> I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life

I wrote something about a related point in my parallel post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824800

With this in mind, I think that

> This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.

is not a feeling that is felt as strongly by people from Germany as for people from other countries.

1. As I have hinted in my original post, there simply is not that much of a feeling of "belonging" also for Germans who live in Germany.

2. I wrote in the linked post

"I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around 'if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own'. There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it."

So, people from Germany are often much more used to the situation that they do things alone on their own, and thus in my opinion indeed have much more internal tolerance to the situation what people from other cultures would call "a feeling of not belonging".

This is exactly why I wrote further above:

"This woman should [...] learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life."

The reason is not knowing the laws and rules can get her into trouble, but living your life on your own (without a sense of "belonging") is something that is easily doable (as I hinted: quite some Germans feel this about their life in Germany) - if you don't "belong" or have few contacts, you can still live.