Another reminder that I will be pausing the substack for a couple of months from next week. Payments will automatically go on hold, so if you’re a paid subscriber, you will not spend anything during this period. If you have questions, please contact me via email, Twitter or the substack direct message function, and I’ll be happy to deal with any problems or queries.
Berlin is a wonderful city, even if its hipster vibe is a bit much for a square like me. The decadence is part of the charm, and the Germans, or at least the Prussians, are good at it, having enough sense of order that it can feel squalid without feeling unsafe.
When I most recently visited the German capital last year, there seemed to be quite a bleak mood. The politics of sustained boredom that characterised the successful post-war Federal Republic had run out of road, and a mindset which had worked for so long now seemed to be pushing the country to the brink of disaster. As someone who loves Germany and admires its culture, I find this very sad, although at least it provides a brief distraction from my own country’s woes.
That mood will not have been improved by two recent elections, the first of which brought Alternative für Deutschland to the brink of power in Saxony-Anhalt and the second seeing a spectacular result for Die Linke, the successor party of the East German Communists, in Berlin.
