What I now know about the German economy, and also: BABY GOATS!

I will preface this by saying I know a first-world problem when I see one. First-world problems (hereafter known as 1WPs) are those kinds of situations which are deeply annoying to the world's wealthier citizens, but would be considered an extreme luxury to those living in second- or third-world nations. For example, your iPhone not picking up wi-fi is decidedly a 1WP. In the words of my father, "shut your neck."

Yesterday was full of 1WPs, as I travelled from Berlin to the tiny Swiss village of Rotschuo, on Lake Lucerne. This involved a train, a bus, a plane, another train, and then another, and then another bus, and one more. And I really do hate public transport connections.

An aside: even though I had no less than six (!) connections to make, some with only three minutes' lead time, I made each and every one of them without a hitch. This is testament to the efficiency of the German and Swiss transport systems. Cannot imagine trying to undertake a similar journey in Victoria without it turning into a giant dizazzo.

However, despite it being a long day with a lot of suitcase-hauling, it was not entirely unpleasant. At Warschauerstrasse, a man with a suitcase saw me looking at a subway map and offered to show me the way to Tegel Airport, as he was en route back to Paris. This turned into a most pleasant train-and-bus-trip, followed by espresso and croissants at the airport before boarding our respective flights.

Turned out that this bloke, Michael, is Germany's OECD representative, based in Paris. His job is to share Germany's best practice in macroeconomics with other OECD nations and also to nick good ideas from other countries. This was a most fascinating conversation, because Michael was able to explain to me how Germany had managed to weather the GEC so successfully. I had asked a few Berliners this question, but no-one was able to explain this satisfactorily. ("Hmm... Car manufacturing? Dunno.") Anyway, Michael told me that Germany was the world leader in developing green technology. There are 350,000 workplaces in Germany whose primary business consists of developing and exporting green energy solutions. He also told me that Germany has been successfully trading carbon for some time now, and could Australia pull its socks up on this matter, please. So the first two legs of my journey were passed with informative, engaging and lively conversation with a most interesting person. And a croissant.

The plane trip was uneventful. When I got to Zurich airport, I noticed that the airport smelled strongly of soap, in stark contrast to Berlin, which smells of urine, and Stockholm, which smells of clean sheets dried in sunshine and cut grass.

Halfway through the fourth leg of my journey, observing the outer suburbs of Zurich, I thought: "Seriously, Chops. WTF are you doing here? This looks like Lilydale, only the chateaux less faux. You could have seen this on a Zone 2 ticket." But as I got closer to Rotschuo, the landscape became pretty amazing pretty quickly.





When I arrived at the hostel, I heard some loud bell-ringing and again thought "WTF? Perhaps it is dinnertime or something." As it turned out, the bells were around the necks of the hostel's resident goats, who had given birth to baby kids just one week ago. The kids are the size of house cats (and decidedly less evil) and they can only walk backwards. They kill me.





My room, with its red shutters, panelled walls and checky blankets, is just picture-perfect. It is tiny, but that is ok.











Long-time readers of this here webular log may recall that I was entertaining fantasies of lying by the lake in a bathing suit and a floppy hat, reading one book per day. Instead, I am writing this curled up in the chalet, under a checky blanket, as a storm is rolling over the lake. Reading conditions: perfect. Afternoon napping conditions: ideal.





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