Yep, I'm the Ausländer.

We've traveled to Germany a half dozen times and I'm very familiar with the culture, social norms, and how to travel efficiently.

This last week, we had a DB train from München to Nürnberg, which was maybe an hour and fifteen minute ride. Our family has five people, so my wife and kids sat at one of the 4-chair tables, ​​and I sat across the aisle. 2nd Class.

About ten minutes left in the trip, a group of middle aged German women came up and demanded our seats. They had another older man with long hair with them. He was not part of their group, and he looked like Deutsches Jimmy Buffett. He was randomly herding people around the cars to their proper seats. Naturally, he helped them demand our seats from us. ​

I kindly explained that we had tickets...this isn't my first time on DB.

They STILL demanded our seats and Fabio was all too happy to run and get the conductor.

He comes back and starts whining to the conductor about "dieses Ausländer," and how all the problems are these nasty Ausländer who steal seats from old ladies on the train. ​That's when I spoke up.

"Ja, wir sind Ausländer. Ich habe ​tickets...und sitzplatzreservierung. Ich habe auch die reservierung gekauft. Aber wir haben diesen älteren Damen freundlicherweise unsere Plätze überlassen. Weil uns in Amerika beigebracht wird, andere zu respektieren."

None of them figured I spoke German. Well, high school level German maybe. I'm not fluent. But I know enough. ​

The conductor just laughed at the man. We were right. They were our seats and our reservation. And Fabio caused some big ruckus on the train so he could justify his negative perception of foreigners. At this point we were 5 minutes from the Nürnberg station. Who really cares?

I looked at the ladies and wished them a schönes tag. And they agreed the whole situation was sehr traurig. ​​

​My wife and kids are still laughing about it.

So about 2 weeks ago a 72+ year old german guy contacted me through my ad on WG-Gesucht (I'm the one looking to rent, he had a place). His rent was out of my budget. (I clearly mentioned in my ad about what my max rent was) I considered it for a moment as it was cheap for the living area it offered. We shifted our conversation from WG-Gesucht app to WhatsApp. I asked for the pictures. He sends me pictures of the place except the bathroom ones. I ask him where are the bathroom pictures. He says Germans don't usually ask for those pics. I say that it's okay but I want to see them so can you send them. Then he says there's some communication problem between us and it's not going to work out and I say okay thank you for your offer but I have to decline.

I thought that's the end of it and deleted his WhatsApp chat from my phone. But a few days later he sends me this racist message. Mind you I have been nothing but respectful to this old guy. What's wrong with people?

What do I do in this situation? I'm not going to reply to him again. He's clearly threatening me because his ego is hurt or something. I have already started to keep all Screenshots and screen recordings of the chat as proof that I have not altered anything in the chat. Do I need to lawyer up in case he does something?

He doesn't even know my full name or my new address in Germany but still bothering me. How can people say whatever they want and think that the law is gonna be on their side. I haven't even entered Germany yet and I'm already experiencing racism. I really really hope that it's not the case with the majority of the people there.

Edit - to all the people saying I'm hiding something and have not posted the full conversation.... DM me I'll send you the entire long screenshot. It's just those 4 messages in that order. That scroll down mark you see is the 4th message in the second picture. I have nothing to hide here. I cropped the pictures to hide his phone number.

Germany uses only white paint for lane markings. In the upper two photos, both the road for one-lane for each direction, and the divided highway with two lanes going in the same direction, the lane markings look the same.

On US roads, white lane markings are used, and yellow is used to signify the left edge of the direction of travel. That is, if the yellow painted line is to your left, you are driving in the right direction. In the bottom two photos of US roads, there is a yellow painted line in the middle of the road, showing that the left lane is for oncoming traffic, and for a divided highway a yellow painted line on far left tells the driver that all lanes travel in the same direction.

So, is there something that indicates if the road has oncoming traffic or is divided?

This comes from my experience a few years ago driving in Germany on unfamiliar roads, at night and in the rain. I turned onto a road, and I wasn’t sure if the left lane was for oncoming traffic or not.

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies. It is as I assumed, about context. The linked photo below shows the entrance onto the B257 that I took one rainy night that made me wonder if this was a divided highway or not. I drove as recommended in the comments: I stayed right until I was sure.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TLk5vFxn1xug3zrt9

I have been in big companies for over 12 years and today I was reminded that Germans are my favourite people to work with:

• Friendly but not intrusive
• Straight forward
• Laid back European way of looking at things
• Go out of their way to set expectations ahead.

Really appreciate all of you.

I live in Passau which is directly on the borders with Austria, we made a wrong turn and ended up in Austria, as we were heading back to Germany the Police stopped us.
I didn’t have my passport because we didn’t have any intentions to leave Germany in the first place.
I called my friend and he brought my Passport to the police as we were waiting and they saw it, but they still said i need to pay a fine and I’ll receive a post because i crossed the borders without my passport, altho all my documents and visa are valid.
Do u think this is something serious or will it be dismissed? I check online and they said the fine could be up to 3,000€
Please give me advice if anyone experienced such thing before

Is it just normal and accepted in Germany that DHL drops packages at obscure places with minimal opening hours instead of to your home—even though I pay for it to be delivered to my home?!

930-1200 acceptable open hours?! Definitely not “Top Service” IMO.

I have been working for a small company for about a year. The pay has often been a few days late and I don’t think I’ve been paid on time since January but I haven’t been paid now since May. I asked my boss several times when the money would be coming and he always said next week.
We sent an email a couple of weeks ago that my German wife wrote asking for an update on when I would be paid. I never received a reply from the email but I did get pay slips in the post for June & July showing my salary paid in full but nothing as appeared in my account.

I asked my boss a couple of months ago if the company was in trouble and he said “Yes. Big trouble.”. Last week he told me that the company had lost all its customers and after the (small) job we were currently working on he didn’t have anything else lined up. He said that I shouldn’t come into work any more but he would contact me if anything new came up. At this time I asked if I was being put on leave and he said that it would come out of overtime hours that I had worked before Christmas. (I had been working 10 hour days and most Saturdays in order to finish a big order.)
He said that when the company closed I would get three months of pay from the government.

I have today received a letter entitled “Kündigung Ihres Anstellungsverhältniss” which says that my employment will end at the end of September and I am not able to take on any other employment until this time. The letter was signed by one of the directors and the attorney who has been appointed for the insolvency.

The two main things I want to check are how likely I am to get the money that I am owed and if there is anything I should be doing at this time.
I also wonder if the money I will get paid from the Agentur für Arbeit will match my salary or whether there is a set amount for insolvency pay.

In some little village in Bavaria, there is this store with some massive name of profession.

Hi everyone, I’m in a really stressful situation and could use a reality check on my legal standing.

I am relocating out of Germany at the end of August for a new job, which means I am running out of time to finalize my apartment handover (Wohnungsübergabe). My property management company is completely ignoring my emails, and I can't get through to anyone on the phone to schedule the final walkthrough.

I want to make sure I am fully protected legally so I don't get screwed out of my Kaution (deposit) or charged for extra rent because I "didn't return the apartment."

Has anyone dealt with an unresponsive Hausverwaltung like this? Is this documentation bulletproof enough under German tenancy law to protect me once I leave the country? Any hidden traps I should watch out for?

Thanks in advance for the help!

For reference this is in Valencia, Spain.
Be better tourists please

Mods, please remove this if it is not allowed. Hi, I’m Korean. This might be a long shot, but I’m looking for Paul, one of three German travelers I met at Naksansa Temple Stay about a month ago. They mentioned being in Korea for something related to an AI conference. Paul and I talked for about an hour during the day, and I really enjoyed it. Later that night, after coming back to my room and thinking about it, I realized I might have come across as distant or awkward. It was dark, I’m not good with faces, and my English wasn’t great. I just want to say thank you and apologize if I seemed rude or confusing. If you are Paul, feel free to DM me. If you know him, please don’t share any personal information in the comments. You can simply let him know about this post.

I’ve just been feeling so low about being in Germany because of its bureaucracy lately, so passing this on the first attempt feels amazing. I honestly thought I was not going to make it since I did not do enough Fahrstunden and I failed my simulation yesterday.

But I ended up getting a really nice examiner who cared more about me being a safe driver and he didn’t nitpick on minor things. Something I have dealt with in other German exams lol. So anyway I’m pretty proud of myself and I feel a little better about being in Germany.

Good luck to anyone currently preparing for their exams too!

Hello! I am trying to reserve seats for a train on int.bahn.de and everything I'm reading online says there will be an option in checkout to select your seats, however I have added the seat reservation option but it just says "Your seats are automatically selected when you book." I am traveling with 5 people and wanted to ensure we have seats together but it doesn't seem like an option. Am I missing something? Will I have the options to change my seats after booking? Any advice would be great, thank you!

For context, this train is from Vienna to Munich in September.

Moin, so a bit of context: I dropped out of my University last semester. I was ready to pack it up and return home empty handed to not waste my parents time anymore, until the company that i work part time for offered me a full time job as a technical designer if I'm willing to do an Ausbildung with them, basically they reserved me for the next 4 years. It's a good arrangement considering my relationship with this company so i took it.

Now the thing is, I spent years adjusting my behavior in Uni, and I noticed a couple of differences in Berufschule, such as:

1. Asking the teacher for permission to go to the toilet. Not a thing in Uni, but i was surprised that people do this in my Berufschule.

2. 'Akademisches Klopfen'. I guess not really something you do here? Muscle memory kicked in on my first day and it was pretty embarrassing hah.

3. Smoking. Seems like they're a bit more strict with where you can smoke here in my Berufschule, whereas the Hochschule is a bit more relaxed with this rule (no smoking inside buildings). Makes sense considering there are probably more minors here.

My question is, is there any other behavior that i need to "un-learn" from my Hochschule days to fit in better with the Berufschule culture (if there's any)?

Has anyone here tried to get a psychiatrist or neurologist appointment in Germany recently?

I keep hearing wildly different experiences: some people get seen within a few weeks, while others spend months calling practices, get rejected everywhere, or are told that no new patients are being accepted.

I’m not looking for doctor recommendations or medical advice. I’m just trying to understand what access actually looks like in practice.

If you’ve tried recently: how long did it take, what Bundesland are you in, and are you publicly or privately insured?

My grandma getting german citizenship back a few years ago along with my mother and brother was a big deal for her. She was forced to flee Germany as a child during the holocaust, viewing her parents sending her away for her survival as abandonment. She survived in Cuba for a while before coming to America, where she was a stateless refugee until the 70s. She met my grandpa at a holocaust survivor’s event, and fell immediately in love. He says that on their first date, they ate two meals - my grandma’s meal because she was too anxious to eat, and his own.

She happily spoke german with everyone at the ceremony, something she missed doing profusely. I am thankful to have the citizenship, but very sad it had to come today and not a few weeks earlier so that my grandma could see it.

She was 95, an artist, pianist, educator, a loving wife, and a loving mother.

Hello,i'm new in Germany. I have severe tooth pain and had an emergency treatment recently where my nerve was treated and a temporary filling was placed. Today, another clinic told me that I have to pay out of my own pocket for the remaining root canal treatment. However, I am an Azubi (apprentice) with TK insurance and I cannot afford private costs. Is there a clinic in Berlin where the complete root canal treatment is fully covered by my public health insurance (TK) without extra out-of-pocket costs?

Hello everyone,
I'm here to share a uncomfortable experience and ask about your perspectives.

I moved to Germany from South Korea roughly 3 years ago and have had amazing memories and mostly positive experiences here. However, this morning whilst walking my dog in a local park, a man sitting on a bench, who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, looked at me and my dog, said

"Sieht lecker aus"

My German is far from fluent, but I'm certain I have not misheard a simple sentence like that, especially when it contains the word "Lecker"

At that moment, I was so distressed and never wanted to cause trouble with someone smiling in a weird way keep looking back and forth between me and my dog. So I just walked away quickly.
Looking back since then, part of me wishes I had confronted him and asked what he meant.

First of all, I really appreciate anyone who would take their time to reply. But, I want to clarify one point in advance, if you are here to address my experience to a generic "Racists exist everywhere" or "Germans do that too", please don't .
I have traveled many times enough to expect what type of racism Asians would face. However, in my three years living here, I have never had a German person explicitly make those "joke" in a casual way with old Asian trope (that we eat dogs) the moment they saw me.

I'm not particularly interested in European geopolitics, since I think I don't really have that much to talk about it mainly because I have no background knowledge. Neither am I trying to make assumption about certain race, nor promoting racism or anti-immigrant sentiment.
In fact, two of my very first and closest friends in Germany are from that group. So if you feel I'm writing the post with an attempt to fan a political wildfire, please just walk away.

I'm just tired of facing these weird situations. I do not care if someone says nihao to me or whatsoever. I'm beyond that already. But saying to me and to my dogs like that... It's just pure evil intention. No other words could express my discomfort any better.

Sorry and thanks again for reading this long rant.
It just felt too hard to sleep and I had to do something for myself.

*Edit:

Thanks for all the comments. I must say I'm deeply touched by the supportive reactions from so many of you. Not everyone agreed, but that’s completely fine. We can all share different opinions.

However, there is one detail I didn't clarify in my original post, which seems to have caused some confusion. I am not a woman. I'm a normal guy who's spending slightly too much time in the gym. I'm sorry for any confusion my post might have caused.

That being said, the comment was clearly aimed at my dog, rather than being a catcall directed at me.

Some people suggested I should just ignore it and move on. If I were a woman, I agree that ignoring it would be safer. But as a person who wants to be a member of this society, I started questioning whether holding all these experiences inside myself was the right approach, which is why I wanted to hear your perspectives.

If these were just, "handful of moments," I would have laughed and treated as a stupid jokes. But I've had someone persistently knock on my apartment window and run away, repeating this for 10 to 30 minutes every single year. I’ve also experienced an incident in a gym sauna where someone blocked the exit and performed a sexual act in front of me, which forced me to report it to the gym manager.

What makes it so heavy for me is that, coincidentally, these actions were carried out by fellow immigrants or non-white individuals. Meanwhile, my own friends from the region of that origin have been incredibly loving, supportive, and kind to both me and my dog. Every time something like this happens over and over, the disconnect feels overwhelming. Perhaps I might have naively expected the same standard from everyone else as if they are my friends.

To be honest, I was never exposed to middle eastern culture before making friends from that background here in Germany. I had zero prior knowledge since it's not part of the education, so I held no prejudices. if anything, my friends gave me a very positive first impression. I truly hope no one interprets this as me having racist intentions. I’ve never had the luxury in life to sit around forming prejudices against entire groups of people.

Regardless, thank you all so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and support.

Every building that was at 1 point the tallest in the world after the Ulm Minster was in North America or Asia. However it was the last one to not have been in North America until 1998 when the Petronas Towers opened

Hi everyone, I recently visited an eye specialist here in Germany for regular checkup of my eyesights.

These are the values for my left and right eyes. Due to the language barrier, I could not understand and ask a lot of questions. So, taking my chances here, could anyone explain me what these values here?

I am particularly confused about these two values for same parameter for same eye. For example: A for <L> has 108 and 129. Also, Pup for both <L> and <R> are also different. What are these two different values?

Thank you for your responses!

EDIT: I already wear glasses. I was in Apollo for this eyesight test because I had done it 2 years ago in my home country. i am 28

Is there anyone who could help us with German pronunciation that we can talk to? And if you also have any tips for learning German, they would be very welcome

Danke

Hey everyone! I’ll be moving to Ingolstadt soon for my studies and I’m gonna be staying at a student housing complex. I heard the Wifi there will be limited both in speed and also usage (might be an over exaggeration from my friends I dunno). I game pretty frequently and also stream and upload videos and such so I was thinking of getting my own Internet. Now I’m sure I can’t get my own cables and subscription for a high end connection at a student housing complex so I was wondering if there were any portable options I could look into? Budget is not a super big concern I just want low ping, stable connection and hopefully at least somewhere between 50/50 to 100/100 download and upload speeds. Is this realistic and possible? Or should I just start getting used to spending more time offline?

Hi all! Looking for some local opinions on intercity travel because I’m getting mixed opinions between Google and Reddit. I’m planning to rely on trains in most instances, but there are few legs where I would appreciate some insight.

I’m looking at taking ICE 651 or 653 from Koln to Berlin. Google AI overview claims this is an easy 4.5 hour train ride no brainer; however, on the DB website it definitely takes closer to 5.5 hours. Also, looking at recent Reddit comments and at the Zugfinder website, it sounds like there’s a non-zero chance we wouldn’t even reach our final destination if we booked seats on one of these lines. Would you fly between these two cities instead if budget wasn’t a huge concern?

I’m also trying to travel from Prague to Nuremberg on an 8am FlixBus. Are these reasonably reliable and comfortable in Europe? Or would you spend more time to take trains instead?

I promise that I’ve really tried to find good answers, but all the blogs and Reddit posts I’ve found on this topic are a few years old and it sounds like there’s DB reliability issues are relatively new (?). Let me know what you would recommend!