A couple of thoughts came to mind as I read Thomas' note. The United States cover roughly 50,000,000 square miles. They are 225 years old. Compare that to Germany or France or England. Germany (all European and Asian countries) built its culture on its size, population, age (roughly 2000 years), and nationalism. Accommodations were for the elite who did not care to rub elbows with the Great Unwashed. There wasn't much space to build lesser, but comfortable "inns." It was difficult to build a suitable highway across national borders. Urban planning begun centuries ago resulted in street sizes incongruous with motorized transport. The US was only 125 years old when it began offering people the means (money, personal transport, roads) to visit every corner and promoting tourism. While there are still accommodations for the "first among equals," satisfactory places became available for the "other equals" because there was room. Then the automobile "monopoly" found it profitable to lobby city governments to discontinue electric railroads and began to assist the trucking industry in selling the convenience and "low cost" of motorized highway door-to-door delivery. My description is faulty and incomplete, but maybe I have conveyed the idea that in the US we had the energy, the desire, the means, and the opportunity to go anywhere in 50,000,000 square miles that includes duplicates of almost every tourist attraction in the world. (I said "almost." Travel is being promoted world-wide because there is something else.) There may be something in this that brings about the contrasts. Remember, we are sons and daughters and venerators of the folks who maintained the Old World cultures for so many years. Stan from Livonia, MI ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Koch" <ferdinad@omnitelcom.com> To: <GERMAN-LIFE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2001 3:44 AM Subject: Re: [GERMAN-LIFE] German walking habits > > Ivan Illich calls the automobile a radical monopoly - a product that > makes other competing methods impossible or much more difficult.