"Cat" was his first word (and is, thus far, his only word), but he "talks" at great length (and in a highly animated fashion) to the cats.
My Swedish colleagues (most of whom are male but get really generous paternity leave) regard us with pity when I explain what things are like here (even though things are far better here now than in my day).
5) It's hard to see many currents in contemporary German cultural/intellectual/commercial life that echo the iconoclasm of the Bauhaus, or the Jena's Sera Circle, or Kraftwerk, or Thomas Mann, or Paul Klee, or (even) Karl Marx I suppose.
4) The success of parties like AfD and BSW also suggest than many Germans are clinging to the past rather than embracing the future. The Greens, of course, are far more focussed on the future, but are (often irrationally) sceptical of modern technologies that might provide a more secure future.
But limits do make a difference then. They reduce congestion, and, by happy coincidence, reduce accidents (and knock-on congestion) if, at any point, congestion ceases to be the limiting factor in speed driven.
3) It's very striking that over that last decade or so (thinking of 2 countries I've had a lot to do with during that period) Sweden has virtually abolished cash, whereas Germans still view payment cards with suspicion and it can still be quite difficult to use them there.
2) You only need to look at the architecture of Berlin (painstaking, obsessive restoration of the past, cheek-by-jowl with uncompromising, often jarring, modernism) to appreciate a similar "schizophrenia" is abroad in Germany.
1) Pulling out one of the threads here .... I've long been fascinated by the conflicting attitudes towards modernity (v tradition) it difference countries. Jacques Tati's films explore the contradictions in the French embrace of modernity that are both very funny and very thought provoking.