1 trip, 3 countries, part 2: Germany, immigrants and assimilation

Hi there guys, in part 2 of my series of travel stories from my recent trip, I am going to focus on one aspect of Germany which most people are very afraid to talk about just in case they get accused of racism or xenophobia. Germany and Sweden have been the two most welcoming European countries when it comes to accepting refugees - I've talked about refugees in Sweden in the past so in today's post, I am going to focus o my experiences in Germany dealing with some of the ways these refugees have been challenging the cultural norms in Germany. On one hand, I applaud Germany's stance on refugees and the Germans have truly put the British to shame but on the other hand, there have been some very disturbing instances of poorly assimilated male Muslim refugees causing a lot of trouble in Germany, such as in the city of Cologne at New Year's Even party in the town square back in 31 December 2015 when about a thousand Muslim men descended on the party and they sexually assaulted and robbed German women who thought they were safe. That incident shocked Germany into questioning whether or not it was such a good idea to have an open door policy to allow so many Muslim migrants who simply turn up asking for asylum - particularly if they were single, young men. Now if we simply focused on that incident, we could paint a very scary picture of how Germany is now unsafe because it has made the mistake of letting in so many Muslim migrants but in reality, I actually feel a lot safer in Germany than I do back in the UK. However I want address these more subtle ways these migrants have been changing German culture and society. 

I'm sure you have heard a lot of stereotypes about Germans being humourless, efficient, law abiding, very punctual and reserved. That's actually quite true - there's no smoke without fire. German buses are very reliable so if the bus timetable says that the bus will be there at 8:47 am then it will appear at that very moment or slightly before that. If the bus turns up at 8:45 am, then it will wait two minutes before departing, so it will be back on schedule. It is nice to be in a society where everything simply works so efficiently. German society is so efficient because Germans are great when it comes to following the rules, however, they are not to good at enforcing the rules when immigrants refuse to follow the rules. I took advantage of the very cheap €9 ticket which allowed me unlimited travel on German public transport for the entire month. One must still wear a mask on public transport in Germany - whilst I dislike having to do that in the hot weather, I still follow the rules because I don't want to upset the law-abiding good people of Germany who all follow that rule. It is the immigrants who are the ones regularly refusing to wear a mask - I remember this Muslim woman on the bus in Merzig, she was completely covered head to toe in conservative Muslim Hijab which included a headscarf that completely covered her hair, but she refused to wear a mask. The one part of her body she refused to cover up was the one part she was required by law in Germany to cover up. It felt like a middle finger to German society on her part. It was common to see Muslim women refuse to wear a mask on public transport in Germany, it was such a flagrant disregard of the rules. 

On this trip we had a punishing sightseeing schedule and since the sun set at about 9:50 pm, we would still be visiting various places until then and that's when we would start thinking about getting some dinner. However, most German people eat dinner quite early around 7 or 8 pm and leaving dinner till 10 pm meant that a lot of places would already be shut. So most German restaurants run by white German people would simply refuse to accept any more customers after 9:30 pm if they want to shut at 10:30 pm sharp. Thus the only places we could get a meal would be these places run by migrants from places like Turkey, Syria, Pakistan and Vietnam. I like the cuisine from that part of the world but it did shock me that I had to challenge the bill each time I ate somewhere like that. So for example, when we went to eat a Pakistani meal, the restaurant owner was very happy to speak to us in English to get us to dine there but when I questioned the fact that he overcharged us for the meal, he suddenly and conveniently forgot how to speak English and switched back to German. To his surprise, my German is actually very good so he then gave me some story that he was meant to increase the prices on the menu because the costs of the ingredients have gone up but he hasn't done so yet. I argued with him that what he is doing is illegal in Germany, I'm not in some bazaar in Lahore bargaining with him over the price of the meal - he could only charge me the price as printed on the menu. It wasn't just with the Muslims, it happened at a Vietnamese place as well. It was so frustrating as this would never happen with a white German person. 

If a restaurant run by a white German person wanted to increase their prices, then they would print brand new menus with the new prices and offer an explaining as to why the prices have gone up, so the customers would know exactly what they are paying. However, there is this aspect of haggling and bargaining that the migrants have brought with them to Germany - now I would expect to do that kind of thing in somewhere like Morocco or Turkey and I thought that this wasn't legal in Germany, but clearly some of these migrants are so poorly assimilated that they would try it anyway just to earn a little bit more money. After all, we were clearly tourists and not locals, we were unlikely to return to the restaurant ever again even if we had a great meal there. This happened every single time without fail with these places run by migrants where I had to challenge the bill and get them to correct a "mistake". So for example, if we had one side order of a salad, they would charge us for two salads instead of one and when we challenged that, they would be like, "oh I pressed the wrong button on the system, sorry about that mistake." Strangely, white German people would never ever make such a mistake and at the risk of sounding very racist, these migrants really need to assimilate and become a lot more culturally German in this respect. I did eat twice at Chinese restaurants on this trip and I am pleased to report that after double checking the bill there, I was charged exactly what I expected. The irony is that one should always be able to just take that for granted and not be pleasantly surprised when they do get it right, especially in a country like Germany. 

To be fair, the most I was overcharged was about €3 and even then I was always able to argue with them in German to get my money back. I have heard far worse cases in other countries where the locals would take advantage of the fact that a tourist would be unfamiliar with the local currency. An example would be Vietnam where US$1 = 23,500 Vietnamese Dong. So even to buy something like a piece of cake or a cup of coffee, you would be expect to pay a large five figure sum. It gets even worse in Iran where US$1 = 42,350 Iranian rials. Thus some tourists have been duped into paying ten times the price for a meal when the restaurant manager 'accidentally' puts an extra zero on the price and given that the tourists are rather confounded by these massive numbers, some naively just pay whatever they have been charged, not realizing they have paid the equivalent of US$200 for their dinner than than US$20. And of course, if the tourist is careful and points out the mistake, the manager pretends to be innocent and apologizes for the honest mistake but they never ever make the kind of mistake where the tourist is charged US$2 instead of US$20. This is nothing short of a scam targeting foreign tourists and the locals often turn a blind eye to tourists who fall prey to it because they think that the tourists are so rich, they won't even notice that they have been scammed like that. Thus this is one aspect of traveling through third world countries which I find very exhausting as I am always having to be so careful and that's why I was somewhat surprised to have encountered it quite a lot on this trip in Germany where this kind of dishonest and unethical behaviour is so un-German - this is definitely a change that the recent immigrants have brought to Germany. 

Why do the locals put up with it then? Well, I think the answer lies in the way nobody on that bus in Merzig confronted that Muslim woman who refused to wear a mask. I am guessing she got away with it because she was Muslim. When we first crossed the border from Luxembourg to Germany, the German train conductor immediately told us to put on a mask and we complied. Unlike in Germany, one is no longer required to wear a mask on public transport in Luxembourg at all. But when the same German train conductor came across a Muslim woman (I could tell she was Muslim from her traditional Hijab), the conductor chose to ignore the fact that she wasn't wearing a mask and simply left her alone. Why did she do that? Was the train conductor afraid of being accused of being racist if she asked that Muslim woman to wear a mask? Or did she think, "or it's no use asking these Muslims to follow the rules, they never follow the rules and I'm not going to get into an argument with her when I have so many passengers on the train." There has always been tension in Germany regarding migrants: some Germans think that it is their duty as a civilized society to set an example to the world about how compassionate Germans are to refugees fleeing war and persecution, no matter where they are from or what religion they may have. But there's another part of German society which thinks, enough is enough, we don't want any more Muslims here, they cause so much trouble and they make little effort to assimilate or even learn German, we will always welcome Ukrainian refugees as they are white and Christians, but we don't want any more Muslim refugees.

Smaller German towns and villages are extremely quiet after dark - the white German people tend to finish work at a certain time and go home to rest, whilst the only businesses still open are run by the migrants. So for example, outside the train station there would be a number of taxis waiting to pick up passengers trying to get home and it would be extremely hard to find a white German taxi driver willing to work that late at night - no, they would all be migrants and to be fair, they are providing an important service. If you were an old lady trying to get home late at night, you would be very grateful that there are still taxis available at that hour. Migrants are doing the kinds of jobs that white German people simply refuse to do. However, it can sometimes be rather frustrating trying to deal with migrant-run businesses. When I was in Saarburg, we went into a Turkish-run restaurant near the station and asked if we could get coffee there. An old man (who looked like the boss there as he was clearly the oldest man working behind the counter) said yes to us, took our orders and told us to sit down. So ten minutes later, a much younger man showed up at our table and asked if he could take our order. And I was like, "I have spoken to your colleague just now,what happened?" The young man then went back and asked if the older man he had taken the order down. There was then an argument in Turkish but it sounded like the old man had indeed asked one of the younger guys there to make the coffee but the guy just completely forgot to do it. I rolled my eyes and walked out at that point and at the risk of sounding terribly racist, a white German person would never ever mess up a simple order like that and so that is why the stereotype of German efficiency exists. 

A lot of you may say at this point, Alex you're just using anecdotal evidence such as the Muslim woman who refused to wear a mask on the bus and the Pakistani man at the restaurant who 'made a mistake' by overcharging you for your dinner. I'm not trying to make any kind of conclusions based on what I have observed on this trip and indeed, on the many previous times I have visited Germany (including for the three extended work stints spent in Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin). Furthermore, you could also argue that it might be best for a German person, resident in Germany to talk about these cultural issues with migrants failing to assimilate to German culture and that as a visitor, my perspective on this may be a lot more shallow. But if we go down that road, then nobody can talk about any issue because there will always be someone more qualified, knowledgeable and experienced to discuss the issue. I am offering my perspective as a German-speaking regular visitor to Germany who has been to Germany many times since 2000. There are two ways to evaluate the issue: quantitative and qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis would involve looking at data such as the number of young men convicted of crimes in the past year and checking what percentage of them are Muslim or migrants born outside Germany. Qualitative analysis would involve looking at individual stories and trying to understand why certain groups of people would tend to behave a certain way, revealing the kind of insights that statistics wouldn't be able to and thus in telling you these stories, we are doing qualitative analysis of this complex social situation in Germany.

Now to be fair, Germany certainly isn't the only country in the world which has had some problems with migrants but many others do as well. In Singapore, the anger is usually directed at migrants from China whilst in France and the UK, that angst tends to be directed at Muslim migrants who are poorly assimilated. But let's take the issue of wearing masks on public transport since I used that example from my trip to Germany: in the UK, even when it was a legal requirement to wear a mask on public transport, compliance was at best around 60% on a good day, often less. So it wasn't like in Germany, where there was a clear division between migrants disobeying the rules unlike the locals - in the UK, the locals were probably just as disobedient and even the then prime minister Boris Johnson himself broke all the rules. The German situation is so different because of the very nature of Germans - they follow the rules and that makes the difference between the local Germans and the migrants a lot more stark unlike a place like London, where that difference just isn't there or at least isn't as stark. Likewise in Germany, it is very obvious when a migrant doesn't speak German (or at least doesn't speak it well); but in the UK, even tourists who are here for the first time probably have a decent grasp of English so once again, the inability to speak the local language is far more likely to make migrants in Germany stand out than in the UK. Thus as a result, it is this combination of all these factors make it much harder for migrants to integrate and assimilate into German society as the bar is just so much higher for them in Germany than in a country like the UK. 

You might say to me: Alex, you're originally from Singapore, you're a migrant too - why are you giving other migrants such a hard time? I don't think I'm particularly giving them a hard time but being a migrant myself, I feel like I am in a unique position to talk about the issue. After all, a white German person might feel afraid to raise the topic at the risk of being accused of being racist, but if an Asian migrant like myself can start the conversation then I think that's a lot more productive than sweeping the whole issue under the carpet. Thus my purpose here is not to explain the issue, I don't claim to have all the answers but I can start a conversation about the issue - so what do you think? Why are some migrants so poorly assimilated whilst others have less issues integrating? Why do Germans put up with the migrants who make little or no effort to assimilate? Have you ever been frustrated by migrants who simply refuse to assimilate? Or do you think that I'm being way too harsh on these migrants and that given time, they would eventually assimilate? What more can be done to make these migrants assimilate better? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.