I think it's always easier to see the disadvantages of your own situation. The German economy surely has its own disadvantages more easily appreciated by people on the spot.
As for roads, my experience is rather out of date, but when I travelled through Germany to Sweden in 1989 (a little while ago by now...), I was driving mostly on motorways that had two lanes in each direction. One lane was populated by lorries driving slowly, the other by sinister black BMWs that materialized behind me as if by magic (travelling at the speed of sound) and breathed fire until I risked collision with the lorries in the other lane to get out of their way.
Quite irrelevantly, I remember one thing about the situation in Berlin in 1976-77 (when I lived there). Everyone paid for tickets to travel on the U-bahn, and solemnly cancelled the tickets in the automatic machines on every trip. Supposedly, inspectors went around checking tickets, but in fifteen months my ticket was never checked. I asked a few of my German colleagues why people bothered to pay for tickets that were never checked. They were deeply shocked. The idea of travelling without paying for a ticket had never occurred to them. Only a depraved Englishman could have thought of it (though in fact I was a coward, and always paid for my tickets just like the Germans).
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The grass is always greener
Date: 2005-07-19 06:37 pm (UTC)As for roads, my experience is rather out of date, but when I travelled through Germany to Sweden in 1989 (a little while ago by now...), I was driving mostly on motorways that had two lanes in each direction. One lane was populated by lorries driving slowly, the other by sinister black BMWs that materialized behind me as if by magic (travelling at the speed of sound) and breathed fire until I risked collision with the lorries in the other lane to get out of their way.
Quite irrelevantly, I remember one thing about the situation in Berlin in 1976-77 (when I lived there). Everyone paid for tickets to travel on the U-bahn, and solemnly cancelled the tickets in the automatic machines on every trip. Supposedly, inspectors went around checking tickets, but in fifteen months my ticket was never checked. I asked a few of my German colleagues why people bothered to pay for tickets that were never checked. They were deeply shocked. The idea of travelling without paying for a ticket had never occurred to them. Only a depraved Englishman could have thought of it (though in fact I was a coward, and always paid for my tickets just like the Germans).
-- Jonathan