Germany from a different angle?

From time to time every one of us, who stays just long enough away from home, wants to return to his family and friends. Especially to occasions, such as Christmas when the whole family gathers, the desire to see your love ones grows.

Hence I packed my things and returned for a holiday trip back to Germany, Dresden. It was great to see most of my dear friends and my whole family for almost three weeks. I spent Christmas in my hometown Dresden and new- year in Berlin with friends. In between, I visited Köln, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Krefeld and Soest to give a visit to friends in other parts of Germany. To have a bit of snow before every little rest of it melted away right before Christmas was nostalgic as well. Especially as I spent the time outside with my friends in the valley and rock tops of the Elbsandstein Gebirge during a hot wine (Glühwein) hiking tour.

In many parts of Germany live is indeed wonderful: (cultivated) nature, parks, cheap food in a huge variety, a lot of space for relatively cheap rents, very good health care, and an almost free education system. Germans should be a happy folk, but when you wander through the streets of cities in Germany you immediately notice the absence of smiling people or anyone with a happy face expression. I don’t want to generalise, but as I spent most of my free time outside of the house I couldn’t avoid noticing this. And it is not the first time. Whenever I came back in the last three years, from Japan or Australia, I realised how unhappy people seem to be, or at least how unable to express their happy emotion, if there is one. It made me sad to see, that so many people in the country where I grew up, were apparently not happy. Instead of compliments I heard complaining! 

I can only hope that people start to value what they have and will be happy and thankful for whatever they got! Life is too short to be grumpy and unhappy. Death can be always around the next corner!