Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>The
> Opposing Team is Daimler, Sony, Mitsubishi, Nokia, etc. and not just
> Microsoft and Intel. We've got to think *past* the Wall Street Bubble, not
> just against it.
Germans flock East for cheap sex and petrol
FROM ALLAN HALL IN CHEB, CZECH REPUBLIC
AS a boom town Cheb has little to say for itself. Years of communist neglect
coupled with the birthing pains of rampant capitalism have left buildings
and streets in a decrepit state. Neglect hangs in the air like noxious gases
from the defunct chemical plants that once spewed poison into the atmosphere
with abandon.
Yet this Czech Republic town and others like it are El Dorados for wealthy
Germans who break for the border each day to carpetbag the spoils of
consumerism with a vengeance. Berlin is painfully aware that billions of
marks that should be heading into its cash-strapped exchequer are being lost
annually in the bazaars of its not-so exotic eastern neighbour.
Everything is cheaper in these frontier towns. Petrol costs 70 pfennigs
(about 22p) a litre less; excellent Czech beer is 28p a half-litre in bars
or £4 for a takeaway case of 24 bottles. Entire outfits of brand-name
Neoprene sportswear, training shoes and counterfeit fashion wear - Versace,
Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton to name a few - are available for a pittance.
They are hawked, curiously, by Vietnamese traders; once fighters for North
Vietnam's liberation, welcomed as heroes by the commisars of the former
communist Czechoslovakia and now exiles from their homeland. They have found
a new life and, relatively speaking, new riches in the Czech Republic.
Other items they sell in sprawling market stalls housed beneath plastic
sheets are cartons of Western cigarettes, at £10 less per 200 than their
retail price in Germany, bottles of high-grade spirit for £3 each, and
neo-Nazi "white power" CDs that are forbidden across the border.
Authorities refer to the hordes of visitors - an estimated 750,000 a month
to Cheb alone - as the "TBZ Touristen"; T for tanken, or filling up the car;
B for bümsen, a coarse German word for sex; and Z for zigaretten.
This week saw the German equivalent of the CBI arguing against drawing the
Czech Republic and its other eastern neighbour, Poland, into the European
Union club too quickly. While the official line is that they are not "ready"
to play at capitalism on a level field, the fear of German businesses,
particularly small ones, is that manufacturing will be contracted out to
them at bargain-basement rates.
Besides the loss of revenue, German authorities are also deeply concerned
about the B-word. Prostitutes line the boulevards in these seedy, border
towns, wearing little more than scraps of clothing and offering cheap sex -
mostly without condoms.
"Mother comes here to get her hair done and father goes off to the brothel,"
Brigitte Valoweka, a waitress in a Cheb restaurant, said. "A lot of these
girls are Roma, Gypsies. They are dirty and have no idea of staying healthy.
They just want a few marks to take home. It seems that everyone is on the
game. But they only want to do it with rich Schnitzels - Germans."
On the outskirts of Karlovy Vary - the Sudeten spa town of Karlsbad to
Germans - there is the undignified sight each day of hundreds of scantily
clad prostitutes lining the pavement near Theresienstadt, the former Nazi
concentration camp that is now a memorial to Holocaust victims.
Every day 25,000 German cars pour into Cheb, with a similar number of
vehicles crossing into Varnsdorf, heading for the sights and the bargains of
such former Sudeten German towns as Liberec and Brux. Czech authorities like
the hard currency - an industrial wage in the Czech Republic is a fraction
of what it is in Germany - but bemoan the proliferation of the mafia that
has muscled in to control the sex, booze, drugs and illegal weapons sold in
the markets.
Russian Makarov pistols and Kalashnikov rifles can be purchased for a few
marks. A deranged imam, who killed his family of six before turning the gun
on himself in Bielefeld last year, bought his KAL Czech pistol for £10 in a
bazaar on the border.
"They may be old but they are in good condition and you certainly can't get
them as easily in Germany," Dieter Brandl, a civilian employee with the
German Army, said. He travels twice a month from Hof, Bavaria, to practise
shooting at a club outside Cheb.
"The ammunition is half price and the weapons I am able to use much better.
Everyone comes here looking for a bargain and this is mine."
Although the locals deride the Germans and are contemptuous of their big
cars, big waistlines and swaggering manner, they cannot allow personal
feelings to get in the way of commerce. They are dependent on the hard
currency as their jobless queues get longer and the economic outlook remains
bleak.
Max Sommerer, German customs chief at one of the border crossings, said:
"There would be more crossing each day were it not for the traffic jams.
It's like the exodus from East Germany at the time the Wall fell, in
reverse."
Berlin would like to regulate trade with its neighbour, which is one of the
reasons for Germany pressing for speedy membership for the Czech Republic
and Poland into the EU,to the chagrin of its business community. It hopes
the Ostpolitik diplomacy would bring about a normalisation of prices,
thereby allowing more marks to flow back into Germany's tax coffers.
Some western neighbours, including France, have of late began carping about
Germany's muscle-flexing towards the East. They imply that there are secret
ambitions to form a Teutonic bloc to control economic tracts of former
Soviet satellite states and republics.
German officials maintain that their policy is less a grand Ostpolitik
manoeuvre and more of a careful planning for the future. "German foreign
policy these days is driven by a simple priority: to prevent poor foreigners
from swamping our prosperous country and from the poorer neighbours draining
Germany's exchequer," Michael Steiner, a former foreign affairs adviser to
Helmut Kohl, the ex-Chancellor, said.
The Government of Gerhard Schröder, the present Chancellor, does not deny
that spreading stability through economic growth is one of its objectives.
Herr Steiner said: "I think it is fair to say that the basic aim of the
Government's dealings abroad during its first year has been to export
stability to those countries that most need it. And in Europe right now that
means the eastern part of the Continent.
"We have sought, and continue to seek, calm in areas like the Balkans,
Turkey and certain East European nations, creating conditions for those
nations to be brought into the mainstream of affluent Western democracies.
If that means that there will be fewer refugees and immigrants roaming
around Europe and more buoyant economies, than my view is that that is a
positive thing."
However, Germany's bargain hunters, enjoying their £2 lunches with beer and
wine included, followed by a bargain-basement romp with a good-time girl,
hope that such an economic union may be a long way off.
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times
Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to
reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.
Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
