In my local area.....we have this musical theater operation which was built in the early 1990s, and from 1995 to 1998....they ran the musical Sunset Boulevard. This was a 1,500 seat musical hall.....ultra modern by 1990s standards....connected a newly-built hotel, which was a minute off the autobahn. It lays outside of the Frankfurt urban zone, and is just minutes away from Wiesbaden itself.
Somehow in the planning process, they even convinced the local town of Niedernhausen and the Bahn folks.....to put in a special stop behind the theater....where the train from Frankfurt could stop and let audience members off and on the rapid-railway system.
Once Sunset Boulevard shut down....it's been mostly 'cats-and-dogs' occupying the musical theater....an occasional band night, a comedy night, or some two or three night showing of some traveling musical.
It sits underused.
Last year, folks got all hyped up and enthusiastic because some big-name production of a musical Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) was going to come in and run for at least a year. Everything was lined up....singers signed to contracts....guaranteed financial situation....tickets being sold.
Couple of days ago....total collapse. The show is cancelled. From the FAZ (the Frankfurt newspaper)....they kinda hint that the payment deadines weren't met, and the producer finally said that they didn't have the cash reserves to continue this planned musical.
Locals are shocked.....various business operations in Niedernhausen were lined up to rake off some of the visitor/guest tourism (food, beverage, hotels)....politicians are peeved....and musical lovers dismayed.
Somewhere in the midst of the FAZ article....they note that with the 1,500-odd seats....with pricing between 39 and 99 Euro a seat.....all you had to do was make roughly 40-percent occupancy, and the cost of the building rental was covered. My guess is that the production folks took the cost of the musical crew (figure four nights a week minimum) and it just wasn't going to make a real profit.
Joan of Arc....as a story....is a five-star piece. As a musical? It's hard to say how this would play out in terms of music, words, and drama on a stage.
And so the musical theater will sit....to be lightly used for a line-up of comedians and heart-breaker singers. In this case....the opera never opened, so there's no fat lady to sing and end the show.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Der Radler
It's an interesting operation....perfectly located. Some folks will take their bikes from their house to the city, basing them there.
The local guy will use the bike to get from the railway station to where ever they work or study in Wiesbaden. In the event of bad tire, or some maintenance issue....here's the bike shop right there in the station to handle issues.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Riding the German Rails
First, there is the regional train, as you on the right (in red). These are mostly new and bought in the past dozen years. You can push bikes on board, as well as baby carriages. No compartments.
There are some limited first-class sections although there's nothing special about these sections and it's not worth on a regional train to pay for first class.
The AC unit on these regional trains....for some odd reason....typically always works well.
Note, there's no drink machines, pubs, or cafes on these regional trains. These regional trains never have toilets.....so it's something that you might want to plan around if using.
They typically run from one significant town to another (example: Wiesbaden to Darmstadt, or Wiesbaden to Frankfurt).
The second example shown in the shiny white is the ICE, which runs long-runs and typically has a cafe or restaurant onboard. Yes, ICE trains all have toilets. These have a first-class section is slightly worth the price, if you are traveling several hours. There are state-of-the art and look almost like some aircraft.
The AC unit on the ICE trains isn't anything worth bragging about and if you are traveling in July with ICE and the heat is expected to be mid-90s.....get off prior to mid-day. The heat will exhaust you if you try to stay for a all-afternoon long trip.
The food on the cafe operation? Decent but nothing to brag about. I might buy a coffee or Coke.
Please note that ICE doesn't stop much. So you might do a trip from Frankfurt to Berlin and only stop six times. On a regional train, you stop every five to ten kilometers.
Finally, we come to the local trains.
These local trains, between 7AM and 8 AM are crammed full of kids going to school and adults going to work, so don't ever hope on getting a seat on board these trains. The positive is that you rarely will be on the train for more than 20 minutes.
I should also note that the local trains will stop at some points where there are no stations....just a covering and ticket sales machine. So you wait till it pulls up....hit the button and some step or two will pop out and you step up into the train. The driver for the local trains? They are contracted out, and typically make ten-percent less on pay. No one explains this deal or reasoning.
Sleek and modern? Yes. But you had to be around in the 1980s and have ridden the old trains.....to appreciate these modern vehicles.
Cruise from Mainz
So some bits of advice.
The stand is briefly up and running in the early morning....prior to the 8:30AM cruise. You need to have tickets in your hand prior to 8:30....because they intend to leave within two or three minutes after they pull up and put the boarding platform over.
You can browse for the optional points to get off.....my advice is to stay on for at least two hours.
Parking around the KD area? Almost non-existent (you really have to hunt and pay for it).
So my advice.....use the public transporation system, and arrive by train at the MZ bahnhof. Take number 6 bus going to Wiesbaden, which will stop near the Mainz VHS School (find it on the google search, it's around the 6th possible stop after leaving the bahnhof area). You are six minutes walking from that bus-stop to the KD stand (you can see the river from where they drop you off....so walk direct across the street toward the river, and turn RIGHT, then march for about two minutes to the KD stand and boarding area....going EAST on the river).
You should on being there at the KD stand by 8:15 at the latest. Whatever railway ticket you used to get to Mainz.....will be good for the bus system as well, and conclude once you get to the VHS school drop-off. Note about bus 6.....one direction goes to Wiesbaden and other to the Mainz-Gutenberg Centrum mall. Don't confuse your way....get on the WI bus direction. It's direct from the MZ bahnhof....to your 2 o'clock position from the front door of the station....300 feet away with the overhang on the building. It typically leaves between 7 and 9 AM every twelve minutes, so you might want to be there at the right time to avoid missing the cruise boat.
I should note that from Mainz, they will advance port-wise and in ten minutes be over in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, which works just as well.....and have the same lousy parking circumstances, but with a great bus-drop off point from the Wiesbaden train-station.
KD offers a second cruise in the peak-months of summer (around 9:30, but check their web site for the right time).
Several observations about the Rhine cruise deals. Weather always plays into this....it can be windy and rainy. The drinks onboard aren't cheap. I wouldn't eat while onboard, unless it's cake and coffee. Plan for a big lunch at the point where you get off. Saturdays and Sundays are hectic, so I'd do the trip in the middle of the week. Don't wear shorts unless you know for sure it's going to be 85-plus degrees. Kids hate the trip....so unless these are fourteen or older kids.....don't waste your time or effort. Returning? I'd take the train and travel back rather than a 2nd cruise down the river.
My 'Station'
Yeah....about five minutes driving is this 'station'.
It consists of a ticket machine, a covering big enough for eight people to huddle under, and a concrete area where the 100-passenger train can pull up, and you jump on.
Yeah, it is in the middle of nowhere. But from here, it's a twelve-minute ride into Wiesbaden.
Mainz: Just Something You'd Notice
Three years ago.....it wouldn't have been prominent or noticed in the middle of the street. Now, the guy knows that the public discusses this all the time now So, he's got the items listed and priced to sell.
I have no idea about the profits off this, but I'd take a wild guess that he sells at least ten to fifteen items a week. That's probably three times what he was doing in 2012.
A Tax for Immigrants?
Ok, sometimes I write an essay, that is mostly there to amuse you.....this one is not really there for amusement, but I imagine that you will be laughing by the end.
So, there's these two professors from Switzerland. Margit Osterloh is a graduate from the Technical University of Berlin, and has been a professor in in organization for over twenty years. Bruno S. Frey is a professor of economics....and fairly well known within his teaching practice.
These two have stood up and said that you ought to make refugees and immigrants entering Europe....PAY for entering. Call it a tax levy.
Once paid....the immigrant would enter the said country. Those under the war refugee status? They'd get their money back. The rest? They'd be paying for their status for immigration.
I'm guessing that some sponsor status would be created....where a company says they could use three-hundred people in this field....to come to Spain, or Belgium....so the sponsor might be fitting into the plan.
But the deal would revolve around you having to commit some money to get into the country.
There's a lot left out of the story via Focus, and I'd like to hear these two in some chat-forum deal because it's a curious idea. Naturally, a bunch of folks would be irritated by the concept, and a number of liberal types might be hostile about money being involved (capitalist evil requirement might be uttered).
It'd put the refugee thugs who sell seats on boats or such into a bind because if you knew that you needed to pay 5,000 Euro at the check-in point and there's no guarantee about getting to Germany....that you might be applying for residency and a work visa in Spain or Belgium....well, that might not make you very happy.
The odds that this will be discussed? Zero. It'll freak out the Berlin crowd big-time if anyone suggests a tax levy on incoming immigrants.
The curious angle to this is that if you figure some 18-year-old kid walking in, and having no real status, training, education, or craft.....Germany will spend in the neighborhood of 80,000 Euro for living requirements, German classes, intergration classes, craft classes, shelter, transportation, and welfare. All that money came from someone who worked his butt off and sweated through various life requirements in Germany. It was not free money.
The odds that you will ever hear about this idea via state-run German TV? About the same as aliens or big-foot being discussed by Channel One or Two (will never happen).
So, there's these two professors from Switzerland. Margit Osterloh is a graduate from the Technical University of Berlin, and has been a professor in in organization for over twenty years. Bruno S. Frey is a professor of economics....and fairly well known within his teaching practice.
These two have stood up and said that you ought to make refugees and immigrants entering Europe....PAY for entering. Call it a tax levy.
Once paid....the immigrant would enter the said country. Those under the war refugee status? They'd get their money back. The rest? They'd be paying for their status for immigration.
I'm guessing that some sponsor status would be created....where a company says they could use three-hundred people in this field....to come to Spain, or Belgium....so the sponsor might be fitting into the plan.
But the deal would revolve around you having to commit some money to get into the country.
There's a lot left out of the story via Focus, and I'd like to hear these two in some chat-forum deal because it's a curious idea. Naturally, a bunch of folks would be irritated by the concept, and a number of liberal types might be hostile about money being involved (capitalist evil requirement might be uttered).
It'd put the refugee thugs who sell seats on boats or such into a bind because if you knew that you needed to pay 5,000 Euro at the check-in point and there's no guarantee about getting to Germany....that you might be applying for residency and a work visa in Spain or Belgium....well, that might not make you very happy.
The odds that this will be discussed? Zero. It'll freak out the Berlin crowd big-time if anyone suggests a tax levy on incoming immigrants.
The curious angle to this is that if you figure some 18-year-old kid walking in, and having no real status, training, education, or craft.....Germany will spend in the neighborhood of 80,000 Euro for living requirements, German classes, intergration classes, craft classes, shelter, transportation, and welfare. All that money came from someone who worked his butt off and sweated through various life requirements in Germany. It was not free money.
The odds that you will ever hear about this idea via state-run German TV? About the same as aliens or big-foot being discussed by Channel One or Two (will never happen).
Sunday, March 27, 2016
True Believers in Brussels?
Around twenty years ago, I picked up True Believer.
It was a book written in the early 1950s by Eric Hoffer. Eric hadn't published anything prior to this, and he was mostly this oddball character who read at feverish rate (more than 200 books a year) yet had never attended a single university class in his life. He had a great appreciation of history and how people and conflicts interact....fitting like a lego-like structure.
So, True Believer became this highly read book of the mid-1950s.....which describes how mass movements organize themselves, gain membership, and eventually will meet some type of end or modification.
In the middle of the book, you learn that someone who is a true believer of their movement, political party, or religion.....is often a highly frustrated and self-loathing guy....who compensates for his weak identity, by searching far and wide for some great crusade to attach upon.
Hoffer points out that mass movements....no matter if they are political or religious....are a perfect vehicle for such frustrated people. As he notes.....it appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."
Hatred and intolerance? They fit right into this vehicle. You have to be for something, or against something....to achieve some payback on your weak lifestyle build-up.
You see....those with the agenda or great crusade aren't picky. They want losers. They want people who have wasted their young lives and have no ability to grasp that the great crusade is a fraud.
Yes, recruitment is simple. Puff up the great fraudulent crusade....woe the easily mislead youngsters to a new creed.....promise something big (everlasting pleasure or positions in life are always helpful).
The battle or crusade? It is gimmick of the strong against the weak. No sympathy, no kindness, no human attachment, no understanding. As the recruiter for this agenda, you want people to walk in.....go through a quick orientation....spill a bit of blood here and there.....and then go out in some bloody or great ending. The thing is.....no one graduates to some promised point of being alive five to ten years down the line.
You can argue that this is mad, and fiendish.....but you aren't recruiting for some ice cream shop or jazz band. This is a group of pretender thugs, who are bound and determined to live short lives and be buried six feet under within a certain amount of time. These aren't people that banks would do home loans for, or be managers of businesses one day. These are people without much of a reason to live.
Hoffer says the trend to this gimmick is constant recruitment. When you start to fail or people have figured out your fraudulent movement....things go downhill. So far, I'd say from Brussels, we are still a far distance from the fraud being figured out.
As for the book, True Believer? I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a better of prospective of the people on the other end of this European problem. A mass movement has some rules and expectations, and Hoffer does a good job in laying out the situation. Easily read over a weekend, it's a four-star book.
It was a book written in the early 1950s by Eric Hoffer. Eric hadn't published anything prior to this, and he was mostly this oddball character who read at feverish rate (more than 200 books a year) yet had never attended a single university class in his life. He had a great appreciation of history and how people and conflicts interact....fitting like a lego-like structure.
So, True Believer became this highly read book of the mid-1950s.....which describes how mass movements organize themselves, gain membership, and eventually will meet some type of end or modification.
In the middle of the book, you learn that someone who is a true believer of their movement, political party, or religion.....is often a highly frustrated and self-loathing guy....who compensates for his weak identity, by searching far and wide for some great crusade to attach upon.
Hoffer points out that mass movements....no matter if they are political or religious....are a perfect vehicle for such frustrated people. As he notes.....it appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."
Hatred and intolerance? They fit right into this vehicle. You have to be for something, or against something....to achieve some payback on your weak lifestyle build-up.
You see....those with the agenda or great crusade aren't picky. They want losers. They want people who have wasted their young lives and have no ability to grasp that the great crusade is a fraud.
Yes, recruitment is simple. Puff up the great fraudulent crusade....woe the easily mislead youngsters to a new creed.....promise something big (everlasting pleasure or positions in life are always helpful).
The battle or crusade? It is gimmick of the strong against the weak. No sympathy, no kindness, no human attachment, no understanding. As the recruiter for this agenda, you want people to walk in.....go through a quick orientation....spill a bit of blood here and there.....and then go out in some bloody or great ending. The thing is.....no one graduates to some promised point of being alive five to ten years down the line.
You can argue that this is mad, and fiendish.....but you aren't recruiting for some ice cream shop or jazz band. This is a group of pretender thugs, who are bound and determined to live short lives and be buried six feet under within a certain amount of time. These aren't people that banks would do home loans for, or be managers of businesses one day. These are people without much of a reason to live.
Hoffer says the trend to this gimmick is constant recruitment. When you start to fail or people have figured out your fraudulent movement....things go downhill. So far, I'd say from Brussels, we are still a far distance from the fraud being figured out.
As for the book, True Believer? I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a better of prospective of the people on the other end of this European problem. A mass movement has some rules and expectations, and Hoffer does a good job in laying out the situation. Easily read over a weekend, it's a four-star book.
Special Compartments for German Women?
This is an oddball German story which the state-run news media haven't really picked up. Focus and several regional newspapers have done some reporting over the episode.
So, the leadership of the Bahn (our national railway organization) decided for the train network working from Leipzig and Chemnitz (two significant eastern Germany cities)....will have female and children-dedicated sections (no men).
It's a sixty-five to seventy-five minute railway ride, or sixty minutes if you were driving a car. Why the difference? Well....you can't go direct from Leipzig to Chemnitz....even though they are just eighty-four kilometers apart. You have to go through via a couple of region stops.
These special compartments are supposed to be for unaccompanied women and kids. Why? Well, what the MRB folks (the regional management of the line) say is that women complained and wanted better security. These compartments are supposedly near the conductor's point and if anything arose....the women could immediately get help. My general impression of German railway conductors is that they are mostly guys with only ten more years to go for retirement, and asking for help in a dire situation.....would only mean they'd blow a whistle and hit the button for the train to halt, while the driver calls the cops (figure 20 minutes for some cop to arrive).
A necessity? Well, I don't ride in the region of Chmnitz or Leipzig.....so I can't really say.
I tend to ride the Bahn around Wiesbaden, Mainz, Frankfurt and the Rhine Valley. I don't feel unsafe in any fashion. Maybe some women riding the same route as I do.....might feel uncomfortable after the Koln riot episode and feel stressed when some immigrant guy walks through and gives them the 'gaze'.
If you ask the sales people.....they will tell you that tear gas canisters are being sold at a hefty pace, and a lot of German women are arming up with those.
The problem I see is that the Bahn in general has reduced their car-rate and what might have been a three-car arrangement from Wiesbaden to my local 'burg' is now just one single car. Across Germany, I'm guessing various segments have had cars trimmed. So, dedicating one section to just women might limit space on the train in general.
As for this safety factor being explained to the public? Well, you can't explain it.
The curious thing is that if you went back to the era of railway operations in Germany of 1871 to 1920.....the Landerbahn era....then the management folks had compartments for unaccompanied women. It was a common thing in those days.
Between the 1920s and 1940s....these unaccompanied spaces for German women quietly disappeared. People felt safe.
I'm not sure if this will be a trend, or spread throughout Germany. It would be odd if all of the routes went this way.
So, the leadership of the Bahn (our national railway organization) decided for the train network working from Leipzig and Chemnitz (two significant eastern Germany cities)....will have female and children-dedicated sections (no men).
It's a sixty-five to seventy-five minute railway ride, or sixty minutes if you were driving a car. Why the difference? Well....you can't go direct from Leipzig to Chemnitz....even though they are just eighty-four kilometers apart. You have to go through via a couple of region stops.
These special compartments are supposed to be for unaccompanied women and kids. Why? Well, what the MRB folks (the regional management of the line) say is that women complained and wanted better security. These compartments are supposedly near the conductor's point and if anything arose....the women could immediately get help. My general impression of German railway conductors is that they are mostly guys with only ten more years to go for retirement, and asking for help in a dire situation.....would only mean they'd blow a whistle and hit the button for the train to halt, while the driver calls the cops (figure 20 minutes for some cop to arrive).
A necessity? Well, I don't ride in the region of Chmnitz or Leipzig.....so I can't really say.
I tend to ride the Bahn around Wiesbaden, Mainz, Frankfurt and the Rhine Valley. I don't feel unsafe in any fashion. Maybe some women riding the same route as I do.....might feel uncomfortable after the Koln riot episode and feel stressed when some immigrant guy walks through and gives them the 'gaze'.
If you ask the sales people.....they will tell you that tear gas canisters are being sold at a hefty pace, and a lot of German women are arming up with those.
The problem I see is that the Bahn in general has reduced their car-rate and what might have been a three-car arrangement from Wiesbaden to my local 'burg' is now just one single car. Across Germany, I'm guessing various segments have had cars trimmed. So, dedicating one section to just women might limit space on the train in general.
As for this safety factor being explained to the public? Well, you can't explain it.
The curious thing is that if you went back to the era of railway operations in Germany of 1871 to 1920.....the Landerbahn era....then the management folks had compartments for unaccompanied women. It was a common thing in those days.
Between the 1920s and 1940s....these unaccompanied spaces for German women quietly disappeared. People felt safe.
I'm not sure if this will be a trend, or spread throughout Germany. It would be odd if all of the routes went this way.
Fixing The Unfixable
They had an interview with the German Interior Minister (Thomas de Maiziere) yesterday. He's from the CDU Party and probably one of the more competent Berlin figures that is regularly seen on TV by the public.
He suggests some legislation that will change the foreigner episode in Germany......course, it's a question mark if there's enough support to pass the rules.
He wants to be able to deny long-term residence in Germany.....if the new immigrant refuses to learn German or refuses job offers.
He also wants the government to have some approval over where a refugee ends up living.....to avoid creating ghetto situations like you see in Belgium today. This would involve creating a state-right instead of a immigrant-right. This state-right would dissolve at some point when the refugee can ensure his livelihood with work.
SPD partnership comments? They've agreed in principal but they'd like to see how this is worded. You can probably expect opposition from the Green Party and the Linke Party (although it'll be curious how they say they like ghetto situations in public).
I would have very little confidence in this being implemented, and if you add on court challenges....even less confidence.
On the idea of kicking out immigrants who turn down jobs.....first, you have to be offered a job. If you have no marketable skill or valued education....who will offer the job? Even if they train you to some marginal degree, you can simply do badly in the interview process, and walk out happily unemployed.
The idea of controlling where a new immigrant lives? This would end up being a comical episode.
You'd have some German bureaucrat sitting in some city who has 1,500 refugees under his control. First, you'd have the affordable housing issue....where there's only a couple of neighborhoods in this city of 150,000 with apartments in the range of what the new immigrant can afford. You can take a guess about the condition of these apartments, and the neighborhoods there.
Then you need software to project where the 1,500 refugees live. How will you identify ghetto-possible neighborhoods? What science or research will you include into your wise method of dispersal?
Forcing half of the 1,500 folks to live 10 to 20 kilometers out away from this city? Fine, how will they get to integration classes and work? What if mass transit isn't practical? Will you pay for a new car for this immigrant?
So after new immigrant "Joe" has completed his mandatory two-year integration in this remote village or faraway area.....what do you think "Joe" will do on day one of his 'freedom'? He'll find an apartment in the cheap area of the metropolitan area, and move smack-dab in the middle of the ghetto. As hard as you fought, and you literally spent millions to try in preventing a ghetto establishment.....your new immigrant will outwit you in the end.
No matter what you do....other than tearing down the ghetto itself and making it into a park and thus forcing dispersal.....you can't beat the game being played out.
Back twenty years ago.....it would be a typical thing for Germans to criticize Americans on all the ghettos in America that we had 'created'. You'd sit and try to defend this but you really didn't have a good understanding how a ghetto got formed or generated. I sit here now.....looking at the Belgium method of creating ghettos (never intentional), and then look at the German method underway.....and I must admit.....I am amused.
No one sets out to create a ghetto. No social scientist, political figure, city engineer, or intellectual ever starts out with a plan to make a ghetto.
People look for cheap and affordable housing. They find like-minded people in that housing, and over a course of a decade or two.....they form a ghetto. It's never intentional....it's just the way it is.
In another five years, I'll actually be able to sit there and reverse the criticism episode of twenty years ago over American ghettos, and kindly ask my German associate why he went to such efforts to create German ghettos. He'll huff-and-puff.....getting all hyped up.....and eventually say it was the fault of George Bush. I'll grin, and say that even five-hundred years from now.....the 'George Bush' answer will still be uttered by Germans.
In the end, I think Germans would truly like to find a solution to their problems and make it work. But it's not like a broke BMW or clogged chimney where you can apply wisdom and a repair. Here, you are screwed.
He suggests some legislation that will change the foreigner episode in Germany......course, it's a question mark if there's enough support to pass the rules.
He wants to be able to deny long-term residence in Germany.....if the new immigrant refuses to learn German or refuses job offers.
He also wants the government to have some approval over where a refugee ends up living.....to avoid creating ghetto situations like you see in Belgium today. This would involve creating a state-right instead of a immigrant-right. This state-right would dissolve at some point when the refugee can ensure his livelihood with work.
SPD partnership comments? They've agreed in principal but they'd like to see how this is worded. You can probably expect opposition from the Green Party and the Linke Party (although it'll be curious how they say they like ghetto situations in public).
I would have very little confidence in this being implemented, and if you add on court challenges....even less confidence.
On the idea of kicking out immigrants who turn down jobs.....first, you have to be offered a job. If you have no marketable skill or valued education....who will offer the job? Even if they train you to some marginal degree, you can simply do badly in the interview process, and walk out happily unemployed.
The idea of controlling where a new immigrant lives? This would end up being a comical episode.
You'd have some German bureaucrat sitting in some city who has 1,500 refugees under his control. First, you'd have the affordable housing issue....where there's only a couple of neighborhoods in this city of 150,000 with apartments in the range of what the new immigrant can afford. You can take a guess about the condition of these apartments, and the neighborhoods there.
Then you need software to project where the 1,500 refugees live. How will you identify ghetto-possible neighborhoods? What science or research will you include into your wise method of dispersal?
Forcing half of the 1,500 folks to live 10 to 20 kilometers out away from this city? Fine, how will they get to integration classes and work? What if mass transit isn't practical? Will you pay for a new car for this immigrant?
So after new immigrant "Joe" has completed his mandatory two-year integration in this remote village or faraway area.....what do you think "Joe" will do on day one of his 'freedom'? He'll find an apartment in the cheap area of the metropolitan area, and move smack-dab in the middle of the ghetto. As hard as you fought, and you literally spent millions to try in preventing a ghetto establishment.....your new immigrant will outwit you in the end.
No matter what you do....other than tearing down the ghetto itself and making it into a park and thus forcing dispersal.....you can't beat the game being played out.
Back twenty years ago.....it would be a typical thing for Germans to criticize Americans on all the ghettos in America that we had 'created'. You'd sit and try to defend this but you really didn't have a good understanding how a ghetto got formed or generated. I sit here now.....looking at the Belgium method of creating ghettos (never intentional), and then look at the German method underway.....and I must admit.....I am amused.
No one sets out to create a ghetto. No social scientist, political figure, city engineer, or intellectual ever starts out with a plan to make a ghetto.
People look for cheap and affordable housing. They find like-minded people in that housing, and over a course of a decade or two.....they form a ghetto. It's never intentional....it's just the way it is.
In another five years, I'll actually be able to sit there and reverse the criticism episode of twenty years ago over American ghettos, and kindly ask my German associate why he went to such efforts to create German ghettos. He'll huff-and-puff.....getting all hyped up.....and eventually say it was the fault of George Bush. I'll grin, and say that even five-hundred years from now.....the 'George Bush' answer will still be uttered by Germans.
In the end, I think Germans would truly like to find a solution to their problems and make it work. But it's not like a broke BMW or clogged chimney where you can apply wisdom and a repair. Here, you are screwed.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Swapping Problem A for Problem B?
One of the great lessons in life that I gained as a manager is that when you determine you've got a problem, and you go through the possible solutions.....you really don't want to accept a solution where you fix one problem but help to create an equal or bigger problem with your solution.
This morning in Focus (the German news magazine), they did a brief discussion over the Germany, EU and Turkey talks about the three billion Euro going to Turkey, and they will hold back the immigrant wave at their border. The Turks want two additional things (the extra three billion is still out there but everyone has doubts that the EU would be that stupid).
The Turks want EU membership, which most of the twenty-eight EU members kind of laugh about because they have human-rights violations and a fairly corrupt government. On top of that, they want ease of access into the EU, with no visas. The German leadership in Berlin has hyped up this part of the deal and made it all very acceptable.
Well, Focus sat down and talked to some people in Turkey who laid out the big issue if this all comes through.
What some Turks (outside of the government there) say....is that without this visa threshold in place....they think half-a-million Turks will attempt to enter EU....to stay. So instead of worrying about half-a-million Syrians which Turkey would hold back.....it'd be a half-million Turks instead. Yeah, fixing one problem only to create another.
What's been going on for several years within Turkey is a ethnic war with the Kurds of Turkey. Speculation is that they would see this window open and finally accept the fact that they can't survive with this regime in place (within Turkey). So they'd leave. There's not many EU countries with populations of Kurds....except in Germany, so that's where they'd immigrate (the best word for this).
The timing of this? Focus hints June is the talked about point where the visa item would be eliminated. So you'd start to see in July if this talk was correct. The Kurds would be in a slightly better position than the Syrians because they would be legit, and avoid walking through various countries to enter Germany. They could actually get on trains or buy airline tickets. Once they arrive, they'd walk up to some immigration officer and declare themselves.
What would happen by late September (90 days into this entry mess)? This would be a curious thing to ask. If the BAMF (the German agency in charge of immigration) noted 150,000 applicants from July and August from Turkey, it'd be discussed in Berlin.
I checked on the population of Kurds in Turkey.....the Turk say it's near 16-million, but the Kurds say it's closer to 20-22 million.
Presently in Germany, there are around 550,000 Kurds (2014 numbers).
If we got up to the two German state elections in Oct/Nov and it looked like the three billion Euro was totally wasted, and you had 200,000 new Kurd applicants for immigration....there would be a fair amount of disgust and frustration with the Berlin leadership. You could throw five more points onto what ever number the anti-immigration AfD Party is anticipated to get in the two elections.
Even more worrisome? Three more state elections in the spring of 2017.
It's a crystal ball thing, because no one really knows the intent of the Turkish government and if this visa business will create an invented wave of Kurds on German soil. If you woke up on 1 January 2017, and realized that 500,000 Kurds were in the immigration line of Germany.....you'd ask stupid questions. The Turks would respond that they'd hold back the Kurds.....for another five to ten billion Euro....while smiling. At that point, the Berlin leadership would realize they were screwed.
This morning in Focus (the German news magazine), they did a brief discussion over the Germany, EU and Turkey talks about the three billion Euro going to Turkey, and they will hold back the immigrant wave at their border. The Turks want two additional things (the extra three billion is still out there but everyone has doubts that the EU would be that stupid).
The Turks want EU membership, which most of the twenty-eight EU members kind of laugh about because they have human-rights violations and a fairly corrupt government. On top of that, they want ease of access into the EU, with no visas. The German leadership in Berlin has hyped up this part of the deal and made it all very acceptable.
Well, Focus sat down and talked to some people in Turkey who laid out the big issue if this all comes through.
What some Turks (outside of the government there) say....is that without this visa threshold in place....they think half-a-million Turks will attempt to enter EU....to stay. So instead of worrying about half-a-million Syrians which Turkey would hold back.....it'd be a half-million Turks instead. Yeah, fixing one problem only to create another.
What's been going on for several years within Turkey is a ethnic war with the Kurds of Turkey. Speculation is that they would see this window open and finally accept the fact that they can't survive with this regime in place (within Turkey). So they'd leave. There's not many EU countries with populations of Kurds....except in Germany, so that's where they'd immigrate (the best word for this).
The timing of this? Focus hints June is the talked about point where the visa item would be eliminated. So you'd start to see in July if this talk was correct. The Kurds would be in a slightly better position than the Syrians because they would be legit, and avoid walking through various countries to enter Germany. They could actually get on trains or buy airline tickets. Once they arrive, they'd walk up to some immigration officer and declare themselves.
What would happen by late September (90 days into this entry mess)? This would be a curious thing to ask. If the BAMF (the German agency in charge of immigration) noted 150,000 applicants from July and August from Turkey, it'd be discussed in Berlin.
I checked on the population of Kurds in Turkey.....the Turk say it's near 16-million, but the Kurds say it's closer to 20-22 million.
Presently in Germany, there are around 550,000 Kurds (2014 numbers).
If we got up to the two German state elections in Oct/Nov and it looked like the three billion Euro was totally wasted, and you had 200,000 new Kurd applicants for immigration....there would be a fair amount of disgust and frustration with the Berlin leadership. You could throw five more points onto what ever number the anti-immigration AfD Party is anticipated to get in the two elections.
Even more worrisome? Three more state elections in the spring of 2017.
It's a crystal ball thing, because no one really knows the intent of the Turkish government and if this visa business will create an invented wave of Kurds on German soil. If you woke up on 1 January 2017, and realized that 500,000 Kurds were in the immigration line of Germany.....you'd ask stupid questions. The Turks would respond that they'd hold back the Kurds.....for another five to ten billion Euro....while smiling. At that point, the Berlin leadership would realize they were screwed.
Friday, March 25, 2016
Intoxication
This essay "Intoxication" is really about a condition that occurs when you've arrived in Wiesbaden or the Rhine Valley region....spent days, weeks, months and years there....and leave one day....only to discover that you were in some Disney-like park and riding an awful long log-ride. In essence, you just never realized how good it was, until you packed up and left. You were intoxicated for several years....in some happy daze, and felt some layer of enchantment over your soul.
1. Wiesbaden really isn't huge or a mega city....it's 280,000 residents. The thing is....you are surrounded by lego-like cities (Mainz across the river with 200,000 people, Darmstadt down the road with 147,000 residents, Frankfurt with it's 687,000 people, and another 100,000 along the west end of Wiesbaden along the Rhine River). You were on the borderline of a major urbanized zone but always felt some small town shadow.
2. You had one of the most significant airports in the world within thirty minutes of driving. It connected to Wiesbaden via an autobahn and a railway system (straight out of the basement of the airport). In sixty minutes, you could step off a plane....grab your bag, jump on a train, and arrive at the Wiesbaden station. There were hundreds of places that were on the hub of the airport, giving you a fantastic chance to travel a great distance in twelve hours.
3. You had literally a hundred-odd fests within a thirty-minute drive over an entire year. Wine fests, apple-wine fests, beer fests, small village fests, spring fests, and the list goes on and on. You were never invited....you just noted such-and-such fest over the weekend and drove over.
4. You found the Rhine Valley and Hessen offered up fresh fruit and vegetables every single week. Farmer markets gave you opportunities to always have fresh and local items for the table.
5. Cafes were the escape point where you could sneak off and sip through a great cup of coffee and have a slice of kase kuchen (cheese cake) while reading some romantic novel and listening to soft jazz in the background. You felt a private cloak over your presence.....just someone in the shadows.
6. You sipped fine local wines that amazed you in taste and quality, for less than five Euro. You discovered that Hessen apfel (apple) wine on a hot afternoon would renovate you and kinda packed a punch.
7. You walked through a shopping district in December....sipping gluh-weine and eating sugary-laced items. The lights, the atmosphere, and cobblestones.....all left you in a happy daze.
8. You zoomed along on the autobahns....sometimes worrying about your safety but feeling peppy about the 100 mph situation.
9. You sat for hours on a park bench facing the Rhine River and watching ships go up and down the river. You'd occasionally get up and walk along the bank.....stopping for an Italian ice cream....and then admiring the hundred-year-old houses on the other side of the river. Architecture was never something that you were keen on, but now, it seems that you notice such things.
10. You hated history in high school and college, but somehow.....all these little pieces started to fall into place. The castles, palaces, bridges, war memorials, and innovations made sense.
11. You discovered that around your village, there's this one trail (paved in fact) that leads onto four other trails, and you could actually walk ten miles one afternoon, and return by nightfall by bus or train. Oddly, other than getting lost.....you don't worry about assaults, thugs, or wild dogs on this trail. Well, you might worry about wolves, but that's another subject.
12. You discover ninety-nine ways of making schnitzel. Then you start to examine a German menu to find hundreds of things you've never eaten. Along the way, you find some great Italian and Greek restaurants in the Wiesbaden area. You worry about calories, but the temptation is great.
13. You listen in the background on a Sunday.....quiet. No lawns being mowed. You get used to this type of day without any noise.
14. You become amazed that city parks can be finely landscaped, safe at all times of the day, and actually draw you into a simple one-hour walk.
15. You waltz into the local train station and stand amazed a the simplicity of the schedule and the cost. You start to take risky one-hour trips to cities with historic charm and character.
16. You find yourself on a shopping district....in need of a very unique red men's hat, and surprised that there are actually three or four hat shops which feature this unique item.
17. You find that Frankfurt has this adventurous district of Sachenshausen. It's got a party-like atmosphere going on from sundown to sun-up. If that wasn't enough, you then discover jazz clubs and twenty different entertainment venues in the local area.
18. At some point, you walk onto a Rhine cruise boat and spend an entire afternoon amazed at the landscape of the river, and sipping some fine beer along the way.
19. You sat in a concert arena to hear some Irish lass belt out a weepy-eyed song that never would have been played in the US. You went to Mainz and hear some Czech band play a dozen great tunes. You sat in a Rhine River monastery and heard some monks render a five-star song.
20. You marveled at cops who seemed to be professional and bright....wondering why you can't find these sort of characters in the US.
21. You skated in the midst of December on some ice-rink and felt like a kid again. You actually went to Bavaria and learned how to ski....falling down a hundred times but having the best day of your life.
22. You were enchanted, enamored and taking one more risky adventure as each day passed.
All of this....leaves you intoxicated in some way. Then, as you finally leave, the intoxication evaporates, and you are back in the world of reality. It was good, while it lasted.
1. Wiesbaden really isn't huge or a mega city....it's 280,000 residents. The thing is....you are surrounded by lego-like cities (Mainz across the river with 200,000 people, Darmstadt down the road with 147,000 residents, Frankfurt with it's 687,000 people, and another 100,000 along the west end of Wiesbaden along the Rhine River). You were on the borderline of a major urbanized zone but always felt some small town shadow.
2. You had one of the most significant airports in the world within thirty minutes of driving. It connected to Wiesbaden via an autobahn and a railway system (straight out of the basement of the airport). In sixty minutes, you could step off a plane....grab your bag, jump on a train, and arrive at the Wiesbaden station. There were hundreds of places that were on the hub of the airport, giving you a fantastic chance to travel a great distance in twelve hours.
3. You had literally a hundred-odd fests within a thirty-minute drive over an entire year. Wine fests, apple-wine fests, beer fests, small village fests, spring fests, and the list goes on and on. You were never invited....you just noted such-and-such fest over the weekend and drove over.
4. You found the Rhine Valley and Hessen offered up fresh fruit and vegetables every single week. Farmer markets gave you opportunities to always have fresh and local items for the table.
5. Cafes were the escape point where you could sneak off and sip through a great cup of coffee and have a slice of kase kuchen (cheese cake) while reading some romantic novel and listening to soft jazz in the background. You felt a private cloak over your presence.....just someone in the shadows.
6. You sipped fine local wines that amazed you in taste and quality, for less than five Euro. You discovered that Hessen apfel (apple) wine on a hot afternoon would renovate you and kinda packed a punch.
7. You walked through a shopping district in December....sipping gluh-weine and eating sugary-laced items. The lights, the atmosphere, and cobblestones.....all left you in a happy daze.
8. You zoomed along on the autobahns....sometimes worrying about your safety but feeling peppy about the 100 mph situation.
9. You sat for hours on a park bench facing the Rhine River and watching ships go up and down the river. You'd occasionally get up and walk along the bank.....stopping for an Italian ice cream....and then admiring the hundred-year-old houses on the other side of the river. Architecture was never something that you were keen on, but now, it seems that you notice such things.
10. You hated history in high school and college, but somehow.....all these little pieces started to fall into place. The castles, palaces, bridges, war memorials, and innovations made sense.
11. You discovered that around your village, there's this one trail (paved in fact) that leads onto four other trails, and you could actually walk ten miles one afternoon, and return by nightfall by bus or train. Oddly, other than getting lost.....you don't worry about assaults, thugs, or wild dogs on this trail. Well, you might worry about wolves, but that's another subject.
12. You discover ninety-nine ways of making schnitzel. Then you start to examine a German menu to find hundreds of things you've never eaten. Along the way, you find some great Italian and Greek restaurants in the Wiesbaden area. You worry about calories, but the temptation is great.
13. You listen in the background on a Sunday.....quiet. No lawns being mowed. You get used to this type of day without any noise.
14. You become amazed that city parks can be finely landscaped, safe at all times of the day, and actually draw you into a simple one-hour walk.
15. You waltz into the local train station and stand amazed a the simplicity of the schedule and the cost. You start to take risky one-hour trips to cities with historic charm and character.
16. You find yourself on a shopping district....in need of a very unique red men's hat, and surprised that there are actually three or four hat shops which feature this unique item.
17. You find that Frankfurt has this adventurous district of Sachenshausen. It's got a party-like atmosphere going on from sundown to sun-up. If that wasn't enough, you then discover jazz clubs and twenty different entertainment venues in the local area.
18. At some point, you walk onto a Rhine cruise boat and spend an entire afternoon amazed at the landscape of the river, and sipping some fine beer along the way.
19. You sat in a concert arena to hear some Irish lass belt out a weepy-eyed song that never would have been played in the US. You went to Mainz and hear some Czech band play a dozen great tunes. You sat in a Rhine River monastery and heard some monks render a five-star song.
20. You marveled at cops who seemed to be professional and bright....wondering why you can't find these sort of characters in the US.
21. You skated in the midst of December on some ice-rink and felt like a kid again. You actually went to Bavaria and learned how to ski....falling down a hundred times but having the best day of your life.
22. You were enchanted, enamored and taking one more risky adventure as each day passed.
All of this....leaves you intoxicated in some way. Then, as you finally leave, the intoxication evaporates, and you are back in the world of reality. It was good, while it lasted.
The New Poll
Der Spiegel (a major news magazine in Germany) went out and did a poll. Generally, they cover a wide array of topics in Germany, and have a fair pulse on society.
So the poll centered around voters and how they feel.
Fifty-seven percent of the people polled say that their opinion doesn't count. That's more than half of the German culture who don't have much respect for the leadership in Berlin.
Sixty-one percent said they were negative or very negative about the immigration, refugee and asylum policy in effect. That left roughly one-third of those polled who had something of a positive nature about the immigration policy....but in a negative way.
The most worrisome number out of this poll? Forty-five percent of the people who claimed CDU or CSU participation....were unhappy with the Chancellor and the immigration policy.
We have roughly seven months before the next two state elections in Germany occur.....both out of the eastern side of Germany.
My guess is that this poll will talked about for a week or two, drawn into TV political chat shows.....and journalists will try to assure people that things are fine and the polls don't reflect reality. They will sit around after the show at some local pub....sip cocktails....and do witty conversation over the art of tall-tails.
Election shifts regularly on an infrequent basis. There's always a driving force, some great momentum, some realization of reality where someone realizes that you have to shift and do something different.....to avoid a massive shift. Presently, I'm of the mind that we've yet to cross that line, and it might be spring of 2017 before a German massive shift occurs.
So the poll centered around voters and how they feel.
Fifty-seven percent of the people polled say that their opinion doesn't count. That's more than half of the German culture who don't have much respect for the leadership in Berlin.
Sixty-one percent said they were negative or very negative about the immigration, refugee and asylum policy in effect. That left roughly one-third of those polled who had something of a positive nature about the immigration policy....but in a negative way.
The most worrisome number out of this poll? Forty-five percent of the people who claimed CDU or CSU participation....were unhappy with the Chancellor and the immigration policy.
We have roughly seven months before the next two state elections in Germany occur.....both out of the eastern side of Germany.
My guess is that this poll will talked about for a week or two, drawn into TV political chat shows.....and journalists will try to assure people that things are fine and the polls don't reflect reality. They will sit around after the show at some local pub....sip cocktails....and do witty conversation over the art of tall-tails.
Election shifts regularly on an infrequent basis. There's always a driving force, some great momentum, some realization of reality where someone realizes that you have to shift and do something different.....to avoid a massive shift. Presently, I'm of the mind that we've yet to cross that line, and it might be spring of 2017 before a German massive shift occurs.
The Ehrenbreitstein Fortress
This is one of my travel essays.
If you head north out of Wiesbaden....about an hour's drive to the northwest is Koblenz. There's probably enough in the town to spend an entire weekend (a full Saturday and most of Sunday) there.
The end-point of the landmass (in the picture) is the Deutsches Eck (the German Corner). It is a major statue that meets with the Rhine and Moselle Rivers.
In 1897, roughly nine years after Kaiser Wilhelm I died, the locals completed this statue to the guy. It's best to say that Wilhelm I was fairly admired around the country (perhaps more so than his grandson Wilhelm II).
I'd allocate an hour to walk around the park and admire the statue work.
If you look across the river, there is the old fortress. You will have to board a cable-car (couple of Euro) to get across to the hilltop. For the fortress, I would allocate a minimum of four hours. If you are the historian type....maybe eight hours. There is a cafe on the very top, along with two or three coffee, soda and beer operations as well.
I should note that this is a pretty large facility. If you've come with a couple of kids.....you will find it impossible to manage them or find them. Yes, you can literally get lost in this fortress. So you might want to establish some rules or hand the brighter of the kids a map.
The French, Napoleon's crew, came and destroyed the original fortress there in 1801.
I should note that there's been some type of fortress on this hill since 900 BC, or at least the locals believe that. The Romans eventually arrived and added to it, and after them....the Catholic Church.
Around 1815, this region of Germany became part of Prussia. They worked from 1817 to 1828 to build what you see today. The idea was....it was to be a place that no French Army would ever take on again. This was true until 1945, when the French Army took over the region. Two years later, they released the fort to the local state. It went through various stages, but today is a major tourist attraction for the local area.
I should note, it's not a free deal to the fortress.....11.80 Euro for an adult, and around 5.50 for a kid.
Between the old city area, the walk around the river, the Ecke, and the fortress.....provided you arrive by Friday evening....you will have enough to check out for an entire weekend. I would also recommend any of the dozen-odd restaurants along the river near the Kaiser statue for lunch or dinner. Naturally, all of this means walking....a fair distance over a weekend.
So, if you were looking for some four-star history theme weekend.....Koblenz would be a great fit.
If you head north out of Wiesbaden....about an hour's drive to the northwest is Koblenz. There's probably enough in the town to spend an entire weekend (a full Saturday and most of Sunday) there.
In 1897, roughly nine years after Kaiser Wilhelm I died, the locals completed this statue to the guy. It's best to say that Wilhelm I was fairly admired around the country (perhaps more so than his grandson Wilhelm II).
I'd allocate an hour to walk around the park and admire the statue work.
If you look across the river, there is the old fortress. You will have to board a cable-car (couple of Euro) to get across to the hilltop. For the fortress, I would allocate a minimum of four hours. If you are the historian type....maybe eight hours. There is a cafe on the very top, along with two or three coffee, soda and beer operations as well.
I should note that this is a pretty large facility. If you've come with a couple of kids.....you will find it impossible to manage them or find them. Yes, you can literally get lost in this fortress. So you might want to establish some rules or hand the brighter of the kids a map.
The French, Napoleon's crew, came and destroyed the original fortress there in 1801.
I should note that there's been some type of fortress on this hill since 900 BC, or at least the locals believe that. The Romans eventually arrived and added to it, and after them....the Catholic Church.
Around 1815, this region of Germany became part of Prussia. They worked from 1817 to 1828 to build what you see today. The idea was....it was to be a place that no French Army would ever take on again. This was true until 1945, when the French Army took over the region. Two years later, they released the fort to the local state. It went through various stages, but today is a major tourist attraction for the local area.
I should note, it's not a free deal to the fortress.....11.80 Euro for an adult, and around 5.50 for a kid.
Between the old city area, the walk around the river, the Ecke, and the fortress.....provided you arrive by Friday evening....you will have enough to check out for an entire weekend. I would also recommend any of the dozen-odd restaurants along the river near the Kaiser statue for lunch or dinner. Naturally, all of this means walking....a fair distance over a weekend.
So, if you were looking for some four-star history theme weekend.....Koblenz would be a great fit.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
The Smart
It was a carefree type decision. I admit, there were only four priorities on my list, and the Smart met all four. That was probably not wise on my part, but heck.....you only live once and need to make some bold and stupid decisions along the way.
It was only after I got it home that I realized that there was no spare tire. There was a little can for 'huff-up' but you were pretty screwed if the tire ever went flat. Yeah, I should have checked this out but I just assumed under the carpet through the back-door....there was some tire there.
On streets, it handled well. On the autobahn, it always took thirty seconds to get up to full speed (that was with my foot pumped to floor). One other autobahn feature was the wind-effect.....at 100 kph, an occasional breeze would push the car to the left or right.
As summer came, I realized the glass roof intensified the heat in the car. After leaving it at lunch.....it'd be around 150 degrees inside the car and I'd have to lower the windows for two minutes while it chilled.
The AC unit? It was the size of a Coke-can and gave me bare minimum relief. When I say bare minimum.....it means BARE minimum.
The fuel tank was roughly five gallons. Course, I did get roughly 38 mpg. But with the distance to work (35 minutes) this meant that I filled the car up every four days.
The seats were crap. After five months of driving, my back always had a pain and my hips hurt. The seats barely went back three inches and the pitch went maybe 20-percent at best.
The radio was FM only. The antenna? It had to be screwed off every time I washed the car. The speakers were cheap and worthless.
I had one headlight go out twelve months after I bought it. I came to discover that you needed the hands of a seven-year-old kid to reach through and change the bulbs. I was able to talk my son into doing the first time. The second time.....I ended taking it over to the mechanic.....who removed the whole front grill to get to it.
In the winter time, I had a forty pound bag of sand in the passenger floor area for the first year. For the second winter, I procured a second forty-pound bag. For the third winter, I procured a third forty-pound bag. If I had kept it for a fourth year.....I probably would have gone and added a fourth bag. Results? Even with winter tires on the stupid car, the extra weight, and front-wheel drive....it was a death trap on ice.
I could park it anywhere (that was one of the four positives of the car against the thirty-two negatives).
It was easy to enter the vehicle and step out (made perfect for a tall guy, go figure that one).
Around the 12th month of ownership.....I reached a level of frustration with the car. It was a serious threat to your safety if you ever got into an accident, and it simply didn't have any speed. Making a trip from K-town to Wiesbaden? With the bumps and cheap suspension.....you felt totally worn out, and it really hurt bad if you had to make a round-trip in one single day.
I kept the car for roughly three years. I thought on gas mileage alone, it'd be easy to sell. I was wrong. On Ramstein, I had the car up for six weeks on the sell-lot, with only one single person asking questions. I removed it.....waited for a month, decreased the price by $700 and had four people in one week interested. Only one got real serious and I sold it for $1000 less than my previous listed price (it was blue-book before) so it went for a loss for me.
I look back at the car. For urban travel.....it was your dream vehicle. For anything beyond that or autobahn.....it was plain crazy and a serious threat to your life. Oddly, I kept it for three years, and still will wake up in the middle of the night with some nightmare over the handling, the wind-effect, or the ice-slide effect of the car.
My wife always referred to it as the clown-car.....refusing to drive it, and I think she only rode in the passenger seat four times ever (she never drove it period).
The approach to the design? That's the curious thing. Everything about the car revolved around simplicity and simple fit. I doubt if there were more than six guys on the design team, and one Chinese guy who crammed the smallest engine possible into whatever room was left. I'm not even sure how the safety crash episode required by the German authorities was ever accomplished and passed by these folks.
So, my recommendation (it's been nine years since I owned this work of technology). If you lived in some small town or village where you had no intentions of ever getting out or driving past 50 kph, and all you were ever going to transport was a case of beer or a dog.....well, is the car for you. Otherwise, skip it.
A Tale of One City (Not Two): Molenbeek
I sat and read a essay today.....on Molenbeek, Belgium....the ghetto where a large portion of Muslims now live on the west end of town. This is where all the excitement over the Brussels terror action was situated yesterday.
The population of this 'burb' rests at 93,000....more or less. This was a thriving area throughout the late 1700s and all the way to mid-1950s. Commerce and manufacturing made it a working-man's area. At some point in the late 1950s....they needed more manpower, so they allowed a fair number of North Africans to come in and take jobs. They didn't use the term multiculturalism in those days....it was simply work for money.
Depending on which analyst, journalist, or politician you talk to.....most will say that crime and bad behavior started up in the 1980s and never saw any real attention by the authorities or cops.
I read a comment by one retired cop from the region who said in simple language that this was a area that you just didn't get out as a cop and enforce the law.
The word 'ghetto'? Well, they use it often. If you go and look at pictures of the 'burb'....2.2 square miles, it's highly packed and dense. There are differing numbers over Muslims in the area. Some will say forty-percent.....some will say sixty-percent. Some people hint that some buildings may be officially listed as having 200 residents, and the truth is that there's 220 folks there....of which some folks are of Belgium or have a visa to be there.
So this essay came to this great question.....can you take down a ghetto? Can you just go and tell people that this neighborhood is too dense or populated, and force a quarter of the population to leave? Can you even go as far as ordering them to go more than just a mile or two.....but actually go forty miles away into some rural area? Well...no.
Most will argue now that Belgium has a problem of people being there.....without any real hope of employment, and they sit around to whine and complain about their wasted lives.
Oddly, I went to Wiki and looked at this one piece of curious history. You see....from Saint-Jans-Molenbeek....there are thirty-to-forty significant people from all walks of life who apparently never wasted their lives. These are writers, painters, scientists, actors, soccer players, singers, and professors. The thing you notice is that these are mostly all people born prior to the 1950s, and the bulk are long dead now. You could probably walk around this burb today...an area that you could walk from one end to another in about twenty minutes, and not find any kid whose destiny is life is worth writing much about.
What kind of solution can you dig up for Molenbeek? None.
As an American, it reminds me of Detroit. People stayed, even when Detroit was in the later stages of its destruction. People even stay in Detroit today.....waiting on some mythical recovery that will never come. The people in the ghetto region of Molenbeek? They are sitting there and waiting for the same mythical recovery. In their case.....one by one.....the young and naive will chat with others, and occasionally get all emphasized about some religious cause, then find themselves counting the hours of their life left to live.....dying for some fraudulent cause that seems to give them one last glimmer of purpose in life.
My suggestion? Go and cut social programs and easy money for the welfare class. Make them want to pack up and leave. That's about the only legit way of convincing people that recovery in this place is not possible, so give up and move elsewhere.....maybe a good distance elsewhere.
The population of this 'burb' rests at 93,000....more or less. This was a thriving area throughout the late 1700s and all the way to mid-1950s. Commerce and manufacturing made it a working-man's area. At some point in the late 1950s....they needed more manpower, so they allowed a fair number of North Africans to come in and take jobs. They didn't use the term multiculturalism in those days....it was simply work for money.
Depending on which analyst, journalist, or politician you talk to.....most will say that crime and bad behavior started up in the 1980s and never saw any real attention by the authorities or cops.
I read a comment by one retired cop from the region who said in simple language that this was a area that you just didn't get out as a cop and enforce the law.
The word 'ghetto'? Well, they use it often. If you go and look at pictures of the 'burb'....2.2 square miles, it's highly packed and dense. There are differing numbers over Muslims in the area. Some will say forty-percent.....some will say sixty-percent. Some people hint that some buildings may be officially listed as having 200 residents, and the truth is that there's 220 folks there....of which some folks are of Belgium or have a visa to be there.
So this essay came to this great question.....can you take down a ghetto? Can you just go and tell people that this neighborhood is too dense or populated, and force a quarter of the population to leave? Can you even go as far as ordering them to go more than just a mile or two.....but actually go forty miles away into some rural area? Well...no.
Most will argue now that Belgium has a problem of people being there.....without any real hope of employment, and they sit around to whine and complain about their wasted lives.
Oddly, I went to Wiki and looked at this one piece of curious history. You see....from Saint-Jans-Molenbeek....there are thirty-to-forty significant people from all walks of life who apparently never wasted their lives. These are writers, painters, scientists, actors, soccer players, singers, and professors. The thing you notice is that these are mostly all people born prior to the 1950s, and the bulk are long dead now. You could probably walk around this burb today...an area that you could walk from one end to another in about twenty minutes, and not find any kid whose destiny is life is worth writing much about.
What kind of solution can you dig up for Molenbeek? None.
As an American, it reminds me of Detroit. People stayed, even when Detroit was in the later stages of its destruction. People even stay in Detroit today.....waiting on some mythical recovery that will never come. The people in the ghetto region of Molenbeek? They are sitting there and waiting for the same mythical recovery. In their case.....one by one.....the young and naive will chat with others, and occasionally get all emphasized about some religious cause, then find themselves counting the hours of their life left to live.....dying for some fraudulent cause that seems to give them one last glimmer of purpose in life.
My suggestion? Go and cut social programs and easy money for the welfare class. Make them want to pack up and leave. That's about the only legit way of convincing people that recovery in this place is not possible, so give up and move elsewhere.....maybe a good distance elsewhere.
New Political Poll Data
Public-run Channel One (ARD) ran some polling data and did the 18-month out projection of the national election in the fall of 2017.
It's not a very happy situation.
AfD, the anti-immigration party.....is holding firm at 13-percent. The SPD sits at 22-percent....mostly shaking their heads over public sentiment and lack of enthusiasm for their message. The CDU? They are happy to some degree with 34-percent of the potential vote.
The three remaining parties site in lesser positions: FDP at 7-percent (better than what they got in 2013), the Linke Party at 8-percent (losing more votes), and the Greens at 12-percent (they rarely go higher or lower these days).
There are at least twenty-odd things which could occur over the next 15 months to make the situation alarming for the CDU or SDP: (1) some terrorist action on German soil, (2) one million immigrants arrive in 2016 and the same for 2017, (3) scandals, (4) increase in disgruntled voters wanting Merkel to retire, or (5) an awakening that the EU-Turkey deal was more of a free gift to Turkey and didn't do anything to help alleviate the immigrant crisis in Germany.
The poll that would worry the news media? If you get to some point where the SPD slips below 20-percent, and the CDU slips below 27-percent....it can only mean that the AfD and it's anti-immigration strategy will likely be sitting at 20-percent of the national vote.
This 20-percent case.....makes for an interesting situation because of the coalition required to run the government. Imagine the CDU having to build a 50-percent or better coalition....with the Greens and the SPD. They would be forming the weakest form of government that Germany has had since the late 1920s.
Four years of weak CDU-SPD-Green leadership? It could lay down the framework, with continued immigration woes....for a 2021 election where the AfD would take 30-percent of the vote.
You just look at the mess in progress and wonder why someone doesn't do a Einstein moment and realize the necessity of change.
It's not a very happy situation.
AfD, the anti-immigration party.....is holding firm at 13-percent. The SPD sits at 22-percent....mostly shaking their heads over public sentiment and lack of enthusiasm for their message. The CDU? They are happy to some degree with 34-percent of the potential vote.
The three remaining parties site in lesser positions: FDP at 7-percent (better than what they got in 2013), the Linke Party at 8-percent (losing more votes), and the Greens at 12-percent (they rarely go higher or lower these days).
There are at least twenty-odd things which could occur over the next 15 months to make the situation alarming for the CDU or SDP: (1) some terrorist action on German soil, (2) one million immigrants arrive in 2016 and the same for 2017, (3) scandals, (4) increase in disgruntled voters wanting Merkel to retire, or (5) an awakening that the EU-Turkey deal was more of a free gift to Turkey and didn't do anything to help alleviate the immigrant crisis in Germany.
The poll that would worry the news media? If you get to some point where the SPD slips below 20-percent, and the CDU slips below 27-percent....it can only mean that the AfD and it's anti-immigration strategy will likely be sitting at 20-percent of the national vote.
This 20-percent case.....makes for an interesting situation because of the coalition required to run the government. Imagine the CDU having to build a 50-percent or better coalition....with the Greens and the SPD. They would be forming the weakest form of government that Germany has had since the late 1920s.
Four years of weak CDU-SPD-Green leadership? It could lay down the framework, with continued immigration woes....for a 2021 election where the AfD would take 30-percent of the vote.
You just look at the mess in progress and wonder why someone doesn't do a Einstein moment and realize the necessity of change.
The German Bakery
Most Americans will arrive and somewhere in the first month....stop at a German bakery. They've noticed them as they passed or had someone suggest a visit. The visit will probably lay down the framework for more visits....because there is something unique and uncommon with these German icons.
There are two basic types.
There is the industrial-run operation where four clerks will sell the production line of such-and-such bakery complex which is twenty-odd miles away. Somewhere around 1AM.....twenty folks will show up....cigarettes dangling from their mouth with triple-dose of coffee, and make enough bread, cakes, and brotchen to fill up twelve trucks....which must leave by 5:00 to make forty-one drop-offs by 7:00.
While the guys and gals back at the production line have a knowledge level that would be worth 500 pages of discussion.....the four clerks at the store have enough knowledge to fill up sixteen 3x5 cards. If you asked what was in such-and-such product....they'd look at you in a dazed sort of way.
The neat thing about the industrial-run operation is that prices are stable and fairly cheap. The products won't be bad.....or even marginal. You might even come to appreciate some of the things....like cheese-cake.
So, you'd sit at the cafe or bakery operation....sipping a four-star coffee (rarely does Germans allow the sale of anything less than that), and go through some cherry glazed roll.....and gaze over the morning news. People come and go....business thrives.
The second type of bakery is that the one where Hans (the baker) runs himself. Hans is married and his wife is the chief clerk. Somewhere around 1AM, Hans will show up with his apprentice Ursula (a sixteen-year-old teenager).
Ursula will typically be the type of school graduate that you might ask what one-quarter of an hour would be and she'd be standing there for three minutes trying to analyze this and think of a correct answer. You could run through the typical questions....what German state do you live in....what's one-tenth of 66 kilograms....or can pumpkins be used to sweeten anything? And Ursula will utterly fail. Hans knows this and has to be direct, firm, and continually reviewing her work. The thing is.....Ursula will eventually get smart enough (by the third year) that he only has to supervise her fifty percent of the time.
In the front of this little operation of a bakery and cafe.....will be one helper for the wife. The helper.....Heike....will wear mostly loose fitting blouses and the old retired German guys who come in at 9AM to have their daily coffee and cake.....will ask her to pick up one cake out of the lower tray (giving them an eyeful), then change their mind and ask for a second cake instead....thus getting a double-eyeful.
The thing about this second operation....is that Hans makes superior products. It'll cost ten-to-twenty percent more but there's some type of mythical magic that he puts into his products and they taste better.
The industrial guys have probably taken over 98-percent of the cafe and bakery operations in Germany today. There are few private operations that thrive or survive.
On a weekly basis, I will probably venture into a bakery or cafe at least three or four times a week. You can call it a habit, or just a desire for superior coffee and bakery products.
Better than Starbucks? Well.....yeah.
I know that Starbucks is some kind of package deal where you get their 'atmosphere' and a five-star cup of coffee. But you just can't compete against the German bakery products and occasionally the old fashion atmosphere of a cafe.
In Wiesbaden, if you wanted the old-world experience of a cafe......you'd go to the center of the shopping district....to the Cafe Maldener. On Saturdays or holiday periods.....you'd have to make a reservation because there's just too much traffic going into the cafe. You'd have to dress half-way decent because you kinda feel like it's not the cheapo sip-and-go coffee shop. Waiters come at your beckon call....well....if you wait long enough. The place has charm.
The other shop in Wiesbaden that I always admire....is the Living Bakery along Bierstadter Strasse. With jazz in the background and the best coffee in town, it's a place where you marvel at a 300-calorie cheese cake for a while.
There are two basic types.
There is the industrial-run operation where four clerks will sell the production line of such-and-such bakery complex which is twenty-odd miles away. Somewhere around 1AM.....twenty folks will show up....cigarettes dangling from their mouth with triple-dose of coffee, and make enough bread, cakes, and brotchen to fill up twelve trucks....which must leave by 5:00 to make forty-one drop-offs by 7:00.
While the guys and gals back at the production line have a knowledge level that would be worth 500 pages of discussion.....the four clerks at the store have enough knowledge to fill up sixteen 3x5 cards. If you asked what was in such-and-such product....they'd look at you in a dazed sort of way.
The neat thing about the industrial-run operation is that prices are stable and fairly cheap. The products won't be bad.....or even marginal. You might even come to appreciate some of the things....like cheese-cake.
So, you'd sit at the cafe or bakery operation....sipping a four-star coffee (rarely does Germans allow the sale of anything less than that), and go through some cherry glazed roll.....and gaze over the morning news. People come and go....business thrives.
The second type of bakery is that the one where Hans (the baker) runs himself. Hans is married and his wife is the chief clerk. Somewhere around 1AM, Hans will show up with his apprentice Ursula (a sixteen-year-old teenager).
Ursula will typically be the type of school graduate that you might ask what one-quarter of an hour would be and she'd be standing there for three minutes trying to analyze this and think of a correct answer. You could run through the typical questions....what German state do you live in....what's one-tenth of 66 kilograms....or can pumpkins be used to sweeten anything? And Ursula will utterly fail. Hans knows this and has to be direct, firm, and continually reviewing her work. The thing is.....Ursula will eventually get smart enough (by the third year) that he only has to supervise her fifty percent of the time.
In the front of this little operation of a bakery and cafe.....will be one helper for the wife. The helper.....Heike....will wear mostly loose fitting blouses and the old retired German guys who come in at 9AM to have their daily coffee and cake.....will ask her to pick up one cake out of the lower tray (giving them an eyeful), then change their mind and ask for a second cake instead....thus getting a double-eyeful.
The thing about this second operation....is that Hans makes superior products. It'll cost ten-to-twenty percent more but there's some type of mythical magic that he puts into his products and they taste better.
The industrial guys have probably taken over 98-percent of the cafe and bakery operations in Germany today. There are few private operations that thrive or survive.
On a weekly basis, I will probably venture into a bakery or cafe at least three or four times a week. You can call it a habit, or just a desire for superior coffee and bakery products.
Better than Starbucks? Well.....yeah.
I know that Starbucks is some kind of package deal where you get their 'atmosphere' and a five-star cup of coffee. But you just can't compete against the German bakery products and occasionally the old fashion atmosphere of a cafe.
In Wiesbaden, if you wanted the old-world experience of a cafe......you'd go to the center of the shopping district....to the Cafe Maldener. On Saturdays or holiday periods.....you'd have to make a reservation because there's just too much traffic going into the cafe. You'd have to dress half-way decent because you kinda feel like it's not the cheapo sip-and-go coffee shop. Waiters come at your beckon call....well....if you wait long enough. The place has charm.
The other shop in Wiesbaden that I always admire....is the Living Bakery along Bierstadter Strasse. With jazz in the background and the best coffee in town, it's a place where you marvel at a 300-calorie cheese cake for a while.
The Approaching German Travel Season
I sat last night watching public-run TV here in Germany....the business news. They came to this brief tidbit....tourism and travel.
There's this update over German reservations and travel arrangements for the coming vacation season.
For those who don't grasp the German mentality about spring and summer vacation periods....Germans take this fairly serious....planning several months in advance. Typically, come January....they open up the catalogs and start talking serious about where they will be going and to what extent (one week, two weeks, three weeks, etc).
Analysis will be done over all-inclusive deals (drinks and food), or just half-board (just breakfast and dinner with no lunch or drinks). Then there's the weather discussion....must it be ultra-hot or just mild? A beach deal or some history adventure deal? A rowdy hotel with Russians in the background, or a quiet place where old Greeks mostly sit around and discuss this woeful year? Do you go radical and visit Ireland....mostly asking if it always rains this much?
So, there's some shock over this coming season. Reservations for Tunisia? Down roughly by seventy-percent. Reservations for Egypt and Turkey? Down by roughly 30-to-35 percent. Reason? Increased terrorism.
Who gains? Spain is on the upswing for German tourists....maybe a record year. This includes Spain itself, the island of Ibiza, and the Canaries (to the far south).
Behind Spain, is Croatia, Italy, Greece, Austria, and France. The normal locations like the US, Asia, and cruises remain steady.
The thing is that Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia have had a lot of success in the past....built large resorts....and are fairly desperate for jobs to exist to make the public happy. Just suffering through one single year of significant decrease is a big deal. If the trend stayed around? Yeah, some serious heartburn.
In the case of all three stagnate locations.....they will likely put up exceptional deals for the resorts and put themselves into a heavily discounted position to attract last-minute visitors. It wouldn't surprise me if you'd start to see some five-star resorts in Egypt offer up a full package (food and drinks inclusive, with airfare and hotel) for 600 Euro (for two weeks).
The thing is...would you travel to some location that occasionally gets mentioned for terror acts? Some Germans are that risky. Most aren't.
A decrease in Germans traveling? No. These are people who have saved their money....will get days and days of vacation time from the company....and demand some type of relaxation. They will go somewhere....even if it's a nickel and dime Bavarian valley trip where some Heidi-gal runs a cheap two-star hotel.
So, if your German associate seems peppy and upbeat....it's probably because he's on the countdown calendar and only sixty days away from some unforgettable vacation to some Greek isle where the sun shines 99-percent of the time, the women will be half-nude, the booze cheap, and the air-conditioning works (at least from 8AM to 8PM). It'll be a dazed look, as they drift back and forth....imagining themselves at buffet eating experience with tons of food, and some waiter bringing them their sixth beer. Your German associate....is in hog-heaven (as we say in the US).
There's this update over German reservations and travel arrangements for the coming vacation season.
For those who don't grasp the German mentality about spring and summer vacation periods....Germans take this fairly serious....planning several months in advance. Typically, come January....they open up the catalogs and start talking serious about where they will be going and to what extent (one week, two weeks, three weeks, etc).
Analysis will be done over all-inclusive deals (drinks and food), or just half-board (just breakfast and dinner with no lunch or drinks). Then there's the weather discussion....must it be ultra-hot or just mild? A beach deal or some history adventure deal? A rowdy hotel with Russians in the background, or a quiet place where old Greeks mostly sit around and discuss this woeful year? Do you go radical and visit Ireland....mostly asking if it always rains this much?
So, there's some shock over this coming season. Reservations for Tunisia? Down roughly by seventy-percent. Reservations for Egypt and Turkey? Down by roughly 30-to-35 percent. Reason? Increased terrorism.
Who gains? Spain is on the upswing for German tourists....maybe a record year. This includes Spain itself, the island of Ibiza, and the Canaries (to the far south).
Behind Spain, is Croatia, Italy, Greece, Austria, and France. The normal locations like the US, Asia, and cruises remain steady.
The thing is that Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia have had a lot of success in the past....built large resorts....and are fairly desperate for jobs to exist to make the public happy. Just suffering through one single year of significant decrease is a big deal. If the trend stayed around? Yeah, some serious heartburn.
In the case of all three stagnate locations.....they will likely put up exceptional deals for the resorts and put themselves into a heavily discounted position to attract last-minute visitors. It wouldn't surprise me if you'd start to see some five-star resorts in Egypt offer up a full package (food and drinks inclusive, with airfare and hotel) for 600 Euro (for two weeks).
The thing is...would you travel to some location that occasionally gets mentioned for terror acts? Some Germans are that risky. Most aren't.
A decrease in Germans traveling? No. These are people who have saved their money....will get days and days of vacation time from the company....and demand some type of relaxation. They will go somewhere....even if it's a nickel and dime Bavarian valley trip where some Heidi-gal runs a cheap two-star hotel.
So, if your German associate seems peppy and upbeat....it's probably because he's on the countdown calendar and only sixty days away from some unforgettable vacation to some Greek isle where the sun shines 99-percent of the time, the women will be half-nude, the booze cheap, and the air-conditioning works (at least from 8AM to 8PM). It'll be a dazed look, as they drift back and forth....imagining themselves at buffet eating experience with tons of food, and some waiter bringing them their sixth beer. Your German associate....is in hog-heaven (as we say in the US).
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Essay: The Remarkable 1928 German Election
This is one of those history lesson essays that I occasionally write. The topic? How to build the weakest coalition possible in German politics and lead right down the path for the Nazi vote in November of 1932.
So, in May of 1928.....the Germans held a federal election. Roughly three-quarters of the public came and actually voted. The public was charged up and feeling enthusiastic about the various promises on the table from different political parties. The results with this election could be split into a couple of remarkable things.
First, there were forty-one parties across Germany in this election. Roughly twenty-percent of the vote.....were for parties below the five-percent margin. In these days, it didn't matter with that five-percent or better rule that Germany has today.
Fifteen parties walked into the new Bundestag after this election....with seats. Amusing in some ways.....but it will detract from stability.
The Communist Party? They took 10.6-percent of the vote. Because of the twenty-percent vote for oddball minor parties, and the Communist Party vote....it's a problem to create a coalition authority in this new government.
So, the SPD does what is remarkable.....they build this coalition out of four political parties. Just to suggest this meeting where all four are at the table and trying to form some agreements, and split the cabinet posts.....probably took an enormous amount of skill and patience.
A 'Grand Coalition' with the SPD, Centre Party, DDP, and DVP. What most will say is that four came to some acceptable agreement on foreign policy, but marginally agreed to internal policy.
So when 1929 rolled around and the economic woes of Wall Street came to Germany.....these four members of the Grand Coalition were not in any position to be smart, agreeable, or prioritize the solution ahead.
What Germans were able to view over the period between the economic downfall and the November 1932 election....was crappy politics and weak leadership. Why trust any of these players?
The election of 1928 laid down the framework for the Nazis to emerge as a potential solution to the woes of the country.
Thirty-one million Germans voted in 1928, and stood up one of the weakest possible government coalitions. You can spends lots of time talking about Hitler speeches and Brown Shirts, but democracy itself.....helped to put the Nazis into the right place, at the right time, with the message that the public accepted.
So, in May of 1928.....the Germans held a federal election. Roughly three-quarters of the public came and actually voted. The public was charged up and feeling enthusiastic about the various promises on the table from different political parties. The results with this election could be split into a couple of remarkable things.
First, there were forty-one parties across Germany in this election. Roughly twenty-percent of the vote.....were for parties below the five-percent margin. In these days, it didn't matter with that five-percent or better rule that Germany has today.
Fifteen parties walked into the new Bundestag after this election....with seats. Amusing in some ways.....but it will detract from stability.
The Communist Party? They took 10.6-percent of the vote. Because of the twenty-percent vote for oddball minor parties, and the Communist Party vote....it's a problem to create a coalition authority in this new government.
So, the SPD does what is remarkable.....they build this coalition out of four political parties. Just to suggest this meeting where all four are at the table and trying to form some agreements, and split the cabinet posts.....probably took an enormous amount of skill and patience.
A 'Grand Coalition' with the SPD, Centre Party, DDP, and DVP. What most will say is that four came to some acceptable agreement on foreign policy, but marginally agreed to internal policy.
So when 1929 rolled around and the economic woes of Wall Street came to Germany.....these four members of the Grand Coalition were not in any position to be smart, agreeable, or prioritize the solution ahead.
What Germans were able to view over the period between the economic downfall and the November 1932 election....was crappy politics and weak leadership. Why trust any of these players?
The election of 1928 laid down the framework for the Nazis to emerge as a potential solution to the woes of the country.
Thirty-one million Germans voted in 1928, and stood up one of the weakest possible government coalitions. You can spends lots of time talking about Hitler speeches and Brown Shirts, but democracy itself.....helped to put the Nazis into the right place, at the right time, with the message that the public accepted.
The Thing About Color
This is a bridge that you'd cross into mid-town Brisbane.
Extra cost? I doubt it. It's the kind of thing that you'd stand and admire for a while.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
The "Cold Blood" Talk
“This war on terrorism needs to be carried out with cold blood."
-- French President Hollande (after Tuesday attacks in Brussels)
When you hear a comment like this.....you ask....what exactly do you want to do? After a while....people get used to Twitter-commentary....fancy French flags over their pictures to show solidarity.....cops and military troops at public events and facilities....and tough talk. The result? Well, nothing.
In a month or two....something else will occur, and Hollande will respond: This war on terrorism really needs to be carried out with really cold blood. Yeah, and what?
Yeah, I am cynical. Political talk is cheap. It's like the Pope jumping all over people or countries who stand against immigrates or asylum seekers, but won't throw up the gates to Saint Peters Square in Rome or throw a billion of it's cash stash toward the support of such people. It's all fake chatter.
I would make three simple suggestions. First, the NY City policy of 'stop-and-frisk' (which got terminated by the present mayor) ought to into full enforcement in affected countries, and target exactly who you think is potentially a risk (hint: it won't be 66-year old Belgium women). And by frisk.....I don't mean a hundred a day, or a thousand a day....you start to frisk 100,000 people a day, and you make it absolutely personal. Day after day, week after week.
Second, pretty much sit and declare any religion with a violent means or demonstration of potential threatening behavior....a threat. Give them a month to clean up their act....after that....with no demonstration of involving themselves in a clean-up.....you, the government, start identifying any wording within documents or bad-behavior religious scholars as a necessary to hold people. Task these people with a mental exam and let the psychology crowd evaluate them as a threat to society. Present behavior modification opportunities or just hold them until you think they might be safe. If it requires five years....fine.
Third, you go right at the heart of the issue....all of the thugs recruited for ISIS and the 'gimmick'....are young and impressed with fraudulent religious goals. Fine.....tell them exactly how this game will work. Run a 60-second commercial on how some fake pretender will convince you of your loser status in life, but you could be some die-by-the-cause thug and rejoice in being dead. Heep a massive amount of foolish talk upon the commercial and ask....why are there no fifty or sixty year old men doing this stupidity? Well....they just aren't that foolish.
At some point, the public will lose patience because political talk is fairly cheap, and they will turn to some means of government that is less desirable but more capable in fixing the problem. Sadly, this is the path unless you achieve results.
-- French President Hollande (after Tuesday attacks in Brussels)
When you hear a comment like this.....you ask....what exactly do you want to do? After a while....people get used to Twitter-commentary....fancy French flags over their pictures to show solidarity.....cops and military troops at public events and facilities....and tough talk. The result? Well, nothing.
In a month or two....something else will occur, and Hollande will respond: This war on terrorism really needs to be carried out with really cold blood. Yeah, and what?
Yeah, I am cynical. Political talk is cheap. It's like the Pope jumping all over people or countries who stand against immigrates or asylum seekers, but won't throw up the gates to Saint Peters Square in Rome or throw a billion of it's cash stash toward the support of such people. It's all fake chatter.
I would make three simple suggestions. First, the NY City policy of 'stop-and-frisk' (which got terminated by the present mayor) ought to into full enforcement in affected countries, and target exactly who you think is potentially a risk (hint: it won't be 66-year old Belgium women). And by frisk.....I don't mean a hundred a day, or a thousand a day....you start to frisk 100,000 people a day, and you make it absolutely personal. Day after day, week after week.
Second, pretty much sit and declare any religion with a violent means or demonstration of potential threatening behavior....a threat. Give them a month to clean up their act....after that....with no demonstration of involving themselves in a clean-up.....you, the government, start identifying any wording within documents or bad-behavior religious scholars as a necessary to hold people. Task these people with a mental exam and let the psychology crowd evaluate them as a threat to society. Present behavior modification opportunities or just hold them until you think they might be safe. If it requires five years....fine.
Third, you go right at the heart of the issue....all of the thugs recruited for ISIS and the 'gimmick'....are young and impressed with fraudulent religious goals. Fine.....tell them exactly how this game will work. Run a 60-second commercial on how some fake pretender will convince you of your loser status in life, but you could be some die-by-the-cause thug and rejoice in being dead. Heep a massive amount of foolish talk upon the commercial and ask....why are there no fifty or sixty year old men doing this stupidity? Well....they just aren't that foolish.
At some point, the public will lose patience because political talk is fairly cheap, and they will turn to some means of government that is less desirable but more capable in fixing the problem. Sadly, this is the path unless you achieve results.
Hessen Numbers Examined
The statistical guys did a fair amount of analysis over the Hessen city voting (three weeks ago), and came to some surprising conclusion. This was prior to the three state elections of two weeks ago.
If you compare 2011 voting to 2016 voting.....there was this swing of people going to the AfD (the anti-immigration party). Naturally, you'd assume it was mostly disenchanted CDU voters. Well....no.
The data shows that barely eight-percent of the 2011 CDU voters flipped over to the AfD. Most disenchanted CDU voters went to the FDP instead (16.4 percent). In some ways, it's a positive because the typical FDP position is not that far off from the CDU position, and to be honest....on the immigration issue....there's barely much difference between the two.
But, here's the shocker.....on the SPD....21.8 percent of 2011 voters flipped over in 2016, and voted AfD. That's a fair jump.
Should this trend worry the national SPD folks? I'm guessing they are sitting in some conference room and debating the trend. They'd like to believe that it's really all disenchanted CDU voters going this direction. If they were in a national election and lost 21.8 percent to the AfD, some would just hand in their cards and retire.
Not that this really changes any positions on the Merkel vision for immigration, but it probably will put significant pressure on results coming out of this EU-Turkey deal, and hopes that the migration numbers decrease.
If you compare 2011 voting to 2016 voting.....there was this swing of people going to the AfD (the anti-immigration party). Naturally, you'd assume it was mostly disenchanted CDU voters. Well....no.
The data shows that barely eight-percent of the 2011 CDU voters flipped over to the AfD. Most disenchanted CDU voters went to the FDP instead (16.4 percent). In some ways, it's a positive because the typical FDP position is not that far off from the CDU position, and to be honest....on the immigration issue....there's barely much difference between the two.
But, here's the shocker.....on the SPD....21.8 percent of 2011 voters flipped over in 2016, and voted AfD. That's a fair jump.
Should this trend worry the national SPD folks? I'm guessing they are sitting in some conference room and debating the trend. They'd like to believe that it's really all disenchanted CDU voters going this direction. If they were in a national election and lost 21.8 percent to the AfD, some would just hand in their cards and retire.
Not that this really changes any positions on the Merkel vision for immigration, but it probably will put significant pressure on results coming out of this EU-Turkey deal, and hopes that the migration numbers decrease.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Wealth Redistribution: German Style
I've brought this up a couple of times in essays....but it simply got reinforced today with an item from Channel One (ARD), my public-run news folks.
The German Federal Ministry of Finance admitted today that near 9.6 billion Euro went from four states.....to the 12 other "lesser" states.
The big chunk? Bavaria paid out almost 5.5 billion Euro. Baden-Wurttemberg around 2.3 billion, Hessen around 1.7 billion and Hamburg around 112 million.
ARD admits at some point that the biggest receiver of the excess taxation money....is Berlin itself (just over 3.5 billion).
There's a case being tossed around and will end up with some national court review of this whole national tax redistribution game. Both Hessen and Bavaria are pressing on this episode. They want a "fairer" deal....with more of their wealth generated....staying in their own states.
This is one of those conversations that Germans will sit around and discuss over the business side of the nation and why job growth is centered in just a few locations. When you bring up wealth redistribution....it goes beyond the personal level, and surprises people as being a state-level system as well.
The German Federal Ministry of Finance admitted today that near 9.6 billion Euro went from four states.....to the 12 other "lesser" states.
The big chunk? Bavaria paid out almost 5.5 billion Euro. Baden-Wurttemberg around 2.3 billion, Hessen around 1.7 billion and Hamburg around 112 million.
ARD admits at some point that the biggest receiver of the excess taxation money....is Berlin itself (just over 3.5 billion).
There's a case being tossed around and will end up with some national court review of this whole national tax redistribution game. Both Hessen and Bavaria are pressing on this episode. They want a "fairer" deal....with more of their wealth generated....staying in their own states.
This is one of those conversations that Germans will sit around and discuss over the business side of the nation and why job growth is centered in just a few locations. When you bring up wealth redistribution....it goes beyond the personal level, and surprises people as being a state-level system as well.
The 'Good-for-Germany' Immigrant Report
There was a fine piece written up on Focus today, which laid out a report by a think-tank in Germany....over German rural areas benefiting from the new immigrants.
What the Center for Social Research Halle (ZSH) said is that rural sections of the nation were hurting prior to the immigration crisis, where Germans themselves were migrating to urbanized areas.
What you typically see is a German youth who finishes up schooling.....goes off for his Abi or university degree, then realizes that this small rural area will offer no real career choices....so he or she moves to an area like Mannheim or Trier.
With a falling birthrate, these rural areas are losing population.
All of this would lead to a great thing.....except for one odd thing, which the ZSH folks didn't point out. Most everyone who is in the immigration, asylum, or refugee situation.....wants to live in a highly urbanized area.
There are no jobs in this rural areas that the ZSH report discusses. That's why they were losing population over the past decades, and will continue to lose population.
This is why the urban planner crowd is all freaked out in cities like Frankfurt now....because there's a major lack of affordable housing. Housing in these rural areas? You can find houses ready to go, and immigrant families could quickly move in and settle. But why go somewhere where there is no jobs.
It's a curious way that they wrote this report and seem to have avoided going out and reviewing what the immigrant crowds are doing and why they have no interest in rural Germany. Maybe there's some gimmick to the research project but my confidence in this immigration thing being great for rural Germany is about zero. It just won't happen in the manner that these folks discuss.
What the Center for Social Research Halle (ZSH) said is that rural sections of the nation were hurting prior to the immigration crisis, where Germans themselves were migrating to urbanized areas.
What you typically see is a German youth who finishes up schooling.....goes off for his Abi or university degree, then realizes that this small rural area will offer no real career choices....so he or she moves to an area like Mannheim or Trier.
With a falling birthrate, these rural areas are losing population.
All of this would lead to a great thing.....except for one odd thing, which the ZSH folks didn't point out. Most everyone who is in the immigration, asylum, or refugee situation.....wants to live in a highly urbanized area.
There are no jobs in this rural areas that the ZSH report discusses. That's why they were losing population over the past decades, and will continue to lose population.
This is why the urban planner crowd is all freaked out in cities like Frankfurt now....because there's a major lack of affordable housing. Housing in these rural areas? You can find houses ready to go, and immigrant families could quickly move in and settle. But why go somewhere where there is no jobs.
It's a curious way that they wrote this report and seem to have avoided going out and reviewing what the immigrant crowds are doing and why they have no interest in rural Germany. Maybe there's some gimmick to the research project but my confidence in this immigration thing being great for rural Germany is about zero. It just won't happen in the manner that these folks discuss.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
The Half-Capacity Story
It'll be one of those stories that really churn up harsh talk by Germans and frustration. According to the Sunday edition of the "Welt am Sonntag"....the refugee camps/centers in Germany are approximately half-full right now.
Most Germans would say....if this is true....why would you pay three billion Euro to the Turks for this whole new Merkel deal?
Presently, the data shown....says that throughout eastern Germany.....accommodations are basically at 20-percent. In Brandenburg, it does go up to 44-percent capacity. In the state of Thuringia.....it's around 18-percent.
Some states refused to comment (Hessen for example) on the occupancy rate.
What's going on? It's hard to say. Maybe the flow since November has decreased a good bit. Maybe the closed trail episode has had some effect. Maybe the Germans have realized that a quarter of the 1.1-million refugees in 2015 simply aren't there anymore or were badly counted.
If this were all true....why play out this game with Turkey and the three billion Euro pot of money that the Turks want.....to control the immigrant issue? Or is it the fact that no one in Berlin really has a clear enough picture of the whole thing.....because they pushed it all to the state level and lost the ability to clearly lead on this issue?
What'll happen if this claim is proven true and the Germans and the EU pay three billion Euro to the Turks? You can pretty much give up hope of the CDU or SPD in the two fall state elections being able to get anything above twenty-percent. Both would have a large amount of blame, and lack any trust with the public. And at the heart of this.....the news media which just never got smart enough to ask stupid questions and realize how screwed up the whole process was.
Most Germans would say....if this is true....why would you pay three billion Euro to the Turks for this whole new Merkel deal?
Presently, the data shown....says that throughout eastern Germany.....accommodations are basically at 20-percent. In Brandenburg, it does go up to 44-percent capacity. In the state of Thuringia.....it's around 18-percent.
Some states refused to comment (Hessen for example) on the occupancy rate.
What's going on? It's hard to say. Maybe the flow since November has decreased a good bit. Maybe the closed trail episode has had some effect. Maybe the Germans have realized that a quarter of the 1.1-million refugees in 2015 simply aren't there anymore or were badly counted.
If this were all true....why play out this game with Turkey and the three billion Euro pot of money that the Turks want.....to control the immigrant issue? Or is it the fact that no one in Berlin really has a clear enough picture of the whole thing.....because they pushed it all to the state level and lost the ability to clearly lead on this issue?
What'll happen if this claim is proven true and the Germans and the EU pay three billion Euro to the Turks? You can pretty much give up hope of the CDU or SPD in the two fall state elections being able to get anything above twenty-percent. Both would have a large amount of blame, and lack any trust with the public. And at the heart of this.....the news media which just never got smart enough to ask stupid questions and realize how screwed up the whole process was.
The Marktkirche of Wiesbaden
The Marktkirche is in the center of town, and near the six central bus points of the city.
The Mauritius Church originally on the square was built over four decades, and was completed in 1521. It sat there until 1850.....when a fire burned enough of it....that it wasn't repairable. At that point, the city went to a new church....the Marktkirche.
Upon completion in 1853....it was the tallest building in the Duchy of Nassau (what is Hessen today).
What will be pointed out about the church is that just about everyone connected to it in the 1930s and to the end of the war.....was anti-Nazi. So, it has a reputation.
If you stand around the square throughout the day....you will note the bells which ring on the hour and half-hour.
Within the square, there's at least twenty places where you can pause for a lunch, or break (drink or food). I should also note that the city park and casino are only five minutes walking away, and the shopping district is barley one minute away.
A Good Walk
If you were looking for a great two-hour walk along the Rhine River, with an occasional sip of apple-wine, coffee, or a cone of ice-cream....this is a four-star walk.
Getting lost is practically impossible, although there is a curve or two. I should also note....it is ABSOLUTELY flat in nature and extremely safe. Other than using common sense on extremely hot days.....it's decent walk.
The Schloss Biebrich is also along the route, and one of the finer city parks in the region next to it (if you were into English landscaping).
There is some work going on around the Schiersteiner Bridge and you might have to walk a bit around it.....but the trail does continue on. If you were adventurous....you could probably make it on down to Geisenheim (five hours of walking), or perhaps even Rudesheim (six hours of walking). The railway operates several stations along this route (after Schierstein) so you can always return to Wiesbaden at the conclusion of your walk.
How to Lose an Election
Right now.....if you are a political figure in the Berlin region (the whole state of Berlin, in fact)....you are walking eggshells until the fall election. You really don't need to screw or get negative press because people will remember stupid acts.
So, it comes up in the news this week....there's accusations of a inside contract deal with the Berlin mayor and a friend. The deal? It's with a US consulting company in the range of 238,000 Euro (this is what Deutsche Welle is reporting over on their side). It's roughly $268,000 American.
What was the contract about? An integration plan to handle an incoming crew of 80,000 refugees. You see, the city didn't have a single person on their staff capable of building such a plan. It's hard to say this with a straight face. You'd think with literally hundreds of people on the city staff....most all with some type of Abi (almost the level of a community college) or a college degree itself....that they would have one or two people who could sit down and write the requirements, the general time-line, and the risks involved. But no.....they wanted to be told this by the contracted company.
Typically, when you do a contract.....there is a bid process. You write the requirement of what you expect, give a time-line for the product to be delivered, and accept bids over a short period. The mayor and staff avoided that....which means they had a 'favorite' in mind and it likely means they overpaid for the advice given. It also demonstrates that they wanted the advice ONLY from someone that they felt was qualified in their mind.
This all leads the political opposition machine in Berlin politics to suggest that the Mayor was helping to funnel business to a former associate, who worked for McKinsey.
By mid-Thursday this past week....the heat was on, as opposition parties (mostly the Pirate Party, the Linke Party, and the Greens) demanded that the mayor appear and explain things. They had enough votes.....to keep the session open and force the mayor to appear. So eventually, Michael Muller (the mayor) showed up. Local news attending describes him as being a bit aggravated (this from the Tagesspiegel). He made a few comments, and left the situation in a negative position from public perception.
The last part of this story is the puzzling part. This master plan delivered to the city? The commentary so far indicates that it's mostly a marginalized plan with no real time schedule. If it were true....it'd mean that the 238,000 Euro was mostly flushed down with nothing showing value.
Whether the SPD (the mayor's party) likes it or not....this episode tarnished their character and transparency. It'll be brought up in campaign advertising later in the year. At this point, you really wouldn't want to lose one-to-two percent of your voters on something stupid like this.....over a lousy 238,000 Euro.
So, it comes up in the news this week....there's accusations of a inside contract deal with the Berlin mayor and a friend. The deal? It's with a US consulting company in the range of 238,000 Euro (this is what Deutsche Welle is reporting over on their side). It's roughly $268,000 American.
What was the contract about? An integration plan to handle an incoming crew of 80,000 refugees. You see, the city didn't have a single person on their staff capable of building such a plan. It's hard to say this with a straight face. You'd think with literally hundreds of people on the city staff....most all with some type of Abi (almost the level of a community college) or a college degree itself....that they would have one or two people who could sit down and write the requirements, the general time-line, and the risks involved. But no.....they wanted to be told this by the contracted company.
Typically, when you do a contract.....there is a bid process. You write the requirement of what you expect, give a time-line for the product to be delivered, and accept bids over a short period. The mayor and staff avoided that....which means they had a 'favorite' in mind and it likely means they overpaid for the advice given. It also demonstrates that they wanted the advice ONLY from someone that they felt was qualified in their mind.
This all leads the political opposition machine in Berlin politics to suggest that the Mayor was helping to funnel business to a former associate, who worked for McKinsey.
By mid-Thursday this past week....the heat was on, as opposition parties (mostly the Pirate Party, the Linke Party, and the Greens) demanded that the mayor appear and explain things. They had enough votes.....to keep the session open and force the mayor to appear. So eventually, Michael Muller (the mayor) showed up. Local news attending describes him as being a bit aggravated (this from the Tagesspiegel). He made a few comments, and left the situation in a negative position from public perception.
The last part of this story is the puzzling part. This master plan delivered to the city? The commentary so far indicates that it's mostly a marginalized plan with no real time schedule. If it were true....it'd mean that the 238,000 Euro was mostly flushed down with nothing showing value.
Whether the SPD (the mayor's party) likes it or not....this episode tarnished their character and transparency. It'll be brought up in campaign advertising later in the year. At this point, you really wouldn't want to lose one-to-two percent of your voters on something stupid like this.....over a lousy 238,000 Euro.
Soccer Fan Riot
It won't make page one news in Germany, but it'll be talked about by folks in Koln (Cologne). Yesterday, there was a soccer game played between 1. FC Kaiserslautern against Fortuna Dusseldorf. For the record, you should note that these are in the first league.....they are actually at the second level. Typically, folks don't get too charged up about soccer games at the second level.....these are typically games where 10,000 to 15,000 people show up and it barely gets mentioned in the news.
In this episode yesterday.....Fortuna Dusseldorf won. Sadly, the Kaiserslautern fans.....all 400 of them who made the trip up to Dusseldorf.....were a bit hostile and frustrated.
Things kinda went out of control on the train, as they headed south....toward Kaiserslautern.
Somehow, the fans broke into the engineer's area, and had started playing some of their preferred songs over the train's speaker system.
As they pulled in Koln....cops had been called out. This turned into a riot of some type....where disruption was triggered over most of the tracks and trains halted throughout the whole area for a while.
Cops also spoke of vandalism going on within the train station itself.
It is a reminder of how you need to review your safety situation when you travel in Germany, and expect the unexpected on occasion.
In this episode yesterday.....Fortuna Dusseldorf won. Sadly, the Kaiserslautern fans.....all 400 of them who made the trip up to Dusseldorf.....were a bit hostile and frustrated.
Things kinda went out of control on the train, as they headed south....toward Kaiserslautern.
Somehow, the fans broke into the engineer's area, and had started playing some of their preferred songs over the train's speaker system.
As they pulled in Koln....cops had been called out. This turned into a riot of some type....where disruption was triggered over most of the tracks and trains halted throughout the whole area for a while.
Cops also spoke of vandalism going on within the train station itself.
It is a reminder of how you need to review your safety situation when you travel in Germany, and expect the unexpected on occasion.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Guido Westerwelle
Former FDP party chief and German foreign minister....Guido Westerwelle has passed today....from Leukemia.
There's roughly an eight-year period where he was a major player within his party and got routinely mentioned in German news.
The moment where I reached an admiration for the guy....came after the 2005 German election, during the famous Elefantenrund (the Elephant-round). The SPD had lost in the election.....a bare margin....and their chief (Schroeder) was talking up this idea that the CDU would not be able to form a coalition....but he (Schroeder) could.
They turned to the FDP chief (Westerwelle) and he delivered this brief one-minute commentary, which I would refer to as the 'cold-day-in-hell' speech....where he said his party would not partner with Schroeder.
There were probably eight million Germans watching this prime-time talk and the bulk of them went nuts for Westerwelle.
If you bring up Westerwelle's name with most Germans.....they will recite this short speech on the Elefantenrund and how pumped up they got at that point.
There's roughly an eight-year period where he was a major player within his party and got routinely mentioned in German news.
The moment where I reached an admiration for the guy....came after the 2005 German election, during the famous Elefantenrund (the Elephant-round). The SPD had lost in the election.....a bare margin....and their chief (Schroeder) was talking up this idea that the CDU would not be able to form a coalition....but he (Schroeder) could.
They turned to the FDP chief (Westerwelle) and he delivered this brief one-minute commentary, which I would refer to as the 'cold-day-in-hell' speech....where he said his party would not partner with Schroeder.
There were probably eight million Germans watching this prime-time talk and the bulk of them went nuts for Westerwelle.
If you bring up Westerwelle's name with most Germans.....they will recite this short speech on the Elefantenrund and how pumped up they got at that point.
Wiesbaden and Hotels
I will occasionally write travel theme essays. On the subject of Wiesbaden and where one might stay.....you end with four categories of hotels.
Premium class: The Nassauer Hof, Hotel Hansa, the Blu Schwarzer, and the Dorint all fit into this category. It's hard to find anyone who complains about a stay in Wiesbaden at these four hotels. Cost? Minimum of 100 Euro a night, and the Nassauer Hof will typically be a 200-or-more Euro a night place.
Decent Three-Star class: Motel One, the B and B Hotel, Hotel Drei Lilien, and Ibis. I could probably throw another dozen onto the list.....you can find a good listing and comments off Trip Adviser.
Cheap places: NH Wiesbaden, City Hotel, Hotel am Kochbrunnen. These are places where you can probably get a room in the 60-Euro range. They aren't necessarily bad places....just places without character and simply considered average.
Losers: I won't bother with names.....you can analyze data on Trip Adviser and come to conclusions.
The thing is....Wiesbaden is close enough to Mainz and Eltville am Rhein....that you could stay at hotels with either of these cities and enjoy day-trips to Wiesbaden as well. The 6500-area rail and bus ticket which gives you all-day access to Wiesbaden and Mainz is 6.3 Euro each. Eltville is outside of that zone but it's got different features on the plus-side. If you could get rooms at Kloster Erberbach, it'd be a unique life experience....but it'd be a premium price that you'd pay (you'd have to make reservations six months ahead of time because it's not a large place). I'd also put the Das Spritzenhaus on the list....but again, six months ahead on scheduling a room.
Distance convenience? No matter where you stay in Wiesbaden....it's a 20-minute walk at most....to any of the typical tourist sites. That's the one key advantage of the small city image.
Bad deals? Well....there are a couple of minor hotels in the region that have noted that they are credit card-friendly hotels.....only to have the guest discover upon arrival that they aren't friendly....or when the whole trip is finished and you are ready to pay.....they refuse the credit card and want you to pay cash. Well....if you arrive to discover this....smile and walk away. If they've pulled the trick on the last morning and demand 1,200 Euro in cash (when they said they'd take credit cards).....then go and call the cops. A short conversation will occur, and the hotel manager will be pressured into accepting the credit card. Why such behavior? They'd like to have cash....to avoid identifying income and taxation. It's illegal behavior but I can think of two hotels in Wiesbaden who've done this in the past three years. Larger hotels don't do stupid crap like this.....these are mostly the forty-to-sixty room places (on the cheaper side).
Outlying hotels? That's one of the other things that you could examine. Niederhausen is a smaller town to the north of Wiesbaden, which has the Ramada. Great place by the autobahn. Negative is that there is no public transportation around the hotel (you need a car). Pricing for this hotel is usually in the 60-Euro range. The Wald Hotel in Eppstein (about 25 minutes driving from Wiesbaden) is another great place.....placed in a wooded area....with price range near 80-Euro a night. Again, public transportation is a negative so you need a car.
How much sight-seeing can you make out of a Wiesbaden stay? If you have a car, and make some use of public transportation.....ten days worth.
Most of what Wiesbaden has to offer (the park, Casino, down-town, etc) can be seen over a two-day period. Mainz.....maybe 1.5 days. A trip up to Eltville and Rudesheim (plus the Kloster) would eat up two days. Perhaps adding a Rhine River tour for one day (plan getting on the boat from Biebrich and returning via train to Wiesbaden at the conclusion of the day). And with the car, you could take the one-hour drive up to the old Roman fort and Hessen-Park for one whole day of sight-seeing. Frankfurt? With a all-day ticket....may one day of sight-seeing. And if you had a fancy for German cars, tanks, and technology....there's the museum down in Speyer (one-hour away) which could consume one whole day (don't forget the Cathedral and city-walk). Oh, and Heidelberg is only an hour away by train.....if you wanted an old-city experience.
Cheap? No. Reasonable? Considering all the things you could see over a ten-day trip....maybe.
Premium class: The Nassauer Hof, Hotel Hansa, the Blu Schwarzer, and the Dorint all fit into this category. It's hard to find anyone who complains about a stay in Wiesbaden at these four hotels. Cost? Minimum of 100 Euro a night, and the Nassauer Hof will typically be a 200-or-more Euro a night place.
Decent Three-Star class: Motel One, the B and B Hotel, Hotel Drei Lilien, and Ibis. I could probably throw another dozen onto the list.....you can find a good listing and comments off Trip Adviser.
Cheap places: NH Wiesbaden, City Hotel, Hotel am Kochbrunnen. These are places where you can probably get a room in the 60-Euro range. They aren't necessarily bad places....just places without character and simply considered average.
Losers: I won't bother with names.....you can analyze data on Trip Adviser and come to conclusions.
The thing is....Wiesbaden is close enough to Mainz and Eltville am Rhein....that you could stay at hotels with either of these cities and enjoy day-trips to Wiesbaden as well. The 6500-area rail and bus ticket which gives you all-day access to Wiesbaden and Mainz is 6.3 Euro each. Eltville is outside of that zone but it's got different features on the plus-side. If you could get rooms at Kloster Erberbach, it'd be a unique life experience....but it'd be a premium price that you'd pay (you'd have to make reservations six months ahead of time because it's not a large place). I'd also put the Das Spritzenhaus on the list....but again, six months ahead on scheduling a room.
Distance convenience? No matter where you stay in Wiesbaden....it's a 20-minute walk at most....to any of the typical tourist sites. That's the one key advantage of the small city image.
Bad deals? Well....there are a couple of minor hotels in the region that have noted that they are credit card-friendly hotels.....only to have the guest discover upon arrival that they aren't friendly....or when the whole trip is finished and you are ready to pay.....they refuse the credit card and want you to pay cash. Well....if you arrive to discover this....smile and walk away. If they've pulled the trick on the last morning and demand 1,200 Euro in cash (when they said they'd take credit cards).....then go and call the cops. A short conversation will occur, and the hotel manager will be pressured into accepting the credit card. Why such behavior? They'd like to have cash....to avoid identifying income and taxation. It's illegal behavior but I can think of two hotels in Wiesbaden who've done this in the past three years. Larger hotels don't do stupid crap like this.....these are mostly the forty-to-sixty room places (on the cheaper side).
Outlying hotels? That's one of the other things that you could examine. Niederhausen is a smaller town to the north of Wiesbaden, which has the Ramada. Great place by the autobahn. Negative is that there is no public transportation around the hotel (you need a car). Pricing for this hotel is usually in the 60-Euro range. The Wald Hotel in Eppstein (about 25 minutes driving from Wiesbaden) is another great place.....placed in a wooded area....with price range near 80-Euro a night. Again, public transportation is a negative so you need a car.
How much sight-seeing can you make out of a Wiesbaden stay? If you have a car, and make some use of public transportation.....ten days worth.
Most of what Wiesbaden has to offer (the park, Casino, down-town, etc) can be seen over a two-day period. Mainz.....maybe 1.5 days. A trip up to Eltville and Rudesheim (plus the Kloster) would eat up two days. Perhaps adding a Rhine River tour for one day (plan getting on the boat from Biebrich and returning via train to Wiesbaden at the conclusion of the day). And with the car, you could take the one-hour drive up to the old Roman fort and Hessen-Park for one whole day of sight-seeing. Frankfurt? With a all-day ticket....may one day of sight-seeing. And if you had a fancy for German cars, tanks, and technology....there's the museum down in Speyer (one-hour away) which could consume one whole day (don't forget the Cathedral and city-walk). Oh, and Heidelberg is only an hour away by train.....if you wanted an old-city experience.
Cheap? No. Reasonable? Considering all the things you could see over a ten-day trip....maybe.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
The German Tango
Public-run news in Germany has kinda avoided much reporting on this, so you have to follow the BBC and various other news groups around Europe to get to the meat of this story.
The current deal being worked between Chancellor Merkel of Germany and the Turks is this really nifty idea.
"Hamad Joe" from Syria, who walked over 1,600 kilometers to reach Germany....would be put on a list which would mean he goes back to Turkey (likely the place where he started this trek). In exchange for the wonderful Turks accepting Hamad Joe.....the EU (not Germany) would take one alternate-Hamad Joe who sits in a current refugee center in Turkey.
I know.....it does sound pretty stupid.
In American language.....the Yankees are dumping their fat chubby first baseman to the National League team....the Cubs. In exchange....the Cubs will send another fat chubby first baseman back to the American League itself.....just not to the Yankees. The Red Sox might get this guy.....the Angles....or maybe the White Sox.
Several people have pointed out.....via EU regulations....that this is an illegal swap and cannot be acceptable under current EU rules.
Why this would make sense? I suspect the deal would get rid of some burden for Germany, and put some of the other twenty-eight members of the EU into a position where they have to accept some folks.
Would Hungry be willing to accept this deal? They've said they will only accept Christians. Several of the other countries have said that they will only accept moderate Muslims.
Just on logistics alone.....you can sit and imagine six planes taking off each day and flipping a thousand-odd people around from country A to country B to country C.
The possibility that Humad Joe from Germany touches down in Turkey, and slips over to the other line, and flies out in two hours.....back to Europe (maybe Denmark or Spain)? Well, yeah, that's something that I suspect will happen. The Turks might be crazy enough to do something like this, and turn the whole thing into a flying circus.
The current deal being worked between Chancellor Merkel of Germany and the Turks is this really nifty idea.
"Hamad Joe" from Syria, who walked over 1,600 kilometers to reach Germany....would be put on a list which would mean he goes back to Turkey (likely the place where he started this trek). In exchange for the wonderful Turks accepting Hamad Joe.....the EU (not Germany) would take one alternate-Hamad Joe who sits in a current refugee center in Turkey.
I know.....it does sound pretty stupid.
In American language.....the Yankees are dumping their fat chubby first baseman to the National League team....the Cubs. In exchange....the Cubs will send another fat chubby first baseman back to the American League itself.....just not to the Yankees. The Red Sox might get this guy.....the Angles....or maybe the White Sox.
Several people have pointed out.....via EU regulations....that this is an illegal swap and cannot be acceptable under current EU rules.
Why this would make sense? I suspect the deal would get rid of some burden for Germany, and put some of the other twenty-eight members of the EU into a position where they have to accept some folks.
Would Hungry be willing to accept this deal? They've said they will only accept Christians. Several of the other countries have said that they will only accept moderate Muslims.
Just on logistics alone.....you can sit and imagine six planes taking off each day and flipping a thousand-odd people around from country A to country B to country C.
The possibility that Humad Joe from Germany touches down in Turkey, and slips over to the other line, and flies out in two hours.....back to Europe (maybe Denmark or Spain)? Well, yeah, that's something that I suspect will happen. The Turks might be crazy enough to do something like this, and turn the whole thing into a flying circus.
More to Dump on Koln
It's been eighty-odd days since the Cologne (Koln) riot episode. Generally....most Germans figured that they knew all the facts now about that evening.
Well....no. The local press there...the Cologne "Express"....says that there was actually fewer the reported 140 cops around the station and cathedral than reported.
The real number? Eighty.
In fact, there's one other odd piece to this story now. Shortly after midnight....from the eighty.....a number of them were told to end their shift and go home.
They won't say the precise number who were around by 1AM, but I would probably take a guess that we are talking about fewer than fifty on duty an hour after midnight.
What story did the Koln cops give the State Interior Department on 11 January 2016? It's hard to say what they said or how they fudged on the numbers. The Ministry kinda say that they weren't deceived. If they weren't.....I'm wondering what you'd call it.
The public? It's just come out this morning (Thur) and I'm guessing people are sitting there and reading over the story....wondering why the cops couldn't get their story correct, and why they acted like some Banana-Republic cop force.
Since they've fired the chief of the police already....they can't fire anyone else, unless the head of the State Interior Department decided to step down at present.
Personally, this whole thing laid out at this point, would make me think that downtown Koln is a no-go area. Cops won't even protect the train station area....so why risk yourself there?
Well....no. The local press there...the Cologne "Express"....says that there was actually fewer the reported 140 cops around the station and cathedral than reported.
The real number? Eighty.
In fact, there's one other odd piece to this story now. Shortly after midnight....from the eighty.....a number of them were told to end their shift and go home.
They won't say the precise number who were around by 1AM, but I would probably take a guess that we are talking about fewer than fifty on duty an hour after midnight.
What story did the Koln cops give the State Interior Department on 11 January 2016? It's hard to say what they said or how they fudged on the numbers. The Ministry kinda say that they weren't deceived. If they weren't.....I'm wondering what you'd call it.
The public? It's just come out this morning (Thur) and I'm guessing people are sitting there and reading over the story....wondering why the cops couldn't get their story correct, and why they acted like some Banana-Republic cop force.
Since they've fired the chief of the police already....they can't fire anyone else, unless the head of the State Interior Department decided to step down at present.
Personally, this whole thing laid out at this point, would make me think that downtown Koln is a no-go area. Cops won't even protect the train station area....so why risk yourself there?
Berlin Car-bomb Aftermath
Berlin has settled upon a story for the car-bomb episode that killed a Turkish guy (Mesut T.) with a criminal background.
The story goes this way....at least by how Bild tells the story. Mesut T and an associate (he's Russian) were in some deal where things went wrong (drug-deal is the topic mentioned) and they fired shots at some other Russians (one hit apparently). This was at the end of 2015.
The car that exploded....belonged to Mesut T's Russian friend, so he was the target.
All of this makes sense up to a point.....Russian mafia people don't do public settling of scores. They take a guy, and dump him in some mine or river....so there's no body and no investigations by the cops.
Why a car-bomb? It makes almost no sense. The story does fit and I admit it's a comfortable ending except they have to hunt the bomb-maker down.
My guess is that they will spend a month looking around for evidence on some bomb-maker and then half-way close the case because they can't go any further.
What of the intended target.....the Russian guy still living? That's a curious thing.....Bild doesn't tell any of that story. Cops don't say much. If I were this guy.....I'd be on some train and heading as far away from Berlin as possible.
The end of this story? Well.....if the story was accurate....then you got a bomb-maker in the Berlin region working for the Russian mafia. Why should he stop at just one single car-bomb? Not that I'd sit and worry as some Berlin resident.....but the cops would have to stand there and be somewhat curious....was this a one-time only situation? You just don't know.
The story goes this way....at least by how Bild tells the story. Mesut T and an associate (he's Russian) were in some deal where things went wrong (drug-deal is the topic mentioned) and they fired shots at some other Russians (one hit apparently). This was at the end of 2015.
The car that exploded....belonged to Mesut T's Russian friend, so he was the target.
All of this makes sense up to a point.....Russian mafia people don't do public settling of scores. They take a guy, and dump him in some mine or river....so there's no body and no investigations by the cops.
Why a car-bomb? It makes almost no sense. The story does fit and I admit it's a comfortable ending except they have to hunt the bomb-maker down.
My guess is that they will spend a month looking around for evidence on some bomb-maker and then half-way close the case because they can't go any further.
What of the intended target.....the Russian guy still living? That's a curious thing.....Bild doesn't tell any of that story. Cops don't say much. If I were this guy.....I'd be on some train and heading as far away from Berlin as possible.
The end of this story? Well.....if the story was accurate....then you got a bomb-maker in the Berlin region working for the Russian mafia. Why should he stop at just one single car-bomb? Not that I'd sit and worry as some Berlin resident.....but the cops would have to stand there and be somewhat curious....was this a one-time only situation? You just don't know.
The Ticket-Handler Story
I sat and watched HR (my local public-run Hessen network) last night. MEX was one....their version of Sixty-Minutes but more diversified. They cover grocery store gimmicks, bad deals, health issues, fake vitamins, mass transit, etc.
So, last night, they got onto the topic of 'ticket-handlers'. These are people who you'd call when you've gotten a traffic ticket for serious speeding and the cops want to take your license for one to two months. This is a fairly regular thing with the blitz-camera technology.
You get this letter....noting you were in such-and-such city a month ago, and seen via the blitz-camera doing 75 kph in a 50-zone.
You have three options....accept the loss of your license, challenge the picture part of this (it might not be your car), or say the picture is blurry and it was so-and-so (someone else) driving the car. Naturally, with the third option....the cops want to know who because they will lose their license for the next thirty days.
This ticket-handler is a guy who you call. He will review the ticket and picture. Then he will offer the deal. A hundred-Euro for his services alone. Then he gets a person to accept blame for the speeding. Naturally, there is a cost factor to this.....in the two-hundred to two-hundred-fifty Euro range. My impression is that they'd prefer cash, but maybe I'm wrong on this part.
Who would be stupid enough to admit false speeding and lose their license? Well....the guy they interviewed was a college student who rarely if ever drove. He enjoyed the cash flow. The points off this? They disappear in roughly a year, so he could afford to do two of these one-month loss of driving privileges every year.
How many thousands of people do this? Unknown. You can probably find old retired guys sitting in retiree homes....who still hold a license and never drive.....who'd volunteer for two or three of these a year.
Do the cops care? They'd like to get the right guy, but frankly.....they just want to enforce the law.
Why pay someone off? My guess is that a number of folks are fairly desperate on their job situation and can't afford lose their car driving ability for a month. If you were a bus-driver, delivery-guy, or worked at some site twenty kilometers away.....well....it'd demand a resourceful solution. I'm surprised how successful this operation is with getting around the situation.
So, last night, they got onto the topic of 'ticket-handlers'. These are people who you'd call when you've gotten a traffic ticket for serious speeding and the cops want to take your license for one to two months. This is a fairly regular thing with the blitz-camera technology.
You get this letter....noting you were in such-and-such city a month ago, and seen via the blitz-camera doing 75 kph in a 50-zone.
You have three options....accept the loss of your license, challenge the picture part of this (it might not be your car), or say the picture is blurry and it was so-and-so (someone else) driving the car. Naturally, with the third option....the cops want to know who because they will lose their license for the next thirty days.
This ticket-handler is a guy who you call. He will review the ticket and picture. Then he will offer the deal. A hundred-Euro for his services alone. Then he gets a person to accept blame for the speeding. Naturally, there is a cost factor to this.....in the two-hundred to two-hundred-fifty Euro range. My impression is that they'd prefer cash, but maybe I'm wrong on this part.
Who would be stupid enough to admit false speeding and lose their license? Well....the guy they interviewed was a college student who rarely if ever drove. He enjoyed the cash flow. The points off this? They disappear in roughly a year, so he could afford to do two of these one-month loss of driving privileges every year.
How many thousands of people do this? Unknown. You can probably find old retired guys sitting in retiree homes....who still hold a license and never drive.....who'd volunteer for two or three of these a year.
Do the cops care? They'd like to get the right guy, but frankly.....they just want to enforce the law.
Why pay someone off? My guess is that a number of folks are fairly desperate on their job situation and can't afford lose their car driving ability for a month. If you were a bus-driver, delivery-guy, or worked at some site twenty kilometers away.....well....it'd demand a resourceful solution. I'm surprised how successful this operation is with getting around the situation.
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