Feeling responsible for things you can’t control

It's difficult to read that and not pass comment. I travelled to a particular place in Germany pretty much every year between 2002 and 2016, and have watched the area I go to change, in my opinion for the worse, in exactly the same way I watched my own country collapse 30 years previously.

It really does appear like the same malign political influence having done my country (England) first, then turned it's attention to Germany!

Haltern Am See when I first went there was a high trust, clean and very orderly little place, like the Soilhull that I remember from the sixties.

In a nutshell, clean, polite and civilised. The whole place was easy on the eye, no graffiti, clean & well maintained streets with actual cigarette vending machines at the end of the street that were not vandalised AND the people seemed very invested in keeping it that way.

In short, I felt like I needed to up my own personal game if I was not to be a "visiting barbarian". 

Each time I went there (particularly in the early years) I took copius photos and you can see the year that the grafitti started to appear, when the roads stopped being cleaned to a high standard, when hooded and swarthy looking creatures who CLEARLY were not the good people of Haltern started to be seen prowling the streets at night and the shops started to up their "Security measures" and finally, the point where even the cigarette vending machines became uneconomical to operate.

I am putting forwards my own (very unpopular) observations, because whilst the first time I witnessed "the process of transformation" unfolding in front of me and sucking out the QUALITY from the society in which I was immersed, I was easily convinced by those who can function linguistically better than I can manage, that I was the problem, and that my vision was inferior to theirs. 

SEEING EXACTLY THE SAME PROCESS unfold in front of me as an observer in a different country, seeing the same arguments being made to push the agenda, and the demonisation of dissenting opinion, as both "quality of life" and "standard of living" plummet for the hapless indigenous inhabitants whilst their leaders deny, deflect & blamecast was too much to endure again, so I don't go there any more. 

Instead of being a unique and lovely place to go, as it was when I first went there, Haltern Am See became a lot more like the land I had just left, due to I have to assume, poor political leadership.Just as happened in England. 

We are being FORCED to transition from a series of European monolithic cultures into a different type of society entriely.

A process it seems, akin to taking down a thousand year old tapestry which depicts the history of european peoples and staining it a uniform shade of light brown.. 

The most frightening thing though, is that pretty much anyone who really tries to whomp up a better way of doing things, (Which is where an intelligent mind goes after realising that everything is getting messed up) runs up against the enormity of the problem. 

It's really, really easy to complain about falling social and living standards, but MUCH harder to work out what is the right path that you should be on.

Your much maligned "Alternative For Germany" party isn't having torchlit parades in the street, and it's leadership isn't wearing the hugo boss uniforms either, they are just a party that represents a section of the german population that likes and admires the orderly Gerrman culture and way of doing things that make places like Haltern Am See pretty and worth worth visiting...  

I Sperg said:

We are being FORCED to transition from a series of European monolithic cultures into a different type of society entriely.

Hasn't this happened numerous times through history with different wars, invasions, resettlements etc resulting in the people in any particular region being quite a mix anyway?

Admittedly most were broadly Caucasian as long distance travel was less common until last century but there were arabic and black influences throughout southern and south-eastern Europe from the various trade interactions and invasions since the middle ages.

Borders have been redrawn time and again, pupulation groups moved (or in some cases nearly exterminated) and all sorts of influences have been felt so for Germany to consider itself any sort of monolothic culture is clearly a fabrication by someone with an agenda.

Where I live in Sao Paulo there are huge immigrant populations of Jews, Syrians, Japanese, Italians, Portuguese, Germans, Koreans and Bolivians to name just the largest groups.

The city is a real cultural melting pot but there is little racial antagonisation other than the rich white classes largely hating everybody else. I wonder if it could be a similar thing going on in Germany?

I lived in Frankfurt for 3 years and found the inherent racism in a large part of the German population to be quite shocking - there were plenty of those welcoming to hard working outsiders but my Brazilian wife got so much hate for her exotic looks and appearance that she preferred to stay back in the UK.

The people I knew from the South of Gernany were even worse - I fired one guy from Muich who insisted on tellng me I was stupid for hiring a black guy in the team as "they are just like monkeys" was his reasoning. I fired him on the spot once I verified someone else had heard this too as a witness.

I'm afraid Germany and racial purity issues are something I think need to be allowed to dilute to break that Ayrian mindset.

I’m sorry that you had such a negative experience. I apologise on behalf of those who can’t behave properly. A broad mass of Germans is however rather tolerant and welcoming towards all kinds of people. Hopefully, you’ll be able to meet the right people one day. You seem to have had some pretty bad luck with the people you had to interact with. 

You have nothing to apologise for as it is not your doing and a few bad actors don’t reflect the nation. Sometimes I wonder if the more extreme elements make their views more visible to travellers than perhaps the moderate population. In the UK these sort of people seem to get more airtime on TV, or is that also a trick of the mind? I think we can be deceived into thinking such views are prevalent. 

You have nothing to apologise for as it is not your doing and a few bad actors don’t reflect the nation. Sometimes I wonder if the more extreme elements make their views more visible to travellers than perhaps the moderate population. In the UK these sort of people seem to get more airtime on TV, or is that also a trick of the mind? I think we can be deceived into thinking such views are prevalent.