News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

The map reflects current political breakdowns within certain circumscribed locations, Ziemowit.
Within every "city", there's usually a "Kreis" or "district", not really translatable in one English word,
example, "city of Berlin, "Kreisstadt" or district of______, province of Brandenburg" etc..

No, the map is actually correct:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

AMEN, take any tabloid with a "super" grain of salt, no pun intended.

Maybe it did happen this way it was reported, and then again maybe it didn't.

On the other hand, Americans abroad, in Europe as elsewhere, have a less than sterling reputation.
Sure, all occupiers and conquerors behave badly, but only the US has pretended that "we are loved throughout the "free" world!"
BULL CRAP!

Ask a German old enough being raped by US servicemen during the first years of the allied occupation after the war. The Russians were bad,

the Americans though were often not much better. We simply have better PR at our disposal than the former "Russkies".

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

@Bratwurst Boy,

A most informative map, thank you:-) Was no longer aware of the subdivisions.

@Tacitus,

Indeed, a great many foreigners do for sure work as doctors and enginieers....no doubt at almost half the salary of a German:-)
It's nearly the same here in the States; many Koreans, Hindus and Russians work as doctors, teachers, lawyers, and engineers. If though you
believe they earn the same as a native-born US citizen, you're dreaming, hate to put it to you bluntly.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

I see. Then before, you simply meant "nurseries" rather than "nursing homes".
Many foreigners confuse or conflate like-sounding words:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

"Nursery homes"??

I think you meant "NURSING homes" = Altersheime, rather than Kitas or "daycare nurseries":-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Delphy no mates,

You're ignoring the fact though that in certain European countries, perhaps not Poland, but in Germany, France or England, Jews were often highly assimilated, and in fact DID eat, pray, and yes sleep (through numerous instances of intermarriage) with the "enemy", as evidenced by the fact that for instance, Benjamin Disraeli, as an arch example, born a Jew, converted while still a young statesman to the Church of England, married a gentile, and was buried an Anglican!

There were many other such examples, I'm sure.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

....WITHIN a larger, equally homogeneous community of once pagan, long-practicing Christian inhabitants. You're comparing apples and oranges, dude.
Countries such as England, France, Holland as well, which had centuries-old colonial traditions were accustomed to outsiders, non-Christians within their borders.
Save for Cameroon and Tanganyika, Germans had little experience with a colonial heritage, were therefore, like the Poles or the Scandinavians, uncomfortable in a melting-pot setting. Until relatively recently, that is:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Germans throughout their long history have always had serious issues with non-Germans living in their midst. This isn't castigating the Germans, I'm simply stating an historic fact.

Language / Ski Or Ska? - Polish surname endings [44]

Sure, why not? There was once a famous Polish-Jewish conductor active in the US named "Artur Rodzinski"! One couldn't tell he was Jewish by his name either.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Not giving up on the basic good in one's homeland is certainly understandable!

Me? I wouldn't give up my US-birthright of citizenship for all the tea in China. We STILL have the remanents of the New Deal of which to be proud. Just because the US is going through a particularly nasty phase is no reason to abandon ship, is it? We'll eventually turn it around, hopefully in our lifetime.

Even Brett Kavanaugh can't take that away from us. He's shooting himself in the foot anyway, as he constituents are former New Dealers themselves:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Oversimplified by a wide margin, RichMazur, but intrinsically right on.

Travel / So I went to Warsaw - my thoughts after visiting Poland [88]

I'm glad, WielkiPolak.

The rest then is up to them:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

While I agree in principle, Tacitus, Merkel is out of touch with her constituents, that's all I was trying to say.
Surely the age-old verities of law, justice, and mercy will and should never go out of fashion.

The problem remains that the above must be tempered with common sense.

Travel / So I went to Warsaw - my thoughts after visiting Poland [88]

Did you bother to speak to them in Polish?

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

@Tacitus

Nonetheless, she has managed to polarize the nation as never before! Her policies have failed, many of them miserably (case in point!), and she appears

incapable of tailoring her desires to the needs of the people!

During the late '60's in the US, there was a saying, "The majority isn't silent, the government's deaf" (Geschwiegen ist die Mehrheit nicht, der Staat hoert bloss nicht zu).

In Germany, the majority is anything BUT silent, and yet Merkel remains tone deaf to the changing rhythms of the populace which she has been entrusted to serve.

She slavishly, indeed rigidly, remains mired in an outmoded ideology, because, as I've oft posted, she can't "jump over her own shadow", so to speak, and doesn't

temper he do-gooder thinking with the pragmatics of political necessity.

For one who prides herself on being a pragmatist, her staunch indifference to the opposition within her own party, suggests that she's anything but.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

@Maf,

As I keep explaining and you keep rejecting, the lady is, typically for her generation, so traumatized by memories of that country's "recent" past, she's moving

as though in lock step with what she's been taught to think, namely, "We Germans must try to reverse our history by taking care of all within our country!"

Her almost '68er mentality refuses to acknowledge that today's Germany is, on the surface anyway, quite different from the painfully divided, economically struggling
post-War (East) Germany in which she grew up, until Pastor Kasner decided to move with his family to the West in or around 1959 or so.

The sixties coddled these red-diaper dope babies to the hilt; anything left of center, African, Asian etc. was "good", anything European, conventional, Western, was "bad".

Merkel's heroes were probably Castro, Che and Mao, not realizing still that it was precisely those political extremists whom Europe later came to reject wholeheartedly during the "Velvet Revolution" in '89, from which she along with others finally benefited:-)

As with many of her ilk here in the US, Angie still doesn't get it.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

@Bratwurst Boy,

Understanding her motivation(s) and being for her misguided policies are two completely separate issues!

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Seems a no brainer....to nearly everyone except Angela Merkel!
Boy this lady's clueless. Well-intentioned perhaps as she may be, she has managed to make
a rather horrid mess of things, hasn't she.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

I presume then that means you agree?

Study / Considering MD program at Polish University (2019/2020 School Year) [6]

Are the teaching (as opposed to strictly research) faculty English native speakers by any chance?
I'm only asking because many years ago while a grad student, I participated in an international student
exchange program hosted by one of the smaller German universities, this one near by Hannover, and the German faculty insisted on teaching
the foreign student exchange programs for subjects as varied as biology, history, and IT all in English!

The results as one could imagine were less than stellar:_)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Can one honestly speak of the "Balkanization" of Poland?
I find that difficult to believe, although of Europe on the whole, surely the degree of ethnic mix may indeed be parallel
with the situation on the Continent prior to the First World War.

It certainly should come as no surprise to anyone here, hobby historian or what not, that it was surely no coincidence
that the most perfervid of race purifiers, namely Hitler, came from a mixed border area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
with Jews, Ruthenians, Poles, Slovenes, Hungarians, Huzuls, Slovaks, Croatians practically tripping over one another,
among whom SOMEWHERE out among all that Mulligan's Brew of a "diversity", there may have been some "stray" Germanic
Austrians to fill inLOL

When any majority feels or imagines themselves outnumbered, indeed marginalized, by a minority, there's always bound to be
extreme friction, I don't care how tolerant people think they are.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Paris was known for her odor emanating from the Seine as far back as even I can recall, and that's not too recent:-)

As far as Eastern Europe goes, I'd have to agree that Prague and Budapest are much cleaner than the French capital, any day of week.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

A valid point, I suppose.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

And a proud day it is too!

Just called an acquaintance of mine from around the Hamburg-Harburg area, formerly in Blankenese, to wish her a Happy Re-Unification Day:-)
Fell on deaf ears. She had off from work, stayed home, drank a beer, and called it an evening LOL

People continue to blame the Germans for nearly every problem in Europe. My response to that is simply, "You shouldn't destroy an entire orchard just because of a few rotten apples."

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

You're tellin' me, bud!

The press though on both sides of the Pond tries to conceal it, but it's still hard to hide:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

The Federal Republic of Germany remains the no.1 economic engine of Europe, bar none. This is a fact and you can't argue with stats that aren't massaged.

For the zillionth time, Merkel's between a rock and a hard place and if she doesn't wake up to opponents like Seehofer, Soeder along with others, Germany'll

go the way of Sweden, possibly Hungary.

This is no laughing matter.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Quite! Rather like comparing apples and oranges.

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Yeah, and we know who they are, don't we G (undercover)! At least admit you're getting dumber, then we'd all know whom we're dealing withLOL

Crnogorac3, GDP isn't always a bellweather of how a country's doing. Other indicators include how she fares within the EU and what her neighbors have to say.

Orban too claims Hungary's doing just fine, however Bruxelles might have a different opinion on the matter:-)

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

What's to check? May have been off by a bit, yet the impact remains the same!

News / "It's too late for Germany" (but not for Poland) [1798]

Similar I suppose to the identical ignorance of many Polish electorate who blithely voted in the exact same party that ruined their economy some fifteen or more years back, namely, the PiS.