Why life in Germany is sex with a cactus

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When you move to Germany, you expect a “European paradise”: clean streets, laws that actually work, and universal prosperity. And you get all of that. But it comes with a whole bunch of oddities that, for some reason, are never mentioned in integration courses. Germany is a country that first gives you the freedom to be yourself, and then punishes you for deciding to throw away an empty wine bottle on the wrong day of the week.

Sunday Apocalypse

The first rule of the expat fight club: if you haven’t bought food by 8 p.m. on Saturday, you’ll starve to death. Sunday in Germany is a day of national mourning for capitalism. The city dies out. Everything is closed.

You’re rushing through Rewe on Saturday night as if it were the last day before the end of the world, elbowing your way through other equally panicked immigrants. This is a country that forces you to “rest” according to a schedule established back in Bismarck’s day. And if you decide to drill a hole in the wall on this “day of silence”—or, God forbid, turn on the washing machine—expect a visit from the police or some old lady from next door who’ll materialize out of thin air with a look on her face as if you’d just burned down the Reichstag.

The Digital Middle Ages and the Magic of Paper

After living in the CIS, where everything is handled with three clicks in an app, Germany takes you by surprise with its mailbox. Paper! Tons of paper! People here love to send letters. Every action you take results in an envelope that takes a week to reach you.

Want internet service? Expect a "delay" of a month. Want a bank card? You’ll get three different letters on three different days: one with the card, another with the PIN, and a third confirming that you’ve received everything. Customer service here is stuck somewhere in the ’90s. In half of Frankfurt’s coolest bars, they’ll still tell you “Cash only,” looking at your Google Pay as if it were a scam. Your time here is worth nothing if it goes against German “Ordnung.”

Tax Hangover

Once a month, you open your pay stub and have a mini-heart attack. You look at the amount the government has taken out of your paycheck and realize that you personally paid for the asphalt in the neighboring block and a couple of months of life for some very lazy—but very well-protected by the law—citizen.

Yes, that’s the price of security. Yes, it’s a safety net in case you decide tomorrow to leave IT and go pick strawberries in the fields. But it really gets to you when you realize that you spend almost half your workday slaving away for a system that, in return, sends you paper letters and closes stores on Sundays.

Why are we here, after all?

And that's because, despite all this madness, Germany gives you one fundamental thing— the feeling of security that comes from being whoever you want to be. Here, you can work as a butcher, perform in a drag show, write music, live with your boyfriend, and know that no one will come to your home to “check on your morality.” Here, your taxes translate into the confidence that tomorrow won’t be any worse than yesterday.

Germany is like an old, grumpy grandpa. He drives you crazy with his rules, he makes you mow the lawn with a straight edge and won’t let you make a racket, but if anyone tries to hurt you—Grandpa will pull out his old shotgun and stand up for you like a mountain.

We put up with this cactus because the taste of the freedom it protects is still sweeter than 24/7 service in a gilded cage.