Pratik Agrawal

Edit 2 on 31.03.2024

Edit 1 on 04.12.2023

Originally Written on 24.04.2023

Note: I left Germany in November, 2023

I moved to Germany in 2019 for pursuing master’s degree. I had already worked for over 4 years in Indian IT industry by then. When you move to other country especially non-English speaking one, to say that it’s quite an experience would be a massive understatement. In this post, I will keep adding some experiences, observations, cultural differences and some of random notes about Germany. The only point of this post to defrag my mind and get rid of some constant stream of thoughts I keep having about things I am observing and noticing. Also, I have realized that documenting your experiences in time and place where and when you are going through them can serve as good memory lane \ time machine because what you are feeling at this time and place you won’t experience these feelings ever again. (maybe in a thousand years, some would like to know how an Indian guy in Germany felt? :))

Disclaimer: These are just my opinions. I could be making gross generalizations. (Probably I am)

• Banking experience in germany is pretty suboptimal. I found it extremely difficult to open a bank account when I had moved here. Even had to face some rude bank employees who outright refused that they spoke any English. [Although we met a guy at Sparkasse Potsdam HBF who was nice and explained things pretty clearly after visiting so many bank branches in and around Potsdam]

• Digital Payments: Germany runs on cash. It is pretty common to find restaurants in Berlin (Capital of Germany) that would not accept cards.

• Public Transport is top-notch [compared to India]. Especially I find the REs and RBs pretty convenient mode of commute [to and from suburbans of cities].

• Flexibility in Higher Education: Students are given full freedom to select elective courses. They can also decide how many semesters they want to complete their studies etc. This is still not possible in India. My Indian my found difficult to comprehend this in a good way.

• I personally found the Sunday Everything Closed thing pretty frustrating at times.

• The clean shaving experience: Getting clean shave in Germany feels like the barber was given some punishment to work in this profession and at the same time he has to leave for airport in next 10 minutes to catch flight. While in India it felt like you have personally hired the guy for the entire day, and he was born to do this. [Sample size is 5 saloons]

• The entire Online delivery for food, groceries etc. experience in Germany is below par. After you are used to swiggies and zomatos of the India, it is going to be very frustrating experience in Europe.

• German Bureaucracy makes you feel less human. They treat you like a shit. (There is no other way to say this)

• Tech Recruitment: They would wait for years to find a perfect candidate rather than hiring semi-good candidate and then training her on the JOB. (so I found the argument for this: because it is pretty hard to fire someone in Germany, they are very cautious in their hiring)

• Per capita empathy is pretty low.

• Work culture is pretty relaxed compared to India. You are trusted to deliver rather than constant micromanagement.

• To me, German society feels mechanical and robotic sometimes. Maybe this is the reason why they are efficient. People have fun but only after they put “have fun” in their calendar.[okay, I admit this is a gross generalization. ]

• Average European’s India Mental Model is: we all speak one language, all of India has very hot climate, etc. after a point, I didn’t even correct them. It was exhausting and they did not seem to care either.

• The German humor stereotype is more or less true, at least they didn’t get my type of humor. I had faced so many awkward moments with my German friends because of my jokes. To one friend, I had to send a Wikipedia link of self-deprecating humor.

• I have huge respect for Indians who don’t feel terrible in German winters without any sunlight for 6 months straight.

• Germany is very clean and Potsdam felt like heaven in summers with all the big open green spaces, Parks, lakes etc.

• The Hochschuleschport thing was also pretty interesting to me where you can take weekly classes about any sports in your university for a nominal fees.