So my Comparative Welfare States class is naturally somewhat Europe focused. This is to be expected because, frankly, Europe has both the widest variety of, and also the most comprehensive welfare states. 

Of course, a somewhat different way of looking at things is that the US, for example, which has a fairly minimal welfare state, just has a different philosophy: that a flexible labour market acts as its own source of welfare: easy employment is the security net for those who falter. 

Anyway, in Europe the vast majority of comprehensive social reform came around the 1960s, pushed along by the various Social Democratic parties. And this is more or less the case from Sweden to France to the UK and to Italy. 

Social Democrat parties are traditionally moderate-left leaning, their original constituencies and strong supporters being industrial working men, who were breadwinners for families which relied on them. And the system was more or less built to support them. 

Today though, it’s a complicated world. The family structure has changed, with more women going to work, and the jobs market has changed too. In Europe and the US fewer and fewer jobs are industrial, more and more are service oriented. 

So the traditional structure of setting up a social support system for an industrial worker who might expect to work in the same company for his entire working life… has changed. For one, service jobs are harder to regulate, since a lot of them are either very education requiring, like waiters. People like waiters also don’t work regular hours, and many won’t have a full time contract, and instead will be part time, or on-call. 

And in most of Europe, just like in the US, part time work doesn’t really grant you any benefits. People like this, who are inconsistently employed, are called the Working Poor. 

This is part of why a lot of the older former industrial workers have shifted their support towards more conservative parties. Although they traditionally supported Social Democrats, who pushed to create their welfare system, the changing nature of these countries’ economies has made them much more conservative. 

After all, that’s what conservative means. They want to preserve the old system. Though that’s not entirely true: they want the world to go back to how it was in the 1960s, when they had it made. And this is part of why they’re also typically against immigration, because all change is threatening to their part of the social order. 

In a way, you could correlate this kind of thing to America. It’s typically pointed out that there are a lot of poor white people who nevertheless vote against their economic interests by voting Republican, since Democrats are usually seen as supporting poor people and Republicans are typically seen as supporting rich people and their businesses. 

In Europe, it’s a resistance against change, against the growing insecurities of the changing world. In America, is it the same?

This is, to me, a non-rhetorical question. I see a lot of people like to answer that it’s a problem of lack of education and easy brainwashing or that “Republicans are just dumb”, but Europeans aren’t too badly educated and many of them still support conservative parties which aren’t necessarily working in their economic interest but are perceived to be. 

Switzerland through newspapers

I have to admit that Switzerland, in ways, highly amuses me. This is one of them. 

A “Lehrling” is an apprentice of sorts. Switzerland’s education system makes a significant difference between higher education and trade or vocational schools. When Swiss youths are 16, they have a choice to learn a specific trade or to pursue higher studies. Both are fine and normal choices. 

A trade will put you into specific jobs or job types. Chefs, nurses, carpenters, that sort of thing. And while part of their education is indeed study, they spend years basically working in their industries while attending 1-2 classes a week. 

And apparently they’re protesting because they don’t have enough holiday. They want one more week, making it 6 weeks of holiday a year. 

My American followers, if you haven’t worked full time yet, let me remind you that you have 2 weeks, of which paid sick days are taken from. You have to work with loyalty to the same company for years before earning 3 weeks. 

In Europe, a months is normal. When I was an intern I earned 2 weeks paid holiday every 6 months, so 4 weeks a year. Apparently these apprentices get 5 weeks, and want 6. 

Oh Europe. 

So I saw this and took a picture to look it up. 

Europe is full of fun little memorials to people you’d have little other reason to remember. 

One of the major differences most people notice between America and Europe is just that Europeans generally walk so much more. 

In much of America, outside of the denser cities, people drive. It’s a strange thing to see someone walking in places like Texas or Florida. There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s true, where police trailed a man in Beverly Hills because of suspicious behaviour: walking, because everyone drove. 

That last story sounds like the kind of thing that people who’ve never been to America tell other people who’ve never been, but nevertheless in many places it’s quite rare to walk. This is because American cities tend to sprawl. They’re not very dense. A city like Houston is not much of a city, but a CBD with suburbs and smaller cities spread out all around it which make up Houston as a whole. 

One thing I see a lot in America is “Drive Thru” too. You can do it for Fast Food, but you can also do your banking and some other services, all without having to leave your car. It’s convenient, but it certainly encourages an impression of general laziness. 

Europeans though, are able to walk through much of their cities. It’s affordable and economically savvy to do so, even. Public transportation works and isn’t prohibitively expensive, and also involves a lot of walking up and down stairs to and between metro stations. Europeans also bike a lot more within their cities, because the distances aren’t so large between destinations. You never have to get on a highway to get from one part of a city to another. 

Europe also has quite a few older buildings, some of which don’t have elevators or only have those old ones which can barely fit a few normal sized people. This, too, encourages stair usage. 

Europe can be quite hilly, too. Cities tend to incorporate hills into their urban sprawl, such as often in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and southern Germany. This means walking up and downhill often. This can be the case in America too, but many major American cities are situated on flatlands. 

I can’t necessarily speak for other countries, but the Swiss are pretty outdoorsy. People go hiking often, not least because it’s so conveniently close by. The visual evidence of long term health is made manifest by how obscenely fit the older people are here. 

Europe also tends a bit more towards shopping districts rather than shopping malls. You will tend to walk along normal streets to go shopping, rather than drive to a mall. 

Regarding eating habits, well, France might have invented “haute cuisine” but much of its real cultural delights are very heavy. The same can be said for what constitutes real Spanish, German, English, Italian and Eastern European foods. Europeans also drink a lot of alcohol, often considering it a necessary accompaniment to meals. 

To watch people eat here in Europe makes you wonder, for a little while, how they manage to stay healthy. It can’t be good for anyone to drink as much beer as Germans get used to drinking, with sausages, potatoes and bread. And yet, they do. 

And I think at least part of it really is to do with the fact that every day while just going about their business, they get the kind of decent exercise that Americans have to set aside time for aside from their busy lives. 

Correction: I am informed that Germans are competing for the fattest in Europe with the English. England doesn’t surprise me terribly, but Germany did. 

I’ve been a student of European history, and also tried to make some headway in Asian history and other “world history.” 

Much of more recent world history is about Europe and Europe’s impact on the rest of the world, and truly no patch of land was uninfluenced by Europe. 

While European history, by itself, is fascinating, one can’t ignore the largely destructive effect that Europeans had on other parts of the world. 

It’s ironic indeed. Take the 1800s, where Europe was struggling with the new socio-political ideas like democracy and communism. Both were ideas intended towards the betterment of ordinary people, against the privilege of aristocracy and the old orders. It was also a period of literature, economic development, scientific discovery and technological innovation. It makes it a fascinating period to learn about what made Europe what it is. 

At the same time that Europeans were revolting in 1848 for democracy, self-determination and social upheaval… several European countries held large colonial holdings in the rest of the world. They did this largely at the expense of local cultures, peoples and rulers. All the rights that Europeans were struggling for were ignored in the colonies. 

The Victorian period is what people most identify with Britain. Even though England today is nothing like England then, the outside concept of England is inevitably tied to the reign of Victoria. This is because it was a time when the British did so much to contribute towards the world, again in science, literature, and trade.

At the same time, it had an evangelistic approach to its colonies, converting Africa to Christianity by the machine gun, imposing Christian moralistic virtues upon India, and forcing Opium to be traded in China by force. 

The thing is that the study of history cannot be made in a vacuum or in a bubble. It is too simplistic to focus entirely on European excesses and oppression of its colonies without also exploring European progressive developments. Similarly, one must always bear in mind how much of European advancement was based on its exploitation of its colonial resources and peoples. 

I have long found the Italian Risorgimiento fascinating. The uniting of Italy was accomplished by republicans, socialists, monarchists and progressive statesmen and revolutionaries in 1866. How did that same country go on to attempt imperialistic conquest in 1895 in its failed invasion of Abyssinia? How did they reconcile their formative principles with the desire to grab their own piece of the imperial pie? The same question can be asked of most of the influential countries in Europe. 

Giuseppe Mazzini

I have an addiction to statues or busts. I generally figure that if the effort was made to memorialize them, I’d like to learn about them. 

Mazzini is a big one though. He was one of Italy’s heroes of its unification, as a fervent journalist, Republican and politician. He, like Garibaldi, believed strongly in Republican values. 

Wood Carving at ägerisee, Switzerland

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uncdan:

gedenkenbrauchtwissen:

uncdan hat auf deinen Eintrag geantwortet: uncdan hat auf deinen Eintrag geantwortet: uncdan…

It’s true though. Racism in Europe manifests quite differently from in America, and the approach to racism is also different.

Interesting!  Would you mind going into more detail about this?  People ask me a lot about racism in Europe today, I only know how it is in Russia because I did my thesis on that.  I would like to know more about this.

Well, I haven’t done a thesis on this, so I’m going from mostly observation, reports and speculation, so, you know, pinch of salt. 

But one of the differences is that there are real, legal neo-nazis in Europe. And they have political parties. They just don’t call themselves nazis. 

Red Light Politics here on Tumblr focuses mostly on racism in Europe, especially where she’s based in the Netherlands. And it’s quite shocking. It is legal to go blackface in the Netherlands, complete with a comical “ethnic/colonial” costume. The argument is that racists are allowed free speech too, which, okay, is technically true, but in practice hands a carte blanche to them. She is a white immigrant to the Netherlands and still has trouble being accepted by the locals, so you can imagine their feelings on others. Officially it’s a very free and progressive country, but the trends are worrying. 

Basically, it just seems like racism is a lot more direct here in Europe than it is in America. One way or another, activists against racism in America have at the very least made everyone politically correct, or at least try to hide it better. You know how in America it’s fringe nuts or offhand comments and we hint that certain people think certain races should be booted back to where they came from? In Europe there are political parties specifically geared to that stance. 

In a way this isn’t completely a bad thing. It’s a little more honest, even though it’s terrible. And it puts the issue directly on the table: “I am against immigration and think that multiculturalism has failed.” 

Hell, there’s a frighteningly popular book in Germany about how Turkish people are eventually going to take over Germany because they fuck more and birth more Turkish kids than Germans do. This kind of book would never fly very far in America, even though there are people who think along similar lines there about whatever race it is they don’t like. 

Berlusconi came into power and held onto it for as long as he did for being popular on the anti-crime stance. For most Italians who were his supporters, that directly meant to them “All the African immigrants are causing so much crime and he’s against them.” Crime in Italy was so bad that there were volunteer citizen militias. They didn’t do much other than walk around with mobiles, but some took it more seriously than others. Some were specifically right-wing, targeting African immigratns, and even had fascist salutes. 

Even here in peaceful Switzerland we get our share of anti-immigration politics. I posted a long time ago about this. The Schweizer Volks Partei is the local right-wing anti-immigrant party. And it has risen to popularity in the last several years on that note. If you follow the link, check out the very obvious “white sheep kicking out black sheep” poster. 

There were protests against it of course, but the fact that it happened from an official, and disturbingly popular, political party, is something that would never happen in America. 

I have a Polish friend who was pretty well travelled. She has had boyfriends from Turkey, India, Lebanon, and so on. But she carries a frighteningly common opinion that, although she likes Muslims just fine, she thinks they’re dangerous and will take over Europe and are bad about women’s rights. The irony is quite lost on her. 

But like I said, there’s institutional racism in America. Racism activists there spend most of their time trying to prove that it exists and happens. In Europe, there’s little attempt to hide it. It’s a more honest debate, but it’s also a more disturbing one.

I mean this in the sense that there are real debates with people’s honest racial opinions. I don’t like it, BUT by having these anti-immigration parties, they actually talk about saying that the crime rate has increased with immigration. They don’t hide it, the way American politicians do when they try to hide their racism for votes. 

Wow.  I didn’t know anti-immigration in politics was so widespread.  I’ve only heard of this sort of belief in a few individuals (like Marine Le Pen).  Thank you for expanding on this, it’s fascinating and very important to be aware of.

You didn’t? Oh I’m surprised! Well anyway, right-wing anti-EU or anti-immigration parties are on the rise around Europe. The ones to watch for are:

The Swedish Democrats. 
The Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands. Check out the views of its leader Geert Wiilders on Islam. Scary stuff. 
Marine le Pen and the Front National in France, but you knew that.
The British National Party. 
The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) are the ones at least partially behind that controversial ban on minarets.  

All of them won seats in their respective parliaments in the last several years. It’s a very worrying trend. 

gedenkenbrauchtwissen:

uncdan hat auf deinen Eintrag geantwortet: uncdan hat auf deinen Eintrag geantwortet: uncdan…

It’s true though. Racism in Europe manifests quite differently from in America, and the approach to racism is also different.

Interesting!  Would you mind going into more detail about this?  People ask me a lot about racism in Europe today, I only know how it is in Russia because I did my thesis on that.  I would like to know more about this.

Well, I haven’t done a thesis on this, so I’m going from mostly observation, reports and speculation, so, you know, pinch of salt. 

But one of the differences is that there are real, legal neo-nazis in Europe. And they have political parties. They just don’t call themselves nazis. 

Red Light Politics here on Tumblr focuses mostly on racism in Europe, especially where she’s based in the Netherlands. And it’s quite shocking. It is legal to go blackface in the Netherlands, complete with a comical “ethnic/colonial” costume. The argument is that racists are allowed free speech too, which, okay, is technically true, but in practice hands a carte blanche to them. She is a white immigrant to the Netherlands and still has trouble being accepted by the locals, so you can imagine their feelings on others. Officially it’s a very free and progressive country, but the trends are worrying. 

Basically, it just seems like racism is a lot more direct here in Europe than it is in America. One way or another, activists against racism in America have at the very least made everyone politically correct, or at least try to hide it better. You know how in America it’s fringe nuts or offhand comments and we hint that certain people think certain races should be booted back to where they came from? In Europe there are political parties specifically geared to that stance. 

In a way this isn’t completely a bad thing. It’s a little more honest, even though it’s terrible. And it puts the issue directly on the table: “I am against immigration and think that multiculturalism has failed.” 

Hell, there’s a frighteningly popular book in Germany about how Turkish people are eventually going to take over Germany because they fuck more and birth more Turkish kids than Germans do. This kind of book would never fly very far in America, even though there are people who think along similar lines there about whatever race it is they don’t like. 

Berlusconi came into power and held onto it for as long as he did for being popular on the anti-crime stance. For most Italians who were his supporters, that directly meant to them “All the African immigrants are causing so much crime and he’s against them.” Crime in Italy was so bad that there were volunteer citizen militias. They didn’t do much other than walk around with mobiles, but some took it more seriously than others. Some were specifically right-wing, targeting African immigratns, and even had fascist salutes. 

Even here in peaceful Switzerland we get our share of anti-immigration politics. I posted a long time ago about this. The Schweizer Volks Partei is the local right-wing anti-immigrant party. And it has risen to popularity in the last several years on that note. If you follow the link, check out the very obvious “white sheep kicking out black sheep” poster. 

There were protests against it of course, but the fact that it happened from an official, and disturbingly popular, political party, is something that would never happen in America. 

I have a Polish friend who was pretty well travelled. She has had boyfriends from Turkey, India, Lebanon, and so on. But she carries a frighteningly common opinion that, although she likes Muslims just fine, she thinks they’re dangerous and will take over Europe and are bad about women’s rights. The irony is quite lost on her. 

But like I said, there’s institutional racism in America. Racism activists there spend most of their time trying to prove that it exists and happens. In Europe, there’s little attempt to hide it. It’s a more honest debate, but it’s also a more disturbing one.

I mean this in the sense that there are real debates with people’s honest racial opinions. I don’t like it, BUT by having these anti-immigration parties, they actually talk about saying that the crime rate has increased with immigration. They don’t hide it, the way American politicians do when they try to hide their racism for votes. 

With Europe’s economic woes dominating the headlines once more, it’s hard not to think of Yogi Berra’s dictum “It’s déjà vu all over again.” As usual, the turmoil centers on Greece, which is in its fifth year of recession and struggling beneath a colossal debt load. This year, in exchange for drastic austerity measures, Greece’s government agreed to an aid package (its second) with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, totalling $174 billion. But three weeks ago furious Greek voters tossed the ruling parties out of office; attempts to form a coalition government failed, and new elections are scheduled for next month. Now Greek politicians are talking tough about renegotiating, but the E.U., led by Germany, which is the largest contributor to the bailout, says that there will be no more money for Greece if it doesn’t live up to its promises. So policymakers are seriously discussing a so-called Grexit—in which Greece would default on its debts and abandon the euro.

This isn’t an outcome that anyone wants. Even though a devalued currency would make Greece’s exports cheaper and attract tourists, it would do so at a terrible price, destroying huge amounts of wealth and seriously harming the country’s G.D.P. It would be costly for the rest of Europe, too. Greece owes almost half a trillion euros, and containing the damage would likely require the recapitalization of banks, continent-wide deposit insurance (to prevent bank runs), and more aid to Portugal, Spain, and Italy, which seem to be the next countries in line to default. That’s a very high price to pay for getting rid of Greece, and much more expensive than letting it stay.

Rationally, then, this standoff should end with a compromise—relaxing some austerity measures, and giving Greece a little more aid and time to reform. And we may still end up there. But the catch is that Europe isn’t arguing just about what the most sensible economic policy is. It’s arguing about what is fair. German voters and politicians think it’s unfair to ask Germany to continue to foot the bill for countries that lived beyond their means and piled up huge debts they can’t repay. They think it’s unfair to expect Germany to make an open-ended commitment to support these countries in the absence of meaningful reform. But Greek voters are equally certain that it’s unfair for them to suffer years of slim government budgets and high unemployment in order to repay foreign banks and richer northern neighbors, which have reaped outsized benefits from closer European integration. The grievances aren’t unreasonable, on either side, but the focus on fairness, by making it harder to reach any kind of agreement at all, could prove disastrous.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2012/06/04/120604ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz1x8yUwW3N

European borders from 1000 to 2003 AD. 

Lovely stuff, apparently done to a song from the Inception soundtrack. 

Naturally I own neither, and the video may be taken down since it’s intellectual property owned by Centennia Software. 

You can really see the short stick that Poland got, again and again. 

First, it’s May Day today. There are supposed to be labour strikes and protests in Zurich today. Personally I’d love to go, just to have a look, but my parents are naturally concerned about police crackdown and the like. One more reason to move downtown, if or when I can. 

Second… one thing that everyone needs time to get used to in Europe is fizzy water. Just about everywhere you go in Europe, if you ask for water the first kind they’ll give you is carbonated. If you ask for mineral water, that is what they will give you. 

And at first, to most people, it will taste odd. But quite a lot of people I’ve known who move here to Europe, after some time, get to prefer it over still water. I do. You also can worry less about the build up of plastic bottles, because recycling in at least Western Europe is pretty good, if not excellent. 

So whenever I see Americans campaigning for people to buy fewer plastic bottles, and it’s a good cause, I always think of how lucky I am to be residing in a country where the government steps in to help fill in the gap between environmental protection and consumer demand. Because buying fewer plastic bottles just isn’t enough. There has to be a proper, concerted effort to clean things up, and no one does it better than government. 

Switzerland is not the most anal-retentive of recycling countries. As it is, they recycle paper, cardboard, cans, plastic bottles and the different colours of glass bottles. How often depending on where you live, they collect paper for recycling, and will drop it back on your doorstep if you haven’t tied it up properly. 

Germany has far more recycling bins in its sorting stations. Switzerland typically has 4, and sometimes extra for cans or plastic. Germany has, to my knowledge, 8 assorted bins. 

In Spain, they recycle those little yogurt cups you have leftover after eating one. A Catalan friend of mine living here had been saving them up, wanting to know where to turn them in, and was rather disgusted to realize she couldn’t. 

One of the amazing things I see here in Switzerland though, is how clean and straightforward the waste disposal workers are. At least once a week I see them drive along the road, picking up random discarded garbage, not just on the road, but even along the lakeside, stepping through the shallows. 

And it occurs to me that amid all these concerns over employment in the US, an actually strong recycling industry would do wonders. Because it doesn’t just provide jobs and is a productive outlet for Keynesian spending, but it also instills a communal obligation to maintain a clean environment. If you provide the option to recycle, and treat it seriously, people will, in turn, also take it seriously. 

As it is recycling in most of the US is a joke, and it’s rather heartbreaking every time I go back there. The last time I moved there, my roommate and I must have saved hundreds of plastic bags from our grocery shopping. We didn’t want to just throw them away, but had no idea what to do with them. We didn’t have enough garbage to use them all up for throwing that out, but felt guilty otherwise. But we had no other options. 

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, took what our President calls a shellacking on Sunday night. Sarkozy is running for reëlection, and in the first round of voting, he came in second place to the Socialist Party candidate, François Hollande, who has been heavily favored to beat him, and is even more heavily favored to do so again when the two men go head-to-head in a runoff vote, two weeks from now. Never before in the history of the Fifth Republic (as French broadcasters repeatedly intoned while the votes were being counted) has an incumbent of the Elysée Palace failed to win the first round. But it’s not news that the French are sick of Sarkozy; and they don’t much like Hollande, either, except in so far as he is the anti-Sarkozy. To many French voters, the choice this year is so depressing that it feels like whoever wins, France loses. On Sunday, however, the turnout at the polls was much higher than expected, and the really big loser was Europe.

When I first moved to Switzerland, the first thing I noticed was “holy crap, the girls are all so pretty here!” I’m a straight guy, so, you know.

Prior to arriving I had been in Michigan, on a university campus, and while I was there I was generally thoroughly unimpressed with most of the girls. Some were pretty, but somehow something was just lacking.

I particularly noticed this as soon as summer hit, all these Michiganders, with warm weather relatively sparse, dressed to enjoy it… In tacky dresses. In my experience of looking at women’s fashion, it all looked freaky cheap. It was what I expected prostitutes in Europe to wear. People were trying to look nice and colorful, but it just yelled cheap to me.

I got the same impression when I came back to the US and lived in Florida. For spring break students from all over America flew in, and most of the girls wore these tight fluorescent short dresses. Their bodies and manner screamed that they were used to hoodies and sweatpants, but they were trying to pull off bright summer wear which, again to me, made them look like London whores.

By contrast, the people (men and women both) I was meeting in Europe just… Carried themselves well, dressed better, and looked after themselves better. I don’t even mean that they wore expensive clothes, which they didn’t, but they just chose better.

It’s amazing what impression a button jacket and a nice scarf can get you in America, which is really normal over in Europe. I won’t say that Europe doesn’t wear hoodies or have shabby people, but in general there’s an odd difference. It stands out to me whenever I go between the two places.

I met attractive women while in Florida, but they often also came across as cheap. I much more rarely get that impression here.

One thing it takes a little getting used to in Europe are opening hours.

In Switzerland I have the most experience, but it’s similar in many other European countries though, notably, not the UK.

Basically, almost nothing is open on Sundays. In Switzerland only the train stations and other essential services are open then, and not full hours either. Otherwise it’s like society telling you to seriously take one day easy.

The same goes for lunch hours. Post offices, supermarkets and government offices tend to take up to two hour lunch breaks. They literally close shop for those hours so everyone can eat together. Spain takes it a step further, with the afternoon siesta.

Similarly, not much stays open late at night. Nightclubs and bars, yes, and sometimes there’s a kebab shop open late, and the odd 24 hour marché, but that’s it.

This is in stark contrast to a lot of the US where you can still find things open all the time, because you never know when someone needs to buy something. Convenience stores, walmarts, 24 hour diners, and all that are fairly common. They always manage to find people willing to work odd hours.

In Asia it’s similar; they rarely turn down a chance to sell you something. But if there’s any trend I’ve seen it’s that generally street stalls open late. In Phuket and Jakarta some of the street food stalls don’t open until 6pm, but then they’re up until 3-4am, half the time watching local soap operas on tv. It was surprisingly difficult to find things in the mornings.

In Saigon there’s a market called Cho Ben Thanh, which by day is a huge everything-market, and in the evening they close shop and open fresh seafood restaurant stalls. These open until the curfew hours when electricity gets cut around midnight, but if they still have customers they switch on their generators and keep going.

One of my favourite Mamak (mix of Indian and Malay cuisine) food places in Penang was open 24 hours, but during the quiet hours had a big projector screen for Bollywood dramas and football games.

In Jakarta, I was once around menteng with a few friends at 3am. He wanted to introduce us to “nasi gila” (literally ‘crazy rice’) from a wheelbarrow stall guy he knew. The food itself was nothing special, but the whole area was crowded with these wheelbarrow food guys, all crowding together to hang out.

In Switzerland, as in the US, clubs are only allowed open to certain hours. Sometimes a permit can be bought to extend that time to later, which is worth the money if it’s a popular spot. But to my knowledge, there is rarely an enforced closing hour on clubs in the developing countries of Asia.