For decades, Germany stood for quality, efficiency, and engineering excellence. But today, visitors to Europe’s economic powerhouse are often surprised to find a country where many things simply don’t work.
Trains are late, roads and bridges are in bad shape, car sales are down, and public administration is entangled in a web of bureaucracy and weighed down by a sluggish digitalization process.
Add to that a string of public planning fiascos — from the delayed central train station in Stuttgart to Berlin’s international airport — and it feels as though progress has slammed into a wall.
To many, the country looks like it’s in a permanent state of delay and disrepair.
Not country-bashing, more like therapy
Delayland is hosted by DW Business journalists Andreas Becker and Nicolas Martin.
Fresh off their award-winning investigative podcast Cannabis Cowboys, the duo now turns its gaze to a challenge closer to home: Germany’s race to keep up in a rapidly changing world.
Each of the five episodes is a journey through dysfunction — and a search for solutions.
The hosts travel from Switzerland to India, from France to Denmark, and uncover what lessons success in these countries might hold for Germany.
Delayland isn’t just a business podcast. It’s psycho-geography: a map of Germany’s mindset, its post-1945 identity, its superiority complex, and its fear of change. In short, it’s a national therapy session.
Edited by: Uwe Hessler
The podcast is available on dw.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms.
While you’re here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.