They probably assumed this is like a theme park or something and not an actual city that people actually live in year round. Cities having nice, people friendly places away from cars? Who’s ever heard of that?
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I dont think OP realizes how disgustingly car-centric German culture is. They probably do, in fact, have parking garages
Am German, can confirm. Parking garages do indeed exist here. Germany is very car centric, but fortunately not as bad as the US. Our cities do also have mostly working public infrastructure that makes it possible for lots of people to get to the Christmas market and drink several mugs of mulled wine without the need for overly huge parking garages.
Last time I drank a bunch of mulled wine in Germany during Christmas, I went to the train station and found it was closed.
Its absurd that the trains dont run all night, especially on holidays where everyone is out drinking and trying to not drive or bike intoxicated
I agree, there’s definitely room for improvement.
It seems rare, that the whole train station was closed (probably not one of the bigger cities) and you must have stayed rather late, while christmas markets usually already open in the afternoon (or even earlier) and the sun sets early in their season, so there’s plenty of time to enjoy them while they are most beautiful (at night) and still make it home by train in a lot of places.
That being said, in more places than you’d expect, you won’t find convenient train connections after midnight, if at all. That makes using public transit almost useless for partying. I remember living in a somewhat rural area as a young partygoer and if I wanted to go to the city for partying, the choice was to either go home before the city folk even really started going, or keep partying until the clubs closed and then hang around with the punks at the railroad station to wait for the first train in the morning. Having a designated driver and going by car was the usual option.
While it’s nice to have, I don’t think it should be normal to expect train drivers to work all night, especially on holidays.
While its nice to take holdlidays, I dont think its reasonable to shutdown necessary public infrastructure on holidays. Imagine if the electricity and water systems also shutdown on holidays.
Anyway, humans aren’t needed to operate trains.
There is a parking garage right under that market. There is a large street right beside it as well. In a radius of 500m there are at least 3 other large parking garages.
these people have not walked anywhere in their life have they?
Where would we walk? Most places are not set up for that.
Some people go on walks around their neighborhood for the sake of walking. But unless you live in the right area of the right city you can’t just walk half a mile to get a muffin. The store is a 10 minute drive away.
I don’t want to sound flippant, but there are places to live in the US where you can walk to things. People choose to live outside cities and old town areas because it’s cheaper and bigger.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t some nebulous countrywide “It’s everyone else’s fault” thing. People can and do choose to live close to things. We choose what we want.
You didn’t come off as flippant, but perhaps as sheltered… people live with the choices available to them. If you want to have kids, you have to choose a well funded school district or living in the suburbs driving everywhere. The “choice” to live in a wealthy walkable district, or to buy a bigger house in the city, or to pay tuition to send your kid to a private school, is not a choice that everyone can make.
Perhaps you can consider growing up in suburban America and then raising your own family there a choice. I wouldn’t, in the same way I wouldn’t consider wearing mainstream clothing a choice. It’s what’s visible and available to the vast majority of people, and you’d have to decide one day that the stuff everyone else in your life wears just isn’t working for you, and then work hard and pay a premium to find alternatives.
Never at any time in history in any part of the world has there been affordable spacious housing in a city. This isn’t something unique to the modern US nor is it the result of government.
If the average person wants to live in a walkable area, they live in a small place. That’s how it works. It’s a city. People can even raise a family there. The option exists. It sounds like you don’t like that option. That’s not anyone else’s decision being forced on you.
People did not choose to exclussively zone for single family homes with no commercial uses mixed in. Government bodies decided that and people bought the homes because they need somewhere to live.
Single family zoning can exist, but it should not be the only or the majority of the zoning for a city and it should be taxed fairly compared to rest of the city (instead of subsidized like the vast majority of suburbia).
Fun fact from Germany! These giant Christmas markets actually double as parking lots outside of holiday seasons! Everything is temporarily built on top of a giant parking lot!
Furthermore these tend to be close to both major hubs (Think like a central train station!) and some other event areas that DO need the parking (like a football stadium!). That way, while the holiday markets (plural, several a year) are off, the space can also be used as parking space for sports events hosted in the adjacent stadium!
Just some amazing German efficiency for you. Oh also they frequently get used as skateparks.
Who would want to go there by car anyways? Going to a german Christmas market and not drinking tons of Glühwein seems like a waste
Who said anything about not drinking?
