Europe: Worlds Apart

by Henry Schulte

Jun 21, 2025

Contemplating the European Experience

I hadn’t been to Europe in many years. And I swore I would never go again. I would rather have a root canal than deal with the hassle of traveling and airports. Regardless, when asked by some long-time friends and high school buddies, I found myself at 35,000 feet heading to Zurich.

I thought I would also take the opportunity to use the trip for a column.

Let’s begin with some basics most of us are familiar with. Our infrastructure sucks. We have Amtrak. It was only operating at a loss of a mere $705 million at the end of September 30, 2024, after having received $2.43 billion in 2023. Almost all the tracks in the United States are shared with the privately owned and operated freight railroads. By law, freight lines are supposed to give Amtrak priority, so I wondered why it was that we had to pull over and wait for the freight train to chug on by?

All Aboard!

Flash to Switzerland. When the train says it’s leaving at 10:37 you and your luggage better be on it, or one or both of you will be waving goodbye. They don’t share tracks. The efficiency is amazing. The cleanliness of the trains is impeccable and there are no homeless hanging around at the station or shooting up in the club car. There’s no one on the dock to help you. They assume everyone knows where they’re going because it’s simple. Though I will admit the larger stations are a whirlwind of organized chaos.

Paris is completing 120 new miles of underground tracks, four new lines and 68 new metro stations.

Underground!

I was watching the process on TV over there and it was beyond impressive. The plan is to move two million people a day by 2030. They’re complaining its completion is running late and could cost $39 billion.

Enter California’s “bullet” train.

The bullet fiasco is projected to cost $135 billion to complete, and we know it will be even higher. The first segment was supposed to go from Merced to Bakersfield, 165 miles and be completed the same year as Paris’s 120-mile underground system. Newsom’s choo choo still hasn’t laid a single track and probably never will. Paris will be serving millions from all over the country as the bullet train remnants become a tourist attraction.

We are suckers.

Assimilation Not Required

I also wanted to hear firsthand how Europeans feel about Trump. It was unanimous; he is not liked by the populace. Though not with the same psychotic hatred the left has in the U.S. When I asked directly why, most really didn’t have an answer, they just thought he wasn’t good for Europe. At an outside café three young people sat down and I posed the same question. I first asked what they did for a living. I guessed working in tourism or selling pot and I was way off. All three were corporate lawyers on lunch break. They casually said they didn’t care for him. I then asked how they formed their opinion. Of course, CNN International, which I had to watch because it was the only channel that spoke English and ran anti-Trump stories 24/7. If there weren’t a few updated lopsided views on Palestine, you would have thought nothing else was going on in the world. The kids said they also got their news from The New York Times International.

I rest my case.

On the other hand, tourist guides, and immigrant taxi drivers loved him. One taxi driver who held a French, Iranian, and Swiss passport said he would read Trump’s “tweets” every morning and that would kick-start his day.

In other ironic news. Sweden is kicking out many of the foreigners who have turned their once safest country in the world into a crime zone. And Germany, who had its own version of Joe Biden with Angela Merkel, have closed their borders preventing “illegals” from entering the country. And they’re sending back as many of the millions they allowed in, finally admitting it was a mistake. Europe is trying to get its countries and culture back, but if your name is Trump, democrats are getting all knotted trying to keep them here while we watch more and more Americans die or get burned.

The last time I was in Munich I saw more burqas than lederhosen and I was told Paris now looks more like Islamabad. Liberals may fool themselves and ask, “What’s wrong with that? First, none of the foreigners are willing to assimilate; the European countries, however, are being forced to accommodate them. Sound familiar? What used to make other countries pleasant to visit was their ability to hang to what made them they what they are in the first place.

Take their culture you take their country.

No Photos, Please

Like a Stop sign, if you remove it, eventually people will have a free-for-all and ultimately there will be an increase in traffic accidents. Without controls on humans who don’t abide by the same rules as the country that embraced them, we’ve come to see firsthand what happens.

My takeaway from visiting Switzerland, Germany and Amsterdam is they have their transportation act together. Roads are pothole free, the countryside clean and gorgeous, and the small towns are out of storybooks. I only saw one person on the sidewalk looking for a handout. I grant you, the large cities had their share of graffiti along the train tracks, but they weren’t lined with tents and trash. I’m not saying they don’t have their issues, but I didn’t see it. We walked nearly every square inch of Amsterdam and never saw a single bum. Though I did get yelled at by a lady of the red lights. I was told they were going to call the police. I calmly asked why? I was told you can’t take pictures.

I turned around to face our group and oops, someone had taken a picture. Who knew? I guess everyone except us naïve tourists. We quickly moved along looking for a beer.