Back to Tyskland forum

Are Germans rude??

Publisert i Tyskland forum

Many of my foreign friends who live in Germany complain that Germans are very rude - or at least unfriendly.

Obviously, as a German myself I don't really experience us that way. But I would like your opinion: Are we really as cold as some people say????

Dora Böhm

  • Gå til René K.s profil

    innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    I just surfed the internet and found this nice site.
    http://www.tobsy.de/?p=22
    It is funny and refers to our topic.
    I laught. xD

  • Gå til René K.s profil

    innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    Just to give my two cents to this conversation.

    I'm German and grew up in the most southern point of Germany (near Lake Constanz). As many of you already said, there are huge differences in which region you are, and I really have to mention "Yes thats true. I also do not get jokes by people from nothern Germany. And sometimes I feel offended by them." so this means in fact that you can not generalize "The Germans" as one race.
    I think the most common mistake people do when they are coming to Germany, or any other county, is to see through their own eyes, of their culture. Means, not everything that seems to be unkind or even offending is actually meant that way.
    There is this nice study of pragmatics which tells us that communicating is a very heavy and underestimated process. And since I study English I realized the problems of intercultural communication. A Spanish guy whould love to be treated in one way but a German, at the same time, would be completely embarrassed about one's behaviour.
    I have been to several English speaking counties (England, US, Malta...) so I dare to claim that I know what I am talking about.
    Right now I am studying in Heidelberg truely said the #1 American tourist city. I never saw an English speaking guy around here who looked misunderstood. But tourist cities are probably not representative.
    To speak of myself I do not make any difference when there is an Indian, Russian or someone from another country. I (try) to treat them in the same way as a German.

    Always beware of the fact that here are different "game rules" involved. The Americans e.g. like to have some sort of vague contact to the other people they see, including strangers. This may well be a holdover from frontier days, when it was vitally necessary to have some sort of idea who the other people in town were.

    But Germans play by different rules. You have people you know, who are your friends; and people you don't know, who are strangers. You deal very differently with these two very different types of people. You usually have contact with strangers only when there is some reason for this, and then you show considerable reserve and politeness. (linguistical said: to be aware of someone's "negative face" - negative means not bad or evil it is just the opposite of the positive face, which is a team playing face.) By the way every one of us has both of this faces.

    Further on this is not being "unfriendly," but more a way of showing tacit respect and not intruding unnecessarily on the other person.

    But I really do not want to bore you with some scientifically expressions.
    Briefly speaking accept us as we (normally) accept you and everything will be fine.

    <3 you guys.

    Eventually, please let this "Nazi" things out of topic it is more than 60 years ago and please do not call people "Nazi" before you really had the chance to know them.

    Hope to clear so things up. Even tried to.
    Would like to hear some statements.
    All the best

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    hmm..ok, i was a kid when i lived there and i could speak the language very good. maybe that's why i didn't see any problems. :/
    ooh, and i never heard there about a german course :/ ok, that is a problem.

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    hello. i lived in germany when i was a child and i visited it a couple of times later in my life and i have to say that i was always treated good and that nobody ever was being racist to me.
    ok, when i was a kid i couldn't really see the difference between germany and my country (croatia), but now i see it. and it's not that bad.
    germans are a little cold, but thery're not unfriendly. i never met an unfriendly german person. even in the store, when i was buying bread, i thought how nice the people here are. i think some of them are much nicer than in croatia (and they say that we are nice and friendly people).
    some people were rude, but that wasn't racist. they're just idiots, and idiots exist everywhere.
    i think it can be difficult for someone who's from a foreign culture to get used to germany (or any country), because we're all different in some things, but we're similar in other things. (i don't like the- everyone pays for himself -thing when going to bars)
    i read a topic here about how germany sucks and how the country is full of nazis and rude people and whatever, and i was shocked! i don't know how i didn't see any of these things in 5 years?! i hate when people have prejudices or meet 1 rude person and say that all people there are rude!
    i think german people are very tollerant (unlike croatian people, where being gay is tabu, or even worse- being transexual or whatever) and i think that people from the western countries are used to live in comfort and freedom a little too much. (you just didn't see what real injustice or bad healthcare and bad politics are (there are lots of it in my country).
    and i understand that people are uncomfortable when many different people from many different countries come to their country to work. i live in a very homogenous country and i think people here would have rude comments if millions of immigrants would come here and work, while we're unemployed. (i don't say it's good, i think it's just a normal animall instinct). people in america are used to have a mixed culture, but european countries aren't so much mixed up and we have to get used to it.

  • Lucy T.

    innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    there are rude people everywhere,even in south america where i came from...needles to say in US is towards mexicans.Now if you came here for a living,you just have to try getting used to the german culture and behaviour...we will always be foreigners,and of course they will prefer giving the job to a fellow german cause its their 1st priority.I,personally,found a nice job as a teacher in a multilingual school,and yes,there some germans applying too but i finally got it cause of my cv.But yes,sometimes it might get hard with racist pinheads...i just ignore and laugh at them...

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    dear how are yo

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    There are a lots of very warm and caring Germans, but unfortunately there is also the small and unpleasant minority of - pardon me - really disgusting creeps who apparently still live in Nazi Wunderland. I tend to meet one or two of them on every trip I take to Germany. They are typically shop attendants, waitresses and the like.

    Now, anywhere in the world you will meet people who are not happy with their job and show it to the people they are supposed to serve. But only in Germany can they give you the ice cold, contemptuous looks as if you deserve to be annihilated. I travel a lot, have been to more than 60 countries, have lived in a number of them, and I can assure you that there is something uniquely unsettling about a certain category of Germans. It's as if they send out a message of "OK, I have this crappy job, but I am worth more than you anyway - because you are worth zero".

    Myself being white, perhaps even German-looking(?), I can only wonder how people of other colours may feel treated by this category of people. My sympathies!

    To end on a positive note, many of the kindest and most unselfish people I know are Germans. I focus on them while travelling and just leave the store or café when encountering one of the the other kind. Life is too short to spend around people who drain your energy.

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    Dear Gohn,

    the staring is not necessarily because of any misguided notions of "backwardness", it may also be simple curiosity.
    People who look Indian are comparatively rare- at least in my neck of the woods of Germany- and I wager that alone would warrant some glances.
    But I can assure you that our stereotypes of Indians are not that they hawk stuff, but rather that they are computer wizards or rather clever people in general. ;)
    I myself had a guest lecturer from Gujarat once, and nobody ever mistook this brilliant man for the janitor.

    Best Wishes and I hope you enjoy your next stay in Europe,
    Daniel

  • innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    I travel a lot in the EMEA and Americas regions for work.

    Being unmistakably Indian, I often get interesting glances from many Europeans (mostly from Germans and Italians), especially on flights. It seems as if they're wondering how the hell this dude got on a plane.

    In many European countries, there are a lot of "people of Indian origin" doing menial jobs and hawking stuff to tourists, so the general impression seems to be that "brown" people are socially backward and incapable.

    I wonder who really is "backward"...

  • Nelson David

    innsent av  i Tyskland forum 

    quite interesting to know all these))) i barely knew much about the germans, but from what i experienced here in Russia.

    I met a german exchange student in my school, and i used to be the polite type. I introduced myself, and himself too, exchanged numbers, and i planned to have a chat with him, as i wanted to move to germany to continue my studies. I was stunned actually, because i got what i never expected, in the sense that, he never wanted to pick my calls, for no reason, we havent even met for one time after the day me introduced ourselves.

    I didn't actually generalise things, because i have also met several peopla of that nature, even the russians. though, i hope when i arrive Germany, it will be something good, because i really love making friends, talking and going out with friends, even when i may not be 99% good in the language..

    It was good information.thanks to y'all))

    God Bless you

Publiser et svar