WELT journalist Thomas Kielinger wrote an interesting piece today. He's been assigned to London for 25 years, and just recently returned to full-time living in Germany. It's worth a read if you can find a copy of the paper.
He's a bit worried, and writes a piece....detailing 'grumbling citizens', 'a fractured society', and a difficult bureaucracy that now exists.
I think for me....having been around briefly in 1978 (2 years), 1984 (2 years) and a 16 year period starting in 1993...then finally returning in 2013....it's difficult to sum up exists today in Germany. It's not the same landscape.
You will notice an occasional project started....with some VIPs showing up and doing a shovel 'trick'....then watch a simple 2-year project turn into a screwed-up mess, with ten years spent on fixing/correcting problems. In the end....no one much in a VIP status wants to show up and proclaim the happy conclusion.
You will step onto a fantastic ultra-modern train in the middle of summer heat (35C)....to find the AC unit marginally works, and 30 minutes later.....you decide to halt your journey (drenched in sweat), and spend forty minutes sipping through liquids to recover from heat exhaustion. The older trains had windows that opened and NO AC units....new ones? No open windows....just a AC unit.
You will walk through the subway tunnels of Frankfurt....observing the drug addicts doing their morning routine. A few syringes lay on the tile floor....which you just observe, and quicken your pace to get somewhere else.
Some folks will note their one neighbor is consumed on environmentalism, while another neighbor is almost a Nazi-lite character....so you simply nod on commentary....never taking anything serious from either.
You quietly look around and easily note that a quarter of society is now pretty screwed on living conditions, no real fallback position, and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Guy/gals who retired five years ago....live near the edge, and often recount the glory years when the Deutsche Mark existed.
You note some die-hard kids are all consumed to block traffic and save the planet....yet their reasoning and explanations seem a bit brain-washed.
You notice at times....wolves in your woods, and nobody seeming to be concerned....as if the landscape is on pause....waiting for some old gal or some kids named Hansel/Greta....to get dragged off for dinner with a wolf.
You sit back in a recliner for the 8:13 PM weather forecast....with the German guy talking over a bright intense red color and hyping up that 32 C (90 F) is enough to dissolve plastic and ceramic things. You know it's not so, but you just entertain the thought that 32 C seems intense to some folks.
In the pub, a discussion starts up about corruption, and over an hour....twenty different scenes are described at the local, state and national level. You don't really care, because it didn't involve your co-workers or friends.
Your TV viewing? Mostly some fake reality TV show, with a big-boobed gal uttering some common sense phrases occasionally....a camper situation in Italy where they spend an hour working a birthday party for some retired German guy....and some poverty situation in Mannheim where you get to know two-dozen bad-off Germans as if they were your cousins or in-laws.
At work, folks talk about such-and-such bridge which has been deemed structurally ready to collapse and suddenly closed....requiring people to add 12 minutes onto their daily journey to work. The expert details? It'll be 3.5 years before the bridge is torn down and completely replaced. You do the math....that's 80 man-hours a year wasted. Over the period of crap, you could have lounged off on some beach in Greece for six weeks.
You ponder a group of 600-odd politicians who say one way or another....they are out to save you or improve your life. 'Jesus-figures' is what your neighbor refers to them. You reach a point where you are skeptical of the Jesus-figures and their saving act.
The positive side approaching? The politicians will approve some legit Cannabis situation....so you can numb up your sub-consciousness.
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