Germany, Schroeder, and Russia

Toward the end of 1998, Gerhard Schroeder of the SPD Party....was elected chancellor of Germany.  Most Germans at the time.....believed that the Helmet Kohl era had simply run out of steam and it was time to bring in a SPD guy (Kohl being a CDU guy).

The best description that an American could give of Schroeder was that he looked and acted "presidential".  He gave four-star speeches, and he had major positive out of his era.....being the reform of the welfare system of Germany.  Beyond that?  At the end of four years.....an election came up around the time of the 9-11 and the Iraq War.  After four years of Schroeder....the pre-polling results were Schroeder barely carrying thirty-percent of the public vote.  It was hard to find a German who really talked really positive over Schroeder's four-year period.

Schroeder used the US confrontation to his advantage......talked up a storm about the US being wrong, and barely ran any campaign dealing with German problems.  In the end.....on election night.....Germans sat there shocked.  Schroeder took 38.5-percent of the vote, and just barely edged out the CDU/CSU candidate.

Within a week after the 2nd election....a public poll was conducted, with a majority of the nation frustrated and against Schroeder.  It's hard to imagine that many Germans saying something in a public poll, but could not defeat him in an actual election.

Roughly two-and-a-half years later....because of a state election and huge defeat for the SPD.....Schroeder as Chancellor.....had to call for a new election.  A couple of months later....the election was held and the CDU/CSU combination beat the SPD by ONE percentage point.  The journalists sat there in shock because there was no way to get a partnership and run the Bundestag with the CDU/CSU combo and the FDP (you need fifty percent or more to claim the 'win', and between them.....they could only muster forty-five percent.

What Germans witnessed on election night was Schroeder of the SPD doing a half-way victory dance because he hinted strongly that the SPD would never partner with the CDU, and the ONE percent win meant nothing because the SPD would then partner up.  Of course, journalists hinted that the same numbers would come of a SPD and Green match-up.

Schroeder then piped up that it would include the FDP guys.....thus giving the SPD and Schroeder a chance for four more years.

Rarely have I been intrigued with German politics more than the next sixty seconds after that comment.  In this group of the heads of the various political parties....sat FDP's Guido Westerwelle.  Usually....Westerwelle is the guy that chats mostly over business situations, the economy, and general law.  In this event.....he stepped right up to the plate and said in a pretty direct fashion that 'hell would freeze over before the FDP would partner up in such a situation'.

By the next morning....it kinda got around that various SPD members were meeting quietly and discussing the fact that Schroeder was 'poison' for the party, and needed to be pushed out.  He was drawing a fair amount of negative media coverage.  Within two weeks.....he'd been pushed out.

At that point, an odd thing occurred with Schroeder, as a private citizen.....he ended up with GAZPROM.....a major Russian natural gas company.  The SPD folks spent an entire evening explaining this, and how it was no fault of their own that he was doing this.

So, years have passed now since that 2005 episode.  This past week.....a dinner party was organized in St Petersburg, Russia for Schroeder.  Putin himself arrived in a limo, and there's a pretty big and clear shot of the two hugging outside of the restaurant.  Last night, here were the CDU spokesman and the SPD spokesman.....fairly direct in that Schroeder is embarrassing no one but himself, and it's a terrible image of the former Chancellor hugging up to Putin while Ukraine is in a tight spot.

My general gut feeling is that thirty to forty years ago......a couple of people of influence came into Schroeder's life, and helped in some ways to guide him to be friendly to the Soviets and later....the Russians.  Schroeder probably isn't that bright.....never considered how he fell into these circumstances, and is fairly naive about politics and world affairs.  So, this dinner deal.....with Putin in attendance.....really didn't come onto his reality screen and there were no red flags as far as he saw them.

For history purposes.....I suspect in fifty years that Schroeder will be seen as a Chancellor with limited accomplishments, and that he used the GASPROM position to create some wealth.....later used by some foundation for German election and political purposes....mostly to get a pro-Russia guy back into the Chancellorship.

Berlin Airport Frustrations

Back in the 1990s....Berlin and the powers-to-be....sat down and perceived this great rebuilding of Berlin and the influx of air travel.  There were three airports around the area: Schonefeld (the old DDR airport), Tegal (in old West Berlin), and Templehof.  Templehof was basically shut down (too short of a runway).

What everyone agreed upon....was that Schonefeld and Tegal had limits and would never be able to carry the passengers that folks anticipated within twenty years.  So a new airport would be built.  The expectation was that it'd be operational by 2010, and fully functional by 2012.  Today?  The new airport is now anticipated to open in 2016, but most folks aren't betting on the new opening date.

Yesterday, a big article came out over Tegal and Schonefeld.  A decade ago....the passenger flow at both airports was around twelve million a year.  Everyone believed that the new airport would be opened by 2010 and absorb the growing numbers.  In 2010, with no new airport open.....Tegal and Schonefeld were handling around twenty million passengers a year.  In 2013.....they went over the twenty-six million point.  By 2016?  My gut feeling is that they will be around thirty-four million.

If serious amounts of infrastructure funding had been pushed into Tegal and Schonefeld back in 2000....maybe the current perception of both would be positive....but the big funding....was pushed toward the new airport instead.  Currently.....the majority of passengers going through Tegal and Schonefeld are unhappy with various conditions.  You need to allocate extra time to get through the security apparatus of both airports.  Neither were built to handle this amount of growth.

I was looking at the numbers....almost 1.6 million passengers a year leave Tegal Airport....for Frankfurt (just barely seventy minutes away).....mostly to catch international flights to get out of Germany.  Just slightly less than that.....were 1.5 million passengers a year leaving for Munich....again about seventy minutes away....for the same reason.

What happens if the new airport is delayed another year....perhaps even two years (2018)?  That's a curious question.  There is a massive amount of negativity associated with Tegal and Schonefeld currently.  By growing another five million in passengers in the future....it's begging for a public relations disaster.

Because of the lack of central authority over the whole airport project.....no one is really getting blamed.  People just stand there....shaking their heads over the screwed up project, the two ailing operational airports there currently, and a massive magnet like Berlin drawing more people each month.  No one can get fired.  No one can get blamed.  I can't think of any place in the world that would just accept it as "normal".....yet here is such an animal.

My general advice on travel to Berlin?  If you had to go into the city from a distant land.....I'd probably land at Frankfurt....buy a ICE-train ticket and ride the Bahn all the way into Berlin's central station (three hours, I know).  But it's a relative stress-free three hours, and as you leave Berlin to return to your homeland.....I'd do the same route in reverse....thus avoiding the security delays, and the frustrating functionality of either operational Berlin airports.

The Burger King Story

On Monday night, RTL (the non-state-run channel)....ran a show that was a undercover operation on Burger King.  It's had a dynamic effect on public perception of Burger King around Germany.

The news guys put at least two guys into an operation run by a syndicate (not Burger King itself or private ownership).  The syndicate?  It's a German guy with a 'silent-partner'.  What is generally known via the show is that the silent-partner is a Russian, and the Euro investment money (I suspect he put up almost all the money and lets the German run the syndicate).....came out of Cyprus.

If Cyprus rings a bell.....it's where bank failures occurred last year....because of an over abundance of Russian billionaires who showed up over the past decade and parked billions into the banking system.  The Cyprus banks tried promising a fair amount of profit margin on investments.....which was probably way beyond reality, and this was one of the dozen-odd problems which sunk the banking sector there.  It would appear this Russian got smart.....found this German with some bright idea of Burger King franchises.....and got promised a fair amount of profit via this deal.

So, the Wallraff investigative team from RTL walked in and applied for jobs....were accepted, and immediately found bad working conditions, unsanitary kitchens, and bad practices all the way around.
There are eighty of the BK operations that the syndicate runs here in Germany.

Clean-up around their BK franchises?  No hired cleaning crew for anything.....the BK employees do it all.  Then you noticed....some guys were ordered to stomp down the paper dumpster in the back.....doing so in their BK uniforms and kitchen shoes.....then walked right back into the place.  No clean up or nothing.

Folks were hired under remarkable conditions where the BK operation benefited greatly.  It was a designed system by some management team to ensure another couple percent of profit off each front.

Typically....BK is the cheapest franchise that you can buy into.  In the US....it's fifty thousand dollars to get your own franchise.  Figure around $300,000 for the start-up costs, and maybe another $150,000 for start-up employee cost.  BK (the company) expects you to pay around 4.5 percent royalty fees each year (covering advertising), and you have to buy sodas, burgers, buns, etc.....from the Burger King vendor (no short cuts).

When the show wrapped up an hour later.....you really had doubts about food safety, and felt negative about the way that they run the operation.  Yesterday morning (roughly eighteen hours after the show).....Burger King Germany (the mother company) announced that they were disturbed by the show and will be conducting on-the-spot inspections.

Via Facebook and various social media players......a number of Germans came out and said they probably weren't going back to Burger King.  Some suggested that the RTL news team go back six months later in undercover status and see if things are the same.

I suspect BK Germany is a bit frustrated with the syndicate operation that got into the middle of this and they know that these guys are carving out a bigger profit for their silent-partner than the norm.  Maybe BK Germany will offer to buy the eighty franchise operations and just put the syndicate out of a potential mess.

As an American in Germany.....I'm not visiting fast food operations like McDonalds or Burger King as much as I did in the US.  Maybe because of better alternate food possibilities or just my taste in fast food is diminished over the last decade.  After watching the show.....I had a fair amount of worry over food safety.  Getting food poisoning over a stupid burger or ice cream.....is something that you shouldn't have to worry about.

A Little Veil Story

For hundreds of years....Germans didn't have to deal with Muslims.  It's not until you get to the 1950s....with industrial expansion and the need for more workers....that Germany got into the guest worker program and Turks came to Germany.

Most Germans will say that the Turks out of the 1950s and 1960s....were a totally different group than they see today.  Generally, a guest worker came in....worked for a period of time.....sometimes two or three years, and then returned to Turkey with a fair sum of money saved.  Some Turks came to like Germany and brought their family here.

When I was here in the 1970s and 1980s....Turks were insulated in society.  They had their own community....their own pubs and restaurants....and generally were hard-working guys who had some appreciation of a stable economy, decent infrastructure, and a very limited corruption situation with city and state authorities.

The Islam thing?  Well....to be honest....all the way up until the early 1990s....I can't say that it really was obvious in Germany.  If Turks  or any other Islamic society did their religious business....it tended to be on a small scale and not that noticeable.

This past week....a sign of the changing times popped up with the Islamic folks in Germany.  A eighteen year old female in a school program in Bavaria.....came up and noted that she didn't feel right with her face exposed in Bavarian society.  So, she wanted to wear a veil to cover her face and just have her eyes exposed.

Bavarians aren't exactly pro-Islam and this request didn't go well.  A lawyer took up the episode.  The court stood up last week and finally said "NO".  It's an interesting argument that the court uses.  Basically, the German state court said that a teacher needs to observe your face, your emotions, and your reaction.....as they teach.....in order to get the right message across.

I sat there reading this and kinda wondered if this argument would ever work in the US.  American teens are pretty good actors, and you might get sixty different reactions or emotions.....none of which might be acceptable or interpreted by a teacher.

The veil thing?  Well, I walk Wiesbaden on a weekly basis, and in eight months.....I've seen one single case of a fully veiled Islamic gal on the streets.  You see the hair covering and the long silky gown outfit on a regular basis.....maybe forty times a day in the shopping district.  But veils?  No.  At the Frankfurt airport?  I probably see it a dozen times as I transit there.

Eventually, some German court will pause, reflect, and allow it.  A week or two later.....five German punk kids will be wearing silky gowns out on the street with full-up veils.  Cops will stop them....the guys and gals will claim discrimination and suddenly this will get out and become some short-term fashion trend.  Batman masks, Green Lantern masks, Green Hornet masks, veils, etc.  The German authorities?  I don't think they'd really appreciate the matter, or where this would lead onto.

It's hard to say if this was a personal choice thing or some mentor put the young gal up to the idea.  I'm guessing that she will be disturbed by the court ruling.....pout a day or two.....then either get on with this ruling, or pack up and leave for Turkey or some friendly Islamic country.

I look back at the Turkish society in Germany from thirty years ago.  It makes me ask how thing got into an Islamic throw-back situation, and who pushes this agenda.  If it wasn't a big deal in the 1970s.....why now?  History always tells you some impact, some lesson learned, some trail to how we changed.....so what's the history for this change?  I'm kinda pondering this.

Ukraine, Continuing Saga

Somewhere, deep in the heart of Moscow, there's a giant room (at least I think in this theory).....with four huge whiteboards.  There's timelines and suggested epic climaxes, which lead onto phase two and news media recommendations.  The Ukraine episode?  Mostly scripted and viewable on this whiteboard arrangement.

This past week?

A couple of European military individuals were conducting an approved mission to observe and simply report, within the borders of Ukraine....without weapons or armed guards.  They were stopped, and grabbed.  Today?  Most sit in a guarded area and are considered prisoners.....accused of spying.  Generally, I'm of the mind that their bosses in Europe and NATO.....really have a limited grasp of the declining stability of Ukraine, and this was a major screw-up.  Holding them?  Well, it makes the pro-Russian Ukrainians look like thugs.  But, there's going to be some talks and some admittance of stupidity upon NATO's part.....to get them out.

A TV station grabbed?  Well....yeah.  The pro-Russian guys got themselves into the media control business, and it simply makes sense.  How long will it stay in operation?  That's a good question.  I imagine that it'll run 1980s shows for the most part to fill up time and just pretend to be operational when they don't have the smart guys to do it.

General reaction around Europe this week?  "Consequences" is the term being thrown around....mostly at Russia.  Doesn't matter when European country or media unit covering Ukraine.....there's general some feeling that Russia will lose on some type of ground.  As of yet, they've not been able to identify what exactly Russia will lose.  Other than grabbing or freezing private Russian funding in Cyprus, or halting BMW parts going into Russia.....it's hard to see Russia suffering.  You have to remember....most Russians have a family history of suffering....and they've been doing it a thousand years.....so this European threat is mostly empty-handed.

This past week.....an open letter from three hundred German intellectuals (at least they claim such status).....went to Russia's Putin, and mostly identified the European stance with NATO and the EU to be wrong.  After reading the English translation of the letter....I'd say they mostly want 'talks', with more 'talks'.  They are unhappy with German media reporting....thinking it's highly unfair on Russia's account.  And the end result kinda read like a Wizard of Oz moment.....people cooperating peacefully with each other.  I would point out that none of the three hundred German intellectuals live in a marginal lifestyle, with limited income, and all enjoy the benefit of a stabilized infrastructure without thugs walking by their house or apartment building.

The forty million Euro of German arms sales to Russia?  Well, it was a nice tidy story.  Then you start to price pistols, rifles, ammo and such....especially of a German origin.  Then you realize that it's probably three or four truckloads of gear at best.  If it'd been seven hundred million.....maybe it'd be a big deal.  But forty million Euro worth?  Either it went to the Russian Special Forces folks, or to Putin's personal bodyguards....my humble opinion.

The US stance?  There's six hundred US Army paratroopers on an exercise in Poland currently.  Nothing remarkable, and I doubt that they could do much other than pose for pictures, and at least make the average Polish guy feel ten percent safer.  The permanent presence?  They've agreed on 150 US Army troops staying around as advisers.  There's hints of more permanent operations....maybe a fighter wing.  If half of Ukraine falls into a new status of Russia-Ukraine.....this US stance becomes a magnet for long-term trouble.

So we come to another week of raw action, and political jockey efforts.  If you sit and notice Russian TV....Putin does an audience participation episode about every three days now.  He sits in the middle of two hundred regular people.....answers a few questions with a well thoughtful position, readily identifies Russian priorities, and establishes a presence in the room.  Audience members tend to sit and agree with his position.  He has no special interests......he has only Russian interests.  Europe, The EU, NATO, and the US.....are the bad guys.  He emphasizes their wrong position, how they disrespect Russians (the people, not the country), and it's only logical on the actions he's taken.  Russians survive well.....without the help of a big European commercial sector or non-Russian banks, and he'll lay this out in a very simplified way. You might find twenty percent of Russian society questioning this whole mess....but they aren't being heard.

More of the same?  Yeah.  This isn't some simple conclusion episode.  Ukraine uncertainty is page one chaos and news...for the remainder of 2014.

Trampolines

There's a curious trend in my village....probably having been going on for several years.  Trampolines are now a very popular thing.

Even if the yards are small and extremely limited.....folks still put them up.

These two?  My neighbor, and the guy next to him.

I'd say in my village of four hundred residences.....there's probably sixty trampolines set up.

I'll admit.....even in warmer weather...I barely note one kid on the trampoline maybe twice a week, ten minutes per occasion.  Parents probably like because it burns off excessive energy from the kids.

1950s Version 2.0

 I will often point this out....between Frankfurt, Mainz and Wiesbaden....they have just about everything that you can imagine under the sun.

Off on one of the side streets of Frankfurt's Sachsenhausen district....is Peggy Sue (Retro Fashion and Lifestyle).

It's a small shop.....at least from the exterior.  Their emphasis?  Taking the fashion of the 1950s, and selling it to Germans all over again.

Course, you'd sit there and say this is ridiculous or silly....but strangely enough, it's now considered in fashion....and in some ways....exotic.

Last month, they ran an evening of exotic burlesque in Frankfurt, with Peggy Sue fashion as part of the show.  Toss in a DJ or two.....some old fashion burlesque acts in modern situations, and you've got a bit of interest from the typical average German with cash and time on their hands.

Strippers still in the vogue?  Exotic fashion still working?  1950s style clothing highly desired?  Yeah.

I think the logical way to explain this.....is to look upon the rebirth of the 1950s as simply version 2.0.

People want to tantalize....without the raw stuff that they got used to in the 1970s and 1980s.  They want sex appeal to be a long drawn-out act.  They want the clothing style to be more of a simple gimmick than a fashion-model situation.

I guess I got used to the Gothic style, the punk style, the Latino look, etc.  Now.....just another trend.  Looking 1950ish, and glamourish.  Somehow.....it sells.  And the nifty thing for Peggy Sue....there's no real competition right now.

Sachsenhausen (Frankfurt)

 Somewhere in the spring of 1978, as I was stationed at Rhein Main Air Base, one of the guys in the barracks took me to Sachsenhausen....a suburb of sorts of Frankfurt, on the south side of the river.

Sachsenhausen is the pub district.  It's where the nightlife of Frankfurt and Hessen itself....mingle.

Based on the twenty turns that my associate took from the autobahn....I had no idea where we were and how to find any return to the base.  Parking in those days....meant parking a fair distance away and walking at least twenty minutes.

In this half-mile by half-mile area....there were probably sixty pubs, restaurants, and bars.  It was all cobble-stone, and laid out in an efficient German manner.

Over my period of 1978 and 1979....I probably made eight to ten trips to the area.  One of my dorm buddies took me by subway and trolley car.....which made better sense and I completely understood the layout and location after that.

In those days....the late 1970s....Sachsenhausen probably made half-a-million dollars off Army and Air Force guys stationed in the Frankfurt area each week.  Since both the Army and Air Force left.....it's probably ninety-seven percent German now, with a mingling of Americans, Brits, and different Europeans who stop off to spend the weekend in Frankfurt.

I went back to Frankfurt, to Sachsenhausen yesterday.  Haven't walked the street or district since December of 1979.  Course, it was daylight....everything closed up and folks sleeping off the night prior.  It was dirtier than I remember....maybe less paint....maybe less appealing.  Course, I always went at night...with the darkness and shadows hiding the obvious.

Most of the names of the business operations have changed.  Some are designed in a way for a particular customer (heavy-scale Latino music, rap music, Irish folk music, hearty German food, Thai food or drink, etc).  That slant on things didn't exist in the late 1970s.

I would guess in the summer of 1978, there were at least three thousand American GI's in Sachsenhausen on a typical evening.  Some stayed there on the street all night and simply walked back to their barracks in Frankfurt in the morning.  The biggest event for the Americans?  Somewhere around New Year's eve in 1985....some type of chaos occurred and several hundred Army guys just started running through the streets of the district....in mob formation.  No one said if it was the MPs who started some ID check or just some fight.  German cops arrived to kinda clean up the mess.

If you were interested in visiting the district?  Find Sachsenhausen on your city map and simply look to the far right of the district, coming over the bridge, and gaze over to your left.....where the pub district will start.  A parking garage has been built in recent years and is to your right after coming off the bridge (figure 300 meters).  It's five minutes walking from the parking garage.

My general advice?  I'd only go in the summer or spring period.  I wouldn't show up any earlier than 7PM.  There are restaurants on the outer edges, which serve good decent food and I'd start there first.  The cobblestones get a bit of your attention....try to avoid falling because there's broken glass everywhere (yeah, one of those significant safety factors which Army guys discovered if they got real drunk).

Liquid refreshment is of a average cost....so you won't be screwed over.  If you are unhappy with the music selection or character of the pub....just move on.  Most of the establishments stay open well past 1AM....so you can hang out enjoy yourself.  Trolley car?  They stop at the edge of the district, and will take you back to the Frankfurt Bahnhof.  Note, they tend to stop around 1AM.  Walking to the Bahnhof from there?  It'll take you thirty minutes.

So, if you were looking for a unclassy, unfashionable, hearty type of pub district....Sachsenhausen is it.  There's nothing modern ever going to be put into the district, and that's the way that customers prefer it.

A Pit Story

One of the more odd geographic features in my local area (Naurod)....sits about two miles over in Erbsenacker (resting on the ridge overlooking the valley).

If you pull out a map, you will see various trails leading from the north side of Erbsenacker around the village and heading south.  One of those will take you by the Kramstein Mine.  I'd call it more of a small quarry area.

At some point in the late 1800s.....someone discovered some different minerals on the hill, and simply started to dig away.  What is generally said....is that there's some quartz in the 'pit'.  There's also albite, azurite, limonite, malachite, and chalcopyrite.

As you stand on the walking trail goes within sixty feet of the pit.....you can see a little entranceway, then as you walk up....it's really more of a pit.

You'd come across this point in the trail about five minutes after you leave the village on the trail.  If you continue on the trail.....staying 'right'?  Well....it takes you along the main road leading into Wiesbaden.  Staying left....it takes you back along the valley and you can circle yourself back into Erbsenacker (it's a fairly long walk and eighty minutes to get finally back around to the village, but no real difficult climbs).  

The Thing About German Garbage

There are roughly a hundred things that an American has to get used to....as he settles into Germany, and the 'traditions'.  One of those things....is separation of garbage.

EVERYTHING is recycled.  Don't stand there and think for a moment that it's anything less than that.

Outside of most houses (as example, I use my neighbor's place)....there's a tidy arrangement of the four cans (regular, paper, plastic, bio).

There's a schedule pumped out once a year and everyone puts it up somewhere in the house.  You have to pay attention because each week....it's different.  Bio for five months of the year.....is usually only picked up every two to three weeks, then summer comes along and it's weekly. Plastic is usually every two weeks.  Regular garbage is a once a week thing.

Yeah, I admit....it's pretty silly.  You continually review the damn schedule and make sure the can is pulled out to the corner.  If you screw up....you are left with a overflowing can by the next run.  So you can't really afford to screw up on this.

Garbage police?  Well....up until a decade ago.....no one really allocated any positions in Germany for such work.  Then, up in north Germany....a county decided to ratchet it up a notch....hiring two guys to drive around and check cans.  This opened up a can of worms, and since then....most all garbage departments have at least one crew who make the rounds through an area of 150,000 residences.....occasionally checking one can or all.

For an American, it's hectic stuff.  Plastic only, in the plastic can.  Paper only in the paper can.  No batteries ever in the regular can.  Bio has severe limits (no citrus, but grass and leaves are perfectly fine).  A guy would have to sit down and spend probably ninety minutes analyzing the rules and standards.....then put up reminders to cover the dates.  While I admit....it is fairly simple.....it's a routine that you have to get used to and accept.    The negative is.....more rules, on top of extra rules, covered in a rules glaze.  

The Frankfurt Bahnhof

 In August of 1888....the Frankfurt Bahnhof (train station) opened up.  I doubt if anyone could have viewed it as a station-in-progress.  Almost every month....there's a project wrapping up and a new project on the board.  It is forever....in evolution.

I came to Germany in January of 1978, and about ten days into my arrival....I came to figure out the train system and make my way from the base over to Frankfurt.

Upon stepping out of the subway area....I entered the grand hall and just stood there for five minutes.  For a guy from Bama, it was an impressive sight.  As spring came around that year.....I spent almost an entire day walking the entire space of the bahnhof....from the top level to the subway areas.

Over the years....it's changed.  When I went back in 1984....there were homeless guys and drug sales guys all over the place.  If you walked through it....you did so at a fair pace, and got on the train to get out of the station.  Around 1992 when I came back....it was twice as bad.  No real business operations really existed in the subway area....they'd all vacated for the most part.

I've come to note over the past decade.....the bahnhof has cleaned up.  Between the real cops and the private security of the bahnhof.....they walk the station on a regular basis and put intense pressure on dopers to stay out.  It's hard to even find beggars now in the train-station....which used to be a regular thing.

Today?  You've got a dozen food spots to pick from (McDonalds included), and various shops selling tobacco, newspapers, and flowers.  You feel completely safe and it still retains that 1800s look.

The crown of the station?  You have to step outside of the building....going onto Kaiser Strasse and gaze back at the front.  On the roof is a fairly big statue.....a couple of guys holding up the world.

There are 350,000 people that transit the station everyday....which is remarkable in a way that things run on time....safely.....and in a fairly dependable state.  You might find a few bad days in the winter, with snow and ice delaying things....but it's rare.

Between the main station, the trolley car operation, the bus platform on the side, and the subway.....it's a transit work of wonder.  So if you happen to be stopping off in Frankfurt to change trains.....spend an hour just walking around and admiring one of the biggest stations in Europe.

The Turk Shops

One of the fifty-odd things that you need to 'tour' in Wiesbaden are the various Turkish-run bazaar shops (C&S for example).

The best description would be....a Woolworth's Five and Dime.....with dust-collector items on discount....and some pretty gaudy stuff.  Most everything you see in such a shop....will come from Turkey.

Germans shopping at the stores?  Well....I'd say half the clients are German.  They might only be window-shopping....but occasionally there's some good deals (like kitchen utensils or school materials for example ).

Unusual ornaments?  If you needed some really gaudy stuff to improve the appearance of your shed or patio.....maybe this is where you ought to shop.

There are around a dozen such shops sprinkled around the shopping district of Wiesbaden.  It's probably worth five minutes to walk in...browse....and walk out.

Power Charger

I set out on a walk through Frankfurt yesterday, and eventually came to see this odd stand next to a government building. It's a charging station for battery-powered cars.

The blue box is the power charger itself.  The silver-like box is a credit card acceptance device.

Basically, you pull up and park....paying your standard parking fee.  Then you hook up your charging cable to the blue box, and insert the credit card to pay for X amount of a charge.  It wasn't exactly clear how much the cost was.

Usage?  Well....it would be interesting to know in an average month how many folks pull up and use it.  It's the first one I've seen on the streets of Germany....most are rigged up at homes.....within a garage.

The Times Story and Germany

The New York Times did a piece today.....on the German worker, his income, and how a stalled pay scale is disrupting Europe's economy itself today.

What they say....is generally correct. For an entire decade....2000 to 2010....the after-taxation income was stagnant.....a grand total for ten years of a 1.4 percent gain.  That's NOT yearly.....that's for the entire decade.

From 1990 to 2000?  Well, it just barely gets any better, with a 7.5 percent gain, for the entire decade.  Again, that's NOT yearly.....that's for a ten-year period.

What the Times piece tries to do....is make the case that German workers should have been taking one to two percent gains every year or two.....like French or Italian or Spanish workers.  The slanted story suggests that if middle-income Germans just made more....they'd spend more.  They'd buy French wine, Greek summer vacations, Spanish washers and dryers, Italian sports cars, etc.

It's a nice suggestion, and perhaps a topic worth discussion.

Some faults are found in this logic though.  For hundreds of years....Germans have been working on this personal habit of practical management of income.  Debits and credits are balanced.  No one spends money they don't have.  If they made more money....it doesn't really mean they'd spend more money.

When you sit back and examine the past decade.....Germans across the country saved money.  Even with the crappy 2008-era with bad US banking situations and some Germans losing savings....the Germans simply didn't fall the way that the US or it's European neighbors fell.

When Greece fell into the pit and asked the EU for serious help, and the EU kinda said it wasn't going to be guaranteed thing....especially with Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in trouble.  Who did have money?  Germany.  Yeah, the guys who took less pay.....the guys who made it a life decision to run balanced checkbooks.....the guys who skimped and saved on home renovations by often doing the work themselves or hiring Polish under-the-table workers.

Yeah.....somehow, those Germans had cash still in their hand....when everyone else didn't.

Stagnant employment situation?  No.  Germany is actually accepting workers from Greece, Spain and a number of European countries.  By the time you figure benefits and leave.....no one really complains that much.  Maybe it is less pay.....but you consider roughly five weeks of vacation, a pension program that is stable (for the moment), and almost no company downsizing.....there's a success story here.

How does the logic go with the Times article?  It's hard to say.  Somehow, I'm supposed to believe that less German-worker pay hurt Europe.  Yet, their companies are surviving.....no one is Greece is complaining about ample German cash reserves and savings (yeah, they complain about Nazi history but that's another story).

Germans satisfied?  Now.  Just this week in my village....another round of the bus-driver strike is affecting me.  No bus service into Wiesbaden tomorrow.  And there's the chances of another day of strike next week.  Strikes are becoming commonplace as workers sit and demand a 1.5 to 2.5 percent raise.

I'm not sure what the Times was trying to tell in the story.  Maybe some slant belief item from the commerce or state department?  Maybe.  A foundation goofball with a Nobel Prize for Economics chatting up to a Times reporter over theory?  Maybe.  It's just another case where you really have to read through the stuff printed as news today and ask stupid questions.

Explaining the German Spa Concept (Historically)

The Greeks and the Romans played up this concept of water water springs.  There were medicinal benefits tied to usage, and if you were of a better status in life.....you tended to use the springs more than the regular guy on the street.

When the Romans came north into Germany and did their element of conquering around 12 BC.  Control by the Romans over the Wiesbaden area?  There's some discussion over the date....but most side that around 120 AD....the Romans had some type of control over the local region.  What most will say is that the warm springs of the local area drew the Romans, and it was the magnet for regional development of the baths.

All of this came to some evolution of sorts when the regional tribes did a partnership with the Romans....to help them eliminate any threat...coming around the year 370.  For around 120 years....this partnership survived, and was eventually defeated by the Franks.

You can eliminate Roman control over the spa business in 496, and with the Franks....came the curious episode of making Wiesbaden a capital city of the Franks.

For the next thousand years....the Catholic church plays some part in role of Wiesbaden, and it's spa business.

Around the early 1800s....there's stability....and medicinal advice being given by 'experts' over the benefits of warm water bathing.  There's minor tourist industry developing.

By the 1850s....between the spa operations, the casino, and the grand hotels....Wiesbaden became a thriving spa resort.

If you were a major hotel in town.....you had bathing rooms for the guests to reserve.  The average room was around 15 feet by 30 feet, with a fairly good sized tub in the back of the room.  A window was typically in each room, with nicer grades of tile on the floor.  The local geothermal waters were pumped in, and a guy would sit for approximately forty-five minutes (one hour periods were the norm, but the bath lady always had to clean it and prepare for the next guest).  So you paid for the water treatment, and did that several times in a week as your "kur".

You would have the bathing room set for you as you enter....the bathing lady would leave.  You'd undress and lay in a tub with greatly heated water.  Maybe later....you'd swim in a local pool, and talk London or Paris gossip with the guys in the sauna. That night, you'd sit around the Casino....gamble a little, and talk politics.  Maybe on a warm afternoon.....you'd have some ice cream or cold beer to replenish your liquids. You relaxed.....you talked business.....you took a holiday from life.

The Hotel Zais and the Hotel of the Four Seasons....ran combined bath house deal with forty-four bathing rooms (they were opposite of the casino).

The Eagle Hotel had around seventy-five bathing rooms.

The Nassauer Hof had thirty-six bathing rooms.

The Rose Hotel ran fifty-one bathing rooms.

After those five hotels.....there were structures simply for bathing and had nothing to do with the resort hotel operations.  All total?  Around twenty-three business fronts operating as spa centers, with around five hundred bathing rooms.

Between the upper-class hotels, the four-star establishments, and the slightly lesser hotels.....the entire town was bustling on bathing water "sales".

What came out of this period was periodic journals or magazines....in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the US, England, and Russia.....about the robust health aspects of laying in warming waters, with the right content of natural elements.  Doctor "so-v-so" would talk up the magical numbers of potash, sulphur, and Silicic Acid.  All of these cured body ailments, muscle pains, and restored youth.

Added to the list of bathing cures......Wiesbaden had an ample number of doctors in the area which treated your special problems (cysts, blood circulation in your legs, back pain, and graying hair).  You pick it.....they were willing to help fix your problem....for a price.

All of this was a resort magnet, and naturally brought the rich and wealthy from across Europe to Wiesbaden....almost yearly.  A guy would pack up his wife in London....take a ship over, and travel by boat or train down to Frankfurt.....then over to Wiesbaden by the Taunus Railway.   If you could afford the upper-scale hotels, great.  If you needed less.....there were ample accommodations in town to handle just about every category of spender.

In a sense....for roughly seventy-odd years.....it was a status symbol to say you were a banker out of London, and spent three weeks in Wiesbaden every summer for your health issues and stress.  Maybe between the walks in the city park....the fine food and wine.....the bathing waters....and just the quiet nature of the city.....you got better.  Or at least you believed that.

In the summer of 1914.....that resort spa status ended.  Except for Germans.....for the next forty-odd years....no one came back.  By the 1960s.....Wiesbaden had some resort tourism going on, but the health spa status?  It's mostly gone.

Without WW I/WW II.....Wiesbaden becomes an interesting topic of discussion.  The resort status would have grown.  The population of the city would likely be double what it is today (281,000).  And the city would be consumed over health, bathing, fine foods, and eliminating stress in every conceivable way.

World Cup Games A Coming

We are roughly fifty days away now.....from the World Cup.

For an American....what the heck does this mean?  Well....it's the soccer championship that occurs every four years.  It rotates around and this time....it's down in Brazil. For German folks....it's like the Fourth of July, Christmas, and the second coming of Christ.  Well....it's pretty dramatic, and around forty percent of German society will be frustrated, talkative, and stressed-out during this month long period.

Some details that matter?  First, in this bracket deal....there's three games that matter for the Germans.  There's the Portugal game on the 16th of June....starting at 1PM Brazil time, meaning a prime-time event for Germans as they sit and watch the game in comfort and with an ample supply of beer and brats.  PLEASE do not call your German male associate during the game hours.  It would be very displeasing.

I should note.....Germany is expected to have a tough game, but by some miracle....will beat Portugal.  If they lose....it'll be a fairly dramatic moment, and frustrations will be shown the next day at work.

Game two?    21st of June....against Ghana at 4PM Brazil time.  This means an awful late game to watch in Germany, with Germans likely up to 1AM and awful tired as they stroll into work the next day.  The odds on beating Ghana?  Well....Ghana usually shows up with one five-star player and gives everyone this brief moment that he might be enough to beat standard soccer teams.  It's a German win.....with the experts already calling it that way.

Game three?  26th of June, at 1PM, against the US.  This will mean a prime-time TV event, and enough sleep rest for Germans to typically recover by the next day.  As for beating the US?  It's not likely to occur unless two or three of the big names on the German squad get into red-card episodes (thus disqualified from this game) with Ghana.  Throwing a couple of prime but lesser subs onto the field against the US....might go heavily against Germany.  Expectation?  A German win.

After this series.....the first and second place winners go into a new pool, with new participants, and the games start to go later for Brazil prime-time.  This means a midnight start-time here in Germany.  This has suddenly gotten to the union bosses across Germany, with most now demanding some type of schedule change for major industries....on the mornings after such games.

Companies will tell you that they will cooperate to some degree, but they aren't happy about it, and it will reflect in some minor trade-off later with the unions.

So you....as the typical American living around Germans....will come to wake up around 1AM and realize that there's sixteen apartments around with the houselights still on.  It'll seem odd and you stand on the balcony to hear a singular TV audio coming from all the apartments.  The secondary series will lead onto the semi finals, and then the finals.

The odds of the Germans going all the way to the finals?  I wouldn't want to speculate.....but the Italians always tend to be one of the final four in this business.

For four brief weeks....simply prepare for soccer discussions, and tired Germans on the day after games.  Then, it'll be over and we can all get back to reality.  Oh, and I should note.....only ten percent of the German female population has any interest in the outcome of the games, and most will be a bit hostile over this lengthy and odd behavior from German men.

Natascha Kampusch in 2014

Back in 2006, I sat here in Germany and watched the Natascha Kampusch episode unfold in Austria.

Natascha had been grabbed off the street as a kid....kidnapped....and held for eight years by a guy in a simple neighborhood....pretending to be sane and normal, and just desiring some prisoner of sorts. In 2006, she finally escaped, and the guy committed suicide a few hours after the escape.

What she laid out was this lifestyle of containment as a kid.  Books and magazines were read.  Hours were spent listening to the radio.  From every aspect.....she was a prisoner.

What happened since 2006?  The London Daily Mail did a short update story this weekend over Natascha.  Basically.....she tried to get into an educational phase, and has kinda lost interest.  No real explanations but I would imagine she's not the type that really desires to sit in a room with twenty to forty students....listening to some lecture.

The driving class to get a license?  Well....the pressure and stress of an instructor is a bit too much for her there.  Here in Germany.....you only get the license after you've gone through twenty-odd hours of hands-on driving with some instructor sitting beside you and continually correcting your behavior, your mistakes, and your attitude.  I doubt if she has the stamina to sit there and allow some instructor into that type of confined area of a car for an hour.

Contact issues?  The London Daily Mail hints that she doesn't do contact with people that well.  She's an intensely private person.....by my reading of their account.  People ask questions.....people want to know how she feels....people try to put themselves into her position and discuss the matter....none of this really matters within the defined world of Natascha.

At the age of twenty-six....it's hard to say where this story goes.  Career work?  Ninety-eight percent of all jobs in the commercial world revolve around meeting people and working with a customer base.  I don't think she'll ever fit into any of those jobs.  From the remaining two percent?  Between anxiety, panic attacks and personal stress....a simple eight hour a day job would be absolute torture for her.  Toss in yearly evaluations or trainer-involvement.....it'll be near impossible for any long term job.

The other side of this story is that she is an extremely bright individual.....heavily focused on every single detail and event within close proximity of her.....probably calculating forty scenarios in her mind at any given time.  Trust and control in her mind?  It's measured in Planck length.  Planck length is the magnificent device that scientist Max Planck developed...giving the smallest possible way of measuring a defined object.

You can feel some pity for Natascha....along with some hope.  The trouble is that in her mind....it's one against a million, and trust will never resolve itself in any way of living a typically normal lifestyle.  I would imagine just going on a hike....would amount to walking with a seven-hundred pound gorilla next to you and the threat of a thunderstorm going from possibly maximum power to absolute maximum power.  Stopping for a burger at McDonalds?  It means human contact....questions asked (stupid questions I admit)....and unnecessary stress at having to deal with another person.

In a way, Natascha has exchanged prison version 1.0.....for prison version 2.0.  She's never free....just consumed with acting free and pretending to be marginally recovered.

TV Show: "Young Germany"

The public-run TV guys here in Germany produced a 90-minute documentary of historical background on the last one-hundred years of Germany.  Yesterday (Easter Monday).....it played up to the 8:00PM time slot.

It was an awkward way of telling German history.  First, there's this limitation of one hundred years.  Second, it's told by two moderators or narrators....both around seventeen or eighteen years old.....talking to each other, rather than the camera.  It felt like two teenagers talking gossip over an afternoon....historical gossip.  Third, while they had a great deal of historical footage and pictures from the database.....they continually wove soap-opera-like video of themselves in the historical piece.....made to fit the older video shots. Yeah, kinda like reality TV.  Fourth....after a while, I came to realize that they emphasizing history from the prospective of a teenager at the time....not from a historian's view.  Fifth?  Cherry-picking.  There were two segments where the anti-nuclear stance of German youth were brought up (late 1950s and early 1970s).....yet they decided that the Bader-Meinhof gang era would not even be mentioned.

The network guys took up the issue that most German teenagers don't care about German history, and tried to make something "cool" and direct to the thinking of a teenager.

On a scale of one to ten.....historically speaking....I give the show a "five".  The cherry-picking bothers me, and the attempt to make this all "cool"....mostly failed.

But here's the curious thing.  From the age-group of fourteen to twenty-one.....the age group that ARD is pushing the show across to.....I would imagine that less than five-percent of the country's youth watch their network on any given evening.  Most prefer the commercial networks, with live action, or reality shows.

Last night's viewership?  I'd take a guess that less than 2,000 German teenagers watched the show.....most had better choices or were enjoying the day outside.  The bulk of the viewers?  My humble opinion is that the bulk were people over the age of sixty, and kinda remember things in a slightly different fashion.....thus getting into arguments and discussion over the method of telling the history story involved.

A failure?  No.  What will happen is that most German school teachers trying to teach German history.....will get a DVD of the show, and incorporate it into the class structure over the years to come.  It might provoke some class discussion, and at least bring kids one notch higher than they are today.  Even lousy historical items like this.....have some value.  

Local Windmill Feud

Here in the rurals of Wiesbaden....as urban rural as a guy can get....there's a fight underway between the environmentalists, the urban-ites, the progressive folks, the windmill enthusiasts, and just about anyone who doesn't have hobbies to keep themselves busy.

From the map you see.....I live over on the far right side....in the tiny village of Naurod.  The red striped areas?  That's the areas where the windmill folks have done the studies and project lots of wind.  Naturally, it's a ridgeline on a hill, which is about 1.5 to 2 miles from Wiesbaden.

Folks get peppy about landscape....especially from Wiesbaden.  They believe God descended down from the heavens, and blessed them with the best darn landscape that you could ask for.  Never mind the fact that TV towers can be seen in six different directions, on various hilltops overlooking the region.

The anti-windmill mafia?  Well, they've gotten to organizing. Part of the scheme is to get locals writing letters to political folks and the newspapers.  Naturally, most folks aren't bright about this.....so there's a hint to help them along in writing their thoughts on this.

What they suggest is that you need to lead off and really harp on landscaping damage and recreation limitations.  If you just see a windmill....it gets you depressed and negative....especially if it's two miles down the road.  Yeah, I'm not sure how you'd get this across....other than admitting you were drinking a lot and it was all caused by windmill viewing.  The more windmills.....the more booze.

So, we move onto issue point two.....fire, ice thrown from the blades and lightning.  Yeah, the 200 meter tall windmills are a magnet for lightning.  Frankly, it'd be kinda nice to sit on my balcony in a thunderstorm and watch bolts of lightning struck the blades.  Course, TV towers also are a magnet.  In fact, most houses now in my village have lightning rods on the roof.....to absorb the bolt and send it to the ground.  The logic in this political statement?  Well.....your very own house is a problem, if you start talking like this.  And the ice?  Unless you are standing underneath the blade there on some cold afternoon when the ice breaks off from the blade....that's the about the only way to get whacked.

Issue point three?  It's bound to affect drinking water.  I sat there for five minutes....trying my best to think how water would be affected.  You see....most everyone in the entire region.....drinks water coming off the ridge.  There's underwater caverns on the ridge, which pump out tens of thousands of gallons per hour.....to twenty different communities in the region.  An effect on water?  If there were chemicals involved in windmill usage, maybe so.  But I've yet to see any windmill that had some chemical gimmick.  Bad excuse....if you ask me.

Issue point four?  Bird strike.  What the windmill mafia will readily admit.....birds get into some dive related to the blades, and get whacked.  No one wants to talk numbers, but you can assume one single windmill with three blades....likely kills at least a dozen birds a month.....minimum.  Maybe it's a decent reason to forbid them.....ALL of them....but then we kinda opened this Pandora's Box a long time ago.

Issue point five?  Infrasound.  A lot of folks in smaller towns where the windmills were built near.....have complained in recent years of continued issues of dizziness and a throbbing sound.  If you live within a kilometer of a windmill.....you might have an issue to complain about.  The locations on the map?  Well....to be honest....it's at least one kilometer from any community.

Issue point six?  Air safety.  Supposedly.....a low flying plane might get whacked by the blades.  In the nine months I've been a "prisoner" of the village here.....I've never seen a low-flying plane.

Issue point seven?  Property loss.  If you throw up a windmill farm of five windmills....they consume around ten acres of property.  There's not much way to avoid this issue.  Course, all of the regions under discussion are state forest properties, and in the middle of walking trails.  It's not taking away village property, farming land, or urban acreage.

Issue point eight?  Bats and wildcats.  Yeah....it's a pretty long stretch.  The woods are full of bats and I'm guessing it might be a problem.  Course, all these bikers and hikers disturb the bats, and no one says much about that.  The wildcats?  I have walked the woods on dozens of occasions, and never seen such an animal.  Lynx and wildcats?  Maybe you should make up stories about the wolves of Naurod, or the wild bears that roam the woods....with little girls wandering around in red capes....going to grandma's house.

Issue point nine?  Beetles.  Yeah, somehow, it'd disturb the various bugs and beetles of the region.  Roads also disturb them....as do bikers and hikers.  It's a lousy argument.

Issue point ten?  The all inclusive UNESCO heritage project.  They seek to have the town put into the sacred category of spa resorts of worldly renown statue.  The only issue is that the resort spa town status died off in 1914, and most of the hotels that were part of that tourist scheme are long gone....as are most of the spas.  Course, there is the enteral worry that this windmill deal would really screw up the application.  Never mind the fact that no one really believes it will do much for the city except add one more sign, and one more status symbol to the city.  

I will admit.....these guys are bright in their endeavour to stand against the windmill project.  The fact that they are the same ones who stand against nuke power, believe in climate change, and generally always side with environmentalists.....taking a stand against windmills....makes them look hypocritical.  I'm guessing they will get at least three thousand of the locals charged up and each will write a letter.  Chatting up a storm over their precious landscape.....talking about the wildcats of the woods, and harping over the UNESCO project.  At least it keeps them busy.

"Black" Money and Luxembourg

The Local.de put up an article today....related to German customs folks and the search of an older German couple crossing Luxembourg into Germany.  The story goes....customs folks stop them....ask to search, and then come across 200,000 Euro....taped onto the various body elements of the two (yeah, even the genitals as the article described the situation).

There's a hefty fine involved in this cash and carry deal.  Questions will be asked.  Time in jail?  I doubt it.  But of the 200,000 Euro....I suspect they will lose at least a quarter of the money in fines and lawyer costs.  Additional money in Luxembourg?  Well....they will be questioned and asked to sign statements.  Basically, if you lie.....you could owe more money.

All of this brings one to the topic of Luxembourg and hidden money.  Generally, for the past fifty-odd years....Germans have hidden money in Luxembourg.  They'd done in simple ways, and in complex ways.

Banks in Luxembourg used easily allow German customers....but times got tough and regulations more difficult.  Then Germans got into buying property....quietly....and putting secret money into assets like that.  Some Germans even get into deals of investing with some Luxembourg resident to buy a pub or hotel.....letting them hold the asset until they are ready to part company.

German society is fairly negative about tax episodes.  Germans work hard for their money, and don't see much reason to hand over thirty to fifty percent of what they make.  You have lots of craftsmen now....carpenters, roofers, plumbers....who do weekend work and make 30,000 to 100,000 Euro a year in secret money.  Taking a weekend job....you could easily make 4,000 over two weekend, and you really don't care to admit the money and pay taxes.  So it makes sense to hide it.

German customs folks got smart over the years.  Every single road leading out of Luxembourg is generally monitored at various times of the day.  You can cross the river....into Germany....make it three to five miles....thinking you are completely safe, then turn the corner and find a roadblock.  I had this to happen once.  They ask to look in the car, and if nothing suspicious is noted....they let you go (as in my case).

Round the clock coverage?  For the most part.  Patrols lessen at night, I am told....and if you transit via the autobahn....you might have a higher chance of no customs stops.  However, even on the autobahns....the customs folks have authority to pass you.....give you the light, and pull you over.

A decade ago....I was watch German news and they had this craftsman with a RV.  He and the wife were driving from Germany into Luxembourg and were likely less than 500 yards from the border.  Pulled over....the customs folks search the whole vehicle top to bottom....then come to the coffee can.  Bundled up....there must have been around 25,000 Euro in the can (in big bills).  They asked his intent but he kept quiet.  They end up filing a report on this, and some audit will be done down the line.  Lawyer costs?  You can figure he had to engage a big-name guy and pay out at least 15,000 Euro to clear himself.

My general advice on this?  It's best to avoid these situations entirely....but if you were stupid enough to desire crossing into Germany with 200,000 Euro.....I'd find myself a rubber raft.....cross the river at midnight, and drive safely out of the Luxembourg region on secondary roads between midnight and 6AM.  I doubt if any of the customs folks are on duty at that time....and if so....most are likely around the autobahn area.

Finally, I'm pondering over what this elderly couple was intending to do with the 200,000 Euro they were sneaking over.  A new house?  Paying off some debt?  A big villa?  A new business?  It would have been curious to know how they were going to use the money.

The Berlin Memorial Episode

Two German newspapers today took an unusual step with a public petition of sorts that is being pushed to remove tank memorials in the middle of Berlin, near the Soviet WW II memorial on 17 June Strasse....leading up to the Brandenburg Tor.

If you've been to Berlin, the 17 June Strasse is the main drag running east to west in the center of town.  The Tiergarden area takes up a fair amount of space in town, and the memorial was built in 1945....just six months after Soviet forces took the city.  Impressive?  It's as grand as the WW II Memorial in DC.  What few people realize after visiting the site is that it's really the burial grounds for roughly 2,000 (at least that's what the Russians say) Soviet troops during the Berlin last day's fight.

The memorial has two tanks, one at each front edge.  All of the WW II variety.

The petitions involved?  The memorial itself should stay, but the two tanks represent a problem for the new German mentality of supporting Ukraine.  Bad guys, bad memorial tanks, etc.

The newspapers pushing the agenda?  Bild is the national paper which is generally read by the working class guy.  You can best describe Bild as a paper writing up the top twenty significant items of news....in forty words or less.  It's a paper that a guy can read on the way to work and be done by the end of morning break.

The second paper is the Berlin Zeitung (BZ)....which works along with the same ingredients....working guy's paper.....short on details....etc.

The memorial has faced a number of public episodes over the years.  In 2010....near Victory in Europe Day.....the memorial was vandalized with red paint.  The city was accused by the Russians as doing little to protect the memorial.

The effect of the petitions?  I would imagine that they will get 300,000 signatures within a month, and put the city council in a very difficult position.  Of course, the Berlin city council IS NOT known for making quick or sudden decisions....so even if they were to go with the petition....it could be two years before a final decision is made, and they might only remove the tanks to some WW II museum within the boundary of the city of Berlin.

One possibility?  The German-Russian Museum at Berlin-Karlshorst.  It'd be a natural fit and give defining history to the tanks.

What's this all add up to?  Well....it only brews more hostility and frustrations over the regular Russian guy, the Russian image machine, and Putin.  A thousand Russian thugs show up for some Russia-Germany soccer match....dispatch 2,000 Germans to medical facilities, and it just heats up another notch over the Ukraine business.

Germany, Ukraine, and Russia

For whatever reason....Germany has started this week off with comments over dire consequences of the Ukraine and its situation.

German Foreign Minister Steinmeier made the quote of the day:  “It cannot be, seven decades after the end of the second world war and 25 years after the end of the cold war, that we start changing borders based on ethnic, linguistic or religious factors.“

One of Merkel's spokesmen put in the best sense.....you've got paramilitary guys wandering around....pretending to be military....then pretending to be civilian.  This opens up a can of worms, if any armed conflict starts up.

Since the Berlin Wall went down....Germany has been disarming it's military.  Between the SPD and Greens....with mild cooperation by the CDU/CSU.....it's been a step-by-step process.  Logically, it didn't make any sense because everyone saw Russia as a somewhat warm friendly neighbor.  No one foresaw any bullying tactics as a future problem.

The US master plan for disarming?  Well...since the early 90's....we've been cutting on installations and troops in Europe.  There's no need....as we continually viewed the future.  Even now.....there's likely dozens of minor cuts hidden on future plans of this administration until 2016 for European deployed US troops.

The odds of Russia being able to invade Europe itself?  Zero.  But there's this curious thing that has occurred over the past twenty years.  Russians have packed up and left Russia.

They are mostly disinterested in staying because of economic issues, jobs, and corruption.  3.5 million Russians have come to live in Germany today.

If you stop any Russian on the streets of Wiesbaden.....ask them over local conditions and if they'd like to go back to where they were.....most would laugh and say no.  They found better circumstances.

The Russians in the Ukraine?  To some degree....it was a easy entry point, a simple job, and one step up in the world of economics.  The Ukraine had deals brewing with various European countries, and a number of companies were showing profit margins....something you can't find with most Russian companies (unless you talk natural gas or oil).

All it took were some thugs to enter the Ukraine picture, talk negative about government, and a week or two later.....you've got problems.  In some ways.....I'm guessing that the Germans are asking some stupid questions now.

In the spring of 1914....nobody in Europe foresaw a war being imminent.  From 1870 to 1914....what Prussian military generals generally said.....was that a short war was just around the corner.  They saw this as their mark of confidence.  They'd fight some threat, who didn't have any support from other countries.....and run a twelve-month war.  For several decades....the Prussian military ran things in full confidence of their abilities.

The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand occurred on 28 June.    The dozen-odd events to start the war ran up to 1 August, and then spilled over with dissolved relations taking less than a day or two.  No German really believes in a repeat of the 1914 episode.....but no one really saw the Ukraine falling this way either.....over a silly trade deal with the EU.  No weapons.....no threats....no annexations....no hostility....just a stupid trade deal to open up markets and put more jobs and money into Ukraine.  All of this?  Worth fighting some guerrilla war or Russian invasion over?  That's the sad part of the story.

The Fake Montage of Wiesbaden

 The picture you see....is a montage....a fake.  Sadly, it's one off the Wiesbaden Burgerliste magazine that comes out monthly.

There's a fight underway....primarily by the SPD party in Wiesbaden, and a number of landscape lovers....who believe this idea of putting windmills up on the Taunuskamm (the ridgeline overlooking Wiesbaden)....is a terrible idea.

Yes, the same folks talk excessively about climate change and global warming, but the idea of putting windmills in the valley?  Oh no....you just can't do that.

The suggested project was one that would place a couple of windmills on the farthest hillside that you see.  The chief reason?  Wind flow and dependable wind strength.  the actual size of a windmill, if you used the same Picture?  About a third of the size that you see in this picture.  You have to remember....the hills in question are about two miles beyond Russian Orthodox Church that you see with the shiny roof.

I'd take a guess that 200,000 copies of the Burgerliste gets printed and delivered to all households within the Wiesbaden city limits.  Everyone will note the frontpage....note how the landscape is scarred with the windmills, and thus go anti-wind mill.  Though....the same crowd wants to talk excessively about climate change.  Yeah, go figure.

Where will the electrical power come from when the nuke power systems are turned off?  Somewhere else....with scarred landscapes and purity of wind energy driving the agenda.....that's the general consensus.  So if you were wondering what the additional games are in the Wiesbaden UNESCO application....yeah, this is one of the issues that cannot be allowed to occur.

Casino Rules of 1857

In the spring of 1857.....the Nassau police commission sat down and established some rules and regulations over gambling within the city limits of Wiesbaden.  Since the casino was the only authorized place to gamble....it was chiefly meant for the customers who utilized the casino (the out-of-town crowd and the rich and elite).

Rule 1: Play could start at 11AM each day, and run for twelve hours....except for Sundays or holidays where casino gambling was stopped promptly at 3PM.

Rule 2: The dealer can only start play into action, when he utters: "Ca va!"  It basically means....all bets are now valid.  Only after uttering that word....will the game go into the next stage of play.

Rule 3: Roulette is treated slightly different than rule two.  Instead of "Ca va", the phrase uttered will be "Rien ne va plus"....which means don't put anymore more money on the table....the game is about to be played.

Rule 4: The casino bank is not responsible for errors of those playing.  If you were that stupid to walk in, then this rule erased blame on the casino operators.

Rule 5: At the game of Thirty and Forty or Black and White.....a poker-related game that French usually play but was widely accepted at Wiesbaden's casino....once the cards are cut by a bystander at the table....the dealer is no longer responsible for the outcome of the game.  Again, it protected the casino against losses.

Rule 6: Counterfeit or chipped coins, no payment is made.  One could say that counterfeit issues were always an issue at any casino, and the police rule on this simply fixed potential issues from happening.

Rule 7:  Paper money will not be accepted within the casino, for any game.  So, you had to deal with the casino bank, and buy their chips....redeeming your winnings later.

Rule 8: The casino bank will not loan money.  I should note, the city of Nassau operated a state-run pawn shop, with a separate list of rules.....to engage the loan industry and help the poor guys who showed up with only a minimum amount of cash to pay their resort bills.

Rule 9: Money limits were placed on various games.  For example, for Thirty and Forty, you were limited to 400 Fredrich d'or's (the Prussian gold coin currency at the time).  It should be noted that the Fredrich d'or currency was replaced within a year or two of the regulations set by the Nassau police on this issue.

Rule 10: If any accident befalls the roulette wheel....for any reason....then all bets are off.

(Source: Wiesbaden and Its Environs, published in 1864)

Book Review: Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons

By Henry Charles Mahoney, 1917

It is the true story of a Brit, who has been given travel directions and tries to make journey around the first of August, 1914.  Sadly, he arrives in the midst of Germany....as the war is about to start.  They look over his baggage....find cameras.....sort through things, and decide he is a war criminal....then spends sixteen months in the worst possible situations.

Never in uniform....he is continually believed to be a spy.  Sadly, his treatment is about as bad as it comes.

The Prussian military mentality is displayed as Nazi-like in a number of ways.  Those from Britain, France, Russia and Belgium are treated terribly.

Mahoney will make his way around Germany....getting released from prison camp but forbidden to leave the country.  Then arrested again.....then released.  It's a pretty lousy experience.

So when he comes back sixteen months later....he writes the book.  It's taken to the public.....in newspaper articles and tends create what the Prussians never calculated upon.

From the 1870s on....Prussia enjoys fairly good economic times....with a fair amount of tourism due to the rich and elite of various neighboring countries coming and enjoying the landscape and lifestyle.  I doubt if the Kaiser, the Prussian military, or leadership of various states in Prussia understood what would occur as the war ended.

Prussia came to 1919 and likely thought that the war would end, and things would go back to the 'norm'.  It never did.  The 1920s and 1930s....saw little to none of the tourism traffic return.  After WW II.....it's hard to find any real tourism traffic within Germany except for Germans themselves, and Americans.  It's not until you get to the mid-1970s....that you notice tourism picking up.

What economic calamities came after 1919....can be attributed to a fair degree to the anger and frustrations from the rest of Europe.  If you drive around Wiesbaden and note the upper scale homes built around town....all came before 1914.  All came from business and resort enterprise success stories in Wiesbaden's spa district.  The rich and elite came....they spent money....and the money stayed in town.  The same is true for Baden-Baden.....Stuttgart.....Berlin and a dozen other major vacation spots before WW I.

The book?  Worth reading, but you have fairly negative view of Prussian military officers after reading  it.  Those who'd say it's a fictional account?  I'd just suggest to read around and find others who write similar stories.  The reason we have a Geneva Convention....are the accounts that came out of WW I.

The History of the Taunus Railway

As fall approached in 1838....Wiesbaden was set to change forever....because of a simple priority in infrastructure.  The Taunus Railway project was underway in September of that year.  The plan was to lay out a track.....the first in the region.....from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden.  A length of 42 kilometers (roughly thirty miles).

It was a project had to be signed onto by two different entities....the free-city of Frankfurt (unattached to any state but itself), and the Duke of Nassau (Wiesbaden's controlling authority in this period).  It wasn't an easy sales job.  What most people in the Nassau saw....was a threat to the port operation presently at work in Mainz.  Fewer ships stopping to off-load....meant less revenue for the Nassau area.  The general perception was that ships would stop in Frankfurt....off-load....and shipment would be delivered by the railway.

This argument went on for a number of months, and finally was resolved enough to convince the Duke of Nassau to buy into the project. The chief finance vehicle behind the expensive railway?  Well....two Frankfurt banks got into the discussion and saw it as an investment opportunity....too big to miss. The syndicate players?  Gebrüder Bethmann and Rothschild.  What the investment planners found....was extreme interest via the rich and elite in the region in a 'can't-miss' opportunity.  Bluntly, they had more money in their hand than they probably expected.

Roughly a year later, the track was complete on phase one and the stations set into motion.  You could basically go from Frankfurt inner city to Hochst.....a distance of twelve kilometers (roughly nine miles).  No one says much over the travel between the two points....you could walk it in three hours for free.  I doubt if they had that many folks doing the trip unless it was for the thrill itself.

The completed job from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt?  May of 1840....roughly a year later.

What occurred in the weeks after this completion is a rather odd story.  The port guys over at Mainz....still frustrated over the approval and construction....continued to believe that the railway was bringing bad economic times to their business traffic.  This frustration also crossed over into the merchant trade of Mainz.  At some point in 1841....the merchants and port folks decided to cross the river....to Biebrich (on the Wiesbaden side of the Rhine), and try to shut down the port.

The simple act?  They found enough boats and heavy stones, and put a barrier into the area around Biebrich's port.....which basically diverted ALL traffic away from their port....to the nearest port (Mainz of course).  It was a pretty thought plan, and required a good bit of work to accomplish.  Legally, all that Nassau (Wiesbaden) could do....was complain to the local government structure over Mainz.....then residing in Darmstadt.  Needless to say....nothing got solved quickly.  It was the spring of the next year before the stone obstacles were removed.

During this same period.....the same crowd came to threaten the railway line between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden.  In this case....the crowd met up with armed policemen....willing to shoot.

Stability then occurred, and the railway prospered.

The Taunus Railway then takes up the one of three major developments, which turn Wiesbaden into a resort status vacation spot....for the rich and elite of Europe to come, enjoy the spa waters, gamble in the casino, enjoy the Kur Park, local food and dining, and of course....spend money.

Without the railway development, there is no expansion of Nassau or Wiesbaden, and the magnificent houses along the main streets of the city....never get built.

History Lesson Over Nassau and "Rights"

Americans can trace their basic rights back to 1776, and readily identify this to a revolution.  Well, here in the Wiesbaden region....things came a bit later that that for individual rights.  In the 1800s....Wiesbaden was Nassau, and 'managed' by the Duke of Nassau.

In the spring of 1848....a revolution was sweeping Europe.  Various political figures were staging rallies and events, which were frustrating the leadership of various cities, states, and empires.  The agenda item?  Democratic reform.

What can generally be said is that 1846 was a lousy year for agriculture, and there was a serious degree of famine for that particular fall and winter.  Naturally, food riots erupted as people lacked enough to survive.  Over a period of roughly eighteen months.....things were in a spiral.

Adding to this...industrial growth was mounting in urban areas of Europe, which led to negatives over living conditions, and what most would agree as a trend....ghetto-living.

Here in the Nassau region (Wiesbaden).....things came to head on the 4th of March of 1848.  Flyers had been posted, and a disorderly crowd of roughly 30,000 came to protest at the local castle that housed the Duke of Nassau (near the river's edge of Bebrich).  Statistically.....the 30,000 represented around one-third of the entire male population of the region.

The threat to storm the residence came to some peaceful conclusion, where the leaders of the protest wanted to send more of a threat....than take down the Duke.

Five weeks would pass, and the Duke would issue a civil rights proclamation.....which was loosely translated into the "Nine Claims of Nassau".

The rights?

Religious freedom.  The vote for all people (meaning men, of course).  The freedom to carry and keep weapons.  Freedom of the press.  A parliamentary situation where laws might be introduced.  A mandatory oath for all military individuals to support the Constitution or Claims.  Freedom of Association.  Public trials.  Domains were to result into being public or state property.

This ended the revolutionary era, and for the most part....stabilized Nassau for generations to come.  The odd part of the story?  Normally, a bunch of hooligans, thugs, or revolutionary individuals meet....iron out their differences....write up their own rights agenda....sign it.....and the act is done.  In this case....one man...the duke...wrote the rights package, signed it, and closed the whole affair.