CountryBumpkin.

Don´t quite agree that the Germans are "chronic drunks". That very much depends on the people you tend to socialise with. I know many that are perfectly happy with a glass of wine for the whole evening. Then there are those silly kids that find it great sport during the carneval season to go Binge drinking (or as it is called in German "Kommasaufen") so that they get their senceless mugs in the news when being collected by various ambulances. I just would not generalise like that. As I know many Germans I have never seen drunk at all.
Those keen on the heavy boozers should best then go to the Cologne - Bonn - Siegburg area of the Rheinland during carneval season there you will see plenty of those types.

BritishStudent123

Gosh, I'm sorry that it didn't live up to your expectations. It must be very disappointing, but like others have said, I think it'd be wise to try and move to another area, however this can often to more pricey. Living up North is often cheaper though there are fewer jobs. I myself live in Byker (quite a rough area with much of what you described), however I found that if you find the right places to go with the right people, it can be a great comfort.

Hope this helps, even if just a little!
Chin up!

siki

Pepa,

I have been living in the UK for five years now and I must say I strugle too. I am originally from Czech Republic and wanted to move to England to change my life. I had OK job in Prague but I always dreamt about better life. My English friends in Prague warned me to don't come over here but I didn't listen. I am not going to repeat yourself because I agree with everything what you think whats wrong with this society.

I have change three jobs here and I had got basicly nervous break down from one. It was the job at the reception in the hotel where they easily took advantage of me. I had to leave the job and be on antidepressants pills and had to go through councelling with psychologist. I know how it is being bullied, be shouted at work and work basicly for nothing. I was surprised of standard of living. It is poorer then in my country. It was for the first time in my life when I experienced coldness in the house because we couldn't afford to pay higher energy bill and we have to make up to £60 worth of food weekly shopping.

I am dealing with working class people every day. I am getting used to silines,lazyness and shouting at the work place but it is not me. I sometimes don't know how to react to it. I am trying to avoid looking at the mess on the streets and in my workplace. I wonder why british people don't have any pride of their country. Why they don't work hard and have to take piss of someone or the system all the time?

Only good thing is I found English partner and I realize it's fine to be gay here I can be myself in the society and I am openly living with my boyfriend. That's good thing here. People aren't bothered about who you are. But my boyfriend was made redundant (goverment cuts) and he is strugelling to find another job. Unfurtonatelly he has got 3 universities and he is overqvalified for most of the jobs in North England. We don't want to move down south to join the crowd...

One thing is as well I would be extremely scared to retire in this country. People don't care about old people as they are in my country. There is no respect for older or hardworking, clever people. I am scared to walk on the street after sunset when i see someone on the bike cycling towards me. One teenager threw the stone at me once and believe me it's not a good feel.

I secretely hope we move to Prague and start new life somewhere else. I feel sorry for Britain I wish something would change and people would care more here. I wonder where you are Pepa? Still in Britain or Germany?

tsveti

i am also very surprised to hear you have left ur country for the UK!
you have a good standard of living there and as far as i am concerned, there are very few chech people who leave, it just doesnt worth it.
the thing is, Germany is worse in all the points u mention above.
especially being bullied at work, they do this all the time and among themselves too. i have changed few jobs too and finally got myself a position where 80% of the staff are foreigners, so its bearable.
you are right about the older people, but u forget that the western societies are consumers' and capitalistic ones! the social systems of the UK and Germany function better than the ones in our countries though. we rely more on the help within the family, but if you work 60-80 h per week as i do, and have to pay crazy money for child care (as in the UK, in germany its a lot less) and everything else, you wont be able to maintain ur parents, they will be like a millstone on ur neck. i get sometimes patients from care homes in germany, most of them are vegetations - a huge number of them are with an advanced dementia.
do you have an idea how much their maintenance costs to the state? do u realise that if you survive till the age of retirement, there will be no money to for ur own health care because all the money being spent on these vegetations now? i have never seen smth like this in my country. it is simply because our oldies were not couch potatoes and didn't eat plastic tasteless shit food and died with dignity! not like the vegetations here, who even get a gastric tube, to be fed through, just to keep them vegetating for few more years! and it all costs millions of euros per day.
not to mention that being openly a gay in Germany wont do u any favour unless you live in Cologne. Most of the population are catholics = very conservative.
if i were you, i would try to get my previous job in Prague and go back home.
your country has a high enough standard of living, it was a mistake to leave if you were not a highly skilled professional!
you will find another partner there if your british one doesn;t come with you. even if he follows you, without speaking your language he will have no chance of finding job in the Chech republic + i have few gay friends from the university, they never have problem finding partners, am sure u wont have either.
immigration is not for everybody in terms of stress, adjusting to a completely different life-style and relationship to the others.

Assanah

Oh, I love Prague. It is amazingly beautiful and people are very friendly. I would move there if only I could speak the language. That said, I also enjoyed living in GB very much. I didn't think that people are narrow-minded. But then I didn't work in social services or anything like that. I studied. So I think it really depends who you meet. I am sure that there are narrow-minded people in every country, even in Eastern European countries.
If you immigrated and you are not happy, I think that is a hard but potentially a very useful experiences. Now you know that life is not better somewhere else and you could happily return home. And as an old person you won't be thinking "oh, I should have done this when I was young" because you did do it. Maybe your partner will come with you and try it out??

Sam C

I lived in Germany for ten years, plenty long enough to be "Germanised", I'm British and have been back in the UK for a few years now, I totallly understand your situation to a degree.

What you talk about with regards "directness" and honesty, being upfront with people etc is sooo true. Generally english people have a hard time with me these days as they simply cannot handle my direct approach to life, no matter what the subject, i say it like i see it. Even germans themselves had a hard time with me to a point, simply because at the time i couldnt speak very good german to make what i was trying to say more "subtle" on the ears, but i always found myself in positions over there to make friends way more easily than even here in the UK where i'm a natural english speaker, i find my direct straight talking personality is more "accepted" over there. In england my personality tends to make me enemies where as in Germany it tends to make me friends.

However i made some of the best friends in Germany i've ever had and had some incredibly wild times, german women are awesome and defo wont complain about getting together for a threesome. they love english blokes that can speak german too !!!

Speaking the language is a "MASSIVE" must if you really want to enjoy Germany to its full potential, if you cannot speak german its like living life in a goldfish bowl, half at least of the things going on around you are incomprehensible, so you need to learn the language as fast you can, it took me two to three years to become pretty proficient and be able to understand and have a conversation about most subjects.

I seem to get an air of a view that you feel english people have something against eastern europeans, your right in thinking this, everyone i have spoken to in this country is fed up with the influx of eastern europeans, people are of the view that these foriegners are taking the menial jobs away from the young british nationals, so the trend is now it seems to look on eastern europeans with disdain. as there have simply been allowed to many of them through the borders. you only have to look in the newspaper headlines in the UK and the employment statistics to have this proved. And if your thinking of moving to germany......the view is even worse there ! because they have been tolerating this influx for years and years. far longer than what Britain has.

So to sum up germany.
Turks are hated.
Eastern Europeans are "disliked"
Foriegners are Tolerated....
Americans and British are well respected and liked and dont have any problem whatsoever mixing and befriending Germans, In my experience.

hales

I've lived in Germany since 1981 and to my shame I still do not speak the language very well. But that is not a problem. However, the place is certainly going down hill. We have had stabbings, bank robberies, children molested, house break-ins and that was just this week. Work is hard to get unless you have qualifications that are recognised in Germany. Having said all that, I am not thinking of retutning to England. Really think of the cost etc of moving and I don't think the Germans are as generous as the UK with their Social payments.

Ray51

I've been to ( and driven through ) much of western Germany in recent years .
As I am british and speak quite a bit of German , everone's always been very kind and polite to me , no complaints on that front . ( except when you walk across an empty road , on a zebra , disregarding the red light - that's when everyone around goes tsk , tsk , tsk and shakes their heads )
Many things have got worse over the years IMHO and definitively the inflation has been underestimated and incorrectly reported .
On the other hand , they have not gone as mad with house prices , as the Brits , the French , the Spanish , the Portuguese , the Croatians and many others .

Ray51

To add P.S. to my previous post :
one of my very best friends , my ex-boss , is German ;
we've been friends since 1975 ;
and I had a fab German girlfriend , who passed away prematurely , sadly ; and I have other similar friends of long standing , like the Swiss from Basel/Zuerich areas ( i.e. germanic ) .
So , no problems with that mentality , much as it is very different from Anglo-Saxon Hooray Henry , crash and burn .
In Deutschland , when my wife was very ill , I encountered some of the very best levels of medical services anywhere , far higher than the NHS clients even dare to dream of ;
especially , I recommend the University Clinic in Mannheim , fantastic !
Otherwise : the food at places you don't know : can be bland and boring , unless you're a high budget diner and winer ( which'll get charged appropriately ) - but then , maybe that's the same problem with most northern countries ? I was in Sweden 2 weeks ago and deep-fried pork meatballs with a sweet cranberry sauce is definitively not my idea of a nice , healthy meal .
The beer in Germany is nowhere near as good as in Belgium IMHO , but I think Warsteiner is better than Bittburger ;
all of them overpriced , especially at petrol stations .
But , there are other good things about Germany , I'll re-consider and maybe I include them in another post .
Dog-friendly , they are very much ! And civilised in many other ways , which one doesn't suss out at a quick glance .

hales

I quite agree about the medical facilities. One of the reasons for us staying here.

Sam C

I too will definitly agree on the medical side, i have dual citizenship and i lived in germany as a German, half of my family is german, my son lives there with his german mother -my ex wife. So i had it all sorted out to recieve great medical care yet again when my hand broke, i used to have a very weak bone in my hand that i used to break at least once a year, it had healed wrong when i was young, and it looked slightly deformed, i broke it in germany, within 24 hrs i had seen a doctor, seen a specialist and had an operation !!!! i have never broken that bone since (10yrs) and after that operation my hand is perfectly normal.
According to the surgeon is was quite a simple fix, but it was definitly a no no from anything available on the NHS here in the UK. I think they just couldnt be bothered.

Azarel

I went in the other direction, from the UK to Eastern Europe (albeit via Turkey). I must say I prefer it here. I'm also quite a direct person and I think living abroad has made me more direct, especially when using English because your meaning might be misunderstood if you try to be too subtle when talking in English with non-natives, so you tend to naturally be more to-the-point for their benefit. Now I've notice when I go back to the UK I get some funny looks for pointing things out for what they really are and saying the things that 'shouldn't be said'.

Ray51

It's a brave thing you did ;
and I often wonder , how the Brits manage and enjoy living in Rumania , Bulgaria , Montenegro , Hungary , Croatia etc .
( And I know a few of them who went to live in such countries , personally . )
There's gotta be a good reason , either a job , or tax , or the local spouse...
Always interesting , keep us posted as to how you get on , Good Luck !

Azarel

@Ray51

Lots of reasons why I like it here, although I admit I've seen a lot of Brits come and go in the last 7 years because they couldn't adapt, maybe with very similar sentiments to the OP's problems in the UK.

On the the main attractions for me here is the financial incentives. I recently did a comparison for someone else thinking of moving here. We totted up what he pays in the UK for the basic utilities and bills (council tax, gas, electricity, water, heating, garbage collection, phone, internet, cable Tv, TV licence) and compared them to the cost here for the same services/amounts. Basically it worked out about 4000 Euro per year in the UK, and 700 Euro a year here. Almost 6 times more in the UK.

Aside from that, property prices are still reasonable here. I bought my place about 5 years ago and have already paid it off. This means that I'm not only living rent/mortgage free, but the cheaper cost of living means that even working only something like 75% of full time I'm able to pay all my bills, enjoy all my hobbies, eat well, go out as much as I like, and STILL save up money.

We also compared salaries. The upper managers here earn about as much as their counterparts in the UK (which makes then richer when you consider the lower cost of living AND the fact that tax is only 16% even at the high wage levels). Middle managers get somewhat less than in the UK, but again, it probably affords them a better lifestyle when you consider the C.O.L. The losers are the unskilled/semi-skilled labourers here who earn much less than someone in the UK would for the same job, mostly due to minimum wage requirements.

Recently I've seen an increase in people moving here to be with a local girl. Their problem is usually that without local language skills it's almost impossible for them to get a job. Others come over with their UK/US company, keep the same salary, and live a decent life here.

Ray51

Still , I'm amazed ;
courtesy of the EU/Schengen , we are now overrun with Rumanians here in Bruxelles ; some females are beautiful and some get work in bars and hair-salons , some other females would do anything for the quick and easy buck , or an essential one ( and they do "do" it , all day long ! sometimes , all the night long , too ) , most men are underqualified for any meaningful employment , so some guys do revolting and criminal stuff , daily .
Too many men just prefer to beg , handing you a computer-printed note in 5 languages , oh : what a nuissance .