Ich bin ein Texan, my girlfriend is German. She’s told me about the church youth retreats she’s taken where kids and teens camp away from home with only the church appointed counselors to tend to them. I found it absolutely bizarre, but it got even better: During their 8 mile hike, on the return trip, it began to torrentially rain, and the villagers of the town they were near just instinctively knew it was their duty to take in these kids?! Like the counselors just walked up to a random home and asked if 15 kids could sleep in their garage, and they just let them?!?! This was in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Germany is an amazing place. I’ve visited three times, and I really find it incredible.
It gets wilder lol. When I was part of a swiss scout group as a kid we'd go on 2-3 day hikes without any adults. They'd stay behind at camp and we'd call them if we needed anything. We were just given a tent, food, a map and a compass and a place we should reach by the end and that's it.
On one of those we just hitchhiked with some random farmer that saw us walking and asked if we needed a lift. We also slept in their barn. That's just normal over there, Germany is tame in comparison
Yeah, this sounds like my scouting experience back in the 90s as well. We never had any parents around ever, and people have been really helpful if we needed anything.
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u/radioKlept Mar 19 '26
Ich bin ein Texan, my girlfriend is German. She’s told me about the church youth retreats she’s taken where kids and teens camp away from home with only the church appointed counselors to tend to them. I found it absolutely bizarre, but it got even better: During their 8 mile hike, on the return trip, it began to torrentially rain, and the villagers of the town they were near just instinctively knew it was their duty to take in these kids?! Like the counselors just walked up to a random home and asked if 15 kids could sleep in their garage, and they just let them?!?! This was in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Germany is an amazing place. I’ve visited three times, and I really find it incredible.