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 often late, roads and bridges are in bad shape, car sales in the doldrums, and public administration is entangled in a web of bureaucracy and suffering from lack of digitization.

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 lens 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 — yet also a search for solutions.

The hosts travel from Switzerland to India, France to Denmark, uncovering what lessons these successes 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, a national therapy session.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

The podcast is available on dw.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and  all major podcast platforms.