Narri, Narro

Yesterday the rallying cry was not Alaaf or Helau but Narri, Narro. Also, in Freiburg, we celebrate the fifth season, called Fasnet in the Alemannic linguistic area and not Karneval (Cologne) or Fasching (Munich).

A lady of our steadfast rest of Feierabend had lined up in the cold at Freiburg's town hall (thank you, Offi!) to buy tickets for a Fasnet event, that is, the afternoon dress rehearsal of an evening event.

Freiburg offers its senior citizens an afternoon of colorful entertainment with coffee, cake, and an additional drink, to which Red Baron added a bottle of Winzersekt (sparkling wine).

So yesterday, six Feierabend people sat in the city's sold-out Ballhaus and watched the on-stage performance.

Einzug der Narren (Entry of the fools)

Der Elferrat (Council of eleven fools)

Büttenrede: Wir bleiben badisch
(Barrel speech: We remain Baden)

S'Dorle (Little Doris)

Schachtelballett (Frump Ballet)

Tratschtanten (Tattletales)

Kulturbürgermeister Ulrich von Kirchbach mit dem Grußwort
(Greeting of the Mayor of Culture Ulrich von Kirchbach)

Roland Kaiser und s'Dorle (Roland Kaiser and little Doris)

Mutter und Tochter (Mother and daughter)

Die BNZ (Badische Narren Zeitung) Clownerie 
(The Baden Fool Newspaper Clownery)

Hansele Clowns 

Das große Finale (The grand finale)

Red Baron assisted a Fasnet event for the first time. This was an afternoon well spent. Thank you.

**

Guns N‘ Rosé

not to be confused with Guns N' Roses, the name of a Rock Band, is the title of a book by Juliane Schäuble and Annett Meiritz. The authors are USA correspondents of two German newspapers, the Tagesspiegel and the Handelsblatt, respectively.

The two ladies wrote the book in German about Konservative Frauen erobern die USA (Conservative women conquer the US).

On page 13, the authors explain the title of their book: In 2020, when a (small) wave of Republican women was elected into Congress, the glossy magazine Marie Claire declared 2020 the year of the "conservative pink wave. "Pink = Rosé? 

Michele Fiore is posing on her 2nd Amendment calendar for 2016.
Presently, she is the Nevada Republican Party national committeewoman
responsible for fund-raising in the State.
She isn't mentioned in the book, but is here simply as an eye-catcher.

In fact, today, more women are engaged in the GOP than ever before.

Red Baron follows American politics closely but struggles to appreciate the attitudes and remarks of the ambitious conservative ladies mentioned in the book. How will this book be successful in the German market? 

On February 1, Red Baron introduced the book at a Stammtisch of the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft. While the information below was mainly new to my listeners, my American friends may find the revelations boring.

The Three F

Conservative women defend the traditional American values of faith, family, and freedom. These three American "f" remind me of the three German "K" Kinder, Küche, and Kirche propagated in the Second Reich before 1914.

 

When you equate church with faith and children with family, the home activity kitchen is replaced by freedom. In the States, the third freedom is the traditional value, although I assume that the founding fathers (!) were intolerant in matters of the third "f."

Faith, or rather adherence to one of the many churches in the States, is one traditional value conservative women defend with teeth and claws. 

Overall, they are determined to save the country from what they call the "radical left" by taking up power, and many of the conservative women deliberately are radical to be taken seriously by the target audience. 

They are united by a fundamental distrust of what they see as an "encroaching" government; they reject abortion ("pro-choice"), "cancel culture," and "wokeness;" they also, as they emphasize, stand behind the police and the forces of order. And they do not want a welfare state, which for them is synonymous with socialism or even communism. In this way, they live the antithesis of progressive feminism, represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing Democratic icon, or Vice President Kamala Harris.

Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and supporter of Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, said, "Women are more energetic than men. They're probably smarter, too. That kind of woman who has come a long way has worked harder than the average man. The view is gaining ground that women can be more persuasive advocates for conservative causes than men."

Red Baron didn't know that after decades of debate, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which both chambers of Congress approved in 1972 and which guarantees racial and gender equality in the US, has still not been ratified by all States. 

Opponents are mainly conservative women who feed the fairy tale of the young career woman who selfishly chases her individual dreams, scares off all suitors, and ends up depressed, bitter, and divorced, lonely without having had children. Why do conservative women see the traditional division of roles between men and women not as oppression but as freedom?

Here are some of those active conservative women:

©Huffpost

Ronna McDaniel (49), Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman since 2016 and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is supposed to put the GOP back on the winning track after the recent defeats. Formerly a strong supporter of Trump, her motto is not to anger the ex-president but also not to actively support him.

©Stern

GOP hopeful Nikki Haley (51), the first female governor of South Carolina and former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is also following an irritating zigzag, building herself up as a possible candidate for the 2024 presidential election. She said, "The time for being nice is over; that doesn't mean we must be disrespectful. I wear heels - and it's not a fashion statement. I use them to kick. But I always kick with a smile."

Schooling

Schools are always a famous arena for arguments about children's education. For example, one maxim of conservative women is, "Our children see so much garbage on social media. Reading in school should give them beautiful ideas for life. Schools have that in their own hands and must live up to that responsibility." So, it comes to cleaning up school libraries.

 
Already in the early 2000s, there was a backlash against the Harry Potter series because strict Christians sensed a glorification of Satanism and witchcraft. Civil rights activists, in turn, took action against racist stereotypes in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men or Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

©KABB

Stacy Langton (34), the spokeswoman for School Board Mums, joins the Mommy Warriors in opposing curricula, mask mandates, and vaccinations. They take action against what they claim are "anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-white" textbooks. In transgender school workshops, children are "taught to question whether they were born a girl or a boy."

 

Supreme Court

©Der Tagesspiegel

The fight for the right way America should steer has reached the Supreme Court. While the late and oldest justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, championed non-discrimination in employment and education, equal pay, and legal and safe access to abortion, her youngest successor, Amy Coney Barrett (51), a Catholic mother of seven, embodies the opposite model. Her supporters celebrate her as a preserver of traditional values.

Concerned Women for America (CWFA) supported Coney Barrett in her bid for office. They chartered a tour bus ("Women for Amy") to promote the judge. CWFA was formed in 1979 in response to the leftist women's movement. 

The association's goals have hardly changed; it seeks to "protect and promote biblical values among all citizens" and to reverse "the decline of moral values." The 5,000,000-member organization is closely networked with Republicans; grassroots mobilization is its strength. CWFA has hundreds of prayer chapters across the country. It sends a delegation to Congress every month to keep the social conservative palette on the agenda: Abortion, pornography, contraception, stem cell research, etc.

While the worldwide trend is "pro-choice" abortion, the Supreme Court has since overturned Roe v. Wade and granted the states the carve-out of the right to abortion, with the result that many states are answering "productive freedom" with "pro-life."

Abortion

©Abby Johnson

Abby Johnson (42), a radical anti-abortion activist, wants sex education in schools to be about more than contraception. She tells young audiences, "You must consciously choose your sex partners; you may be fathering a life with them. At school, I saw many disgusting pictures of genital warts and sex positions reenacted with stuffed animals. But no one told me about children with disabilities; no one taught me how to raise a family responsibly."

      

Influencer

©The big game hunting blog

At age 19, Kendall Jones (47) was on the German daily Bild, grinning at the camera in photos with lions, elephants, and antelopes shot beside her.

28 years later, Jones is an influencer and sits on a stage at Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the most prominent conservative college organization. Year after year, more female than male students enroll at the approximately 4,000 universities in the United States; in the 2020/21 academic year, nearly 60 percent of all freshmen were women. 

So TPUSA regularly holds a conference exclusively for female members, the Young Women's Leadership Summit. These students demonstrate female empowerment. "Kendall is just herself; she pees in the woods.

In her allocation, Kendall says, "It's more important than ever to be authentic and show the left that we're not going away." She advises the attendants, "Don't be too sexy; you don't have to squeeze every body part into the camera. Pursue a purpose, a goal. Find a subject you're good at and own it. You don't have to know all the details, but you do have to be convincing." This is pretty hollow and superficial. But can you really blame the female influencer? Aren't they following the very concept that men use to rise to the top: "Fake it till you make it"?

Deep Country vs. Big City

The Corona measures have led to a gigantic wave of radicalization in conservative rural areas of America - and a strengthening of the Republican Party.

 
People in rural America feel that their way of life is under attack. Be it because they are forced to be vaccinated, forbidden to attend church services, have their guns taken away from them, or the joy of eating meat is spoiled.

They don't want to be patronized; they want to decide for themselves because they believe they know the risks better than politicians and activists who live far away and have long been alienated from rural life. The plan to enforce the same rules for all states drives many of them to the barricades.

©Twitter

Kristi Noem (51), Governor of South Dakota, promises to defend Americans' "God-given rights." In her book Not My First Rodeo, Lessons from the Heartland, she stages her "conservative feminism" from the countryside as the antithesis of liberal big-city feminism. "These days, it seems like it's all about gendering. I'm baffled about who's still a girl and who's a boy. God was never unsure about that."

©Kim Reynolds

Kim Reynolds (63) also emphasizes the conservative idea of freedom. When the Iowa governor announced in early March 2022 that she would run for a second term, she declared, "As long as I'm governor, Iowa will be a state where you can live your life in freedom and not wake up every morning worrying about what the government will do next to you, to your business, to your children." She was reelected.

African Americans

©Winsome Sears

I couldn't believe there was a group called "African Americans for Presidential Reelection." One passionate Trump supporter is former US Marine Winsome Sears (58), lieutenant governor of Virginia. For her, the most critical issues for black women are not "Black Lives Matter" or the legacy of slavery but the economy, education, upward mobility, inflation, and the surge in crime in American cities during the pandemic. Sears belongs to the fastest-growing group of gun owners: black women.

 

©C-SPAN

Candace Owens (33), an American conservative author, talk show host, political commentator, producer, and activist, sees the Republicans as the Freedom Party and takes a hard line on Democrats, "Republicans freed the slaves in the Civil War. Republicans were the first to elect black Americans to Congress. No matter how you slice it, Democrats can in no way claim to be the party of inclusion. Since the 1960s, we have been the Democratic Party's most loyal constituency. But it has since become clear to many blacks that our relationship with Democrats is best described by the words' abuse by neglect.'"

Latinos

©Pinterest

Anna Paulina Luna (33) has Mexican roots, was poor as a child, her mother a single parent, and her father a drug addict. As a young woman, she joined the Air Force. Her campaign page reads, "She serves her country, not herself."

The negative appeal of "socialism" drove a large number of Latino voters to Republicans. Diane Hirsch, a 72-year-old former nurse carrying a "Latinos for Trump" sign, says, "I don't want socialist communists running our country. We Latinos are often very conservative and care about family values and personal responsibility."

The fact that social benefits are paid for by the government doesn't fit the "American spirit," and Republicans condemn Obamacare as the maximum government intervention.

On Capitol Hill

Political scientist Catherine Wineinger wrote, "Women in both parties, like their male counterparts, are more ideologically extreme than in decades past. Now, there are only about two dozen Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill who count themselves in the centrist camp; in the 1970s, there were well over a hundred."

Infernal duo Lauren and Marjorie (©WJCL)

There is this right-wing radical-women duo on Capitol Hill. Marjorie Taylor Greene (48) and Lauren Boebert (36) are here heckling President Biden during his State of the Union address.

©NYT

Newly elected Lauren Boebert, the congresswoman from Colorado and communications director for the Republican right-wing "Freedom Caucus," caused a stir before entering Congress by announcing she planned to carry a loaded revolver in her purse. 

Then, she voted for Jim Jordan as House speaker until the 14th ballot. Only a call from Trump changed her mind, so Kevin McCarthy eventually became House majority leader on the 15th ballot.

©Marjorie Taylor Green

Lauren's crony, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conspiracy fantasist, is celebrated at the grassroots level for her extremism, with donations flowing lavishly to the right Republican from Georgia.

©Marjorie Taylor Green

The list of Marjorie's scandals is long: she paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines rather than wear a mask in Congress, and she supports the far-right QAnon movement.

           

Trump's Party

The Republican National Committee (RNC) winter meeting in Salt Lake City in early February 2022 will go down in history as the meeting at which the GOP finally surrendered to Trump.

Liz Cheney chairs the House Select Committee.
on the January 6 Attack (©Süddeutsche Zeitung)

What was striking at the Salt Lake City meeting was that women spoke more harshly than men, even unforgivingly, about Liz Cheney (56). Is this because women are particularly fond of criticizing other women, as is often said?

In July 2021, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Cheney to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Two months later, she was made vice chair of the committee. That made her a traitor in the eyes of many Republicans - and a lone hero to Trump critics trying to save the party's brand core.

Punishment was swift to come. On August 16, 2022, Cheney lost renomination in Wyoming's Republican primary to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman in a landslide, garnering just 28.9% of the vote. 

Recently, Cheney has said that she intends to be "the leader, one of the leaders, in a fight to help to restore our party" and that she may be interested in a presidential run, but the Trump people refer to people like Cheney as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).

Ultimately, I asked ChatGPT, "Do conservative women conquer the US?"      

Here is what the software artificially and intelligently had to say: Conservative women certainly play an increasingly important role in the United States. While there is still a long way to go before true gender parity is achieved, conservative women are increasingly gaining influence in politics, business, and other areas. They are also making their voices heard in the media, and their presence in the public sphere is growing. However, it is too early to say that conservative women have conquered the US.

**

Living in Freiburg

Life in Freiburg is pleasant. But not equally pleasing everywhere. The other day, our local Badische Zeitung (BZ) published an article on citizens' satisfaction across the various districts.

Quality of life in Freiburg's city districts
"Do you like living in your current neighborhood?" (©BZ)

To make it short, Red Baron, or better, my city district, won the silver medal. The neighborhood where I live, the Mittelwiehre, is only surpassed by the Oberwiehre.

The BZ wrote: All Freiburg city districts are rated positively, but there is a wide spread between the top district, Oberwiehre (+90), and the bottom district, Weingarten (+26).

If one compares the result with past years' surveys, it becomes clear that the gap is widening. While the districts in which residents were already satisfied continue to improve, the situation is precisely the opposite for those at the bottom of the table, where satisfaction is falling more and more. Opfingen lost the most (-15), followed by Rieselfeld and Weingarten (-10).

When I moved to Freiburg in 2001, the Herdern district was the nec plus ultra to live in.

That changed over the years. Now, Wiehre is at the top in terms of resident satisfaction. Look at the Herdern ranking now. 

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, and so is the Wiehre: Unterwiehre (lower), Mittelwiehre (middle), and Oberwiehre (upper).

©City of Freiburg

On the map, the Mittelwiehre is the centered dark blue area. Note the train station at the bottom. The Unterwiehre is on the left, and the Oberwiehre is on the right.

©VAG

Public transport is excellent. The Stadtbahn (streetcar) serves the Oberwiehre by the red line 1, the Mittelwiehre by the green line 2, and the Unterwiehre by the orange line 3.

The small advantage of the Oberwiehre over the Mittelwiehre is undoubtedly related to its large shopping center, Zentrum Oberwiehre.

In the Mittelwiehre, stores with the most essential goods for daily needs are within walking distance, but the sales areas are small, and the shopping experience is diminished by this narrowness.

©Wiehrgefühl

Cafés are plentiful. Kaisers Gute Backstube runs the Café Wiehrgefühl*, the most pleasant place to sit and sip your coffee.

*Play of words with Wir-Gefühl (feeling of togetherness)

With all these conveniences, I use my car very little. It serves me well on my infrequent trips to France and helps when buying larger quantities of bottles in a distant supermarket.

Mittel- and Oberwiehre are located at the foot of the Black Forest and are popular urban neighborhoods because of their hiking opportunities. The train station Wiehre of the Höllentalbahn (hell valley train), leaving for the Black Forest, is within 4 minutes of walking distance from my apartment.

Unfortunately, Red Baron is no longer fit for long walks, but I consistently fulfill my daily 30 minutes of forced walking.

**

Sponge City

The other day I read the German word Schwammstadt. Then I remembered Sponge Bob lives in Bikini Bottom, not Sponge City. Confused, I looked on the Internet:

The term "sponge cities" is used to describe urban areas with abundant natural areas such as trees, lakes, and parks or other good designs intended to absorb rain and prevent flooding.

©frontiers

The building blocks of a sponge city for water management are retention in rain gardens and bioswales, infiltration into the soil, storage in reservoirs, purification in treatment plants, and final discharge into rivers.

Water harvesting (©Love Your Landscape)

The earliest "sponge" Red Baron remembers is the good old rain barrel.

Climate change means, on the one hand, severe droughts like in Germany's northeast and, on the other hand, floods due to intense (local) rainfall.

So water management becomes essential. When it rains, this rain must seep away, not run off. In cities, more open, green spaces are needed - facades and roofs must be greened so that water can be kept on site.

Greened living environments provide less hostile conditions for humans and animals in the impending hot and droughty summers. Sponge cities help us meet the challenges posed by extreme weather.

In a sponge city, spaces are created capable of absorbing large amounts of water and releasing it in a time-delayed manner.

Measures to be implemented are roads that are changed in the angle of inclination so that they can drain water in a targeted manner (stormwater roads). Other roads may be lowered to serve as detention roads. Finally, there are green roads, i.e., landscaped streets where water can percolate into plant beds, tree trenches, and swales next to the road.

Squares and parks are modified or redesigned as retention basins to hold as much water as possible. All these measures will provide better protection against extreme weather events.

Red Baron sees a problem in water losses due to evaporation. They increase exponentially with higher temperatures. So if a city "sponges" too much of the incoming rain, the final water discharge into rivers will be diminished.

In addition, cities not so efficient with sponging rain will use water from rivers. Counting in the reduced meltdown of shrinking glaciers will lower the water levels of rivers.

Last summer, we experienced such a situation with the Rhine River hampering navigation considerably. Due to the low water levels, ships transporting fossil fuels or building materials could only be loaded half, increasing transport costs significantly.

Creating sponges for water retention is good but will not compensate for climate change, along with its little rain and high temperatures.

*

A Leopard Is Not a Tiger

©Twitter

Today he stopped "scholzing" crossing a red line. During a parliamentary question time at the German Bundestag (parliament), Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would deliver 14 Leopard 2 version A6 tanks to Ukraine. The number corresponds to one company.

 
Finally, the caged Leopards are freed, but German tanks on Ukrainian soil? They were last seen in the Battle of Kursk 80 years ago, in August 1943. A nightmare: German Tiger against Russian T 34, and now Leopard against T 90. 

Until today, the delivery of battle tanks to Ukraine was hanging, a cat-and-mouse game. Our chancellor, internationally derided as a cunctator, procrastinated for a long time. Still, he used his time to forge behind the scene an alliance of Western NATO countries for tank deliveries. Poland had jumped the gun with its announcement to supply a company of Leopard 2 to Ukraine. Now the willing members of the NATO tank coalition (Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain) are to provide a total of two battalions, about 90 Leopard 2, to Ukraine. Germany will take over the training of the crews and the logistics of the supply.

At the same time as Olaf Scholz, the Americans announced they would deliver 31 Abrams tanks, while previously, they had hidden behind the argument that this war equipment was too complicated to be usefully deployed in Ukraine.

 

Unloading of Abrams at Gdynia harbor on December 3, 2022 (©tnv24).

Wait a minute. Poland is in the process of receiving 250 M1A2SEPv3 Abrams main battle tanks since the end of 2022. In addition to the battle tanks, the procurement package includes support vehicles, packages for training (including simulators), logistics, and large ammunition stocks. Poland shares a long border with Ukraine, which would facilitate the resupply and repair of Abrams tanks in Ukraine, so the US' initial rejection was probably just a sham.

©ZDF

Olaf Scholz's intention from the beginning was to forge a broad alliance and, above all, to get the Americans, Germany's nuclear protection shield, into the NATO boat.

 
And so it already sounded today from Putin's mouth that the Americans were fomenting the Ukrainian war to bring Russia to its knees. At the same time, he said, "Germans in their American-occupied country are only vicarious agents of the United States." Are we out of Russia's sight, or does Putin want to keep the German door open?

And as was to be expected: after the tank deal was concluded, new demands for heavy warfare equipment, such as F-16 fighter jets and Tornados, immediately came from Ukraine. Chancellor Scholz stated in the Bundestag, "No fighter jets will be delivered to Ukraine, and NATO ground troops are an absolute no-go."

How long will it take before these red lines are crossed as well?

*

Raffelhüschen

Bernd Raffelhüschen is a German economist and, since 1995, has been a Professor of Finance at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. His primary research focuses on the determinants of life satisfaction in the context of happiness research.

On November 21, 2022, Bernd Raffelhüschen spoke at the Museumsgesellschaft about Public debt, inflation, and low interest rates: an explosive charge for the economy and social affairs.

I only received the slides of his talk yesterday. Here are some of the most relevant figures Professor Raffelhüschen showed during his presentation.

Germany's national debt is 2.381 billion euros, compared with the United States' 30.569 billion US dollars. In Germany, the value corresponds to 72.5% of gross national product, whereas in the United States it is 122.1%. Subsequently, each German citizen carries a debt of 29.000 euros, whereas in the US the figure is approximately 90.400 USD per capita.

To limit expenditures and avoid excessive debt, governments implement measures. While the US has a debt ceiling*, Germany has a Schuldenbremse (debt brake), i.e., a balanced budget amendment.

*soon to be raised? 

The Schuldenbremse is a constitutional rule that prohibits the government from spending more than it receives in revenue. The Bundestag (parliament) voted to suspend the debt brake for two years to cope with the extra expenses during the Covid pandemic. 

Still, Germany seems better off in debt than the US, but looking at the demographic pyramid should give us Germans the creeps. Who will pay for the Gesetzliche Rente (statutory pension scheme) in the future?

Today, the contribution to the Altersrente (old age pension) is 9.3% of your income, to which your employer adds another 9.3%. In case of a fixed contribution plan, i.e., the 18.6% are kept, the present pension level of 48% of your last salary will drop to 36% for those retiring in 2070 (green curve, LHS).

If, on the other hand, the German government seeks to keep the overall pension level at 48%, the contribution to the pension fund must exceed 26% of income (blue curve, RHS).

Another way to finance the Rentenlücke (pension gap) is taxpayers' money. This is already done. In 2020, the federal subsidy to the pension fund already exceeded 100 billion euros annually, with the trend projected to continue.

Another future challenge will be the Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (statutory health insurance), which covers 90% of the German population. Currently, the general contribution rate for statutory health insurance is 14.6% of your income. Half (7.3%) is contributed by the employee, and the other half by the employer.

In all countries, healthcare services are under cost pressure. Maintaining the status quo will increase the state health insurance contribution to 20% in 2060, whereas yielding to pressure will increase it to nearly 28%.

I doubt the American Social Security system and Obamacare will undergo such dramatic developments.

What is the best way to care for old age? Raffelhüschen's four recommendations are, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket!"

 

The best long-term investment is stocks, which return 5% after inflation. They remain the best choice relative to bonds or real estate.

Inflation developed strongly after years of zero interest rates and price stability in the eurozone.

Primarily due to energy costs, producer prices for commercial products rose by nearly 46% from January 2021 to September 2022, while consumer prices in the eurozone reached a record increase of 10%. Energy will remain expensive, so high inflation will persist in the coming months.

The reasons for the present situation - the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine - are apparent, but one factor usually needs to be included: the quantity of money in circulation.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the European Central Bank (ECB) has increased the money supply by a factor of two. 


Yesterday, a lady visited Red Baron to inquire about his happiness in life. This poll continued a series of interviews I undergo every second year. I assume the data are also used in Professor Raffelhüschen's study on the happiness of living in a particular region in Germany.

Using personal data collected across Germany, Raffelhüschen publishes a Glücksindex shown on the map above.

The state of Schleswig-Holstein has the happiest people, with a happiness index of 7.44, while the south of Baden, including Freiburg, falls within the middle range, with a Glücksindex of nearly 7.

May it remain so.

**