In a group of Brits and Americans (non-Germans) who've lived around Germany for at least a decade, this is one of the ten questions you can bring up and the majority of the group will grin, order a second beer, and go into a hour-long debate about how pessimistic Germans are, and their pet theories on why.
It's a discussion that has always bothered me. Germany runs one of the best highway/autobahn systems in the world, yet have continual whining behavior about corrective actions needed, or 'problems'. The same is true for the railway system (one of those that I regard as the best in Europe). You can bring up healthcare, and Germans have a pessimistic attitude that it might take three to four days to get an appointment with their local doctor, which I don't see as a big deal. The list goes on and on....things aren't quite as bad as Germans will chat about or get frustrated over.
Something that links itself to high expectations? I tend to argue that point about German behavior. If you build a railway line from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt, and 110 trams, or trains are supposed to make this run daily along a schedule....then the majority of Germans expect the 110 to run on time. The fact that only 95 run within a minute of the schedule, and fifteen are from three to fifteen minutes late? I wouldn't consider it a big deal, but for Germans.....that schedule was supposed to be 'absolute'.
The same issue exists with promises that such-and-such property tax system will be fixed or resolved, giving people a happy feeling, then six months later with the new system.....you suddenly find half the German public disenchanted or frustrated about the end-result.
Is it bad enough that it's an actual label that people stick on Germans now? I think over the past three or four decades....it's become more obvious, as infrastructure grows, and things get to being more complicated in nature.
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