Reflections on the Rhineland

Germany is a neat place. I like it here, and I really love getting to know how things work around here. I have yet to ever feel unsafe, and I don't just keep to the touristy places or good suburbs. German laws are very different than American laws. I'm not trying to take any political stance, but I just think it's interesting to compare.

Underage drinking is not enforced by police, but pubs and restaurants are required to follow these age rules: 14 year olds can drink beer and wine if accompanied by a parent, 16 year olds don't need a parent around. 18 can have any type of liquor.

Prostitution has been legal since 2002.

The autobahn has no speed limit. I've been driven around on the autobahn a few times, but I haven't driven anything. I did check the speedometer a few times and we were going over 160 km/h (about 95 mph). The luxury auto industry has lobbied to keep things this way because it's easier to sell an amazing car with the capacity to go 150 mph if you can actually go 150 mph somewhere. 

Other things:

Football (soccer) is loved more deeply than religion, patriotism, or success. Each professional team (there's like 40 throughout Germany) has it's own song that's sung as a hymn/anthem at the games, at pubs, at community events. Here is a video to demonstrate (terrible sound quality, and I forgot I was still recording at the end, oops)

So many trees here remind make me think Dr. Suess spent some time in Germany. They have these spheres of green in all the trees. I wanted to get picture before the tress fill in again with leaves. After asking genius boy Nico, I learned it's mistletoe! I don't think I'd ever seen that before. It gets blown to the trees and grows perfectly spherically on the branches, they have symbiotic relationship and creates for some weird looking trees.

I live about 25 minutes away from a place called Neandertal. Yup. The place where the first set of Neatherthal bones (the species got it's name from the town). So my neighborhood has been the cool place for humanoids for about 40,000 years. Really though.

Last week I went to stake conference in Dusseldorf, and it was an interesting experience. It was a braodcast from SLC, so there was an English broadcast and a German one. Greg Schwitzer spoke, so did Elder Hales and Elder Bednar. Bednar spoke in German - he served his mission here 41 years ago. I was really impressed that he freshened up on his German in order to better connect with the people here, I'm sure he's a bit busy as is. 

More updates to come as we're just finishing up with Carnival (a post on it's own) and next weekend I'll be in Basel, Switzerland!