Week 5!

So the topic of week seems to be social problems in Germany,

I don't know if I can really comment on these as so far my perceptions of Germany have been limited to only one city, while furthermore, I'm not a German and my experience is only 5 weeks long, but I will say what I have observed.

As the others have, I have also observed homelessness in Stuttgart, whether this is more or less homeless than in Perth, I don't know. But it is highly concerning given how cold it is and I cannot blame them for taking refuge in the train stations as one of the few things that stay open all night and provide some protection from the wind.

Smoking is still prevalent here, as far as I can surmise, more so than Australia. It is a little dubious for me to say if this is a social problem. Smoking would be incomparable as a social problem to things like racism or sexism, in their scope and institutionalised nature. However, I agree that it has a great impact ont he public health and seeing smoking ads in public places for the first time (as far as I remember) was quite confronting that something that in Australia is so tightly controlled, is advertised the same way coke is (or alcohol, which is a much bigger problem in Oz than here.)

Also, graffitti, I'm not sure if there is more or less here than in Perth, but I think it is an issue. However, one must raise the real question, specifically with homelessness and graffiti, are these social problems in themselves, or symptoms thereof? Surely only a youth who feels they have no stake in their society would damage public property in such a way. But, as I must say, I'm not a sociologist and not equipped nor trained to comment on these things in a deep fashion.

In other news, this week has been a quiet one for me until Friday when I visited the Rockfabrik nightclub, very impressive, it was more like a building with a few smaller venues inside it. Something very cool.

And tonight i will visit a variety show called "Youkali" here's hoping it's interesting!