No effort to ensure access for people with disabilities in Germany

In the strangest legal system we know, there are odd positive laws like the American with Disabilities Act, ADA for short.

Sure, you can find lawyers who exploit the act by going after small businesses, but that's as American as apple pie. All told, the ADA has transformed the cityscapes of the country and the mindset of people.

If you don't believe it, go to most European countries and have a look. Medieval castles generally were not designed for people with missing limbs. Much of what we are being told in books and movies about the culture of the times seems to indicate that chopping off limbs and heads was extremely common, and handicapped access was understood as heads on pikes.

In modern infrastructure, some accessibility does exist, with the blue disabled parking spots prominent everywhere. When you look at the curbs, you will see that there is more work to be done.
Small towns may have marble pedestrians crossings, and we are not talking about Italy here, where marble sidewalks are as common in many towns as concrete is in L.A.

The many trips to doctors and hospitals you may find making as an able bodied driver in rural Germany taught us a few things about crutches and hospital mores.

And then there was the shock at the local physician: they have no wheelchair at the practice.

The closest parking spot is about 25 yards away, which feels like a mile or more when you have one good leg, or maybe fewer than one good one.

There is a removable, locked post which gets you as close as ten or so yards if they find the key and the device is not rusted solid to the anchor tube because no one has opened the post in ten years. But the shorter distance comes with a pair of stairs, each of which looks six feet high when you are down.

Remember the joke with the guy who comes to work on Monday morning, one arm in a sling, the cast still pristine.

Man, how'd that happen?

I had a drink at a bar, and and this patron stepped on my wrist.

Stepped on it?

Yes, drunk idiot stepped on it when I was crawling toward the door on all fours.

That's how high the stairs at the doctor's practice are. Kind of.

We told our very own council member of the need of a manual four wheeler for the doctor and hope the town may help out.

They do have money: for two months now, they have been repairing and upgrading the highschool sports field to the tune of 600 000 thousand Euros (about 700 K in Dollares, amigo).

If a wheelchair appears the community surgery, we'll post a photo.

[Update 3/6/2016] On Twitter, German writer and wheelchair user Laura Gelhaar told us about her attempt to find a neurologist in the capital city Berlin: she called 13 neurologists, and not a single one had disabled access. Eventually, with the help of "a connection", she did get an appointment at her preferred practice.