I can rig one up here in Germany

The Mesh can't be stopped.

Reticulum seems to be the best choice

Reticulum is not user friendly enough (yet) and not many LoRa devices are supported. Once user interfaces improve and support for more LoRa hardware happens I will agree. I already have reticulum (over TCP) but it's not nearly to the point where I could get my mom set up with it. Whereas she can already use MeshCore