Germany – Page 19 – understand-culture

Can tourism in Germany adapt to climate change?

September 2021. Deutsche Welle. Before devastating floods swept across western Germany in mid-July, killing 184 people, Germany’s Ahr valley was a popular destination for wine lovers and hikers.

But now, there is little left for tourists to explore: Vineyards have been destroyed, trails and roads have been washed away. It will take years for tourism in the region to recover. The flooding could be a wakeup call for other touristic regions in Germany to adapt to climate change — or suffer the consequences.

Merkel faults German perfectionism

March 2021. Yahoo News. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed her country’s difficulties during the coronavirus pandemic — from the slow vaccine rollout to the back-and-forth over lockdown rules — partly on “a tendency toward perfectionism” and called for greater flexibility to tackle the latest surge in cases.

In an hour-long television interview with public broadcaster ARD late Sunday, Merkel acknowledged that mistakes were made by her government, including on plans for an Easter lockdown, which had to be reversed.

The three stages of Germany’s emergency gas plan

Reuters. June 2022. Germany triggered stage one of its emergency gas plan in March after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked an energy crisis in Europe, but the German gas market regulator said on Tuesday it was not yet time to move to the highest stage.

Germany steps up emergency cash plans to cope in blackout

German authorities are stepping up preparations for emergency cash deliveries in case of a blackout to keep the economy running, four people involved said, as the nation braces for possible power cuts arising from the war in Ukraine.

The plans include the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, hoarding extra billions to cope with a surge in demand, and possible limits on withdrawals, one of the people said.

Germany’s emergency gas plan explained

The cut in Russian gas supplies has Germany enacting the second phase of their gas emergency plan. What do these plans entail?

On 23 June, Germany triggered the second stage of their emergency gas plan in response to the cut in Russian gas supplies since 14 June and the high price levels. A gas crisis team, which was already set up when the first emergency level was declared in late March, meets daily to monitor and assess the situation.

While the security of supply is currently still guaranteed, “the situation is tense”, according to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. If the Russian gas supply remains low, it will complicate achieving storage level targets by winter. Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck called the current situation “serious”, referring to gas as a “scarce commodity”.

Are Germans really perfectly organized?

Euromaxx reporter Michael Wigge continues his search for the truth about Germany. He travels all over the country with the aim of getting to the bottom of the many clichés that exist about Germany and Germans. Part of the fun of living in such old countries as those here in Europe is that many of the quirks that were hard earned over centuries can be confirmed…and then,again some can’t.

Germany Triggers Emergency Gas Plan to Secure Supplies

March 2022. Bloomberg. European energy prices soared Wednesday as Germany moved to secure gas supplies in case of a potential disruption in flows from Russia. Bloomberg’s Anna Shiryaevskaya reports.

A funny comment: “Eat more sauerkraut. You’ll get more gas.”

First gas flows from Germany’s new LNG terminal | DW News

2022. Deutsche Welle. The opening of Germany’s first LNG import terminal is a milestone in the country’s plans to find alternate sources of natural gas. The terminal, floating off the North Sea coast, was built in a record time of just under 10 months.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz greenlit the LNG projects on February 27 this year — just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine. The facility opened off of Wilhelmshaven is slated to feed an estimated 6% of Germany’s gas demand into the energy grid each year.

German Firms Start Adapting to Rapid Changes in Work

November 2022. Yahoo Finance. Ways of working in Germany have entered a state of constant change due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in digitalization, making digital transformation to improve employee experience increasingly essential, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

Leaked German military documents

The Guardian. 2017. A leaked defence document has revealed the country’s worries about the breakup of the global order – a scenario with serious consequences for post-Brexit Britain.

The German defence ministry set out its worst-case scenario for the year 2040 in a secret document that was leaked to Der Spiegel last week: “EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, and more states have left the community … the increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone, world has dramatically changed the security environment.”

The 120-page-long paper, entitled Strategic Perspective 2040, is a federal government policy document – and the scenarios it imagines are grimly realistic: an east-west conflict in which some EU states join the Russian side or a “multipolar” Europe, where some states adopt the Russian economic and political model in defiance of the Lisbon treaty.