The 9-euro ticket is very popular, but the full trains also have undesirable consequences. Meanwhile, an SPD politician shows his courage by speaking openly about his life crisis. Helmut Markwort’s diary.
The lure of a 9-euro ticket has delighted many and angered some. The beneficiaries are young people and also older people who can treat themselves to travel for little money. At Pentecost, the victims of the action were people who had always behaved in an ecologically desirable manner. For example the cyclists.
They do without diesel and CO2 emissions and use the train to be driven to their cycle routes. In normal times, the railways organized the transport of the bikes well.
At Pentecost, the cyclists were disappointed. They had to stay outside.
On many platforms, angry tourists could be seen pulling away on their two-wheelers.
The second group, who were not very enthusiastic about the onslaught of cheap drivers, were loyal train customers who are used to being driven comfortably to their destination. The prospect of disorderly crowds and possibly standing room drove many to react incorrectly in the sense of the Greens. They fled in their car.
Foreign tourists, in whose countries Whit Monday is not a public holiday, were also surprised by the mass operation. In the US, Spain and Italy, the Monday after Pentecost is not a day off, and even in the Vatican State work must be carried out normally. Although half of Germans no longer belong to any Christian organization, the curious holiday is not endangered. Protests from those who have left are not to be expected.
The French, in whose state religion plays no role, once abolished Whit Monday for social savings, but reintroduced it four years later. They still argue about the details of the regulation today.
The SPD politician Michael Roth is a courageous man. In the midst of parliamentary business, he has admitted that he is burned out and needs a longer break.
We recently saw the 51-year-old, still ready to argue, at Anne Will’s, where he reported on his trip to Ukraine with Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann and Anton Hofreiter. He has always flown high, was the top candidate in Hesse, has been a member of the Bundestag since 1998, was Minister of State in the Foreign Office for eight years and is now Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
In the fight for the chairmanship of the SPD, he came third with 16.3 percent of the member votes and thus missed the runoff. With his admission of mental exhaustion, he draws attention to the widespread disease depression, from which more than five million suffer. They suppress their symptoms out of shame and thus fall deeper and deeper into mental pain.
How many are dealing with it internally is shown by the fact that they are buying the comedian Kurt Krömer’s book. He lived from the business model of humiliating and insulting his television guests, but he couldn’t get out of bed because of exhaustion. He described his illness to Sandra Maischberger. His book is the number one bestseller. But reading is not enough.
Harald Schmidt, who has been a committed patron of the German Depression Aid Foundation since 2008, advocates openness and treatment. He knows many cases. His first advice: See a specialist immediately and strive for a regular life.
FOCUS founding editor-in-chief Helmut Markwort has been a FDP member of the Bavarian state parliament since 2018.
