the grass just feels softer in bavaria
The grass just feels softer in Bavaria. The mosquitoes don't itch as much. Even when a bee stings, it barely hurts. (I am self-aware enough to acknowledge I'm probably being protected to some degree by how hard I'm romanticizing this place, though.)
I can't help but draw a contrast to the places I've spent time in in the US. My grandparents live in North Dakota, and when a mosquito from there bites you it itches for a month, or even longer if you're a wimp like me. Definitely enough to ruin your vacation. My grandfather drove us once to visit the field where our ancestors "overwintered" in a cabin, and we couldn't even make it across the field because of the bugs and the tall grass, how harsh and furchtbar itchy they are. We laughed about how soft our family has become over the course of just a few generations.
In Germany, in central Europe painters can paint en plein aire, where you take your easel and materials to an open field and just paint the landscape. The painting itself wouldn't get damaged by dust blowing into it, or bugs getting caught in the paint, because this is Europe and the landscapes are just more friendly, welcoming, more habitable. North Dakota is part of the Great Plains, with no natural obstacles to block the wind. In winter, it blows snow in your face at such speeds I can't feel my nose after walking more than a block. My grandfather, when I came inside to the foyer with its fireplace and heavy brick walls keeping out the cold, said "Think about how the Native Americans did it!" I genuinely cannot fathom it. I cannot fathom how anyone, using materials less windproof than solid brick, could ever survive in this environment for a full year. My grandfather always says 40 below zero is the same temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius, and I used to just think of that as a cool fact with no relevance, but no: 40 below is simply the beginning of winter there.
I wonder if this radical contrast in environment contributes to the difference in attitude towards climate between Europeans and Americans in the Great Plains. Europeans love the environment and work to take care of it – fighting amongst themselves over whether nuclear is safe or clean enough, taking public transit, putting solar panels on rooves. Every Bavarian village I've seen has sported solar panels on top of dwellings. Whereas we have the North Dakota Access Pipeline sucking out 750,000 barrels of oil per day.
The difference is that nature feels like it's trying to kill you when you visit North Dakota. Man versus nature, you start to see it as a force meant to be subdued. Fighting to exist. Whereas in Germany, summers are mild. Gentle even. There's no hostility from the sun, from bugs. The world is a comfortable place to live. You feel an inclination to protect this space we live on, and you have room to be magnanimous towards wasps and bees instead of cheering for victory in the war we wage on skeeters and biting horseflies. €5,000 fines for killing or even injuring a pollinating insect juxtaposed with highway billboards advertising how many mosquitoes their backyard device can zap.