Wow, lots of generalisations are being made in the comments. I'm German and have lived in the south-west for most of my life. I hope it goes without saying that Germany is a big country, both by space and population. We have some very dense urban areas (Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin come to mind) but also very open "arsch der welt" hinterlands with villages of 100 people or fewer. This creates huge diversity in standard of living conditions as well as life experiences (and expectations). Some places are better than others, this isn't unusual. Thus, many experiences that people have written about can't be applied with any certainty to large swaths of the populace.

Regarding the DW article, yes language is a constraint and does cause issues with finding/keeping a job and integrating into one's area. Believe it or not, this can also affect us locals too [1]. The bureaucracy is often _difficult_ and people behind the counter can be unhelpful.

We definitely suffer from institutional inflexibility, leading to absurd situations, for example with our population of economically active refugees who will probably be forced to leave, which will lead to an even bigger job market deficit and possible economic decline [2], or how we blunder large scale projects like Stuttgart 21 (or 35 or 70?!?!)[3]. The German concept of identity and unity is also very complex [4,5], and sadly this reflects somewhat on our interaction with migrants. Couple this with complex domestic and international economic and political issues [6,7], and we now have a situation that is far from ideal for people coming here to work and build a life.

All this can be difficult to deal with for you who are planning to come here or those who already live here, and I really wish that weren't the case. Please don't be discouraged, we want and need you, for more than just helping to prop up our economy and welfare state (by the way, thank you!). I believe that the diversity of experiences and ideas you bring is a boon to our future.

[1]: https://archive.is/20240627085213/https://www.faz.net/aktuel... [2]: https://p.dw.com/p/539wt [3]: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/s... [4]: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/auf-der-suche-nach-der-deutsc... [5]: https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article13813483/Nati... [6]: https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/deutschland-ist-lau... [7]: https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/research_institute/hri-...