although I have never submitted my citizenship application. I also came here for an internship and stayed. 11 years and counting.

Congrats on becoming a citizen. Having seen many of my friends go through it and accompanying some to their appointment, I know how big it can feel.

I am myself an immigrant to this country, one that has had itequally easy, if not more.

Lately, or perhaps for the last couple of years, I've struggled with negative feelings about the country. I do not like the direction things are moving politically and economically, nor how germans talk about politics, and the biggest reason to want to be in Germany is the very high living conditions one can have here. Culturally, it is hard not feel dettached when Germans themselves seem uninterested in cultural aspects that are normally a reason to want to learn a language (literature, films, etc). I can speak German, but maintaining it or improving it feels more like a chore than something exciting.

Anyway, this was a nice, positive read, and it made me happy to read it. It is often easier to focus on the negative aspects of things, while taking for granted the positive ones. Germany has a lot of good things going for it, and the power to be a better version of itself. A position lots of countries would wish they could be in. Sadly, this does not seem clear to the German political class.

I have a question for you, or any other immigrants.

A common complaint I have heard from rule-followers immigrating to Germany is something like "You have to have an appointment in person for minor thing X at the city hall, and there are 7 slots for a date and time 5 months from now" (some exaggeration).

How prevalent was this in your experience, or anyone else you know? Any particular cities that are worse in this regard?

Great post and congrats on your Einbürgerung =)

A very nice read and pretty much my experience. I have been here for a quarter of my life now, I do not think I can live anywhere else now. People may not like me being here because of my skin color or whatever but I do not mind. I keep to myself and follow all the "rules" I can. In fact, I like most of the rules, rules are good because they ensure order, fairness and equality.

Will a little bit of empathy be nicer, sure, but I cannot complain. Speaking of which, a lot of German natives complain and some are even leaving the country (around 100k left last year), but honestly I have visited / lived in nine countries, and people have no idea how good they have it here. I came here with a bag, twenty euros in my pocket and a job offer, a dozen years later I have pretty much all basic comforts and stability one can dream of, my kids have a bright future waiting for them, all this is not possible in many countries.

As an immigrant living in Germany I can only attest to what's written on the blog post. Just like any other country, there are all sorts of people in Germany and Germans are actually hard working people which is a bit more reserved that the rest of the world. The only F'ed up thing about Germany is the politics and the weather.

> I didn't hesitate to complain (with Lärmprotokoll) to my landlord.

True Alman spottet.

No loud noises on Sunday (mowing lawn, home renovations etc) I can get behind. But I truly don't get why Germans collectively dislikes shops being open on Sunday. If you ask into it, something about the fabric of the German family is at risk.

> I noticed the same thing in the rich districts of Hamburg. You can walk into one and not feel like you don't belong, and the prices in the shops are not that different from anywhere else in the city. Sometimes they are exactly the same. The more I saw of that, the more I wanted to stay. I believe in social democracy, and this is a country that calls itself one and mostly behaves like it.

Try the Kö in Düsseldorf! Of course this is a jab at the fact that nearly every nice store there is one where you walk in, get profiled, and then are given champagne and asked to sit down before you can even look at clothes. We have this ridiculous shit, it's just localized to a couple places known for being so posh! :)

There is one rule of thumb that I’ve noticed: if you are a reasonable person and integrate you will be treated as one of their own. Otherwise not.

Your article mirrors my own experience 1:1, it’s like I’ve written it myself. Apart from the citizenship process. Even though it was also 14 months long (eerie lol), I had to do a lot of noise about it, because they are processing applications out of order (some people got theirs in two weeks, some in two years, no rhyme or reason) - press, meetings with local politicians etc. Which helped my personal case but didn’t fix the problem at all.

Congrats on your citizenship! You're a great showcase for why this immigration process needs to exist and why it works.

"Rules also make normal days easier. Something simple like waiting at a red light even when there are no cars takes away the work of deciding whether to cross. "

Ah, he really became german. (It seems I ain't anymore by that standard - when there are no cars, of course I go.)

> Most people complain about the rules in Germany, but I like them. It means someone, or a group of people, sat down and thought about that specific thing and decided on a standard for everyone. When you have to do something, you don't feel lost, because you can just look it up. You don't have to find someone who knows.

Somewhere in the afterlife, Max Weber proudly sheds a tear of happiness while whispering "this guy gets it", hahaha.

Anway, lovely article and congrats on finding a place where you feel home!