All of the other parties have ruled out working with AfD. But no other coalition makes any sense. Disaster looms.
In German elections if a party does not reach a 5 percent threshold they get generally receive no representation.
But it is my understanding that if an individual candidate in a district wins outright, that person does get a seat. Thus it’s possible to have some trivial representation without meeting the threshold.
CDU/CSU Still Leads
DW reports As German Election Nears, CDU Still Leads in Polls
Tensions are increasing as Germany’s February 23 federal election draws closer, with the campaign becoming rougher as candidates fight for every vote.
But the mood grew even more tense after the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently leading in the polls along with the allied Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), introduced two motions and a bill into parliament to tighten immigration and asylum policies.
The conservative bloc was unable to agree on a joint approach with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz or the environmentalist Greens. But CDU leader Friedrich Merz decided to forge ahead anyway, accepting the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in order to get a majority for the motion with his five-point-plan on January 29. Two days later, however, Merz failed to get anti-immigration legislation passed, despite continued far-right support.
The SPD, Greens and Left Party accused the CDU leader of breaking a consensus of non-cooperation with the far right that has held in post-war German democracy since 1949. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against Merz’s actions.
Almost one in four agree with the CDU’s push to limit migration, but not if it involves accepting help from the AfD. Another quarter of voters rejected the CDU approach in the Bundestag as fundamentally wrong, including the majority of SPD, Green, and socialist Left Party voters.
Should Other Parties Cooperate with AfD?
Germans are sharply divided on the issue. Around 49% of those polled said it was unacceptable to pass a law with AfD votes, while 44% said it was. Some 56% of respondents found it unacceptable for a party to draw up laws in parliament with the AfD, and 66% rejected the idea of including the AfD in forming a government.
On Monday, Merz told party delegates that he would not enter into any form of cooperation with the far right, which he described as his party’s main adversary. The CDU, he said, could not work with a party that wants to leave NATO, the euro and the European Union — but do people still believe him?
SPD heading for an election disaster
Scholz’s poor ratings are reflected in the general opinion polls. If an election were to take place this weekend, the SPD would only get 15% of the vote — 10 points lower than in the last federal election in 2021.
Meanwhile, the votes the CDU instigated in the Bundestag have apparently not damaged the party’s ratings. In the current ARD-Deutschlandtrend, the CDU has increased slightly and extended its lead to 31% — as has the AfD, which has increased its vote share to 21%. The Greens have lost some ground and now have 14% (-1), while the Left Party has a prospect of entering parliament with 5% of the vote. But both the new populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the former member of the outgoing center-left coalition, the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) are tipped to garner less than the 5% of the vote necessary for representation in the Bundestag.
What Coalitions Are Possible?
Together, the CDU and AfD would have a comfortable majority of the seats in parliament.
There would also be government options for the CDU/SPD and CDU/Greens. The SPD, remains the party that more voters say they would like to see as a coalition partner for the CDU. Some 19% (+1) favor the AfD, 14% (-2) and the Greens in this role.
Among CDU supporters a coalition with the FDP (36%) or the SPD (32%) are the most popular. Only 8% are in favor of a coalition with the Greens, and only 6% want to form a coalition with the AfD.
Overall, concern is growing that it could be difficult to build a stable government.
What Coalitions Make Any Sense?
There is only one CDU/CSU + AfD.
Granted they differ on NATO, the euro, and the European Union but they agree on immigration, business policy, and Green nonsense.
A CDU/CSU + Green coalition is mathematically possible if all the bubble parties crash out. That would make a majority mathematically possible but idiotic. The only things the coalition would totally agree on is the Euro.
A CDU/CSU + SPD “Grand” coalition is also mathematically possible if all the bubble parties crash out. But we have had three failed Grand coalitions already. The two party heads are fighting.
If all the bubble parties but Other survive (that ~6 percent is guaranteed dead), then the two-way coalitions may be dead as well. And three-way coalitions will be unstable and blow up just like the current one did.
Green Nonsense
The Wall Street Journal reports Germany’s Election Dodges Its Climate Debacle
The mainstream parties tiptoe around the green fiasco that is devastating the country’s economy.
Europe’s largest economy holds an election in a little more than a week. The country is in the middle of an economic omni-crisis, and the most acute pain for households and businesses alike concerns energy. You’d think, therefore, that energy would be front and center in the election campaign. You’d be mostly wrong, because, well, this is modern Germany.
German households and businesses pay among the highest energy prices in the world. The average German household paid 39.5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity in 2024, compared with 32.1 in Britain, 27.8 in France and 14.9 in the U.S. Midsize industrial users pay 24.8 euro cents per kilowatt hour, better than Britain’s 46.4 but much worse than France’s 16.7 or America’s 7.4. (A euro cent is worth slightly more than a U.S. cent.)
Blame a green-energy transition that’s been under way for some 20 years. Germany has steadily removed affordable mainstays such as coal from its power mix, while also phasing out dependable nuclear power. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine heightened the contradictions of the energy transformation. The economy had come to rely on cheap Russian natural gas to offset all Germany’s other energy expenses. With that stopgap no longer available to the same degree, nothing shields the German economy from Berlin’s energy mistakes. Result: two years of recession and accelerating deindustrialization.
The small Free Democrats triggered this election when leader Christian Lindner, then the finance minister in a coalition with Messrs. Scholz and Habeck, published a paper arguing that Germany’s climate policies are nuts. He posited that Berlin needs a wholesale reappraisal of the (big) costs and (overstated) benefits of a green transition. Yet since then, Mr. Lindner has campaigned primarily on pledges to rein in excessive bureaucracy and preserve the constitution’s balanced-budget amendment.
That leaves the Christian Democratic Union, led by Friedrich Merz, who’s in pole position to become the next chancellor. Mr. Merz probably understands Germany’s energy problem, and perhaps if left to his own devices would solve it in the obvious way: pulling back from renewables and doubling down on cleaner fossil fuels such as natural gas (imported from sources other than Russia) and nuclear.
His party, however, isn’t there. The energy transition was launched by former CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, and she started the country’s exit from nuclear power in 2011. As is typical for European center-right parties, the CDU still houses a greenish wing that really, truly believes in the climate agenda.
This explains why the CDU’s promises on energy policy are such a mishmash. The party pledges to lower the hated network surcharge—currently around 30% of household electricity bills, according to energy-industry lobby BDEW—meant to pay for the enormous cost of building a grid suitable for renewables. How this promise will be funded is a mystery. Unless Germany scales back its renewable ambitions, grid upgrades will have to be paid for in some way. The federal government already spends billions of euros each year offsetting this charge for large industrial users and is brushing up against the balanced-budget amendment.
Germany’s parties can’t admit the depth of the energy disaster because the voters haven’t recognized it themselves.
The exception is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on the far right, which argues forcefully against a forced march into a green-energy future and currently polls around 20%. This party has achieved that level of support despite worrying fascist tendencies because it’s been a consistent skeptic of an open immigration policy voters once accepted but now dislike. A dispiriting conclusion from this year’s election campaign is that mainstream parties are handing AfD a similar opportunity on energy and the economy as politicians’ squeamishness about frank climate talk persists.
What to Expect?
Since no coalition makes any sense but the one CDU/CSU rejects, expect months of bickering followed by the formation of a dysfunctional and unstable coalition.
The only other possibility is CDU leader Friedrich Merz breaks his pledge and forms a coalition with AfD. I rate that a 5 percent chance.
What About Trump?
Germany can expect a nightmare. This one is 100 percent.
Trump wants defense spending at 5 percent of GDP when Germany does not even spend 2 percent.
Germany has one of the worst infrastructures in the EU (internet, fiber lines, phones, and trains). And as discussed above, Germany is deindustrializing having over-relied on diesel and analog phones while avoiding AI and EVs.
Finally, Germany has a trade surplus with the US of $85 billion that Trump vows to flatten with tariffs.
Germany is in piss poor economic and piss poor political shape.
A crisis looms.
Related Posts
January 9, 2025: Trump Demands Defense Spending 5 Percent of Europe GDP, No Chance of That
Much of the EU is struggling to get defense spending up to 2 percent of GDP. 5 percent of GDP has zero chance. Let’s discuss the math.
February 13, 2025: Trump Fails to Pull the Trigger on Reciprocal Tariffs, Will Study the Issue
Q: What’s Going on in the EU?
A: We have a trade deficit with Ireland of $87 billion. And we have a trade deficit with Germany of $85 billion. That is $172 billion of the $203 billion deficit with the EU.
Counter point: Ellen Musk’s meddling in Germany’s election could affect the results. Here’s a guy throwing Nazi salutes and publicly endorsing AfD. They hate him in Germany now as evidenced but the 60% plunge in Tesla sales.
How about those cars that keep meddling in German elections? Knocking down voters who vote for the SPD Nazi party?
what trade deficit with eire are you on about 70 80 90% of that are american
companies in ireland but remember they have free access to europe no tariffs
we send a few ibs of butter to america uproar BUT germany are you sure any
of these parties have much say bar one
Bet ya did Nazi that coming!
Goebbelshit somewhere else.
At this rate, it makes more sense for East Germany to declare independence from Germany, and the AfD would overwhelmingly win there, and then you could run the experiment and watch East Germany 2.0 overtake West Germany 2.0 – it’d be amazing.
A recently died philosopher said “The purpose of something is what it does.”
Many of the Greens advocating for renewable energy could anticipate decades ago an energy-poverty future, where the amount of energy actually used is markedly smaller (,and hopefully the human population is also markedly smaller). And most of them preferred energy-poverty to renewable-energy-at-undiminished-amounts.
Mish forecasts half the possible future correctly, IMO. He neglects here the possibility that Germany will break its constitution and change it. Either way, Germany is going to be weak internally, and of no help internationally.
As for the German public majority antipathy towards the AfD, is that because of their positions, or is it because Germany’s Third Reich history necessitates identifying some group of the political spectrum as “far right” and hating on them?
Anyway, can anyone explain me American fascination with Neo Nazis from AfD?
You can support:
FDP – pro-business, small government party;
CSU – normal very traditional Christian conservative party.
Why support AfD? Just because AfD is pro-Russian and other right wing parties are not?
Can you explain the Democrat fascination with The Ukrainian fascists trying to ethnically cleanse ethnically-Russian The Ukraine citizens?
The AfD is not socialist – Nazism is socialism – banning parties like the SPD Nazis do.
I do not have any relation to US Democrat Party, but ‘Ukrainian fascists’ are Russian propaganda fantasy. And no one is trying to ethnically cleanse Russians. If Ukrainian citizen provides help to hostile enemy force then he will be punished according to law, nationality does not matter.
I bet you eat swastika cereals with pure white milk every morning, and salute your Nazi friends. There were about 7m ethnically Russian citizens of The Ukraine when their government started bombarding them and burning them out of buildings. Finally they had enough and declared independence, after the American Leftwaffe overthrew The Ukraine’s democratic government and started its proxy war to Yugoslavise The Ukraine. Russia intervened to protect them, just as NATO did in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Don’t forget to mention that the evil corrupt Ukranian govt had Tulsi Gabbard on a hit list. Probably at the corrupt demented FJBs request.
Swastika cereals? You have crazy fantasies…
Should your mythical ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ contact AfD for open job offerings? You know just in case AfD will need Gas Chamber Operators and personnel for Crematoriums 🙂
All of your fantasies are as crazy as this, that’s why you’re a Nazi.
You even believe that self-styled The Ukraine Nazis are not Nazis, when there is video footage of them saying so, and of them burning ethnic Russian civilians out of buildings.
Your SPD Nazis trying to ban liberal AfD parties just like in the 1930s. EU will have plenty of spare unemployed fascists and LNG to deploy to force “democracy” on the repressed serfs of the EU.
Can you explain to me your fascination with those NAZI-cosplaying “Ukrainian” terrorists put in power by the Americans with the coup in Kiev in 2014?
I was there [*], you..?
(* well, I left our apartment just before the bullets started flying…)
He, she, or it, might be a Reddit refugee looking for attention elsewhere as a anti-semitic edgequeen.
Dude…
Do you know how Hitler climbed to power?
He won about 40% votes in election. Obviously 40% is less than 50% required to form government.
Politicians from ‘normal’ right were convinced to form coalition with Hitler.
Their parties were banned soon after Hitlers ascension and many of them ended in concentration camps.
You may be ignorant about German history, but German politicians definitely know.
And tell us, when the Nazi party tried to ban other parties, is that somehow different from the current German establishment trying to ban other parties?
The AfD is the party of East Germany, they lived under the Stasi, they remember it well.
But the DAX rallies on!
Elon Musk is failing to cut American spendingDOGE has so far disrupted everything in government bar the deficithttps://archive.ph/XY6FX
Wrong.
House is working on 1.5 trillion cut in spending in next budget
DOGE is doing the investigating that IG’s were tasked to do but never did.
Apparently DOGE is a repurposed existing agency created under Obama.
Fully Legal and can not get undone without new Legislation.
This has been in the works for quite a time. Deep state is totally blindsided by it.
Since DOGE will be doing uncovering of improper spending programs that Info will get passed over to budget making for consideration.
Passing it to find out what is in it days have ended.
You’ll see it in next year’s record deficit. Promise.
You’ll see what I let you see.
Someone wrote Desperate Conspiracy Theorist on the back of your shirt – go and look.
Yeah, but I got those regulators and investigators off my back, which was the point.
I can say it out loud, and they’ll cheer, because that’s how loyal my simps are.
I own the regulators, they are my simps, your resistence is futile.
Sorry—let’s just retire from NATO right after we take Greenland.
Greenland is in NATO, so when we take it, nothing will change! Except the name… hellloooo Red White And Blue Land!
I will do my best to ensure it is CCP-land.
Let’s just retire from NATO right aft
EURO has been relatively weak against USD which benefits German Exports.
This morning retail sales were reflecting all Biden economic lies.
Jay Powell in his recent testimony just proclaimed everything was wonderful in USA.
Bond market rates are losing altitude which is starting to weaken USD.
Europe trade surplus will not be so terrific as the case for a weaker USD is forming.
German GDP is headed lower. Not a supporting premise for any working political stability.
The caveat to a weaker USD is its role as reserve currency should global GDP be dumping faster then anyone imagines.
I think if the AfD is not allowed to form a government, it creates an existential risk for the continuation of united Germany, because the AfD is overwhelmingly the party of East Germany – they have lived under statist-leftist-fascist-socialist-nazi crap
Am inclined to think AFD has much greater support then EU elites can acknowledge. Much as MAGA was constantly derided in US until Trump blew up the fake news propagandists.
There is coming a tipping point in Germany. Germans I have known tend to be super practical and income focused. As German economy weakens, the backlash long suppressed will surface. Germans are tight lipped until that day comes when it all gets unloaded at once.
It will take a trigger moment, perhaps another mass murder incident by illegal migrant or some economic scandal/Banking crisis leading to loss of funds. I would go so far as suggest Fuse is lite, only do not know how long it is.
The key point is that the electoral map shows that the former East Germany is almost 100% AfD. Just as in The Ukraine, the southern and eastern portions are almost 100% pro-Russia and populated by ethnic Russians since the time of Catherine the Great.
Russia is going to have and get reintegrated into Europe. It is part of Europe, just not that part which current controllers in EU will accept.
Perhaps with JD Vance taking a role, economics will prevail over game of thrones currently playing.
Opening up trade with Russia will be part of any solution for ending Russia Ukraine War. Putting back in place another Iron curtain is in no ones interests.
Leaving Russia alone as a sovereign Nation leaves Ukraine alone as a sovereign Nation. That entails ending NATO Eastward creeping.
Keeping NATO restrained will be Key to any resolution. It is the reason Russia took its initial stance on Ukraine.
With Trump bringing end of destruction of US borders that aligns with Russian and Ukrainian sovereignty being preserved.
This is vastly different Foreign policy agenda then prior Globalist patsy role US played.
Economics is upstream of politics – the EU is broke – their socialist totalitarian fantasies can’t be paid for. Importing unwanted immigrants and taxing repressed serfs to within an inch of their lives is not going to increase EU exports and revenue.
This Defense spending mantra suffers from the same problem as evaluations of Russian military capacity: Spending money doesn’t help. You cannot order artillery shells or AD interceptors at Amazon; you cannot buy them no matter how much money you spend, if you don’t have the industrial wherewithal to produce. European Defense spending means you will be increasing the bid for the same scarce American production. It isn’t a matter of GDP and spending … it’s a matter of creating industrial capacity; research & development; skilled workers; experience; planning & perseverance.
All German political parties are socialist/communist/fascist just like the NationalsoZialistische NaZi party of old. Socialism is in their blood. The least socialist are Alternative fur Deutschland AfD who would be extreme left Democrats in the USA.
Socialism fails with every attempt. The future of Germany is writ large by North Korea, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. Peace on them.
Actually, under de Green Nazi party, Germany has been ramping up (open pit: even sacrificing towns in the way) brown coal generation (the most environmentally unfriendly alternative) to compensate getting rid of nuclear & Russian gas at the same time.
Where nuclear is being re-evaluated in every other country, Germany is the only country that has gone so far as to decommission nuclear, and reversing that step is obviously an extra threshold.
Any coalition that includes the Greens means Germans truly are set to head over the cliff.
Alas, several European countries are facing existential and economic crises, and the risk of civil unrest across Europe is growing… so much anger and frustration… so much provocation… so much attempts by the regimes to control, it could explode.
Hopefully AfD will surprise and get over 50%
No political party in Germany has achieved over 50% of the vote since the Weimar Republic was set up in 1919. In the Weimar years, having a dozen or more political parties represented in the Reichstag (parliament) was not uncommon.
That’s the problem with parliamentary systems. You vote for your local MP and wait around to find out who’s going to be running your country after some back room deal.
No. That is the problem with Germany’s proportional system for allocating seats in the Reichstag. It used to be worse when a party was guaranteed at least one seat if it got at least one percent of the vote in the election. The minimum required these days is 5% of the national vote. A lot of parties were represented in Weimar parliaments.
Germany … 60 years of propaganda / brainwashing works!
It works everywhere. Those who own the agitprop media (formerly pulpit), can program the population anyway they want.
No one wants a CDU/CSU/AfD coalition? Did the AfD reject one? I doubt that. Reality will force the hand of Merz as it has in other EU countries. Of course Germany is a special case with its BfV (constitutional protection office), its history and the leper status of the AfD. Austria just failed in a (far) right + conservative attempt at forming a coalition on many of the stumbling blocks that AfD/CDU would face. Yet, Weidel and her peers may prove more pragmatic and flexible than Kickl to get her foot in the door and break the “firewall” once and for all. I think Merz knows what is inevitable can’t be avoided. In Thuringia where the AfD edged out the CDU, a coalition with BSW and SPD was formed to exclude the AfD. But state issues are different than federal. It will be revealed in a week if that coalition can be repeated on a federal level. Improbable, fragile, unwieldy and with guaranteed infighting/cross purposes like the one Scholz formed and fell apart.
the risk is that the protracted failure of Germany to form a government during a global debt and demographic financial crisis and recession is that Germany’s economy is wrecked by this, and the best solution is to partition Germany back into East v West.
Germany, and most of Europe have been conned and guilt-tripped into economic and social suicide.
Married to a Swede, I went there many times, starting in the late ’80’s.
Crime was almost non-existent. It was safe to walk almost any street, any time of day or night.
And the country was so clean! I marveled at the lack of trash on the roadsides, which was already common here.
My first trip, in 1988, Swedes were complaining about the “Turks”.
I saw a few but not many.
Apparently, a few had managed to sneak into the country (it wasn’t easy back then) and once there, claim “asylum”.
They could not be forced to leave.
They would be enrolled into every available social welfare program you could imagine, and some programs that we don’t even have here.
They were not required to work, or even look for a job.
Most Swedes despised them.
But, the Swedes were force-fed these islamic invaders; first a trickle, then a deluge.
Now, 20% of Swedes are foreign born.
One-third of Sweden’s people have at least one foreign-born parent.
Now, the country suffers a high violent crime epidemic, bombings, rapes, ‘no-go zones’ and an economy that has withered.
It is the same story for Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc, etc, etc.
In the not so distant future, I believe that White/Christian Europeans will either have to become hyper aggressive and fight for their survival (civil war?) or they will be forced into dhimmitude and eventually be eradicated.
I guess that we here in America are fortunate; most of our invaders (latinos) have a Christian (Catholic) background.
And, our invaders do not have a “convert or die/dhimmitude” belief structure.
I have no desire to ever travel to Europe again.
South America now receives my travel $$..
Hey Nezz, I spent 3 weeks in Stockholm and went camping nearby in mid-late June (midsommar) 1970 when i was 16. What has happened to the country since is a crime and tragedy. Self-inflicted by virtue signalling woke leftist traitors. Greetings from an ex-pat in Salvador Bahia (almost 30 yrs now). Best part of living here is i can go months or longer without seeing a burka, niqab or even a hijab unlike Berlin where i spent 8 summers in last 11 yrs (have family there)
It’s not just Germany and most of Europe, half of the US thinks a dementia patient or a cackling retard are great choices for leaders.
The average Western citizen is an emasculated, lazy brainwashed moron bordering lunacy and I find the most deranged, and ultimately hopeless, to be the Northern Europeans and all of the Anglos (UK, CND, AUS, NZ and the US).
Unless something VERY RADICAL happens soon, we in the West will start to witness societal collapse with France, the UK, Sweden and Germany among the best candidates to be the first to fall…
Before Trump, I would have put also the US on that list, a Kamala presidency would have seen the US falling deeper into a sort of “soft civil war” with a serious risk of the country splintering into different parts (which might be why they allowed him to win…). With Trump you may have got a respite for 4 years.
I know what the solution would be and I also know that there is zero chance of that happening before the West starts to crumble…
Sorry I meant to reply to Nezz and now I can’t delete my wrongly addressed post.
That solution will come.
To the US and Europe.
It will be like a replay of the last stand at the Gates of Vienna against the Ottomans.
I don’t think we are talking about the same existential problem to be solved…
What I am talking about is the problem of Western decline, its demographic and cultural decadence, disintegration of internal cohesion due to mass immigration from utterly incompatible ethnicities, dystopic and suicidal policies, the emasculation and feminization of society and ultimately the disgregation of the basic principles which have guided every successful society throughout history: GOD, FATHERLAND, FAMILY.
It is an internal problem, not an external one…
Midsommar is like a dream. Almost endless daylight, perfect weather, parties and festivals.
Best time of year..
I remember reading about the high crime rate in the Swedish city of Malmo over 20 years ago.
Relative to having almost no crime for decades before that.
It’s been bad for a long time now.
Is there any correlation with feminism?
Asking for a friend.
It’s the transexual muslim communists, and you know it!
Those are my transexual muslim communists, and you know it.
FemiNazi’s are always an accomplice in deranged leftist movements.
They will be sacrificed by the islamists after their usefulness has ended.
Feminazis are always part of the equation.
Marxists polarize societies and utilize ALL splinter factions to form a mass of evil.
I spend most of my time in East Asia. The Americas and Western Europe have too much crime for me.
Much of Asia has a culture that is laid back and better food.
And Asian women tend to be much less militant and combative than Euro/American women.
I switched long ago…..
It’s not just Germany and most of Europe, half of the US thinks a dementia patient or a cackling retard are great choices for leaders.
The average Western citizen is an emasculated, lazy brainwashed moron bordering lunacy and I find the most deranged, and ultimately hopeless, to be the Northern Europeans and all of the Anglos (UK, CND, AUS, NZ and the US).
Unless something VERY RADICAL happens soon, we in the West will start to witness societal collapse with France, the UK, Sweden and Germany among the best candidates to be the first to fall…
Before Trump, I would have put also the US on that list, a Kamala presidency would have seen the US falling deeper into a sort of “soft civil war” with a serious risk of the country splintering into different parts (which might be why they allowed him to win…). With Trump you may have got a respite for 4 years.
I know what the solution would be and I also know that there is zero chance of that happening before the West starts to crumble…
I agree. With Trump, we got a 4 year stay of execution.
After that, I am not sure..
So crazy. I recall my first trip to Germany in 1981. What impressed me the most was all the technology that existed, almost none of which existed in the US. How far they have fallen.
Germany’s industrial engineering and machine tools are top notch. I guess they have missed the boat on the digital/information age.
My first visit to Germany took place in 1990 (after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before reunification). I was so impressed with the safety of the cities I visited that I went back in 1992 traveling the entire country with a rail pass.