Bring brown paper bags

On your next family or business trip to Germany.

One of the first tourist impressions in the US is the sight of people drinking from containers in brown paper bags. This could very well become part of the German urban landscape in the future.

We were impressed by what we saw as a more measured approach to alcohol consumption by the youth in Germany.
For starters, when you become legally an adult at 18, you drink as little or as much as you want to.

You should have seen our wide-eyed amazement when we attended our first small town carnival parade and saw some marching groups merrily pulling along waggons stacked with beer and hard liqour.

Obviously, there are problems with alcohol around here too. In some areas, night time sales of alcohol at gas stations, at kiosks and in supermarkets have been banned. The same is true for weekend sales.

The southern state of Baden Wuerttemberg is currently seeing a debate about further restrictions, including -- get this -- no drinking in public places - which is why we already recommend to bring brown paper bags.
The existing restrictions were introduced in 2009, and proponents of additional measures point to a drop in crime related to alcohol during the night time hours. In 2009, there were 6492 violent crimes, including resisting a peace officer, in 2011, the number had dropped to 6250.

Proponents say, it proves the crackdown works. We are not great at math but it looks like a 4 per cent or so drop and may well be within the limits of natural fluctuation. The media report did not say anything about the trend in the years before 2009. While we generally assume measures are taken because a situation is getting worse, we also know that this may not be true at all -- go, read the first Freakonomics book for a better look at public order numbers and policies. The underlying meachanisms and arguments are the same here as in the US.

The rigorously positive outlook on life at the K-landnews has led us to identify one huge opportunity in future crackdowns.

We suggest to start looking for a used van soon to be ready for the business opportunity of a lifetime.

Roaming liqour sales vans may well be the next big thing in the German southland.