arsenal21

https://www.amvi.at/index.html#willkommen   There's an Austrian duelling fraternity called AMVI. Were you involved in any drunken swordfights at dawn while in Germany?   Or maybe woke up some morning with a bad headache and unexplained wounds on your face?

I'm not a lawyer but I'm not a lawyer but if your home parish is in Europe, I'd suggest contacting the data controller of the parish and specifying that you don't want any of your data shared.   Churchws are also subject to data protection legislation, in Europe at least.

  May be true if you're in an international office with lots of young people, but I find Germans keep their work and social lives separate.   If you have a hobby, joining a club is probably a good way to meet people.

  I am in the former East Germany and on this side of the Elbe there is very little expectation that a woman turns into a Hausfrau after having a baby, rather the expectation is that they go back to work. Maybe the differences predate the Wall and go back to Protestantism vs. Catholicism.   I know in the Catholic Ireland I grew up in, there was little female participation in the workplace and birth rates were high. Contraception was pretty much illegal until 1980, when it became available on prescription and the number of births fell from then until the mid 90s.   As I see it, having children is a strong biological urge, but so is that to be a productive integrated member of society. There is only so much government policies can do to push people towards one or the other.

  If the mother-at-home policies of west Germany exacerbated the dropping fertility rate, how do you explain them in East Germany where there was 90% female participation in the workforce, year-long maternity leave and a well provided (insofar as anything was in the east) child-care system?   I don't doubt that economic prerogatives have an influence on family planning, but I think these are more at the microeconomic level (so individual choices) rather than macroeconomic level (due to government policy).   The past few years have seen large incentives put in place for people starting and growing ...families but the fertility rate has barely ticked up at all

  I think you are being somewhat disingenuous. The scientific advances that made safe, effective, affordable contraceptives available are probably a much more important factor in demographic decline than government economic policy.   East and West Germany had very different economic systems, for example, but both had overall declining birth rates (with some ups and downs) from the mid 60s (time of the introduction of the contraceptive pill?) up to reunification.   55% of West German women were working compared with 90% of East German, East German women tended to have their first child younger and there probably several other differences, yet both had similar declining birth rates.   https://i0.wp.com/www.prb.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/germany-tfr.gif?w=570&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C300px&ssl=1  

  45 years, Murph, and will be 46 in January. I knew a lad at school who was born on January 1st 1973 and he was given a commemorative medal.

I'd agree with topeka when she says just to smile. There's a clip of Larry Mullen getting arrested in Berlin for driving without a license when U2 were shooting a video, and he just smiles, and you can see it drives the officious cop crazy.

IBM had a massive call center in Erfurt and they sold it to Modis a couple of years ago. They probably have jobs for which German is not a requirement.

"in his 18en Lebensjahr" means he was 17