Moved to Germany from the UK. In practical terms, Germany is so far ahead it's not comparable. The quality of life here is better making minimum wage here than

Moved to Germany from the UK. In practical terms, Germany is so far ahead it's not comparable. The quality of life here is better making minimum wage here than it is if you're on a decent wage in the UK. A lot of the difference is housing - in the UK, you're usually paying a lot of money to live in a shithole. Also, as other commentators have noted, everything is falling apart in the UK, so even if you have money, you can look forward to taking trains that break all the time, driving on roads that have holes in them, etc. In mainstream cultural terms, a lot of germans don't like foreigners, and are pretty rude if they pick up that you're not german, although a lot of that is modulated by where you're from. That extends to germans who work for the state - the auslanderbehoerde is pretty famous for being generally miserable to deal with. The state's basic policy is 'assimilation', so you're basically expected to leave your culture at the door and become 'German', and the state has a pretty narrow definition of what that means (Oktoberfest, christian religious holidays, slightly dubious history etc), and depending on where you're from, you'll have to do courses on this stuff, which can be pretty depressing. If you're black, there's a certain level of racially-motivated violence in some places, although I think the basic level of violent street crime compares favourably to the UK - it compares extremely favourably if you're white. Still, because of the aforementioned rudeness thing, friends I've had who migrated from Africa generally have a pretty bad time living here. Culturally, in the broader sense, Germany is great. The music scene is great here, the art scene, classical music, the food and youth culture etc are all really good, and very welcoming to foreigners. You meet people with a very broad range of views and lifestyles, there are parks and galleries and playgrounds and all sorts of stuff that makes you feel like you're actually living in a 'culture' worth engaging in, not just a bunch of people decompressing after a work-week. The thing I like most about living in Germany is it's a pretty reasonable country. If you deal with institutions, they'll generally talk to you as a rational human. If you live in a city, the city will generally maintain parks and public spaces because they'll see that as important to the community. Money is set aside for cultural life, youth recreation, sports, etc.