When we wrote about Bavaria being the Texas of Germany, we knew that we weren't the only ones to draw these parallels.
In this month's MUH magazine, we're thrilled to be referenced in Martin Karaffa's column "The Lone Star Freistaat."
Though the article is in German, luckily Marty maintains an English version of his columns online (and also writes the wonderful blog Deutschland Über Elvis, a name we wish we could have invented)
;)
;)
In this column, he covers the many similarities in size, religious influence, dialect, patriotism, and folk fashion (boots and hats and trachten). But he brings up one very important factor we had overlooked - vast riches. Texas benefits from black gold (oil); Bavaria benefitted from white gold (the salt trade).
As we thought more about the Texas - Bavaria connection, we realized that there are further economic similarities. One of the popular debates in the US is the Texas vs California model, i.e., why is California insolvent and Texas booming?
Driven by Munich, Bavaria similarly is bucking the overall economic and demographic trends. Despite relatively strong growth nationally, Germany has great regional disparity and is facing major population shifts. Germany as a whole is shrinking (but that's a story for another day) and there's a major population shift from rural to urban areas.
This Der Spiegel chart shows Munich as the one area with significant positive growth. And we often see the newstand headlines proclaiming record high rents on apartments and job growth. We're seeing Help Wanted signs on many store windows in Munich, and Bavaria's unemployment rate in April was and incredible 3.9%!! Versus Germany's overall (and relatively low) 7.3% rate.
While we think some of this disparity is that it's just too expensive to live in Munich unless you have a good job, the bottom line is that there is job growth here and the jobs and the lifestyle are attracting people to move here. Texas has different factors at work (including low cost of living), but it's in a similar economic position relative to the rest of its nation.
Source: Der Spiegel