Entry 2/3 for Feb 23/Mar 2

The week of Feb 23, I had the opportunity to travel to Munich and Berlin, Germany and Krakow, Poland. 

The famous Glockenspiel in Munich

At first glance, nothing about Germany or what I saw of the German economy stood out as different than France to me. The first thing we noted after getting to Germany was actually that no one buys tickets or validates passes for public transport, as compared to the pretty highly regulated system in Lyon, which is opposite of what I would expect.

Looking back, I did notice that a lot of places we went did not accept payment with card—credit or debit. I don’t know if this was just a regional thing or something more closely related to the idea of taking less risks (on credit), but it seemed more common in Germany than anywhere else I’ve been.

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

We also talked with the owner of one of the restaurants where we had breakfast in Berlin. He was really open to explaining the difficulties he encountered trying to open and keep a business in Germany. Apparently, the process is very strictly regulated. He also asked us our opinions on Trump (the first person I’ve encountered to do so). He said he had American customers recently that were avid Trump supporters, though he seemed willing to wait until farther into Trump’s presidency to make his own opinion. We asked about the immigrant population in Berlin, in part because he had mentioned that his family was not German. To him, the issue was pretty cut and dry as a lot of people in Berlin were immigrants, but he did say that it was a pretty split opinion across the nation.

 We also met an American who had been living in Germany for a while at our hostel in Krakow. He had left Miami to work marketing in Germany, but had struggled to get a work visa. He told us that the applications are very specific and that the process was backlogged. He ended up working for a touring presentation on the developing world during the Second World War and had a ton of interesting information to share.

Birkenau, Auschwitz
Krakow, Poland

In comparison to Germany, Poland was so much less expensive. I think the equivalency of currency was roughly .23 Euros to a Polish Zloty. Despite this drastic comparison, though, I did not see more homeless people in Krakow than in Berlin or Munich, or any evidence of a hurting economy. I did encounter my first pick-pocket in Poland, though.

Additionally, since we started this class, I’ve been looking for mention of the EU in daily life. The only thing I’ve found so far is sight of the EU flag on governmental buildings. I found it interesting that even in the German History Museum in Berlin—a museum that covered the history of Germany from the early pre-Holy Roman Empire days to the early 2000s and talked in depth of reconstruction of the German identity after WWII—I found no mention of the formation of or German involvement with the EU. For Germany to be so fundamentally powerful in the EU, as the latest article we read suggested, it doesn’t seem to show a strong attachment to the organization.