Nesting Differences Across the Atlantic

The photo illustrates one of the many, many cultural and physical differences I am fond of recording over summer and winter nesting migrations. During summers in Bavaria, I frequent a Munich Starbucks on a weekly basis in contrast to a daily coffee-for-breakfast routine in Florida winters. This scene was captured in Munich about a week before some 8,000 Starbucks stores throughout the United States were to shut down for a racial-bias “Training Day.” The company announced, “Any customer is welcome to use Starbucks spaces, including our restrooms, cafes and patios, regardless of whether they make a purchase.” This in response to an incident in Philadelphia last month that went viral when two black men were denied use of the restroom and asked to leave. An employee called the police and the men were arrested.

In Munich, it is more likely that customers might need toilet training. There are no homeless souls at Starbucks in Bavaria. In my favorite Florida Starbucks, they gather between 5am and 7am just before the regular office crowd arrives. I am an early riser and regularly mingle among them for a photo or story opportunity.

In Bavaria, cultural differences like No-Right-Turn-On-Red, seem out of date in an age of idling vehicle pollution. Similarly, carrying a pocket full of small change — 1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent, 50 cent, 100 cent, and 200 cent — coins is burdensome in the age of credit-card shopping and instant Internet money transfers with smartphones. My Gold Starbucks card with free refill privileges is not accepted because of some international currency problems. Few and very small garbage containers in public spaces is annoying in an abundance of disposable candy wrappers and throw-away coffee cups. Bavaria recently introduced legislation to allow Christian crosses to be displayed in public buildings in an age of much needed sectarian tolerance and inclusion. A proposal to allow driver-less cars to drive at unlimited speeds, the same as human driven cars on Autobahns, is not unlike the much touted 2nd Amendment right in the United States to own firearms.

The list of differences in my two nesting grounds is endless. When I started these semiannual migrations a quarter of a century ago, I concentrated on observing physical and cultural differences like being landlocked in Bavaria as opposed to having global access to world-wide oceans along the Florida peninsula. A look at a world map shows Bavaria in the middle of Europe far from ocean routes. On the plus side there are several Bavarian passes across the Alps to countries along the Mediterranean and Adriatic sea shores to explore.

Observing cultural differences in this part of the world requires a historical perspective that reaches back tens of thousands of years in Bavaria. Only four-hundred years have past since the Mayflower arrived in the New World and passengers met Native American Indians who crossed the Bering Straits some 15,000 year earlier. America was a wilderness for the first European arrivals. By comparison, Europe seems to have been crowded — since Homo Sapiens out-of-Africa met and mingled with Neanderthals about 100,000 years ago.

For an urban dweller, watching corn grow from bike paths around my farming village in Bavaria could not be more of a contrast to a city waterfront viewed from a marina in Florida.

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