"Aviv Hod" wrote in message
...
My responses below:

I spent literally DAYS waiting in large, suffocating
(because smoking is allowed in public, or at least allowed to
government
employees), uncomfortable waiting rooms waiting to get one piece of
paper or
another stamped by some "official".

many things changed dramatically in many parts of Europe. Well, I can
only speak for Austria. But in many areas, smoking was prohibited, esp.
in government buildings.

I think this is going in the "right" direction, and I hope that soon
Europeans will enjoy the clean indoor public air that Americans have been
enjoying for the last fifteen years.

I wouldn't bank on it. Last time I was in La Rampa, a touristy but still
pretty good restaurant tucked under the Spanish Steps in Rome, there was an
entire page of the menu given over to the notice (not verbatim, but
something like): "To our British and American customers - we regret that by
Italian law we are not permitted to ban smoking in our restaurant".

You can sense the pressure they are under, and the resignation that things
aren't going to change.

Good points. I think this is about the time that the dialog needs to
intensify and that Germany needs to start getting over the trauma of its
past. Likewise, the US should probably be a little more sensitive to the
European mindset. I've always thought that diplomacy is lacking in the
current US administration, and that is one of the things hampering
relations. However, both sides need to be more understanding of the
other.

Beware how you pitch your arguments. Some say that the current
administration doesn't understand how to be diplomatic, or is clumsy at it.
I think the fact is that they understand diplomacy very well, and have
positively repudiated it as not being in the US's interests. I think (if you
believe in diplomacy) you should address your complaints at American
Exceptionalism, not incompetence.

-- David Brooks