Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Pikamax
Several years ago a visitor from Germany told my family and I that the expansive vacation benefits that Germans had were necessary and deserved. He could not figure out why I was not able to just take off 2 weeks when he decided to pay us a visit. I told him I did not have that much vacation time in my job. He was clueless. As it was he came during the New Year Holiday time, and it's mighty cold in Minnesota in January. I had warned him about our cold weather. I took off 3 days to escort him about Minneapolis. The rest of the time he spent in our house. The temperature was about 20 degrees below zero at night!
5 posted on 08/10/2003 1:48:44 PM PDT by Gumdrop
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Gumdrop
He could not figure out why I was not able to just take off 2 weeks when he decided to pay us a visit.

Hah! Let me tell you a personal story here. I once taught English lessons at the Siemens chip fab in Dresden, Saxony. There, the employees get 6 weeks paid vacation. Once I asked some advanced students whether they would sacrifice one week of vacation for double-pay. Eight out of eight students not only rejected the proposal for themselves, they wouldn't allow anyone else to choose it either! These were relatively young people, too--ages from 25-40. Of course, this was in the former East where people have a weird loyalty to Marxism. Still, I was shocked. I had lived in Prague and found the Czechs much more sedulous, ambitious, and entrepreneurial than the Germans--once the hardest working, most populous nation in Europe.

17 posted on 08/10/2003 3:04:18 PM PDT by ishmac
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson