Germany

Currently Germany seems to be at the peak in many sectors. Having faced and eventually overcome a big part of the problems and aftermaths of the German unification the country tries to manage the economic crisis and other challenges, which occured lately. After our very difficult history, which is still influencing our daily life, the country strives to become more international, multi-cultural and an immigration country for people coming from allover the world. But along with the diversities of different cultures, religions and social backgrounds new problems appeared, which the government and people living in this country have to manage.

Due to the federal system Germany has a strong democracy. A huge amount of civil organisations, democratic movements and volunteers show that keeping democracy alive is hard work for every single citizen every day. If you want to change something, you should not wait for the government to change it - it is also your responsibility to inititate changes and fight for it with words and actions.

Nowadays, Germany is often critized internationally, mainly also due to its current hegemony in Europe. Today, it's again not easy to be a German national but unfortunately, we had to get used to that also as a younger person. We carry a collective guilt, which everybody of us comes across at some point in our life. Therefore it is extremely important to support and strengthen our international and multi-cultural society, which we managed to develop in our country until today. No kind of racism or discrimination should have the chance to raise again or being tolerated in our society.

There are still a lot of problems and we are far away of being a perfect country or society. But after having lived and worked in more than 20 transition countries I started to appreciate and value a lot what Germany proposes to me as a citizen today. Germany is extremely interesting, values history and has a wide range of regional peculiarities - cultural, language and policy wise. It gives many people the chance to develop themselves and become responsible and individual citizens.