Germany considers abolishing Unity Day

This sucks.

DW World: Germany's National Holiday in Jeopardy

it's not that bad. you still get 6 weeks holidays and a feiertag celebrating every time somebody from the bible did something.

Isn't next week "jesus builds his first chair" day?

At the moment it's just a proposal, but it's still hardly good news.
On the other hand, we get so many days off in this part of the world that I for one am hardly going to miss Reunification Day or whatever the reason for it was in the first place. It failed to happen this year anyway.

no, his first table

Apparently good old Stoiber is fighting to keep it, at least in Bayern

I'd vote for him if I could.
I would also thank god for the Catholic holidays in Bayern if I believed in god.

Funny how the FDP under Schwesterwelle always want to cut public holidays except noe the Federal Government is proposing it, they are against.

I HATE 3rd October and always try and be out of the country or hang a DDR flag from my balcony or something. It's a really smug holiday.

@grtho Amen. Right down to the flag.

What a shame. Why don't they get rid of Ascension day or something? Unity day should be kept as a day of rememberance. The religious folk already have enough public holidays.

How is it a smug holiday?

Does this mean they're gonna revoke that damn reunification - oh sorry - solidarity tax too? I'd give up the holiday for that. Easy.

I think it could be called smug in the sense of the "look how we've fixed up those freeloading ossies" sense. not that I agree, but it is a bit of a joke.

nah, smug as in "hey, we can pay for a holiday 'cos we charge all the innocent expats some huge chunk of tax for "solidarity", even though they had nothing to do with it!"

weird, the other 44% tax (thereabouts, whatever) doesn't bother me but the solidarity part bugs me to bits. At least I'm an anarchic agnostic and don't pay the Kirchensteuer

They are worried about the revenue lost on one Feiertag so they want to scrap it? I have a better idea - open Sundays up to commerce! That'd create a lot more revenue than scrapping one measly Feiertag. And they should postpone till Sunday all Feiertags that fall on Saturday.


Yeah me too. I tell the Ossie that I work with that he owes me all the Solidaritätszuschlag I've been paying since I was here.

weird, I used to think that when I first got here, and now I love being forced to kick back and relax on Sunday!

That's what I just don't get about people who say they like it - what's stopping you from kicking back and relaxing on a day when the shops are open? You need the government to protect you from yourself? Self-discipline is all that's needed I've spent many a Saturday doing sod all and staying at home, although the alcohol consumed the night before often had something to do with it

Well hopefully good old Bavaria will fight and keep this. As its my birthday on the 2nd and its a Sunday next year I can quite happily go out and get wasted and not worry about work the next day.

This sounds too much like the UK though. First they'll take this bank holiday, then they will start picking at others which they deem not necessary.

@chuckF... self discipline... what's that?!

but seriously, i agree i could equally shop on sunday and relax on saturday, and there are days when this would really help. But I do like the atmosphere in town on sunday without all the shoppers, everyone just chilling out and live music... ach, I love Munich!

ok, off to Venice, have a good weekend!

instead of taking the day off for god building something a babillion years ago why dont we take it off for the wall which killed allot of people and ruined many ecconomies.??!?!?!?

idiots

sometimes the europeans still bloody baffle me

I'm against scrapping holidays. All they are trying to do ois sort out the problems of capitalism as they have always done, by squeezing more from the workers.

The government realised that scrapping a religious holiday would be harder than a secular one.

I find it a very "smug" holiday as it marks the day when the interests of western capital took over the old DDR (and the place had its faults a plenty sure) and fucked it over to make money and expected the ordinary man and woman in the street in the west to pick up the bill for it. And we're supposed to celebrate that with a wanky speach from the Bundespräsident and flag waving in a country that denies 10% of the population (25% in Munich) the chance to fully take part in the democratic process. Fuck it!

And I quite like the idea of shops closing on a Sunday. One of the good things about Munich is that leisure time doesn't mean always getting in the car and driving to the fucking mall.

A lot of people got killed trying to migrate "illegally" across the inner German border over 40 years.

I wonder how many have already been killed trying to migrate "illegally" into the new "Fortress Europe" in the last 15?

Splutter...don´t get me started on that damn church tax thing...I tried to get out of paying it...went to Pocccistrasse and they told me I´d need a letter from my church stating that I have officially left catholism. Grr.

Ah well, at least it can be claimed back at the end of the tax year. Snigger.

joolybooly:

You pay the Solidarity tax because you're earning more in the west (and working less) than you would if you were living in the east. While I'm no great fan of it (since it comes from gross, not net), I have no real probelm with it... other than the fact that most of the money simply disappeared and there's never been a proper investigation into where it disappeared TO.

Go to the library and check out Der Spiegel for most of 1994 and 1995. They hounded everyone about it but never came up with much.

woof.

Losing that Holiday is MUCH worse than you think!

Next year Oktoberfest will be one day longer in order to be able to include that holiday, and in 2006 it will be two days longer...

If the holiday goes then so do those 3 extra days of merrymaking...

YL6

news today at 20:15 said they're not going to dump it after all. Panic over.

I just hate paying the solidarity tax.

News today did say that thoughts of scrapping the holiday on 3rd October have been abandoned. However now they are talking about either 6th January or 1st May instead.

Would much rather keep Jan 6th as a cool post Xmas chill out holiday and quèl surprise, I bet the fucking FDP abd CDU/CSU won't moan about getting rid of the Workers' Holiday!