Tom Bohn did an interview for WELT and it's published today....Fanny Fee Werther wrote the piece and it's worth a moment to think about the discussion here.....'Nobody understands what's happening in Germany anymore.'
If you gathered up a hundred working-class Germans and tried to get some common understanding out of the group.....it's be difficult to say a common 'thread' or landscape exists at this point.
Covid has disrupted the economics, the job potential, the stability of the regular working guy, the social life, the relaxation schedule, vacation plans, life's goals, and made general planning into a chaotic situation.
A couple of weeks ago, I read a piece in the German news over this gal who wanted to make her husband's 60th birthday into a party-type situation. It was all with good intentions. She invited several guests and avoided a public scene by doing this on her patio. Well....the cops got called. This was in an area with ban-rules forbidding more than one single guest. It turned into a pretty crappy situation....for the husband, and for the guests who showed up.
You can probably go and have a conversation with various Germans from the age of 18 to 30, and find that fifty percent have actively violated various ban-rules and just been lucky in not getting caught. The enthusiasm to obey the rules? It's rapidly draining out.
Social media hype? I suspect a number of Germans have figured out that it's best not to advertise your unwilling nature or provide pictures of some party you attended (evidence for the police).
Things ever returning to normal? That's probably a four-hour discussion topic with a group of Germans.
Most people have this idea that the Christmas market business will occur this year, and will be the 'sign' of things returning to normal. If the virus infection rate stays as a top-three priority? Well....you might end up with a very controlled Christmas market, with guards asking for your vaccination slip or some virus test slip. Allowing alcohol to be sold? That's probably a no-go.
How's 2022 looking? A whole new government (probably with a Green Party Chancellor) will be standing there, and the public will be looking for changes to say that the virus era is ended. I just don't see that happening.
So it's a pretty chaotic situation laying there, and no real confidence of things returning to a norm. Curfew is now an absolute part of your life and you continually think about how you need to fit your life into the 'bundle'. Then you start to hear about new changes to the ban-rules, and how long those changes will last before other next round of changes occur.
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