SigmarStern

Lived in Berlin for over 20 years. I will never call a Berliner a Pfannkuchen.

Please tell me what a Berliner is to you.

That's a pretty bleak outlook. It took me about four months to find a job without any contacts. And I live here now. Granted I do speak German, but I don't speak Swiss-German and I have made friends with other expats and swiss people alike. There's a job market that is also open for foreigners. I was expecting much more push back from the people around me but they have been very welcoming.

A B permit was easy to get. You need a job and that's pretty much it. After 5 years you can apply for a C permit. You can try to become a citizen after ten years but that's a different beast. I have nine years and three months to go. I played a game of DND with a Swiss, a Russian and an Argentinian(?) here. My kid goes to school with someone whose parents are brazilian and dutch who met in Australia. So, it's definitely possible.

Left Germany for Switzerland and while I never really felt unsafe in Germany, it's so much more relaxed here. And I start to really appreciate direct democracy.

When I was a kid, Chernobyl happened. We weren't that far away and although I was very little I still remember the fear and uncertainty in my parent's faces. The following years were marked by research about what we can no longer eat, where our food comes from, etc

I also remember the fights about where to store nuclear waste.

I don't want to burn coal. I am pretty upset about what happened to our clean energy plans. But I will also never trust nuclear again. And I think, so do many in my generation.

Online vegan here. Just wanted to add that after a couple of years of the same jokes and arguments and demeaning comments that were forced upon you because you had to explain why you don't want to eat what everyone else around you eats, you kinda lose your tact a bit.

Never went to somebody with a burger in hand and called him a murderer. Been called an emasculated pussy and wittle little rabbit for eating a salad so many times. Same people then complain about annoying vegans. It's a bit infuriating.

I'd like to see the math here. Do we even produce enough wheat (and drinking water) to produce a noodle that reaches all the way to Pluto?

It led me to think about Spotify's politics and ethics and ultimately leaving it as well as a paying customer.

As someone speaking German, a brutally gendered language, let me tell you, they/them is awesome and I'd love to have something similar in German. There is so much fighting and discussions about "gendern" and it consumes so much energy that could be better spent elsewhere. And conservatives are having a field trip with this.

Looking for a new word is equally as hard if not way harder than using what already works fine.

I drowned some ants when I was a little kid in our backyard because I was scared of them and also curious. My neighbor told me to think about what I did. I was mortified. I'm a vegan now.

Kids need to learn that kind of empathy. Although I don't think I would have ever thought about about ripping limbs from frogs.

For years, coming back to my hometown made me feel alien, like in a dream where everything was just slightly off. Like somebody came a rearranged my kitchen drawer while I was sleeping. Just wrong.

But now, twenty years later it, it changed. It didn't become home again but a place that I felt a deep connection to. My friends and I are now parents. The places where we were young and stupid are no longer for us. But that's okay.

I can never go back. Nor do I want to. But I understand my friends that stayed or returned. It wasn't such a bad place after all.