Gambling nation

Unexpected: casinos are all over Germany.

In the nearest town of 10 000 or so, we have counted six so far without searching.  Just on strolls and small shopping trips.

We were used to Las Vegas and the Indian casinos in the States with all the publicity they get. Coming from a "follow the money" culture, we decided to provide a superficial summary to Europeans of where the American casino money goes.

Las Vegas money finances rich people, investors, professional gamblers, some shady, some not so shady. Indian money finances some tribes, and a surprising amount goes into communities and schools. Some of it goes to the individual states that made treaties with tribes to siphon off some of the proceeds. The states are nice to the tribes, the opening position in negotiations generally goes like this: pay us some taxes, so we can make sure nobody puts up roadblocks all around the reservation.

And in upstate New York, we found a small town that the casino tribe is supporting in various ways. They are buying back property, they are even giving a pretty large annual check to the railroad museum in town.

The German casino landscape has lots of English names, presumably for the implied clout of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but the similarities end there. We have seen a "Storm Casino", a "Fun & Play Casino", and other unimaginatively named parlours. There is no casino circuit for ageing entertainers and no glamor -- after all, the Germans Siegfried & Roy could do their shtick only in Vegas.

German casinos are smaller outfits, some look more like a coffee shop with a few attached gambling machines. Sans native Americans, irregardless of the fact that a small number of Germans can claim status as Apache-German, Ojibwe-German, Lakota-German, etc., the German casino scene is a simple commercial setup, like your local butcher or barber shop.
Exceptions like the casino in Baden-Baden, where many a Russian took the dive from riches to rags for centuries, confirm the rule.

No faux pyramids, no palaces. And "Paris, Paris" is a real city to them, just eight hours away by car, or 72 hours by tank.

Whatever the zoning laws may be, we have seen one place where the immoral businesses in town are all in one location: a Burger King, a sex shop, a casino. A friend of the K-landnews calls it the BK-BJ zoning template.

What we had hoped to find was a casino right next to a bank to give us an easy one-armed bandits right next to two-armed bandits line, alas, it was not to be.

The Germans like playing against machines, you won't find the plethora of British style betting shops around here that dot the island towns like Starbucks coffee shops in the States.

Other than that, nothing special to note.

The states regulate, the towns get a few percent in taxes, and some families go hungry because the dad takes all his wages to the casino.