I was trying to enjoy my breakfast. But the radio was on. Listening to German radio seldom makes for relaxed digestion. Either they're rambling on about the latest dispute over economic reform -- here an euro, there an euro, as if the fate of prosperous Germany hung on each and every euro -- or they're rumbling on ominously about the latest danger out there -- real, potential, or imagined.

The lead story on this Wednesday morning was a fire the previous day at the nuclear power plant in Ringhals, Sweden. A plant spokesman said all safety systems had functioned normally, and had triggered an immediate shutdown. At no time had there been a risk of a radioactive leak. "Not serious," the spokesman concluded. The Swedes remained composed.

The German news commentator was filled with alarm, however, not only by the incident itself but even more by the Swedes' lack of it. Alarm, that is. Had something similar happened in Germany, there would have been a huge uproar. The newspapers and airwaves would have flash-flooded with dire warnings, agitated urgings, and agonized navel-gazing.

Why, just Monday a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste, packed into steel containers, finally arrived at a storage site southeast of Hamburg after a journey that was disrupted by hundreds of German protesters. In 2001, the German government decided to phase out all of the country's nuclear power plants within 20 years. That's too slow for some. And now Germans are worried about wind-power installations, whose low-frequency humming is thought to cause health problems.

The Germans, in short, are worrywarts. You've got to give them credit for admitting it, though. This past August Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, ran a cover story titled "Lebensgefühl ANGST." The topic is a German evergreen. In this case, fear of an attack by Islamic terrorists -- a botched plot to bomb German trains had just been uncovered -- was the proximate cause. But the magazine noted that whenever "a new monster" turned up on the globe, "the Germans are the first to buy pills, organize disaster conferences, and whine. The reasons for whining are virtually interchangable."

Reasons have included the bubonic plague, the arms race, AIDS, cuts in Christmas bonuses, acid rain, global warming, mad cow disease, stray meteorites, George W. Bush, bird flu, genetically modified food, insufficiently recycled trash, the hole in the atmosphere's ozone layer, overpopulation, the low birth rate, and excessive worrying.

Germans' hair-trigger anxiety often makes what would be a molehill elsewhere into a mountain of a scandal. Acting on an anonymous tip a few months back, German authorities found spoiled meat at a meat factory in Bavaria. Word got out, and the German media promptly frothed at the mouth. No one had gotten sick, much less died, and it was unclear at first whether any spoiled meat had even gone to market.

This obsession with safety has become a running joke between me and my Russian wife, who is still getting used to German ways. Lower anxiety in other European countries is one of the attractions of traveling for us. So there we were in Amsterdam recently. On a bridge we passed a group of Germans, who were commenting on the structure.

"Sie ist gefährlich!" ("It's dangerous!") said one, with Teutonically furrowed brow.

My wife and I looked at each other and laughed.