In eastern Germany you get your abitur (the secondary school exam that entitels you to study at a university) after 12 years (where i grew up you have to do 13 years of school for the same exam), but apparently it also gets you less:

There are areas in east germany where more than a quater of the population is unemployed. And that is after the young and educated have left to find their luck elsewhere. This picture taken in greifswald (a port city in the north of meckelemburg vorpommern where unemployment rate is something like 19.8%) sums up the misery pretty well – if you ask me:

There are two stickers on the car. The white one advertises a personal housekeeping service, that is flexible, fast and cheap (eg an activity all the way at the bottom of the capitalist chain of exploitation) and the yellow sticker proudly states that the owner of this car has just (summer 05) gotten his or her abitur…