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Be nice to get some boots on the ground reporting.  Will you be in Berlin?  I'd be interested to hear how it compares to NYC, which you also visited recently.

Itss hard to see how they can rejigger their car industry at this late date.  From what I have read, the German car companies made their bet on improving diesel engines instead of EVs.  Not much future in that.

Also not surprising the East Germans have gone right wing.  They lived undder Ruskie control during the worst years of the cold war, and memories don't fade that fast.  It also makes for very divisive politics.

Check in more often!

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[monsta666]

Also not surprising the East Germans have gone right wing.  They lived undder Ruskie control during the worst years of the cold war, and memories don't fade that fast.  It also makes for very divisive politics.

The other contentious issue is since the reunification of Germany a lot of money has been sent from West to East Germany to bridge the economic gap. Naturally the West says the East received too much money while the East says the West didn't support them enough. With the rise of immigrants this has only exacerbated the situation and so the East Germans have readily accepted the populist parties as there is a strong sentiment they are being left behind.

The dynamic is not all too similar to the Rust Belt in the US or the North/South divide in the UK. Let's remember the North of England were very pro Brexit, Rust Belt states are very pro Trump and now we are getting more the same with the East Germans voting populist. It will be hard for the more mainstream parties in Germany to completely ignore the pledges of the far right as it will only underscore the East Germans misgiving that their thoughts are being dismissed/ignored.

As for traveling, I will be around the Dortmund area as my German mate lives in that region. I have been to Berlin but quite sometime ago. More gritty and less affluent than New York but had a more artistic vibe. You won't see as many pigs in Berlin as you would in New York or even Bavaria. I believe the fat catz reside more in Bavaria.

Check in more often!

Will try to come more often. New(ish) job is more busy than the last one but will make a bigger effort.

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OK, now we can add the Austrians to the list of Euro goobermints in chaos.

What this really shows is the weakness of Parliamentary style democracy, where you have multiple parties with a variety of different positions in different areas all vying for power, instead of the 2 party system here in the FSoA.  When times are good it works OK, when times get tough and the choices more difficult, you can't get agreement on enough to have a functional goobermint.

How do you have a Democracy when there is no Majority?  The only thing a majority of people agree with is they disagree with goobermint policy, but they have no policy they all agree on to replace it.

Of course it's no coinkidink that Austria is one of the central Euro states most affected by the Ukraine war and the gas shutoff through those pipelines.  A wider war in Europe seems more likely all the time.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/01/04/the-austrian-chancelor-karl-nehammer-resignes-after-talks-on-forming-a-government-collapse

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