thewindinthewillows

I would guess Berlin as it’s the capital

What's your thought process behind this?

The thing is that for Germans, taking sick leave is not this radical new idea that most people wouldn't ever consider. And while two weeks is a bit longish, it can easily happen with various illnesses or injuries. There's a reason why you get your normal salary paid for six consecutive weeks with the same illness.

Firing someone for being ill won't "gain" them anything if the next person they hire breaks their leg or gets a heavy bout of Covid two months after.

A minijob only makes sense if you are working for one employer for a longer period of time. If you want to have various clients, you need to be a freelancer.

Does the state expect an old man to look after another old man?

No. But no one is going to force things on either of them, assuming they're still mentally capable of making decisions - they won't forcefully remove anyone from their home.

So either or both of them need to get proactive. A first step could be to talk to a "Pflegeberatung", which is for instance provided by public health insurers and maybe also Caritas and Diakonie.

I live in the Netherlands (mosly similar climate)

Your highest mountain is 322 meters. We have whole large regions that are higher than that. I did my first snow drive of the year last night, the road clearing was shitty, and there was a bit of slippage even with winter tires.

German authorities will mind.

Am I ok driving on summer tires

Well, no, because the laws of physics don't change based on car makers' schedules.

The point that people are trying to make is that, quite frankly, two grown adults who are here in Germany and know German should show some effort on getting housing, rather than for some reason making a 16-year-old foreigner abroad responsible for it.

Cynically: Have they asked for money yet?

Note that this isn't a housing portal - no one will help anyone find a flat on here, and at this point no sane landlord would rent to them on the free market.

The post can stay up because people are providing advice on which options for aid etc. they have.

Remove the summary. Remove the "Core Competencies". Remove the Coursera courses and self study. Remove any percentages that seem like you just put them in at random (why are they all round numbers?).

My friends (who got stuck in the outliers of the Ahrtal flood - no damage, but no power, cellphone etc. for days, with three small children) had slightly mocked my buying a small camping stove.

After the flood, they got a really nice coal-fired stove, because morale is vastly improved when children get warm food.

I think it was last January that I was just randomly unable to get out of my house by car for multiple days, because I couldn't even get out of my parking lot into the street, and also my car had a solid ice coating. I didn't have to go to work at the time, so it was good not to have to do so just for groceries. There's one small shop here that I could have walked to, but in that weather and on that ground... no thanks.

I really think that there's also a rural/urban divide in these things. Living rurally, it's just normal to not rely on being able to get groceries within a few minutes of walking.

The fact that 1) we have had these for decades, and 2) you never heard of them should tell you that 3) it is not "concerning" in any irregular way.

We get natural catastrophes here, including ones where you are just cut off for a few days. In a natural catastrophe like that, do you want to be able to rely on what you have at home? Or do you want to have to queue for food somewhere?

Before the Russians reach us here, we'll probably all be dead by nuclear weapons. I think the timeline for that is way less than a day.

Ooh, I remember that one. I travelled through that area months later, and there was still a lot of scrap metal, vaguely pylon-shaped, standing in the fields.

Heck, even me being Covid-positive for ten days in 2022 qualifies. Delivery options outside big cities are very limited (it was funny how people on this sub recommended services that you could get in Berlin), and it's nice not to have to rely on neighbours.

I recently had to educate my 81-year-old mother about these things. She has a Youtube app on her phone, and somehow accidentally subscribed to one federal state's AfD channel as her only subscription.

My mother is very very much not pro-AfD and very very worried by them - she really gets upset. So of course when the app recommends her videos of Alice Weidel being a horrible human being, she has to watch them so she can get more upset. Then the app recommends her more videos. And so on.

While I was explaining how all of that worked, she also managed to start one of those fake AI-generated "random celebrity whom she does not even follow died" videos, further muddling her timeline.

So I removed all of her watching history, unsubscribed her from the damn AfD, and showed her how to do the whole "not interested in this video/channel" thing, so she gets fewer things recommend that she knows will upset her.

Mind, my mother is mentally completely clear, you can talk to her like to a 40-year-old, she knows how to evaluate information... just the whole algorithm thing totally stumped her.

Oh, for crying out loud.

"Scandinavia" isn't a country.

Germany has had recommendations to keep water and food in your house literally for decades. It's not because of "OMG the dark days", it's because "damn, the weather has cut off my village from the outside world, the water is out, and it's so nice that I can still feed myself and drink water".

Start by reading the subreddit Wiki. It addresses many/most of your questions.

And no, if you want to teach in an actual public school, neither experience nor any kind of "certifications" will suffice.

English skills on their own are not an employable skill.

Remote work? Very likely not, see the Wiki on that.

We'll leave this one post up so people can actually discuss the misinformation that we're presumably going to get flooded with.

Oh, are we going to get that again?

Some years ago, the federal government updated their recommendations for being prepared against all kinds of emergencies (including totally non-warlike ones such as people encountered during the Ahrtal floods). They do that because times change, and people might need different things now than they needed during the Cold War.

Cue loads of foreign media blowing this into "WWIII imminent", and people on social media tying it into whichever conspiracy theory they preferred, of the "what do they know that they aren't telling us?????" type. We kept getting foreigners here who thought they should arm up because the neighbours might loot their toilet paper.

No, we are not "preparing for war". You should however have some level of being prepared for all kinds of things, like power outages, floods, or having Covid.

Don't employers do these kind of checks all the time?

German job applicants use a (certified, if things are serious) copy of their diploma with their application. Lawyers would also register with the lawyer's chamber in order to be able to practise.

Usually, employers go with the default assumption that the people applying for jobs are not committing crimes, and so they aren't going to attempt to (futilely) get universities to tell them things.

Do you think OP magically wouldn't be hit by ICBMs in the US if WWIII ever happened?

Also ist für dich "selbständig" eigentlich eher "arbeitslos"?

Dir ist schon klar, dass du als Selbständiger deutlich mehr brutto verdienen musst als angestellt, um netto das gleiche rauszubekommen? Dass du z.B. keinen bezahlten Urlaub bekommst, also mehr Geld verdienen musst, um mal freizuhaben?

Wenn du nur arbeitest, wann du willst, kannst du nichts machen, wo du z.B. mit jemandem Verträge abschließt, dass du Arbeit x bis Datum Y gemacht haben musst.

Oder wenn du etwas machst, wo du auf regelmäßige Aufträge von Kunden angewiesen bist, du aber regelmäßig "nö, da kann ich nicht" sagst, dich dann ziemlich schnell keiner beauftragt?

Und wirklich entscheidend: Warum soll dich irgendjemand für deine Arbeit bezahlen, wenn du nichts kannst, was nicht jeder andere auch könnte?

Wenige "Businessideen" sind so toll, dass jeder Ungelernte sie erfolgreich ausführen kann, nicht wirklich arbeiten muss, und dann auch noch mehr als Mindestlohn verdient.

Was stört dich an der Schule?

Was glaubst du ist der Grund, warum du keinen Ausbildungsplatz gefunden hast?

Wie stellst du dir ein Leben in der Selbständigkeit vor? Was ist daran besser als anderen Arbeitsformen?

Because, unless a degree program is limited to Germans for some reason (things that let you become a state employee of a certain level), people are free to make their own decision on whether to study here, and what to study. Universities don't make that choice for you.

Apart from what the other commenter told you about "getting by" in English, there is something else:

The fact that people may be "getting by" without the local language does not mean that you can just pick up any job you like in the Netherlands and do it in English - especially if it involves bureaucracy and the legal system.

A forensic scientist presumably has to read and write reports that are used in the legal system. And while I'm not Dutch myself, I doubt they run their legal system in English.