This is my list (fitting for 2022) of pluses in life in Gemany:
1. I have an App on my phone which enables me to figure the best route/schedule for rail/bus travel....buy the ticket....then engage in plan 'B' action when the route has 'failed'.
You could dump me off anywhere, and the 'system' would save me.
2. I have a taste for good German beer, which I can find at most beer gardens.
3. On about 70-percent of autobahns....there is no speed limit.
4. Just about everyone (for over sixty years) who has been connected to the autobahn system in terms of design....has done a bang-up great job, and ought to get a medal.
5. You can use the trail system and walk a thousand kilometers over a month, and be completely safe.
6. If you aren't that happy with options of TV viewing with public TV or commercial TV.....there's tons of options for streaming video.
7. Bad and poorly run restaurants fail.
8. In most towns and villages.....you can go out in the darkest of night, and feel safe. (I might say otherwise in highly urbanized cities)
9. The quality of police always reinforces the idea of protection.
10. Public forums via public TV....tend to orientate you to a particular topic and fill in all the questions you had.
2 comments:
Could I venture to add that you actually have rights in Germany? Whereas where you and I are from, it's more we talk about all the rights we have, but the state doesn't grant those rights in practice.
In particular online privacy comes to mind. The quantity and quality of the the ads I get when browsing online in the USA make me appreciate some of the EU directives that we sometimes laugh about here.
Well, the rights discussion is one I did about an hour after that...where I talked about regulation, and it's woes.
On online browsing....both the EU and Germany are adding various regulations....monitoring people, and certain forums...I'd advise you to avoid. Telegram is one where German authorities are convinced that a bunch of right-wing guys hang out and use...it's best to avoid it.
There are various state-side news sites that I can't go to today....because of the EU mandates, so I end up using a VPN and there's no problem seeing news from one city or region.
Having a discussion on 'freedoms' in Germany/US is a five-beer discussion and goes off into fifty different directions. It's bad enough now...that you get faked-up freedoms, and think they have value or can hold up....later finding out they were crap. From my travels (NZ, Australia, Singapore, S.Africa, Panama, Turkey, Iceland, etc)....rights aren't the key...regulation is.
A good example...you have the freedom to protest in Germany (in the Constitution), but you have to ask the police for this opportunity and list the precise route/area. If you said a 8 PM demonstration, I'd guarantee you that the local police in Mainz/Wiesbaden won't approve it. Also, if you tried to demonstrate in BIG Covid numbers...cops would refuse that request as well.
I think I worded this well...the 'herd' is allowed to roam in a certain field, and they tend to stay there. It's not freedom we should discuss...it's adding of more regulations.
(Note, did we really need a EU mandate to limit vacuum cleaners to 900 watts?)
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