I was told that German people don't appreciate the question "how are you?/how are you feeling today?" or similar. Is it true?
It seems weird to me, but I must admit I noticed that some people simply avoid the question and almost never answer.
How should I start a conversation, then? Most importantly, how can make it obvious that I ask because I care, not just because I wanna be polite?

Question

I was told that German people don't appreciate the question "how are you?/how are you feeling today?" or similar. Is it true? 
It seems weird to me, but I must admit I noticed that some people simply avoid the question and almost never answer.
How should I start a conversation, then? Most importantly, how can make it obvious that I ask because I care, not just because I wanna be polite?

Anki · Answer

I have to use English at work for some people and it took me a while to understand, that "How are you?" is just a polite greeting and people are often not really interested how I am. So I shortened my answers to one or two sentence. Like "It's a super busy day, but I'm fine." or "Today was a really good day. How about you?". With coworkers I'm closer, I know it's more like a "real" question and answer it more serious, but in general I try to keep it simple and short.
I'm really not a fan of polite questions. 🤔

Ema_non · Answer

It depends on your relationship with the other person. If a stranger asked me this I would think: Why do you care? We don't know each other.

So this question would come across as nosy or insincere. However, if you are friends with the other person then it would certainly be a normal question.

blinry · Answer

In German, you can certainly ask "Wie geht es dir?", but I'd mostly do that among family and friends. It seems weird in a business context, because, other than in English, for example, an honest answer is usually expected.

In professional contexts or with strangers, you could start a conversation by talking about someting that's going on where you are, or asking something a bit less intense like "Wie war Ihr Vormittag?"

itsOS_official · Answer

I noticed that recently too how we in Germany 🇩🇪 have issues with that. I work at parking communication station and some customer called because of an issue and he started with “How are you ?” And I thought wtf “Who do u care? - I’m here to fix ur problem 😂”

It depends on your relationship with the other person. If a stranger asked me this I would think: Why do you care? We don't know each other.So this question would come across as nosy or insincere. However, if you are friends with the other person then it would certainly be a normal question.

I noticed that recently too how we in Germany 🇩🇪 have issues with that. I work at parking communication station and some customer called because of an issue and he started with “How are you ?” And I thought wtf “Who do u care? - I’m here to fix ur problem 😂”

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It depends on your relationship with the other person. If a stranger asked me this I would think: Why do you care? We don't know each other.

So this question would come across as nosy or insincere. However, if you are friends with the other person then it would certainly be a normal question.