Chewin in the Chung

I’m in Frankfurt. It is an odd place. They have this flaky white stuff that falls out of the sky. It is dry but turns wet when it lands on you. It accumulates on the ground and on parked cars, and the people here have to use these big curved shovels to clear it away. Weird.

Another thing about Frankfurt. It is filled with these tall, big-foreheaded people with long, angular noses. After living is Asia so long, walking around the city here is like being at a family reunion where you don’t speak the language. Nice folks though, and it’s not every city where the stores carry jeans with a 38 inseam. I am clothed. Har.

Has dinner with our customer last night, and they told us an odd aspect of Germany’s taxation. I always knew that Germans pay a zillion percent income tax, and it cripples their economy, and socialism sucks, la la la. But last night I learned that tithes are collected by the government together with income taxes. So, if you are registered as a Catholic (on your tax return? In your household registration? I’m not sure.), then the government will tax you an extra 9% of your total tax owed for the year, and pass that on to the Church. I think it only applies to Catholics and Protestants, which would leave Jews and Muslims free to tithe however much they feel like. As explained to me, this system was originally instituted by the Nazis, as a kind of payoff to the Catholic Church to keep their mouths shut about Nazi nastiness.