Top 10 Things Expats MUST Know About Germany
Your essential guide to German life: taxes, housing, rules, and why you still need cash for a coffee. 🇩🇪
Key Takeaways
- Germany often feels like a strict instruction manual; we provide the 10 essential rules every expat needs to understand.
- Germany remains shockinly slow and paper-based, ranking last in digitalization, often requiring physical mail and lengthy waits.
- Mandatory high deductions for taxes and social security mean your net salary is significantly lower than your gross income.
- High salary deductions fund one of the world’s strongest protective systems, covering health, unemployment, and part of pension.
- Finding an apartment is the hardest part of settling in, requiring speed, high deposits, and facing intense competition in major cities.
- Despite its tech prowess, Germany relies heavily on cash for small purchases, and card acceptance remains problematic.
- Germans strictly adhere to rules and punctuality; breaking minor rules often results in immediate correction from strangers.
- Sundays are legally protected days of rest, meaning all stores are closed, and noise rules are strictly enforced by neighbors.
- Germany’s mandatory and complex waste separation system is essential, utilizing Pfand and enforcing strict rules to avoid fines.
- Germans communicate directly without sugarcoating, and forming social circles requires planning, making settling in challenging.
- Germany is not one culture; people strongly identify with regional differences in tradition, temperament, and social openness.
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More InformationIntroduction
Growing up in a divided Germany, the experience of moving from East to West felt like learning a completely new culture. If a German can feel “foreign” in their own country, imagine the feeling for someone moving here from the other side of the world.
Expats often tell us that Germany feels like a massive instruction manual—full of rigid rules, complicated systems, and defined processes for everything. And most importantly: forms. Lots and lots of paper you’ve never seen before. But don’t worry. We’ll provide you with the 10 most important “pages” from the Germany manual every expat needs to understand to successfully navigate life here.
1. The Bureaucracy Burden: Paper, Slowness, and Faxes
If there’s one thing that consistently shocks expats, it’s how slow and paper-based Germany still is. In the global Expat Insider 2025 study, Germany ranks dead last in digitalization. We hear stories of residents waiting nearly a year just to renew a residence permit. A significant reason for this is Germany’s legal culture: every single rule must be followed perfectly, even if that slows down the entire process.
And despite living in a highly modern nation, almost everything still arrives by physical mail. Bank cards, tax letters, official notifications, and even appointment confirmations show up in your physical mailbox. Furthermore, archaic technology like the fax machine (yes, the fax machine) is still utilized in many official contexts. Understanding that patience and a well-organized physical folder system are your best friends will save you significant frustration.
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More Information2. The Gross vs. Net Salary Shock
Let’s talk about your salary next, because in Germany your gross salary is NOT what actually lands in your bank account. Many expats are shocked when they see their first payslip and realize how much disappears. There are two main reasons for this significant deduction. The first is taxes, which depend on your income and your tax class; the more you earn, the higher your tax rate.
The second reason is social security. This is mandatory for every employee, but at least your employer pays half of the contributions. These deductions fund crucial public services but result in a substantial gap between your gross contracted salary and your final net take-home pay. If you want to know exactly how much you’ll pay and how to optimize your taxes and social security for 2026, feel free to book a meeting with us.
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More Information3. The Value of the Safety Net
But the crucial question is: What are you getting in return for all those deductions from your payslip? Germany has one of the most protective work environments in the world, which is why we score pretty well in the Expat Insider Study. You cannot just be fired overnight like in some other countries. Employees usually receive around 30 days of paid vacation a year, and sick days are fully covered by law.
The money deducted from your salary funds a robust safety net: you get mandatory health insurance (public or private), long-term care coverage, unemployment benefits, and a solid public pension system, with your employer legally mandated to pay half of it. Germany might be expensive, but the safety net provided by its generous social security system is one of the strongest you’ll find anywhere, offering high-quality security from job loss to illness and old age.
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More Information4. The Apartment Hunting Struggle
What is arguably the hardest part about moving to Germany? Finding a home. In the global Expat Insider Study, we rank almost at the bottom for housing ease, and if you’ve tried renting in a big city, you know exactly why. More than half of all expats struggle with apartment hunting. Especially in major metropolitan areas like Munich or Frankfurt, rent prices continue to soar, easily costing over €1,000 per month for a modest place. Listings on popular platforms often disappear within two to three hours because demand is so high.
When viewing an apartment, you will often find yourself standing in a queue with dozens of other applicants. Landlords expect complete, meticulously organized application folders, including bank statements and Schufa reports. Being fast, organized, and prepared to pay a substantial deposit (usually three months’ rent) is essential to succeeding in the German housing market.
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More Information5. Cash is Still King
For a country that builds high-tech cars and world-class engineering, we still pay for a €2 coffee with coins—because in Germany, cash is king. If you pull out your card for something small, people might look at you strangely. In countless small shops, local cafés, and bakeries, you cannot pay by card at all, or only if your purchase exceeds a minimum amount.
To make things even more confusing, some places accept a German EC card but not Visa or Mastercard. And yes, your bank card, PIN, and even your account information usually arrive via slow, physical mail. The good news is that the banking sector is finally digitizing: you can now open a fully digital German bank account with zero paperwork, leveraging our online calculators to find the best options. However, always carry enough cash, especially small bills, because you will certainly need it.
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More Information6. The Holy Trinity: Rules, Order, and Punctuality
What’s taken more seriously in Germany than anything else? Rules. Order, structure, and discipline—that’s the holy trinity here. And if you break a rule, don’t worry: a friendly “Hilfssheriff” (self-appointed auxiliary sheriff) will immediately let you know. Try riding your bike in a pedestrian zone or crossing the street on a red light, and someone will correct you instantly.
A common example is the Warentrenner—that little metal divider at the supermarket checkout—using it is basically an unwritten moral obligation. And, of course, Germans highly value punctuality. “Five minutes early” is considered on time, whether for a job interview or a private meeting. The only exception, perhaps, is the national railway system (Deutsche Bahn), where delays are frequently expected.
7. The Strict Sunday Quiet (Sonntagsruhe)
And arguably the most important rule is that Sundays are quiet time—so shhh. Sundays and public holidays are protected by law as days of rest (Sonntagsruhe). This means almost every store is closed; sometimes it feels like the whole country shuts down. You are essentially “forced” to relax. In addition to Sundays, we also have quiet hours (Ruhezeiten) during the day (usually around lunchtime) and from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at night.
During these times, you are generally forbidden from vacuuming, washing clothes, playing loud music, or any activity that might disturb your neighbors. Your neighbors notice everything, and breaking the quiet hours too often might get you a formal warning from the landlord or even a visit from the police. Respecting these quiet periods is crucial to maintaining harmonious community relations.
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More Information8. Germany: The World Champion of Recycling
The quiet hours also apply to how you handle your waste: you’re typically not allowed to throw your glass bottles into the large, divided communal containers outside (for brown, green, and white glass) during the night or on Sundays. This leads to the next crucial point: Germany takes trash very seriously. We are the world champions in recycling, so separating your trash isn’t just encouraged—it’s mandatory by law.
The system is famously complex, requiring strict adherence to separating paper, plastic (Gelber Sack), organic waste (Biotonne), and residual waste. Furthermore, you pay a deposit (Pfand) on most bottles and cans, which you get back when you return them to the machine at the supermarket. If you mix up your trash, you risk not only having your bin rejected by the collectors but also potential fines that can reach up to €10,000 in extreme cases.
9. Settling In: Directness and Social Planning
There is one more category where we score pretty badly in the Expat Insider Study: the ease of settling in. Expats often say Germans seem unfriendly or distant, mostly because we communicate very directly. There is no sugarcoating or reading between the lines; “No” is often a complete sentence. And we don’t really do small talk; we get straight to the point.
Social circles are small and tight, so making new friends can be tough. If you want to meet someone, you better plan weeks in advance because spontaneity is not really a thing here. And then there’s the language. German is tough, and sometimes it feels like we make it difficult on purpose. Consider umfahren (to drive around something) and umfahren (to run it over) – the exact same spelling, differentiated only by context or a subtle stress pattern.
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More Information10. Regional Identities Over National Unity
And the last thing you should know about Germany: There isn’t just one Germany—there are many. People here identify far more strongly with their region than with the whole country. Bavarians, Swabians, Berliners, people from Rheinland—these are completely different cultures, often with distinct dialects, food, and temperaments.
Oktoberfest, Lederhosen, and large beers? That’s typically Bavaria. Extreme thriftiness and the neighborhood chore rotation (Kehrwoche)? That’s Swabia. Reserved and emotionally distant? That’s often the North, just like their weather. And in Rheinland, they might hug you before they even know your name.
Understanding that the local culture in Hamburg will differ dramatically from that in Stuttgart or Cologne is essential to truly understanding the social fabric and regional identity of your new home.
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