Every country is different and you need to learn slightly different ways of dealing with them in each. On a bad day it can be pretty exhausting.

It turns out, people everywhere want the same things, in the end. They just go about them differently.

In Germany, it often helps frame it as both of you trying to work with the rules together; as a framework to build within and on, rather than a cage to hold you in.

Doesn't always work. Nothing works all the time, (especially if the other person is having a bad day themselves and just wants it to be over). But if it helps even once eh?