Germany/Syrians

 I looked up the numbers for Syrians residing in Germany....on a deportation order.  At the end of 2025....there were in the 10,500 range.

Of this number....around 900 are on a 'tolerance' situation.  Of the remaining....it's mostly due to practical barriers, ongoing procedures, or humanitarian reasons.  

So if you use the 1.2-million total....roughly 99-percent are not on a deportation list.

From my German language class era....I had several conversations with Syrians.  I found most to be educated....enthusiastic about Germany...and not that hyped-up over religion.  

Oddly....the only ones with a serious desire to return to Syria....it's mostly those over age 50.  From age 30 and down....virtually no one seemed interested in ever returning to Syria.  This was the crowd actively seeking jobs....getting certified in skills, and getting a driver's license.

I'll be blunt....maybe the deport-folks will all be gone by the end of 2026...but I doubt that you see more than 50,000 leave by 2030 (total).

31 Mar 2026: Germany: 10 Things

 1.  Merz met yesterday with Syrian President.   Agreement.....over 4 years....around 800k of the 1.2-million Syrians in Germany to 'return' home.

Up front....if you were Syrian and on a deportation list....you go shortly (at least that's the Merz understanding).

If you asked me....of the 1.2-million, roughly half have solid jobs, and marginal interest in returning.  So I'm not buying into the 800k number.

Also of interest....Greens/SPD went highly negative on this announcement.

2.  Digital rape/violence case in Spain against Ulman?  Dumped....by Spanish prosecutor. German case is the only avenue possible at this point.

Odd way of wording by the Spanish prosecutor....couldn't find a competent standing....even though it occurred in his/her local district. 

3. Center of Hamburg....cops called.....local gal bit (in the face) by wolf.  Cops cornered the wolf.....malnourished and thin.  Being fed now, and will be released into a wooded area later.

4.  Spain has now blocked US military aircraft from its airspace and denied access to the Rota and Morón bases over the Iran conflict.

So....I'll just predict....about a  month or two after Iran's mess is settled....the two bases are permanently vacated by the US....declared of no use.   Probably the beginning of several US installations 'gone'.

5.  N-TV ran a German grid story.....bottlenecks are a serious issue now.....grid is apparently a decade behind on infrastructure renovation.

6. Couple of European countries having a gas-shortage....limiting customers to 30 liters of fuel per day.  Hasn't  been brought up in Germany...yet.

7. The Green Environment Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate praises "swarm power plants" in the Rhine as a solution to the energy transition problem.

Basically....you'd anchor these and as the river moved.....blades on the swarms would turn  to generate power.

Key issue?  Well.....you'd need a massive swarm of these units to get any real production.

8.  14-year-old German kid stabbed in front of his school in Hamburg Flottbek. 

9. German inflation jumped in March to 2.7-percent from 1.9-percent previously.

10.  From Sunday night....the ARD public forum-talk show "Caren Miosga"..... achieved the lowest ratings since September 1, 2025.

Topic for the show?   Collien Fernandes.

Approximately 2.21 million viewers watched the episode, in which Fernandes gave a talk of her accusations against her ex-husband Christian Ulmen.

Among the total audience, the market share of the current Miosga episode was 10.8 and almost 20 percentage points lower than that of the previous show...."Polizeiruf 110." Among 14- to 49-year-olds, only 330,000 Germans watched the show.

To be honest....I spent the evening watching 'Lets Dance' and as it concluded....went to a cooking show.  So I can't comment on the effect of the show.  

30 Mar 2026: Germany: 3 Things

 1.  I'll just say it....from a non-German prospective...this Ulmen-Fernandes situation/scandal/exposition/affair....over a two week period....seems to be in a hype-up media (news) 'bubble'.

I suspect if you drag this up with a hundred working-class Germans....roughly 50 to 60 of them can't really explain the nature of the situation,  And if you did package this into a 45-minute news-docu-type deal to explain the fourteen-odd details of the situation....they'd lose interest after eight minutes.

2. For about ten days, we've had this whale-problem in the Baltic Sea region of Germany.  

The whale originally got so near up on the beach....that  he lodged himself on a sandbar, and was 'stuck' (he couldn't wiggle out).

Germans....naturally good rescue folks....decided they could help him.  A crew of  characters....some science folks and some engineer types....got a vessel to dig around the sandbar and eventually got him 'loose'.  So they thought....now, he'll swim off to safety.

Well...for a brief period....maybe eight to  twelve hours, he lingered around and got sand-barred again. 

Again,  they pushed him out.

They've noted yesterday....he just ain't progressing out to sea. 

Oddly, they haven't named him (something Germans do when they are hard-wired to linger on the animal). 

3.  Germany has a Construction Ministry.  Over the weekend...the minister in charge suggested that at the federal level...they should be become a 'developer' (buying, designing,  and  hiring up construction teams to build the houses/apartment buildings).

On paper, it sounds like a marvelous idea.

The history of local, state and federal type projects?  Pretty dismal.

Q-and-A: German Public TV

 1.  Monthly cost presently?  18.36 Euro a month....doesn't matter how many TVs or radios you have in the house.

2.   Locations of Channel 1 (ARD) and Channel 2 (ZDF)?  ARD  - Hamburg.  ZDF - Mainz.

3.  Is there any real difference on news content?  Personal opinion....if you watch both....it's about sixty-percent of the same stuff....told slightly different. 

4. How many Germans watch ARD prime news (8 PM) on average?  Around 9.5-million....out of 84-million residents.

5.  Are there Germans who go out of their way NOT to watch ARD or ZDF?  Curiously, this topic has been studied....around 5-to-5.5-million are dedicated to watch no programming whatsoever. 

6.  Does ARD or ZDF have an 'edge' over the other?  Oddly....data suggests a 2-percent edge to more ZDF viewers....over ARD viewers.  Reason?  ZDF has a fair amount of soap-opera cop shows and  mountain-doctor-clinic shows around 6 PM to 8:15 PM, and older viewers are more consumed to watch this.

Forced To Travel

 The wife wants a week in Berlin for end of April.  So....ok....I did the price comparison to get there.

1st-class ICE train....there and back....880 Euro for two.  My trust in ICE getting me  there and back with NO issues?  Near 10-percent.

2nd-class Lufthansa mid-afternoon tickets...380 Euro for two (round-trip)...flying out of Frankfurt. But they wanted 70 Euro per bag...per person (that was my only grumble).  

Each has a assigned risk factor.  

You have to get to the Frankfurt airport...on a Sunday.  My wife is anti-taxi, and normally anti-bus/tram.  Once there....you have to do the bag-drag....then pass security.

The railway there?  You have to assume the local train will 'work' but some screw-up on ICE will occur. The snack-wagon on ICE?  Crap. 

Lufthansa or Bahn strike?  Well...you factor in this problem as well.

If you rode the train into Berlin....then you have the broke escalator issue going on, and the crime scene at the station  to contend with (same or more so....for Frankfurt).

I told the wife....would be a lot simpler to fly into Egypt.

29 Mar 2026: Germany: 5 Things

 1.  Since day one of this Christian Ulmen/ e-wife Collien Fernandes 'affair'....if you start counting....there are probably over one-hundred odd factors.  No matter who is telling the story....they all tend to leave about 90-percent of these factors out. 

German prosecutor attempting to take a Spain case....back into Germany and bring  Ulmen into court?  Mostly a bluff  (at this point).

2.   Starting 1 Apr...Heavy smokers will be 'entitled' to a free annual lung cancer screening examination.

Active and former smokers aged 50 to 75 can undergo a low-dose computed tomography (NDCT) scan every 12 months. 

Free?  Well....it'll be covered by your standard German statutory health insurance.

My gut feeling....lot of folks are going to be given negative news over their future health condition.

3.  Also starting 1 Apr....the Federal Ministry of Transport launches a new funding program for electric vehicle charging stations in apartment buildings. 

Around 500 million euros are available to install wallboxes, grid connections, and other technical equipment. 

Now....will apartment building owners want to do this?  I suggest they will review hazard reports and increased insurance costs....with a majority declining the hook-up.

4.  A fire broke out overnight in Kehl, near the border with Strasbourg.  Around 3AM.....Disco/lounge...club with 750 partygoers was on fire.

Shocker?  Every single person made it out.

Nuke Energy Discussion

 In the past week....Germany's Energy Minister commented: 'The phase-out of nuclear power was a huge mistake.'

So I'll lay out the whole story....as simply as I can.

Around  1990, as DDR ended....Kohl's people went to find East Germans who could fit into the CDU strategy....for political motives.  They eventually came to the conclusion....Merkel was 'it'.  She was invited for a coffee....Kohl had found his 'Eastie', and history is concreted  down.

The job for CDU bureaucrat Merkel?  Well.....she was a scientist...so the Energy Minister was the obvious job.

What she discovered  over the next year.....Germany's plan to bury nuke-waste....was not really supported by any state, and most science-minded folks felt it was 'wrong'. The path?  You'd have to eventually take down the nuke energy sector.  

To make up for this?  You'd run coal-plants, bump up solar/wind, and have some reserve energy via cheap Russian natural gas.

Kohl goes away....the SPD runs things  briefly.....Merkel builds her path to the Chancellor-job.

In this decade...it's decided that coal  is 'evil'.

Eventually....a massive amount of suffering funds (identified in the 30-to-35 billion Euro range) is put up....to shut down the coal 'pits' and coal energy sector....to retrain workers (particularly in the NW part of Germany).  But don't worry....wind/solar are bumped up, nuke energy still flows, and cheap Russian natural gas is covering the end of coal-energy.

Fukushima occurs.  Over a 2-to-3 year period....it's decided that evil-nuke-energy must end. There's some talk of keeping two or three around....but that plan gets dumped.  Don't worry....wind/solar get bumped up and cheap Russian natural gas covers things.

Then the war happen....with evil-Russia and Ukraine.  That strategy craps out  for natural gas.

So what you have is wind/solar, and on a really bad day....you go to the EU grid, and consume/buy power from  France  or 'friends'....at a hefty rate.  That grid-power....being nuke or coal?  Its best not to  bring that up.

So cherries on this cake?

Well....Bavaria (the state) would like to have a nuke-plant (or two)....the federal gov't said 'NO'....only they can authorize such.  Why does Bavaria want the nuke plants?  They realized that power requirements for industry are expanding.

More?  Austria has designed their nuke-energy burial sit....deep down....about five miles from the German border (Bavaria).....yeah, and this made the Germans angry.

More?  More and more of the high-energy consumer companies are reviewing the idea of exiting Germany....for cheaper grid countries.

Home price for power (2026) in Germany?  Around 37 Euro cent per kWh.  Some folks have exceptional long-term deals at 24  to  27 cents.

Homes hooked up for solar?  German authorities at the end of 2024 said it was 15-percent, with expectations by 2030 of 25-percent.  The problem to dispose of panels?  Yet-to-be-brought-up......but it'll shock some folks when the recycle yard starts quoting 200 Euro per panel.

It's not a happy story over what happened to nuke energy, and it's fairly amusing to look at German neighbors who didn't fall for the 'trap'.

The Trump 'Leave-Germany' Chatter

 A Brit newspaper brought up the topic....some insider to the Trump talk.

The story goes......Trump's team are evaluating removing troops from Germany, and re-establishing them in either Romania or Poland.

So I sat and pondered over the idea.

From a German prospective....there's two groups eyeballing this. One group knows  that the Pfalz state is highly dependent on the money spent....with the Wiesbaden and Stuttgart areas....lesser  concerned.  On the second group....they are highly anti-US and would  like for the troops to be gone. In general....I'd say sixty-percent of German society don't care one way or another.

K-Town/Landstuhl? Financially.....if the US totally left....it's a massive 'hole' that would exist, and you can figure a full decade of  suffering to be occurring.

As for leaving?   Poland would be a fifty-fifty situation....with some elements of society very much supporting the arrival, and another group disliking it.

My general prediction?  The Air Force only has three elements left in Germany....Spangdahlem and Ramstein.  The wing at Spang could easily be moved into Poland....figure about four years to build the base.  Ramstein?  Different story....you have the medical facility (yet to be completed), the  C-130 wing for cargo, and the HQ's.  

Ramstein since the 1980s....have built a  massive structure, and tens of billions invested for the extra-long haul.

The next-war mentality?   Today....it's totally geared toward China/Taiwan.

So I suspect....at the end of this review....Spang's element moves to Poland, and Ramstein remains 'mostly-as-is'.

On the Army business?  Some parts of what exists could easily move to Romania or Poland.

Germans grumbling?  Some might  grumble, but the majority will not care, or actually support the 'end'.