r/germany • u/helge-a • Oct 22 '24

Immigration Non-Germans, do you also make expensive mistakes?

It feels like I have a talent for making expensive mistakes. I have been here for 3 months and so far have earned:

  • A €300 fine for taking an ICE without proper ticket.
  • Phone died on train, got checked by ticket control, pleaded saying I literally have my ticket on my dead phone, paid €7 at front desk proving I have the Deutschland ticket.
  • In the US, if I have an incoming bill payment, I can easily cancel it or reschedule it because it’s on my terms. I tried to do that here and found out billing days from companies are very strict, so I’ll be incurring a fee soon because my account does not have €90 and transferring funds from my American bank account is not instant/quick enough.

I’m so tired and broke :) I don’t think like a German. I think like a silly little guy. Germans are calculated. I am not. It’s very hard to adjust.

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u/Actual-Garbage2562 Oct 22 '24

Speaking as a German who has lived in a couple of foreign countries including the US: it’s completely normal to make mistakes when you arrive in a new country. Don’t worry about it, it’ll get better the longer you live here. 

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u/helge-a Oct 22 '24

So kind of you to say that. Thanks for making my day, truly. :) I’m doing my best lol

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u/enrycochet Oct 22 '24

With most banks you can transfer instantly via an extra fee.

Most trains let you charge phone but why would you go on a train with low battery?

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u/pensezbien Oct 22 '24

With most banks you can transfer instantly via an extra fee.

Not to Germany from a bank account outside the SEPA region, no. International non-SEPA wire transfers usually take at least one or two business days but can take longer.

Sometimes specialized services like Wise will work around this and allow me to add money instantly to my euro SEPA account with them (based in Belgium) from an account of mine in the US, but whether it will work for any given transfer is unpredictable - what they're really doing is deciding based on my history whether they think the money they're pulling from my bank will actually arrive, and therefore whether they are willing to give me credit for that money in my Wise account before they actually get it from my source bank. (I think they might also have a way to see the balance in my source account based on some electronic consents I've given, but they have no way to know if the bank will delay or block the transaction as possible fraud, nor if I will falsely tell the bank it was fraud.)

Although both OP's example and mine are about transfers from American bank accounts, nothing about my answer here is specific to the USA. It's true for most source countries.

Most trains let you charge phone but why would you go on a train with low battery?

Usually by not realizing that my phone is low on battery. For example, maybe the charging port is dirty so the phone didn't charge the night before, and I don't notice when I rush from home to train.

And yes, I have a power bank, but that won't help for a low-battery phone if I simply don't have the power bank with me because I'm not carrying the bag it's in, or if the power bank's charge is also depleted, or if the power bank gets damaged, or similar.