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This isn't especially relevant or important, but fun trivia: in France the National Identity Card was put in place by the Vichy regime.

(Along with a surprising amount of stuff we still have like National Police, Mother's day, being on the UTC+1 timezone, the alarm siren we get every first wednesday of the month, Licence IV for opening bars, etc)

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Just because the Nazis did it, doesn't mean it's automatically bad.

"Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos."

Yes, this is what I meant by "fun trivia".

(Although a lot of these measures were pretty police-state-ish.)

> the alarm siren we get every first wednesday of the month,

Well that sounds as useless as it would be frustrating.

Nah, it's not too loud. I keep wondering what foreigners make of it the first time they're present on a first-wednesday-of-a-month, though.

And yeah, the usefulness is dubious.

So it's just something you've learned to live with and can kind of tune out?

I mean, it's just an alarm you hear for 30 seconds once per month. Compared to living next to a train line or an airport, that's nothing. (Though I've never lived closed to one of the sirens, maybe that's worse.)

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