The harsh reality of living in Germany as an Expat/Foreigner🇩🇪2024 survey results are in😔

hey guys welcome back to my channel and if you're new here it is so great to have you I'm anet a New Zealander living in the beautiful wine region of lower Franconia Germany so first of all I just want to put out a bit of a disclaimer on this video this video is not going to be one of my positive uplifting videos where I praise Germany and talk about all of the wonderful experiences I've had here in Germany if you're looking for a video like that I have plenty of them on this channel you just have to go back and look at some of my older content where I talk a lot about all of the things I love about living in Germany as a New Zealander unfortunately this video today is going to be realistic a really valuable lesson I have learned since living in Germany is not to be afraid to be honest and don't hold back when it comes to expressing yourself especially when it comes to issues you may be facing so recently one of my subscribers sent me a pretty concerning article about xet life in Germany and honestly it shocked me um and it really disheartened me and I just felt compelled to share my personal opinions on some of these topics I first want to clear one thing up I am going to refer to myself as an expert in this video and I know that annoys some people but I just want to make it clear I I don't call myself an exper because I think I'm better than anyone else you can call me an immigrant if you like because that's what I am I just like to use the word exp because I just think it sounds nicer okay so this article I'm going to share with you was recently posted by IX p.de this is a really amazing resource for expats living in Germany or foreigners whatever you want to call us so the title of this article is isolating and uptight Germany receives the worst ranking yet an exp Insider survey Germany never fears well when Internationals speak their minds and the internation exp inside a survey each year but in 2024 new lows have been reached the federal republic has been named the worst country for Digital Life Administration housing and languages so if you're interested in this then please keep watching and I'm just warning you Germany did not do well in the survey so before I jump into that I just want to give a huge thanks to today's partner I'm excited to share that I've recently discovered feather an international digital insurance provider tailored specifically for exps like us navigating the complex German Insurance system fether is going to simplify this incredibly complex and stressful process with clear and simple Insurance advice the team understands the challenges of moving to a new country which is why they offer a 100% digital sign up process their sign up process and policy management is all in English and all online they have incredible customer service to back it up Fe this health insurance products are perfect for those starting their new life in Germany however they also offer a variety of other valuable Insurance options to help settle and smoothly such as personal liability insurance and pension Insurance feather always has your best intentions at heart which is why they don't have a sales team they only have a support team this means that when people come to them to book a call to figure out whether the policy is right for their particular scenario fether support team will provide them with accurate information and refer them to another company if they don't have the right policy for them fether offers a wide variety of policies this might seem overwhelming but don't worry if you're not sure what coverage you need then you can take a quick assessment which looks at your individual lifestyle and circumstances this will help you figure out a plan that best suits you they don't need your email address your phone number any payment details to provide you with transparency advice if you have any more in-depth questions you can easily book a call with an expert this is done through feather's website or app so if feather sounds like something you may be interested in exploring I will link them in my video description okay guys so moving on in 2024 Panama unseated Mexico to take the top spot in the ranking with Mexico slipping down to Second places where experts all reported feeling satisfied with their lives interestingly countries like Norway and Finland which were regularly praised for their quality of life are to be found in the bottom 10 ranking 48th and 51st respectively but still that was all before a mention of Germany which came in 50th Place beating only Finland Kuwait and turkey in the overall ranking exp Essentials exp assessment of Digital Life in Germany made it the worst country for digital infrastructure I have been wiing for years on this channel about the lack of digitalization I've had quite a few Germans call me out and say that I don't know what I'm talking about that everything is absolutely fine here in Germany but I don't think the Germans who are calling me out on this topic have experienced life in another country outside of Germany because things are a lot more advanced in many other countries including New Zealand a little New Zealand at the bottom of the earth we are so far ahead of Germany when it comes to digitalization and Germany needs to step up don't get me wrong as much as I love Germany I have to agree 100% that Germany is totally behind like stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to modern technology associated with bureaucracy digitalization it is so bad here in Germany I don't know why for a wealthy modern first world country like Germany why on Earth are they so reluctant and stubborn about making changes and keeping up with the rest of the world when it comes to to digitalization so a perfect example of this was me trying to get my German residency my permanent German residency it was an absolute nightmare for me trying to get to that point so in previous videos I talked about the fact that I first came to Germany on a visitor's visa I was only planning to stay for 3 months just to have a little bit of a holiday and spend time with my then boyfriend now husband and I I ended up not wanting to leave Germany my boyfriend and I did not want to be a part so we decided that we would extend my Visa and apply for a working holiday Visa and honestly it was an incredibly complicated and very disheartening process so my husband was on a working holiday Visa in New Zealand and Germany also has the same sort of working holiday Visa in Reverse except nobody at the immigration office knew any anything about this and there was barely any information online about it I found a little article about this on the New Zealand immigration website and I literally had to print it out physically print it out bring it to the German immigration office and they didn't believe me it was such a long complicated process trying to prove to the German immigration office that I was actually allowed this onee working holiday Visa in Germany I had to do everything the old-fashioned way with posting all of my documents to them and waiting for them to reply to me and it just took so much longer than necessary I did end up getting the oneye working holiday Visa which I was entitled to but during that time Rob and I actually ended up getting married and the whole process of me trying to get my permanent residency was just so stressful even though I was married to a German citizen was really really difficult the people at the immigration office were so incredibly rude and patronizing and just made the process unbearable every single detail was done the oldfashioned way I was posting really valuable documents through snail mail and back and forth when I finally was able to talk face to face with the immigration officers they were so dismissive and rude and they they were not nice at all when one document was missing that would delay the whole process by months it was just a nightmare I was basically in tears every single time I had to meet up with the immigration office um so I'm not exaggerating that was my experience thank goodness this was years ago this was over a decade ago now but I've heard that not a lot has changed with German immigration another thing is the whole nightmare surrounding German bureaucracy y the insurances I have absolutely no idea how expats who come to Germany without speaking German and don't have any support can deal with the bureaucracy process in Germany I have always had my husband to help me out and only in recent years have I actually taken on some of this responsibility myself I have made a conscious effort to really try and understand and try to deal with some of this German bureaucracy and it is very very challenging even my husband a native German speaker has trouble trying to figure out the German bureaucracy so I have no idea how non-german speakers are able to deal with this just like the immigration basically every corporate office you deal with here in Germany is stuck in the Stone Age I don't want to be rude but that is what it's like you're just bombarded with snail mail and it can be so overwhelming recently I've had to deal with the tax office in Germany honestly the tax office in Germany is my worst nightmare so I'm self-employed so I don't have a company who is automatically organizing all of my taxes and my taxes are not automatically deducted from my earnings so I have to organize all of that or should I say my husband has to organize all of that cuz it's too much for me but basically what frustrates me is I am paying very very high taxes as a self-employed person to the point where sometimes I don't think it's even worth being self-employed because I am not earning a lot at the end of the day if I have to deal with this I'm sure there are so many others that have to deal with situations like this and if you are an exper in Germany it can be traumatizing honestly so I'm not surprised by Germany's low ranking when it comes to this area of life there are quite a few different categories where Germany ranked pretty poorly in this exp survey so I'm just going to be focusing on you know the bureaucracy side of it and also the category of just integration and feeling happy in Germany and feeling like you are welcome in Germany because Germany scored extremely low in this category in the overall sort of satisfaction of life in Germany as far as feeling like part of the community it was really disheartening to hear that Germany ranked so far behind most other countries in this category and I just want to talk a little bit about this because I often will talk about how I finally feel very much at home here in Germany and it has taken me a long time to settle and feel as though Germany is my home and it only happened I would say in the last 5 years or so I have felt this sense of sort of peace and acceptance here in Germany and this happened when when my family and I built our house here in Germany and we were able to put down some roots and I felt that this is when things sort of shifted for me but I have had some pretty bad experiences for a long time I felt very much like an outsider in Germany and I really clung to my exp group I'm still very close to my expert group but I also have German friends now um but it took me a long time to make German friends my family and I lived for quite a few years in a very small Bavarian franconian Village and as much as I I loved living there and I have so many beautiful memories of living in that Village it was very very hard to settle in and integrate um I didn't feel welcome all of the time there were a couple of really lovely families who we became close with and we're still very good friends with them now but there were Germans who had lived there for generations and and I really felt sometimes like I was intruding in this space I have to say at that time we were living in a pretty rundown old house that we were renting and then we eventually bought a property in a small town a lot bigger than the village we were living in and we built our little modest semi- detached house which I just love and we felt a real shift in how people treated us and it was probably because we were living in a much nicer the house I don't know but I don't know the neighborhood was just a lot more friendly and people were just really nice to us and I I don't know I just feel a lot more welcome now than I did but I have to say there are some things that have gone on in my neighborhood that I have found really disappointing I don't know how much of it I should go into maybe I should make a separate video but it is a particular person in my neighborhood I don't think they're watching they don't even know I have a YouTube channel but I am seeing a lot of really disheartening articles and racist slurs on their public Facebook page any articles they can find where foreigners have done something to disturb the peace in Germany and they will try and make a point that all foreigners are bad and it just it really kind of upsets me I don't know I just have to stop going on there and looking at what this person's posting because it I find it very very sad and saying that there are so many good people who live in my neighborhood who I really really like and who I really respect another incident that kind of upset me recently there were two families that moved into our neighborhood and so one family was a German family the other family was a Syrian Muslim family and this family moved into the flats in the area but the other family moved into a nice family home and they were welcomed with open arms in our neighborhoods just like we were there was a message in our street WhatsApp group just saying welcome to the neighborhood and it's great that you're here and everybody was sending them welcome messages and this Syrian family wasn't included at all and not even sort of considered part of the street according to some of the people living around here I don't know I just that was really alarming to me I mentioned it to my husband and he also noticed that and he didn't think it was he didn't think it was okay um and so I always make a conscious effort to say hello and smile at everybody in my neighborhood regardless of whether they are a German family living in a nice home or you know a refugee Muslim family living in less than you know perfect conditions um it just I don't know the those kind of things really upset me I don't think people sit back and put themselves in other people's shoes I really don't so yeah I can see how many expats have a hard time settling into Germany and feeling like they belong um and it's really sad for me to read articles like that and you know I talk a lot about how much I love Germany and I'm the first to defend Germany when somebody says something negative about Germany or Germans but I have to be realistic and I can't only talk about the great things I have to also talk about some difficult topics so I apologize that this video wasn't one of my happy uplifting videos but I just want to keep it real on this channel and I want my channel to be a valuable resource to fellow experts living here I also have a lot of Germans who watch my videos who are interested in hearing about Germany from an Outsiders point of view and so that's why like to show every side of my life here in Germany and I hope that you appreciate that so anyway guys I have come to the end of this video I just wanted to remind you if you are an expert living here in Germany and you're struggling with German insurance and you need some guidance in English then make sure you check out further I will link them in my description below thank you so much for watching guys if you enjoyed this video then don't forget to give it a big thumbs up helps out my channel I would love you to consider subscribing if you haven't already feel free to connect with me on Instagram and I will see you again really soon bye