Three Odd German Problems You Tend To Notice

 After you've been here as a resident for a while, you tend to notice these three odd problems:

1.  In most major urbanized areas....if the emergency ambulance guys get a call to a public area....especially after dark, it attracts attention (like flies to food).  Oddly, whoever they've come to 'help' (usually drunk or drugged-up)...has friends, and they converge on the ambulance crew in a negative way.

Sometimes they throw bottles.  

Sometimes, they try to prevent the crew from helping their associate.  

Sometimes, they just yell insults.

Cops get called, and then this turns into a rescue-effort for the ambulance crew.  

Why?  No one seems to know, and this has turned into a PhD-level mystery.  Oddly, it only happens in big cities, like Frankfurt, Hamburg or Berlin.  

2.  Just based on numbers....Germany has never had so many people employed/working.....as it has today.

Yet, if you read the news, or listen to news journalists.....there's a nation-wide shortage of working people.  

Oddly enough, at this same time....the suggestion has come up to lessen the common working day down to 32 hours a week.  How these companies will function with fewer man-hours?  They won't.....they will end up leaving Germany to find a society who wants a better economic climate.

3.  When some German gets all disturbed and utters 'die da oben'.....he's talking about the enriched/more blessed people  above his status, "those up there" is the way you'd define the term.

I don't think you used to hear this much, but around non-urbanized Germans....the phrase now comes up more often.  

Maybe there's politics to this, or some public perception.  The problem is that people perceive they are being dumped upon and resent it.