Yup, not only the cars are fast on the German autobahn!

Crazy Skateboard Downhill German Autobahn

Oh, and now the police try to find him so they can give him a ticket, tsk, tsk…

“The smoking bans in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Berlin violate the constitution. However, the laws stay valid until the end of 2009, by when the parliaments have to pass new laws.”

Seen on tagesschau.de (German). Crazy. Baden-Württemberg happens to be the state I live in.

It seems, the laws violate the rights of owners of very small bars. Why? Because owners of bigger bars are allowed to designate special areas to smokers; in smaller bars, that’s impossible, leading to a significant disadvantage for these bars. As people won’t have a way to smoke there, they’ll move on to bigger bars instead, violating the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of profession.

Apparently, while only the anti-smoking laws of two states were in question here, this is a big signal for the other 14 states as well, as most of them have almost identical laws in place.

We’ll see how the state governments react to that. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll allow bar owners under a specific square meter size of the establishment to choose whether or not they want to be a smoking or non-smoking venues.

Interesting, I just noticed that what is known (and has been for like a decade or so) as the “Opel Astra” in Europe is sold here in the US under the Saturn brand name, making it the Saturn Astra:

Both Saturn and Opel are brands under the hood of General Motors, so there’s no big surprise here. What’s more interesting is that 4-dollars-a-gallon seem to be making American car buyers interested in smaller European-style cars quite a bit more than they used to.

Also, the very same cars (sold under the same or a different brand name, doesn’t matter) are much more affordable over here. The abovementioned Astra can be bought for 18.000 US dollars on this side of the big pond, while you’ll have to cough up 20.000 Euros (that’s about 30.000 dollars) easily for the same car in continental Europe.

The usual excuse for higher car prices in Europe used to be “the European customer wants higher quality than the American one” — when the very same car is concerned though, this argument is hardly convincing.

Semi-finals!! Need I say more?