We can learn from Germany
Published on 13/10/2005
I have just returned from my first visit to
Germany and my mothers relatives and I have noticed many similarities and
differences between them and us.
The Germans do not have any concept of
tokenism. For example, for a century, cyclists have campaigned for safer
treatment on our congested roads.
The best this country can come up with
is a thin, white line one yard off the road verge a cyclists zone.
Not
so in Germany. There is, by law, a metre wide strip of verge, then a metre-wide
cycle path on every road in north Germany. Because Ostfrieseland is the Fenland
of Germany it is flat, so everyone has bikes and they use them.
It is
comparable to Norfolk, or Lincolnshire, but God help any cyclist brave enough to
duel with the articulated lorries and Land Rovers on the roads of our fens I
know, Ive walked them.
Another Fenland phenomenon the Germans have are
windmills, thousands of them, from the picturesque four-sail post mills everyone
loves, to the most modern 150-metre high generators so hated by the British
rural middle classes.
Not everyone likes windmills, but being the
practical people they are, they accept them.
Because it is flat land
Ostfrieseland has water problems, that is, getting rid of the excess, but
keeping the remainder clean.
All their canals work as commercial
waterways as well as for leisure, and are clean enough to fish in.
The
city of Pappenburg is 100 km from the coast but produces two ocean liners each
year which are carefully floated down the shallow river with great pride and
ceremony.
We have the idea that Germans are at one extreme fanatical and
at the other slavishly obedient to authority.
My observations are that
they are pragmatic and tacitly accept what is good for them, and then get on
with it, for good or ill.
We British would become better wholehearted
Europeans when we lose our tokenist attitudes; our problems are not with Europe,
but with ourselves.
n Arthur Walby is a reader from
Gaitsgill
