Programmer in Berlin: Culture

This is part 4 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page details cultural differences and things I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on them.

Politics

One thing about Germany, and Europe in general, is that it’s relatively left-wing when compared to the US. This is a place where universal healthcare is so commonly accepted that no party – not even the super-racist party! – is talking about removing it. The aforementioned super-racist party has effectively the same political platform as the mainstream Republican party in the US (minus the healthcare thing). Politics in Europe certainly has its own problems, but at least in Germany there is a flourishing multi-party system that allows for people to have some kind of choice when voting. There is even a fun website called the “Wahl-o-Mat” (“Vote-o-Matic”) that tells you which party to vote for after answering a series of questions. There’s also none of the Electoral College silliness, which I won’t get into here.

I think one weird aspect of living in Europe, or at least Germany, is that all the stuff that US politicians told me were “too expensive” apparently aren’t!

• Gas prices are double or even triple what they are in the US. It’s ok, the economy isn’t collapsing.

• Universal healthcare with an individual mandate apparently works. It’s ok, the economy isn’t collapsing.

• The trains, despite all the ineptness of Deutsche Bahn, are generally pretty good! For many short-haul flights, such as Berlin to Munich, it’s actually quicker to go by train than fly. It’s ok, the economy isn’t collapsing.

• In Germany you get significant paid maternity and paternity leave¹. It’s ok, the economy isn’t collapsing.

Similarly, some cultural things that are deemed a “slippery slope” in the US aren’t:

• Promoting Nazism is banned. It’s not a slippery slope, and the country hasn’t devolved into authoritarian groupthink. You just can’t publicly support Nazism.

• There is no right to firearms in the way there is in the US. You don’t really have school shootings out here, and society seems to be ok? Nobody seems to want to band together to make a militia. Nobody in Germany is like, “we need more guns to prevent government overreach.”

I’m not saying it’s perfect, and there’s plenty of criticism to be given to German politicians and the EU as a whole, but I personally think it’s a more fair way of governance.

The EU

What is ironic about the general left-leaningness of Europe is that the EU’s structure is similar to what the “states rights!” people want – a coalition of states with relatively strong political power and identities, working inside a relatively weak federal framework to handle cooperation and disagreement. There is no EU military and only partially-dominant EU money, but there is a common justice framework, freedom of movement and a single market. To my limited understanding, the EU is like if the US had no federal military but every state had its own strong military, and Oklahoma spoke a different language and had different money than everyone else².

I am not qualified to give a good assessment of the EU as a political organization, other than I am very glad they gave me a visa and I wish they would streamline visa application and acceptance for more people. What I can comment on, however, is my impressions of Europeans’ relationship with the EU itself.

I would say that most Americans identify as “American” in some way, while most Europeans identify with a country inside the EU. A friend once commented that they didn’t “feel European” (as opposed to the country they were from) and didn’t know what “typical European stuff” would be (top on the list, as enumerated by Americans: cheese, bread, and trains). I think this speaks to a relationship with the EU somewhere between how Americans view the US government and how the Americans view the UN. Nobody says “I’m from the UN” or “I’m from one of the United Nations” when asked where they’re from, and Americans view the UN as an organization to be navigated and negotiated with as opposed to something they are inherently part of. The EU certainly has more influence over Europeans’ daily lives than the UN does, but it’s not part of the daily conversation as much as the US government is to Americans.

Digging into that relationship a bit deeper, there is also a bit more skepticism of the EU than I expected when moving here. Brexit made this pretty clear from the right-wing side, but some on the left view the EU as some kind of banker’s club where Germany and France get to tell smaller countries what to do. You can see this in the “Lexit” crowd, people who wanted the UK to leave the EU so it could enact more socialist policies without being hindered by the EU’s neoliberal slant. Another example is the animosity countries had toward Germany after the eurozone crisis – their bailouts came attached with harsh austerity requirements that were criticized as exploitative.

I personally think the EU is cool and wish it would remain a strong uniting force, but I also can see how its incredible bureaucracy could be streamlined.

Crime

I can’t speak to general crime rates, but in general Europe feels safer. The relative lack of guns is refreshing, and (at least in Berlin) the crime centers around break-ins and bike theft. I recall being in Copenhagen once, before I moved to Europe, and seeing a woman walking by herself at 3 am. My first thought was concern for her safety, followed by incredible shame in myself and my country – why did I think this was dangerous in the first place? Of course, bad things happen all the time and I don’t want to claim Europe is some kind of crime-free paradise, but it is striking how different it is compared to the US.

Units

One small adjustment will be getting used to the metric system for everything. I recommend not trying to do any conversions in your head and just see/feel the units themselves, but occasionally having a reference point is useful.

Temperature: 0°C is water’s freezing point, 100°C is its boiling point. 37°C is a nominal human body temperature. 16°C is light sweater weather, 20-22°C is a nice indoor temperature depending on your preference, anything over 25°C is unpleasantly warm.

Weight: An average supermarket pineapple weighs roughly 1 kilogram! If you take away only one fact from this article, let it be this one.

Distance: Meters are just yards, so that’s really easy. Centimeters, on the other hand, are quite hard and I still don’t have a good feel for them. A kitchen planner once laughed at me when I tried to mark 10 centimeters with my fingers. It’s a little more than the width of a credit card I guess? Around 4 inches? I also don’t have a good feel for kilometers and can’t give many tips, sorry. A nice thing about miles is that people roughly drive 60 miles per hour over long distances, meaning a distance in miles roughly corresponds to how many minutes it will take to drive there. Luckily people roughly drive 100km/h over long distances, meaning you can divide any distance in kilometers by 100 and that’s roughly the number of hours it’ll take to drive there.

Volume: A cup is roughly 240mL, or 1/4L if you’re in a pinch. A gallon is roughly 4 liters. A liter is about half of a two-liter bottle³, or roughly one quart.

A fun fact: one mL of water weighs one gram, which means one liter weighs one kilogram. Pretty cool!

Washing

Washing machines in Europe electrically heat their water, which means there is far more precise temperature control than water taken from the building’s hot water supply. Instead of “cold,” “warm” and “hot” you have 30°C, 40°C, and 60°C. Luckily clothing sold in Europe tells you what temperature to wash it at on the tag.

Dryers are relatively uncommon in Germany, and most people hang their wash on a line to dry. You can do this inside or outside, if the weather allows. Since fully soaked clothes would take forever to dry, most people have front-loading washers which spin the water out at the end of a cycle. The higher the RPM, the more water is taken out, but higher RPMs also add more wear to your clothes. At 1400rpm, cotton and synthetic clothes usually dry overnight, if not sooner. At 800rpm, it can take a day for things to dry.

I first got annoyed that dryers weren’t common, but I quickly adjusted and stopped caring. Dryers use immense energy and wear down your clothes, and the added convenience isn’t worth it unless you’re washing a LOT of clothes (which explains why it’s mostly families who buy dryers). If you do get a dryer, get a heat pump dryer – they use roughly a third of the energy of the standard dryers you find in the US (but you do have to empty the water out afterward).

I disagree with this Slate article’s general premise and feel that European appliances are generally of equal or better quality, but definitely appreciate the hatred of inscrutable symbols on the appliances here. Devices from Bosch-Siemens are especially bad in this regard: I have a washing machine that has Pflegeleicht (“easy care” or “permanent press”) and Pflegeleicht Plus modes. The manual has no explanation of what Pflegeleicht Plus means⁴, and I only found out via a Youtube comment on a video showing it in operation⁵. On the other hand, the manual for my dryer has an entire section telling me what clothes I should dry on low heat, but doesn’t tell me how to actually do that – I’ve been assuming this entire time that it’s also Pflegeleicht, but that’s never actually explained. Sometimes you’ll have a symbol pop up on the display that doesn’t appear in the manual at all, and you have to scour the internet to figure it out what it means.

Weather

People in Berlin like to complain about the perpetual gray weather and they’re completely right. Seasonal affective disorder is very real, and it might be a good idea to look into Vitamin D and light therapy lamps. One note: a lot of people buy cool-colored light bulbs or a SAD lamp and use it like a regular light. To get the real effects of these lamps, you need to get a real one and use it very close to your face for a long time! I went with the complete nerd option: Luminette lamp glasses, which I use right as I wake up. You look like a total idiot wearing them, but I like them a lot. I don’t have much beyond anecdotal evidence to show that they work, but it’s worth looking at the instructions of any SAD lamp you might buy to see if you can follow its recommended regiment. As an added bonus, they’re good for late sleepers who need to wake up early and can help you adjust to new time zones. There are other companies that make similar devices if you’re interested. Take winters in Berlin seriously!

The real solution is to book a trip to Spain in February, but that isn’t an option for everyone.

Avoiding the “expat bubble”

Moving to a different country raises a lot of questions about integration, maintaining your identity, and what community you decide to cultivate. One thing that can be difficult is keeping ties to your previous community without locking yourself into it. Delving into the language is one way to prevent this. I think it’s also worthwhile to try and rely on “expat services” sparingly. They’re great when starting out, but over time they reinforce the lock-in you’ll have. Language goes a long way here, but it can also help to expand your social network to people from the country you’re in.

Something you may also want to be aware of is what I call the “expat tax,” where companies specialize in providing English-speaking services or advice but charge more for the service. It can be hard to discern if you’re getting specialized advice tailored to your needs, or getting fleeced. Most of the time it’s not a big deal, but occasionally it can end up being quite costly. I know of a mortgage broker specializing in English-speaking clients who, at least in one case, gave a worse deal than a German-speaking mortgage broker. Admittedly, several factors could have caused that, but a slightly worse deal on a mortgage can add up to a big amount in the long run. Don’t feel too bad if you rely on such services, or expat groups or whatever – I’m just saying that accepting a reasonable amount of discomfort at the beginning can yield benefits in the long run.

It’s also worth getting involved on a civic level where possible. Reading local news can help as is watching/reading Tagesschau, the publicly funded German news organization. I find it also helps to go on tours and learn about the history of the place you’re in, not just because it’s interesting but also to help better relate to the people around you.

Customer service

A lot of people moving to Germany (and especially Berlin) experience shock when interacting with the famous German concept of customer service. While usually written off as “rude,” I think there’s a deeper cultural norm powering this. An NPR story on opening the first McDonald’s in Russia sheds light on what is going on here:

SPIEGEL: At that time in Russia, the relationship between customers and service providers like cashiers or waiters was basically the opposite of the relationship set up in America.

CHEKALIN: Waiters were kind of above us. They were not serving us. We were kind of, like, bothering them.

SPIEGEL: In Russia, the role of the customer was to please the waiter, not the other way around. To understand this, you need to remember that in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, Russia was a state-run economy plagued by severe shortages. There were shortages of bread, of meat, toilet paper. And so anyone who had access to stuff - to goods or food - had a tremendous amount of power.

Ultimately, customer service in Germany (especially eastern Germany) follows the rule that the person doesn’t really have to help you and you are being served at their behest. I’m not saying that this is pleasant or right, but it does explain a lot of what’s going on. It also explains why “is there a manager I can talk to” isn’t really a move you can pull. In the States it’s usually a dick move anyway but people do it assuming that the customer service person will be afraid of repercussions. In Germany it doesn’t work very well because there are few repercussions, and you aren’t respecting their authority.

A side-effect of a highly bureaucratic society is that exceptions can be extensively documented and handled if the bureaucrat wants to do so. This means that front-line customer service people often have the ability to break through the system a bit, assuming they want to and that they know they can do it. It sucks that there is a lot of personal discretion involved, but sometimes repeatedly mentioning or reminding someone that they have the power to document an exception can go a long way.

Tipping

There are probably huge articles online explaining how to handle the much more relaxed tipping rules in Germany. The nice thing to note is that there is no tipped wage system like in the US and waitstaff must be paid at least minimum wage regardless of tips. This means they’re not as dependent on tips to get by, and conversely tipping isn’t as compulsory as it is in the States. The card payment terminals which always prompt for a tip are a very recent introduction and make everyone uncomfortable.

WhatsApp

Nearly everyone in Europe uses WhatsApp, to the point that you might be lightly socially ostracized if you don’t. Telekom, which runs its own SMS communication network, allows you to contact their support via WhatsApp because it is so dominant. This has been a great boon to Facebook and its group of aggressive PMs who want to make sure all your contact data is harvested.

When I first moved here, you could use WhatsApp without giving access to your contact list: you could type in a number and directly chat with a person. Then an update came and the app refused to run unless you gave access. After a while it worked again without having to give access (I conspiratorially think that Apple forced them via app store policy), but a strange bug would occur: you could type in a number directly and try to text them, but they “weren’t on WhatsApp.” Give the app full access to all your contacts, and suddenly you could text that person. “Weird.”

I am perennially pissed off about this and I hope everyone involved feels bad about themselves.

Update: hahahahahahahahaha.

Buying stuff on Sundays

One thing you might get frustrated about is the lack of supermarkets that are open on Sundays. This is a cultural thing that is supposedly not based on religion, but come on, of course it is. There are a few gray areas: in Berlin there are some corner stores which are open on Sundays and some which aren’t. I’ve heard there is an informal agreement between corner stores who want to stay open, and they simply don’t report each other so the compliance office doesn’t investigate. In any case, there are some businesses which are allowed to legally operate on Sundays: supermarkets can stay open as long as they’re in a train station and are targeted towards travelers, and florists can sell cut flowers but not flowers in a pot. For everything else, you have to hope your local corner store bends the rules a bit.

I don’t have any specific guidelines on how to get used to it, other than to adopt the northern European tradition of preparing for winter. In the old days, you had to make sure you stored enough potatoes in your cellar to last the winter, otherwise your family would starve. Germans have somehow kept this mentality into modern times, and you can sense the panic when someone realizes they don’t have enough groceries to last into Sunday. Plan ahead, make sure you always have enough potatoes on hand, and be thankful for what I can imagine is the only advantage of this system: extremely quiet Sunday streets.

Smoking

One thing I found unusual was how many people regularly smoked in Europe. Due to a variety of factors, smoking dropped precipitously in my generation in the US (only to have vaping take hold in the subsequent generation). This didn’t seem to translate over to here, and people of all ages smoke in a variety of contexts. I don’t think I’ll forget the time where I was eating lunch at the office and a coworker was having a conversation with me, maintaining eye contact, while simultaneously rolling a cigarette. You don’t see that often in the US!

Supposedly smoking has been legislated out of most public spaces in most of Germany, but the Berlin nightlife industry fought hard against the regulations when they were being crafted. Many bars in Berlin are smoking bars, and some restaurants even have a designated smoking section walled off from the rest of the tables. I guess that’s one of the few downsides of universal healthcare.

test.de / Verbraucherzentrale

If you’re looking for a Consumer Reports or Wirecutter-like site in Germany, I can recommend test.de or the Verbraucherzentrale (“consumer center”). In addition to product reviews, they also have good explanations and overviews of common insurances, guides for planning major life events, etc. You do, however, have to have a decent German reading level to take advantage of it.

Writing letters / Buying a printer

This is slowly changing, but Germany is absolutely a paper-based society. Until very recently, the only guaranteed easy way to cancel subscriptions (gym memberships, newspapers, etc) was to mail a letter to terminate the contract. While you might be able to get away with printing stuff at work or at a local copy shop, it can often be worth it to get a home printer. I have a cheap black and white laser printer which has performed beautifully and hasn’t needed a lot of toner. You might also want to look into getting a scanner to scan and send copies of signed documents, although there are many apps that use your phone’s camera to do this. It will make your life way easier if you can scan multiple pages and combine them into a single PDF, reducing image quality to an acceptable file size along the way. The iOS Files app and MacOS Finder/Preview can do this natively, but the process can be annoying and can result in extremely high-resolution files that may be difficult to transfer. Adobe has a scanning app that requires you to upload to their cloud-based service. Microsoft Lens seems to be a good sweet spot: local storage, can easily make PDFs of a normal size, and free.

Printing Envelopes

It’s not immediately obvious, but most printers have variable-width paper trays and will happily print on DL envelopes (DIN-Lang, the standard envelope size for folded A4 paper). This is great for people with bad handwriting, but it is also super nice when combined with prepaid postage.

Google Docs doesn’t have envelope sizes natively, but you can install extensions to do this. I’ve been using Apple Pages to make letters. The key is to select “Envelope,” and make sure that the page size is set to ‘Envelope DL’. I’m sure Microsoft Word has a similar thing.

If you’ve bought postage online, just drop it into the word processor and print the address, return address, and postage all in one go.

I always kept loading the envelopes into the printer the wrong way, so I ended up writing a little reminder on a label and sticking it near the printer tray so I wouldn’t mess up again.

Subscriptions

Germany really locks you into yearlong subscriptions, so watch out. Gym memberships, cell phone contracts, newspaper subscriptions, etc often have a minimum subscription amount (usually a year or two years) and make it difficult to cancel. The government has passed a law to require simple cancellation online, but if that doesn’t work you’re often best off writing a letter stating you’d like to cancel. There are many templates for this you can find on the internet, but note that if you cancel in the middle of the initial period you’ll likely have to pay until the period ends. Thankfully the law has now changed and you should be able to cancel on a monthly basis after the initial period.

Dating

In general, dating works similar to how it does in the US, with a few exceptions. One is that dating apps can have a different connotation than what you’re used to. Tinder in the US morphed from a hook-up app to a general dating service, but Germany was behind a few years on that. For years I avoided Bumble as “a thing only Americans used,” only to discover that a much broader section of the Berlin population used it. Just be open to differences from what you’re used to.

One thing that is a bit weird is everyone having profiles in English. I’ve heard of stories where two Germans with English profiles figure out they’re German and switch mid-chat. I think this mainly speaks to Berlin having a lot of non-German speakers (and certainly a lot of non-German speaking tourists), so English is sometimes easier to start off with. All I’m saying is don’t worry too much about your own profile being in English, and don’t read too much into it if someone texts you in English.

Pro-tip: mention your test.de subscription in your profile and watch the matches come in like crazy.

Following “The Rules”

A particularly cheesy joke I once heard goes “do you know why crime is so low in Germany? Because it’s illegal.” The extent to which rules and signs are just followed here can be startling to someone accustomed to a more relaxed culture. It’s like the concept of a “victimless crime” doesn’t exist here: even if you jaywalk at night when there are no cars in sight, you’re still breaking the rules and that is, in itself, an offense. There are two effects here.

One is that everyone trusts that everyone else follows the rules. When I was learning to drive here, my driving instructor chastised me for looking left too much when turning right at a T intersection. I was worried about people coming from the left who couldn’t see me or wouldn’t let me turn. My teacher’s response: due to the “right before left” rule (explained later in the “Driving” section), they would have to stop for me and I should just trust that. Apparently it’s not enough to follow the rules, you’re also expected to trust that everyone else is as well.

Two is that “the rules” can take precedence over communication and relationships. Noise complaints from neighbors are a good example here. If I hear someone making a lot of noise in an apartment, I use that as a starting point for a conversation with them. Maybe they didn’t know the noise carried that much, or maybe we can work out an agreement where most of the noise can happen when I’m not home. Unfortunately, what often happens is some variant of “is it before 7pm? Then I’m allowed to do whatever I want!” It’s also limiting for the people who are used to that environment – maybe something is against the rules, but the neighbors don’t care. Instead of asking, they simply state that it’s against the rules and automatically assume rejection – again, there is no “victimless crime.”

This is usually one of the more negative aspects of German culture that people cite, and I can’t say I disagree. I don’t have much advice on how to navigate it except to notice what gets people really freaked out and try to avoid those offenses. These usually fall under:

• Noise during designated quiet hours
• Improperly disposing of trash (including not folding boxes in the recycling bin)
• Blocking cars (blocking pedestrians or bicycles doesn’t receive the same outrage)
• Not lining up properly (I also get mad at this)
• Not staying far enough to the right in a bike lane, even if it’s really narrow and no normal person would want to pass you.

Real shit “they” don’t want you to know about

Worker rep on the board (Betriebsrat)

A Betriebsrat is an elected “works council” made up of employees that must be consulted by management on certain issues. Once a company gets large enough it must accommodate a works council by law, so some see it as a way toward organized labor in a company. A Betriebsrat doesn’t have the same power as a union, so it’s worth looking into what they can and can’t do.

Bildungsurlaub

In most German states, you have the right to a “Bildungsurlaub.” This is paid vacation you’re allowed to take in conjunction with some kind of job or political training. It differs by state, but in Berlin you get 5 working days each year which can also roll over, allowing you take 10 days every two years.

You do have to pay for the class itself and any transportation or lodging. There are almost always German classes available for this, and you’re allowed to go anywhere there is a course available. I know a German who went to Vancouver for two weeks to improve his English, and several of my English-speaking colleagues have spent time in different parts of Germany improving their German. Of course, there’s nothing preventing you from taking a German class in your city of residence, but sometimes it’s nice to have a change of scenery.

Properly opening a Ritter Sport

I opened Ritter Sports for years without knowing that you’re supposed to open them by “snapping” them at the seam. This opens them in a way such that the seam can be resealed, to save the rest for later.

Transport

Public Transit

Of all the lifestyle upgrades I can think of, universal healthcare and pervasive public transit are the two huge benefits of moving to Europe. Sure, there are plenty of cars on the streets, but it’s far easier to take a bus, tram, subway, or commuter rail to your destination than it is in virtually all of the US. It’s not perfect, but in general the BVG (the Berlin public transit operator) will generally get you to where you need to go, at a relatively quick pace. Not all areas of the city have a good connection, though.

However be careful about the ticket system: you have to buy your ticket before you get on the train. Plainclothes ticket checkers (who are not fondly looked upon) will spring into action once the doors close, and I’ve known people who have gotten fines for not buying their tickets quick enough. If this happens, make sure to ask for a receipt – ticket checkers have been known to scare tourists into paying cash on the spot and pocketing the money.

Some, but not all, employers offer a discounted monthly transit ticket called a Jobticket which is probably worth it if offered. See the Deutschlandticket section for more details.

Google and Apple maps generally have decent transit directions. The BVG and VBB (the transit operator for the greater Berlin and Brandenburg area) apps also have pretty good routing. Transit and Citymapper are useful here, but aren’t often used.

One peculiar annoyance of the transit system here is that it can often be difficult to know what station you’re at. The S-Bahn is particularly egregious here, as the signage inside the train is often broken and the signage at stations is unlit and very difficult to see (even more so at night, when the glare on the windows makes it impossible to look outside). The newer S-Bahn trains make it even worse – when the doors are about to close and the beeping starts, the screens in the train switch to what train it is instead of the current station. This makes it impossible to know where you are without looking outside. For people like me who read articles on the train and only react to the beeps, it can be very stressful to look up and not know if you’ve missed your stop or not. Oftentimes, the quickest way to tell which S-Bahn stop you’re at is to pull out your phone and see where you are on Maps.

Bicycle

Berlin’s cycling infrastructure is getting better over time⁶. In addition to all the pop-up bike lanes that appeared during the pandemic (which are being converted to permanent bike lanes over time), the city is building a bike autobahn (bikeobahn?) to connect major parts of the city. Cycling in Berlin is semi-accepted. It’s not as nice as Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but it’s not as bad as anywhere in the US.

Certain areas of the city have relatively good infrastructure (Prenzlauer Berg, in particular), while others don’t (Neukölln, Potsdamer Platz). When the infrastructure isn’t good, cyclists are often crammed in with aggressive cars and the result isn’t pretty. I don’t have good advice here other than to avoid the areas where possible. When it’s not possible, I urge you to heed the words of a bike shop owner when I asked him how to turn left on one of Berlin’s major thoroughfares: “do you want to assert your rights or do you want to stay alive?” Getting a ticket for riding on the sidewalk (slowly, don’t be a jerk and blow past pedestrians) isn’t so bad compared to dying, nor is it worth it to rush or bend traffic laws on the road.

Speaking of traffic laws, you may want to read up on the rechts vor links (“right before left”) rule which described in the driving section. It will help explain why cars act strangely at 4-way intersections.

Regardless of how well built the cycling infrastructure in your neighborhood is, you will always encounter cycling’s second natural enemy behind cars: cobblestones (Kopfsteinpflaster). These are purpose-built to ruin your day as a cyclist⁷. In addition to causing extreme vibration while riding, enough to kick you off your bike if you’re going at anything resembling a normal speed, they can be spaced just wide enough to catch your wheel and send you flying. I’d like to give a special shoutout to the bike lanes which are interrupted by driveways that use cobblestones just for the bike lane – a special treat for everyone who wants to get flipped off of their bike. For some reason they seem to be specially chosen and laid to maximize the chances of catching your wheel.

You can fight cobblestones with a two-pronged approach: avoidance and acceptance. To avoid them, I recommend the Beeline app. You should probably buy a Beeline anyway since it’s a great device, but I think you can use the app without purchasing the device and it works as a great cycling navigation aid throughout Berlin. While it doesn’t know about cobblestones specifically, it does let users rate streets and the routing takes that into account. For those who want more detailed information, the “Berlin by Bike” website and app use exact street data to minimize cobblestones as much as possible. Unfortunately I find both interfaces effectively unusable, so I never end up using these. Google Maps can route for cyclists but it has no concept of cobblestones and minimal understanding of bike lanes, so it often puts cyclists in unpleasant or outright dangerous situations. To accept cobblestones, you can get a bike with wide tires or underinflate your tires to absorb the impact (but not too much, or you’ll get a pinch flat). Getting springy grip tape or wearing cycling gloves can help your wrists too.

Bike theft is definitely a concern around here, but not as much as I recall in SF. I always followed the advice to bring two U-locks, one for the front wheel and one for the back wheel/frame. Virtually nobody here seems to do that, and the foldy “D-locks” are quite common around here. While practical, they offer less security. I’d say the general consensus is to have a less valuable bike + less effective locking instead of valuable bike + more effective locking. Another thing to be aware of: some of the bike racks are too wide or too weirdly designed to be able to lock your rear wheel and frame together with one U-lock. It might be worthwhile to invest in locking wheel skewers instead of quick releases so you can care a little less when only one lock fits.

For some reason, despite Berlin’s reputation as a laid-back city (nobody is really in a rush here), everyone is super aggressive in cars and on bikes. In addition, you also have people who buzz past you at especially dangerous times (intersections when the light just turns green, right when a huge truck is passing centimeters away instead of just waiting a few seconds, the insanely narrow bike “lane” on the bridge at Warschauer Straße), and otherwise general weird behavior.

I don’t want to seem too negative here: cycling in Berlin is a great way to get around, it’s free once you buy the bike and is great for your health. In addition to daily travel, cycling out to Brandenburg for a long weekend can be a great experience. In summer, it’s very popular to bike out to one of Berlin or Brandenburg’s many lakes and chill out for the day. Komoot is a nice way to plan out one of these trips if you don’t know anyone who knows the way. Enjoy it!

Finally, while you may not be able to vote, you can help your city become a more bike-friendly place. I’d recommend joining your local ADFC chapter (that would be ADFC-Berlin for the Berliners), who petition for better bike lanes, better protection of cyclists, and overall encourage a more bike-friendly city. In Berlin they also organize the ADFC Sternfahrt (“rally”), for those who want a tamer Critical Mass experience.

Regional and Long-distance Trains

Germans love to complain about the Deutsche Bahn, and there’s plenty to complain about – the general opinion is that it’s a corrupt organization that was affected by the same privatization spree that created the Deutsche Post. Recent dismal on-time performance has not helped this impression, and trying to understand exactly why DB has such structural problems is a hobby in and of itself.

However, overall there are trains and the trains actually run. You can reasonably traverse the country by train, and if you don’t mind paying a bit extra for a high-speed train you can get from any big city to another in maybe 7 hours tops.

Deutsche Bahn has some confusing pricing for the uninitiated, so I’ll try to explain it below.

Second-class Flexpreis

The basic ticket is the second-class Flexpreis (“flexible-ticket price”) ticket. This kind of ticket works like a public-transit ticket: just like a subway or bus ticket, with a Flexpreis ticket you can take any train that day to your destination. Also like a subway or bus ticket, there is no seat reservation: it’s a free-for-all and you may get lucky or not depending on demand. This also means that DB can’t fundamentally do capacity control for second class. They try to predict demand and tell you on the website, but there’s nothing stopping 200 people showing up to ride the same train and filling up all possible space in the car.

The flexibility makes this kind of ticket most useful for commuters who don’t know the exact time they’ll take a train and don’t mind if they don’t get a seat, since it won’t be that long of a ride anyway. Reserved seats can be purchased afterward if you settle on a particular train and think it might be busy.

Second-class Sparpreis

The second-class Sparpreis (“savings price”) ticket is exactly like the Flexpreis ticket except you have to pick a specific train to ride on. This changes the ticket from a public-transit style ticket (“take any train going that direction”) to something more like flying: you have a specific train to catch and can’t substitute it with another one. The upside is that Sparpreis tickets are usually much cheaper, depending on how busy the train is and how far out in advance you buy it. A funny consequence of this pricing model is that the Sparpreis starts cheap and rises to eventually match the cost of the_Flexpreis_ ticket – at which point you can just buy a Flexpreis ticket, since that lets you ride on any train that day anyway.

Like Flexpreis tickets, second-class Sparpreis tickets also do not come with a seat reservation. Unlike Flexpreis tickets, most people buying Sparpreis tickets are buying for some kind of long-distance vacation or business trip. For some routes and times of day it’s not worth reserving a seat since it will almost certainly be empty, but if you’re wrong you’ll be standing in the aisle for 5 hours straight. Another annoyance is that the seat you pick may be reserved for part of your journey, meaning you’ll have to shuffle around and find another one. Finally, there are the “ggf. freigegeben” seats. Ggf. freigegeben (German for “lol, you thought this would be easy?”) means that the seat may or may not be reserved, and they don’t know due to technical reasons. If you sit there, you’ll have to wait the entire ride to see if someone actually did reserve it or not.

After getting burned a few times, I’ve just committed to paying the extra few Euro to always get a reserved seat. If you plan to save the cash, just be prepared to stand in the aisle/vestibule or shift seats a lot.

First-class

First-class on a DB train isn’t like first-class on a plane: you get slightly more legroom, and occasionally someone will take your food or drink order so you don’t have to go to the dining car yourself. It used to be a better deal on emptier trains since you used to get a free seat reservation included, which often made a first-class ticket only a few more Euro than a second-class ticket with seat reservation. Sadly seat reservations are no longer included with first-class tickets anymore.

BahnCard

If you plan to do any regular traveling with DB, I highly recommend getting a BahnCard. A BahnCard 25 can rapidly pay for itself after a few trips. These are prepaid discount cards that come in six major flavors:

• First- and second- class BahnCard 25
• First- and second- class BahnCard 50
• First- and second- class BahnCard 100

The BahnCard 25 is what applies to most people – you get 25% off of the various kinds of Sparpreise, sometimes including train travel outside of Germany. The first-class BahnCard also gives you the 25% benefit on second-class tickets, but not the other way around, so it only makes sense to have one and not both.

The BahnCard 50 makes the most sense for commuters who need the flexibility of a Flexpreis ticket, it gives you 50% off of Flexpreise as well as 25% off of Sparpreise.

The BahnCard 100 is for high-rollers. It lets you ride any train on the system, although you only get a certain number of free seat reservations to go along with it. I only know of people who get BahnCard 100s through their work, similar to having a company car.

49 Euro Ticket / Deutschlandticket

This is a relatively new offering that was originally introduced in 2022 during the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to reduce German’s reliance on fossil fuels. Its success led to the current version with a higher price but more sustainable funding from the government. The Deutschlandticket allows you to ride any regional, non-high-speed train, as well as public transit in any city, in all of Germany for €49 a month. This means you can ride from your apartment to the train station in Berlin using Berlin public transit, a regional train from Berlin to Hamburg, and Hamburg public transit to your hotel, all on the same ticket, which costs €49 a month. This is not only a great deal, but an impressive achievement that they managed to unify the transit networks of every city in Germany. As you can imagine, many people now opt for the Deutschlandticket instead of single-city subscriptions. You buy it through your local transit agency, and there are even Jobticket variants you get through your employer that cost a little less.

A small caveat: the Deutschlandticket counts as a second-class ticket on regional trains, and can’t be combined with a first-class “upgrade” ticket. If you want to ride first-class on a regional train, you need to pay the full price. Additionally, there are no refunds if a train gets canceled or delayed. If you are planning on using the Deutschlandticket to catch a Sparpreis express train somewhere else, it’s probably better to buy a ticket for the whole journey so you can be rerouted or reimbursed if something goes wrong.

Booking

Booking trains within Germany is pretty easy – just go to the DB website. Booking trains to neighboring countries through DB is also generally pretty good. Unfortunately, there is no unified European train search and booking system, and the accuracy and bookability of train search falls off steeply as you go further away from Germany. Omio provides a Europe-wide train search in theory, but it’s not as good as Google Flights, Kayak, etc. Seems like a great opportunity for a scrappy startup to build something!

Sometimes you might get cheaper prices or different conditions if you book trips through the Austrian rail line (ÖBB) instead of DB.

For longer-distance trips, Rome2Rio can provide some good connections that you might not otherwise think about. There is also BlaBlaCar which helps you organize long-distance carpools, but I haven’t used it.

Driving

I recently got my German driver’s license after converting it from a California one. Unfortunately California doesn’t offer an exchange with Germany, so I had to go through almost the whole driving school process here. Exchanging my license meant I needed fewer required driving hours, didn’t have to do any “special” driving hours (like night driving or Autobahn driving), and it meant that I could skip any theory classes as long as I tested ok. Note that the exchanged license only has to be valid when you make the initial application – if your license expires between the application and when you pass your exams, everything should still be ok as long as the application itself is valid. If you’re thinking about exchanging your license, do it while you still can.

An exchanged California license, assuming you don’t need too many practice driving hours, will cost you roughly €1500 - €2000. That’s the school fees, the fees to use their “learning platform” (an app to go through all the theoretical exam questions), some administrative fees they charge whenever they talk to the license office or sign you up for a test, and the practice driving hours. To help you estimate, I needed about 11 practice hours in total, at a rate of about €80/hr. The schools aggressively hide their fees online, but usually if you ask or sign up they have a published fee sheet somewhere.

I went to the license office to directly apply for the exchange, but I think that was really the wrong order. I had to supply a driving school and test location, so I think the proper order would have been to sign up with a driving school first. From what I understand, most if not all schools will handle all the license office paperwork themselves (with an implied fee, of course).

I had to take the theoretical and practical exam, as if I had never driven before. The practical was relatively straightforward, but I recommend reading up on Reddit to avoid common pitfalls. I found practicing for the theoretical exam way harder. The wording of all the questions is quite tricky, so even if your German is passable it might be better to take the exam in English, even though the translations aren’t great.

Finally, there are two things I’d want to stress when learning to drive: right-before-left and where the speed limit signs are.

Right before left

This is a rule that, as far as I can tell, only exists in Germany and the Netherlands. In the US, there is the concept of a 4-way stop sign at an intersection. Germany doesn’t have that. At a 4-way intersection without a traffic light, the rechts vor links (“right before left”) rule applies: you have to yield to everyone to the right of you. Before you go “oh yeah, that makes sense” I almost assure you that you don’t understand it. There is no cycling of cars as people take turns, literally everyone to the right of you goes ahead while you wait, and only when the right is clear do you go (the people left of you are waiting on you). Imagine that every intersection had a default sign that said “yield to all cars on the right.”

This rule applies basically everywhere there aren’t traffic signs, not just at 4-way stops. If there is a road to the right of you, you have to slow down to see if anyone is coming and yield if anyone is there. The only exceptions are if it’s a “road with a curb” (meaning a driveway), a lesser class of road (a dirt road when you’re on a paved one), or if you have a street sign telling you have right of way or are on a “priority road” (the most common being a yellow diamond inside a white diamond). Until recently this rule even applied in parking lots, but that as of 2022 that is no longer the case⁸.

It’s complicated enough driving through the city trying to figure out if the road to the right of you is a real road or a driveway, but there’s another curveball thrown into the mix: the sign that tells you that the priority road curves right or left. Usually in these scenarios I stop my car and write a Prolog program to solve the logic puzzle of what to do, especially if you want to turn left into oncoming traffic. One nice shortcut: if you’re on a priority road that curves left, you always have right-of-way no matter what you’re doing.

Where the speed limit signs are

This seems trivial, but I found it very frustrating while driving around town. In Germany, the speed limit signs are posted directly at the intersection, and not after. Additionally, there is a default speed limit if you don’t see any sign (50km/h within cities, 100km/h outside). Since I’m usually looking at pedestrians and other cars when turning at an intersection, I kept missing traffic signs when I was first learning to drive here. While you’re walking on the street (meaning, in a non-stressful situation), keep an eye out for them to see where they should be.

Be sure to note the change in default speed limit I mentioned above. Make a mental note that every time you see a “welcome to X city” sign, you slow down to 50km/h.

Finally, speed limit signs on some roads can be on the left side of the road as well as on the right – these can be more difficult to see on wider streets, so try to keep an eye out for them.

Medical

The medical system in Germany is good, regardless of whether you have public or private health insurance. In general it helps to know German to navigate the system, but a few tips can make it a bit easier.

Emergencies

If you have a medical emergency, dial 112 and get an ambulance – make sure to state the street address first, so if the call gets cut off they still know where to go. The number to call the police in emergencies is 110. I struggled for a while to remember which was which – 110 or 112 – until I saw a cheesy poster for a fire brigade’s recreational rowing team: “We give 112 percent!” It took me a second, like “oh god, 110% isn’t good enough?” followed by “oohhhhhh.”

Getting an appointment

With public insurance, it can be hard to find an appointment for your doctor. Some of them only make appointments by phone, but a growing number schedule patients online via companies like Doctolib, Jameda, or Samedi. For specialists it may not be a big deal, but I really recommend finding a Hausarzt (“primary care physician”) that reliably schedules appointments online. Some health insurances offer appointment-making services (Techniker Krankenkassse, for example, has an English language appointment hotline), but I don’t have much experience with that.

One bright spot is that you often don’t have to make an appointment to refill a prescription – usually you can call the doctor’s office, ask for a refill, and you can pick the prescription up when convenient. Sometimes they’ll even mail it to you!

Krankschreibung

With most non-freelancer jobs, if you get sick you’re allowed to take off work for a few days, but on the third day you’re required to go to a Hausarzt and get krankgeschrieben (“written off sick”). That process itself is kind of annoying – most practices won’t give them out over the phone, so you usually have to go in person while having a cold, just to get a piece of paper saying you have a cold. At least it’s better than being forced to work while sick. There is no concept of a fixed amount of “sick days” here and Germans are appalled at the concept.

Überweisungen

In the German healthcare system, the Hausarzt is the gatekeeper for basically all your medical needs. Unless it’s an emergency, you usually have to see the Hausarzt first before seeing any kind of specialist. The magical document you need to see a specialist is the Überweisung (“referral”). This is why I recommended in the previous section that you should really try to find a Hausarzt that’s easy to book appointments with.

The setup can get a little frustrating at times, since you’re just making an appointment to get permission to make a different appointment with someone else. It’s also a little weird because, in theory, you can go to any Hausarzt to do this, not just your main one (although you may get funny looks if you show up to a new practice with an unusual request).

Rezepte

A more familiar concept is that most medicine requires a Rezept (“prescription”) from a doctor in order to pick it up at an Apotheke (“pharmacy”). Despite all the talk of digitized patient records and “E-Rezepte,” Germany is still a very paper-based society and you’re likely going to have to bring a stupid piece of paper with you every time you need to pick up medication. Occasionally you can ask the doctor’s office to send it directly to the Apotheke if it’s one nearby or you have their fax number handy.

Apotheke / Over the counter

What’s weird about the Apotheken is that they’re weird amalgams of prescription medication depots, advisors for over-the-counter medication, and beauty product stores. You can’t just buy NyQuil here, you have to go up to a person, do a little song and dance, and hope that you’ve convinced them enough that you get the product that you want. This goes a little smoother when you don’t know what product you want, as the pharmacists are usually pretty well trained to help you find what you need. A word of caution, however – Germans are very medication-averse, so don’t be surprised to get “herbal” treatments when you expected the real stuff. Sometimes you can explicitly ask for a medically proven active ingredient, but sometimes you may walk away empty-handed.

I am still astonished that homeopathic “treatments” are not only offered in pharmacies here, but sometimes actively recommended by pharmacists and doctors! It may sound like a perverse application of Godwin’s law, but you can literally blame the Nazis for this one.

Mental Health

One big failure in the German health system is how mental health is handled. Finding a German-speaking therapist or psychiatrist is difficult enough, let alone an English-speaking one. Supposedly the problem is that the calculation for the number of practitioners approved in an area by statutory insurance was set in the 90s and was never updated. If you have statutory insurance and don’t want to wait a year to see a practitioner (this is not an exaggeration), you’ll often have to just pay the full price out-of-pocket.

Private insurance has a much better track record in this regard, but that means mental health services are in some ways reserved for the rich.

There is a process to get statutory insurance to reimburse you for a private practitioner if you can prove that everybody in your area is full. It’s a complicated process, but some practitioners might be able to help you navigate it. You will have to pay out-of-pocket to get started, though.

The Berliner has a good overview of the whole situation and how to deal with it.

Food

The food system in Europe is in some ways pretty awesome, and in other ways quite limiting.

Bread

European bread is on another level. For my entire life, “bread” lasted for weeks in the cupboard. It turns out, that’s what makes Wonderbread wonder bread – it has preservatives in it to make it last far longer. Normal bread only keeps for a few days!

The demand for fresh bread has created a whole supply chain and distribution network for fresh baked goods that easily outclasses that in the US. Gas stations and train stations don’t have shrink-wrapped cheese danishes with year-long shelf lives. They have pastries baked daily, and often freshly made little sandwiches with meat and cheese. Cities themselves are dotted with bakeries, and often you’ll be within walking distance of several of them.

That’s not to say that there are variations in quality – you can definitely taste the difference between an industrially baked croissant and one made locally at the bakery itself – but the average quality is much higher and the variance much lower.

What you gain in quality you pay for in choice – often you’ll only find the same variation of the same few pastries or bread types. You’ll occasionally find a fun thing, but a step into an American supermarket will remind you of the shocking emphasis they have on having 10 different brands of peanut butter.

Cheese / Dairy

Like bread, cheese is one of Europe’s core competencies. The average supermarket will have an intimidating cheese selection, both from pasteurized and unpasteurized milks of various mammals.

If you’re a cheese eater it’s definitely worth trying out some random ones, being open to the fact that some of them taste or smell downright terrible. I can’t stomach camembert or brunost but there are a lot of good cheeses I’ve discovered while I’ve been here. Note that unpasteurized cheese can come with some health risks, but if you’re not immunocompromised or pregnant it’s usually ok.

What may be a bit unsettling is seeing unrefrigerated milk and eggs. Eggs are not washed in Europe like they are in the States, which leaves on a protective coating that lets them last at room temperature much longer. Refrigerating them just extends this longer, and a close read of the label will show two expiration dates depending on if they’re refrigerated or not. Similarly, ultrapasteurized milk is milk that stays good for months at room temperature, but needs to be refrigerated once open.

Meat

Meat in Europe is generally handled similarly to meat in the US, with a big exception: pork is better handled here, and (with proper preparation) can be eaten undercooked or even raw. I’ve eaten Mett (“pork tartare”) and lived to tell the tale, but it took some courage to do it. It’s common to have cured but not cooked bacon for breakfast. Everyone keeps saying it’s safe, but it takes a lot to undo an entire lifetime of avoiding uncooked pork.

Coffee

Coffee, as in the States, serves a dual purpose as “concentration fuel” and gourmet experience. However, the latter is emphasized far more than the former. This means that filter coffee from a carafe is readily available at gas stations and other places where you’re just trying to get from point A to B, but quite rare to get at a restaurant. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and a Milchkaffee (“milk coffee”) will be filter coffee with cream, but often the only way to get anything approaching filter coffee is to admit defeat and order an americano. I’ve adapted by ordering cappuccinos all the time.

The concept of unlimited filter coffee is foreign here, to the point that when a (sadly now closed) American diner in Berlin offered it, it was a point of conversation for both Americans and non-Americans alike. Living abroad means excitedly saying things like “they had the coffee carafes, like from Denny’s, and the waiter just walks around filling up your mug!”

Alcohol

Yes, you really can drink beer on the street! The European attitude toward alcohol is far more relaxed, and in my opinion more healthy. Because it’s everywhere and not strictly controlled and locked down, people binge drink less. That’s not to say that people don’t binge drink (how else could you explain the existence of Schlager music?) but it’s far more acceptable to socially drink in small quantities. I think the stronger public transit options and weaker Puritan influences drive the shocking (to Americans) attitude toward alcohol here.

Fun fact: the drinking age is 21 in the US because the National Highway Board found that drunk driving accidents fall off sharply after 21 years of age, and therefore states don’t get federal highway funding if their legal drinking age is under 21. Sucks if you don’t drive, I guess.

Wine

I’m not a knowledgeable wine drinker, but wine is both cheaper and of higher quality in Europe than what I’ve seen in the US. Enjoy!

Navigation

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