I'm afraid COVID-19 doesn't give me many chances to report about life on the big open road or the great outdoors as I would like. COVID has already upended one trip to the south of Spain and postponed another indefinitely. That doesn't mean there isn't stuff happening here in Germany.
- The CDU (Christian Democratic Union), also known as the Conservatives, or the ruling party in Germany for most of this century, have elected Armin Laschet as the new party chair. Supposedly, this means he will have first dibs on the most powerful office in the country, which is Kanzler, or Chancellor. Don't know about that one, CDU. Aside from a big ego, there's not much to see here. He famously dropped the ball on COVID as the Minister-president of the most populous state here in Germany, Nordrhein Westfalen. In Germany, Laschet isn't even the most popular conservative. Jens Spahn, the Minister for Health Services, and Markus Söder, Minister-president of Bavaria, are running circles around Laschet in the polls. If anything, the next election should be interesting this coming September.
- Asked what their most favorite TV program type was, 38 percent of all Germans decided they preferred...the news! Runner up is the live sports broadcast (most likely soccer), followed by travel documentaries. No high budget TV shows needed here.
- And speaking of live sports broadcast: Über-team Bayern Munich was knocked out of the German cup last week...by second league regular Holstein Kiel, no less. Even if Bayern wins the league and the Champions League, you will have some fans gnashing their teeth in Munich. Can you say Schadenfreude?
- What I'll miss about Germany: affordable beer. Last week, at the supermarket chain REWE, I bought a case (here, that means 20 bottles at half a liter each, the equivalent of five six-packs) for 14 dollars. This wasn't a generic bitter beer brand either, but Pilsner Urquell...an import, no less.
- Another bomb is found, this one in Hanau. World War II (of course), 50 kilos, neighborhood evacuated, bomb finally defused. And the experts agree there are still thousands of these babies lying around.
-And meet the raccoon, now the biggest threat to Germany's bird world. Nothing will raid your nest more efficiently than a raccoon. This was North America's gift to Germany, as the raccoon itself wasn't believed to have arrived in Central Europe until last century. in the 1950s, there were no more than 300 raccoons in Germany. In the year 2011, 60,000 raccoons were killed.
