Another Australian checking in, living in a DACH country with life experience in most of them .. Germans are averse to social culpability in ways that Australians (and Americans) are not .. whereas in the US you’ll get a neighborhood watch person on your case for not cutting the grass in the right direction, in Germany you’ll get a grumpy unwashed totalitarian who literally thinks you’re gestapo because you took photos in the public park. Actually, come to think of it, you’ll get a grumpy German complaining about the grass cutting too, never mind that analogy.

Basically, westerners need to realize that the war shock is still reverberating through DACH cultures - remember, German’s were perfectly okay with having their neighborhoods ‘cleansed’ of those their state considered inferior - and then had to suffer decades of persecution for it - whereas Americans see themselves as victors in the freedom game, which is quite pathetic because the freedoms enjoyed in German streets on the regular would have half the American nation birth kittens in conniptions.

I’ll never forget how relieved I felt when I first cracked open a beer on the street in Germany. I don’t do it often, it’s not a thing I really see myself doing a lot. But just the idea of being able to take a couple beers to the park on a picnic with my new German girlfriend, and take a few naughty pictures of her (at her request and with full consent), washed away all the pretense I had, having (at the time) recently relocated from California, where I literally witnessed kids getting their heads bashed in by police for complaining about getting a ticket for having an unopened six pack in the back seat…. I don’t fear German cops, I find them completely amusing. I do everything I can to avoid American cops.

But you know .. Australians too, have their quirks in this regards. I’ve never met a more uncouth nation, frankly. The vitriol and invective I encountered, visiting my homeland again, just for speaking a bit of German on the train with my kids, was overwhelming… from little old ladies who should know better than to challenge a well-traveled cosmopolitan sandgroper on the subject of language. Oh, how their faces vacuumed into themselves once I explained that I was, in fact, Australian, and that I consider anyone who only speaks a single language vastly inferior to those who speak many - just as the original caretakers of the stolen land did!

All in, I prefer living in a DACH nation than either Australia or USA, unwashed totalitarian personalities notwithstanding. It’s just a more relaxed culture, all things considered. The war shock reverberates, but in the corners of it all you will find a lot more free thought than most of the western world.

And that’s another great reason to go to CCC and see for yourself: the freedoms of thought on display.