Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?

Just curious: how long since you moved out of USA? How long it took to learn German well enough (in your personal opinion) to integrate well?

I moved to Germany as well and self taught German to a high B2 level in the 15 months before moving. That was enough where I was able to be conversationally fluent within 3 months of arrival

When I self taught, I primarily used Assimil and Pimsleur daily for the first six months. After completing those programs, I continued with the daily study (that’s the most important part!) and used Easy German the YouTube channel, watched a bunch of German shows, and worked on speaking just by narrating / describing random things and looking up words as needed.

20 years - I left just after 9/11, during which period I witnessed the USA collectively shitting itself, and during which I decided to play no part in the USA's continued economic survival. Far better to have moved to Germany and get things happening in a country not inclined to blood-lust because it was finally attacked the way it had been attacking countries, with impunity, for decades prior. The German culture's proclivity for peace-making, and especially on the subject of forgiveness, far outweighs any of the gung-ho American enthusiasms that might be fashionable ..

Honestly, it took me 5 years to feel comfortable speaking fluent German - mostly because Germans just refuse to correct German-speaking expats, instead choosing to switch to their English ..

I teached in a forgein language it took me 8-12 months to be able to give classes in the native language. German is rated at 750 hours on the FSI scale, which seems a bit much in my experience but that is personal.

https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/

Not the OP, but Europeans are fairly tribal and "becoming" an Austrian or Czech isn't the same as becoming an American. An expat who speaks the language and gained citizenship will be known as "someone who has the Austrian/Czech/German" passport. Only the kids who speak without accent will probably be fully embraced as natives.

In my case, I am a native Czech who speaks flawless Czech, but some people actually refuse to acknowledge me as a Czech on account of my Bulgarian surname. (Funnily some of them cannot even write properly, but hey, they are Nováks or Kučeras and I am not.) Not a majority, but this kind of tribalism is more widespread here than in countries that were founded on mass immigration.

I’ve found Germans to be very humble and accommodating to people that try to speak the language. I would know; I’m still terrible at it. But might be different depending on city etc.

> The German culture's proclivity for peace-making ...

Oh boy, this gave me a good chuckle. Thanks for that.

> The German culture's proclivity for peace-making

I had hitherto been unaware of this proclivity, thanks for educating us all.

For me it was most important to get books in my field in german, read them slowly and learn all the buzzterms and experssion. Some books you can read without really understanding them, e.g. some best selling paper back without any weight too it. I haven't worked in Germany but it's a perfect country to learn by reading books

You might want to pay a visit and get to know some modern Germans.

>German culture's proclivity for peace-making

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitali_Klitschko#Political_car...

>UDAR is supported by the German government and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation[93][94] and received support in particular from Angela Merkel and also politicians from the conservative European People's Party. According to information gained by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the target was to "set up Klitschko purposefully as a new strong man in Kyiv—in order to counter this way the Kremlin's growing influence".

>Klitschko was one of the dominant figures of the Euromaidan protests.

Germany hasn't exactly kept their hands clean over the last few years. But I'm glad you enjoy the propaganda.

Wow talk about rose colored glasses… history is longer than your lifetime my friend.

I think the germans’ peaceful ways are more about compensating for what came before than about innate qualities of them as a people. The U.S. response to 9/11 was indeed abysmal, with no self-examination at all, and I know several people who since then refuse to travel to the U.S. because they basically consider the whole country to have gone mad. There is this very odd thing where if you talk to Americans they are mostly sane and reasonable people, and then you see their political system and it is like an episode of game of thrones.

It depends from country to country; in Romania, for example, where we used to have many communities of Hungarian, Bulgarians, Czech, Polish, Turks and Tatars, if you are reasonably white (or Mongolian looking) and speak a decent Romanian you are considered to be integrated. If you look very different (Black or Chinese) you are accepted, but not considered a local even if you were born and raised in Romania and speak the language natively - this is because non-White people are a tiny, tiny minority (a few in a million).

It’s actually become somewhat of an issue nowadays. Germany has such low acceptance of any military action that even in a situation like right now, where Ukraine is at risk of being invaded, the vast majority is against any action.

Germany is still doing cleanup of WW2 damages today, everyone has experienced at least one evacuation due to old leftover bombs being found. It’s hard to support war when its damages are still deep in the collective consciousness

Germans teach and learn from their history. The USA is busy trying to bury their history and pretend it never happened.

Yes, more multicultural countries work like that. The ancient Austria-Hungary definitely did.

Germany is refusing to help protect Ukraine because its industry is completely dependent on Russian energy, not because of some lingering WWII guilt.