Ignore the big cities and the popular markets. You want to visit one in a small town, where local groups have set up their stands to support the local sports team, where the football club is selling bratwürste and everything has a kind of uncommercial vibe. It’s better than just having bigger commercial vendors selling stuff.

If you’re coming from Germany and want to go there via local train: Don’t even think about it. That train is too full even on normal days and is extremly horrible when everybody wants to visit the christmas market

There really is a difference between german police and what ICE is doing. Masked is not the perfect word for that, sorry. One of the big issue with ICE is that they are totally unmarked. They are wearing no uniforms. They do not identify themselves. German police is not perfect and their riot police especially is a band of assholes, but they are far from ICE.

And yes, Germany and Europe have their problems. But they are still great places to live. And yes, one of the reasons is that other places are even worse for minorities or queer people.

Let’s be honest: I’m living in a small town in Germany and the quality of life is awesome here. No problems with street criminality. It’s secure as fuck. I can buy everything I want in the stores. I have a job with vacation days and I have health insurance. I can’t be fired at will. I’m not getting arrested by masked ICE agents. And migrants are also not arrested by masked agents. We bitch about our roads and traffic, but they are safe and one of the bests in the world. I have reliable public transportation (yes, really! The bus comes on time and I had two occurances where he was late in the last 5 years). Nature is great and not polluted as fuck. I have high speed internet, clean water, reliable electricity and a rich cultural environment. It’s awesome and that is something you really do not have everywhere.

If you want to know how that looks like, here they are asking about military transports to Ukraine and their security measures:

https://parldok.thueringer-landtag.de/ParlDok/dokument/103629/transit_militaerischer_gueter_durch_thueringen.pdf

It still is quite strange for him to focus on Nord Stream. Yeah, it was important infrastructure. But it was switched off for quite a while due to sanctions against russia before the attack. So not great, but there was no immediate impact for people.

I could understand if he was focussing on silence in regard of the Ukraine war or even Gaza, but Nord Stream is strange

When public events of great consequence — such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing — are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb.

It is interesting how people remember things differently - I really do not think that there was silence from the public or government in regards of the Nord Stream bombings. Yes, there weren’t any demonstrations or riots on the street, but silence?