It’s 12:22 on Saturday 24th September 2011 and I’m sat in a friend’s flat in Berlin. At about this time 10 years ago I first set foot in this city, the start of a remarkable journey through European politics, work and further studies that has been a brilliant rollercoaster ride in many ways.
But did I do it all wrong? And am I still doing it all wrong?
A Twitter exchange this afternoon with @olafcramme and @anthonypainter (shown in the screenshot to the right) in light of both Thursday’s election in Denmark and today’s Berlin state election got me thinking: is Nordic bloc politics the solution to the fracturing of the left, the problem so compellingly highlighted by David Miliband?
The contrast between Denmark and Berlin is that in the former the likely coalition configuration was well known before the elections – Social Democrats would definitely work with the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and most likely with the Radicals and, if necessary the far-left Unity List. The media labelled this the Red bloc. The opponents – the Blue bloc – composed the liberals (Venstre) and the Conservatives with parliamentary support of the Danish People’s Party. So fracturing of the left did not matter enormously in Denmark – it was the bloc’s vote that mattered. This development reflects the same tendency in Swedish general elections in 2006 and 2010.
Conversely in Germany – at the 2009 Bundestagswahl (my blog on that here), and at every Landtagswahl subsequently, the problem of how the SPD deals with the Left Party (Die Linke) rumbles on. Equally the SPD also still flirts with the idea of forming a grand coalition with the CDU, while support for The Greens continues to grow. Meanwhile in Berlin, the entry into the state parliament of the Pirate Party with 8.8% of the vote complicates matters still further.
Learning the lessons from Denmark and Sweden, would it not be best for the SPD to ally themselves strongly with The Greens, the Left Party and even The Pirates and present themselves as a Red bloc before 2013′s Bundestagswahl?
As part of my relentless pursuit to be green with my travels, I’m always taking the train. But for a trip I’m planning 3-6 December to Berlin, my patience is really running low.
To get to Berlin from London I have 2 options – Eurostar to Brussels, on to Köln with ICE or Thalys, and then ICE to Berlin. The trip takes 10 hours, a whole day. Alternatively I can take the Eurostar to Paris (yes, Paris, i.e. south from London rather than east), and from there a night train to Berlin. 16 hours. There are a couple of half-way similar options, involving late night changes in Mannheim. No.
The problem – in essence – is that there are no night trains from Brussels any more (see this and this). Have a look at the City Night Line map shown above, or their destinations list. CNL trains reach Rome, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague. But not Brussels. A 2100 departure from Brussels could split in Hannover, with onward carriages to Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin and even Prague, plus with Brussels 2 hours away from London, suddenly a whole swathe of northern Europe would be more accessible from London. If Amsterdam has connections like these, why not Brussels too?
DB, SNCB – please sort out your disputes and make it happen!
Yesterday and today NATO Foreign Ministers have been meeting in Berlin, no doubt an important meeting in light of the problems facing the mission in Libya. I also do not deny that these ministers are important people and are a possible target for extremists.
But is it really necessary to mess up the traffic and public transport in a city when they are meeting?
I’ve spent the past 10 days in Berlin, ostensibly for a half marathon and an IT/politics conference… but as I’m sure anyone who reads this blog can tell, my mind works in strange ways and makes odd connections. So here’s a blog entry about German cycle culture.
In London I’m a determined cyclist, determined being the most important word – for it feels tough. Cycling in London has improved a lot over the years, but it feels like it needs considerable commitment. Lots of cyclists don’t cycle in their regular business clothes but instead keep spare clothes where they work, and shower upon arrival. Cyclists are in amongst the traffic and – even with the advent of cycle superhighways – it’s not something that just fits easily into life.
That’s the opposite of Berlin cycle culture. Walk out of the office, hop on a bike, into the relatively sparse traffic (or on pavements, but that’s not something I want to copy!) Few wear helmets, few wear yellow jackets and – importantly – the bikes themselves are different. Well designed city bikes with mudguards and hub dynamos. Luggage racks at the back equipped with sensible and yet smart panniers, OK to walk into a business meeting. Kids in seats on the back or in trailers.
In short German cycle culture is about efficient integration of the bike into your everyday life. It’s not as laid back as a Gazelle, or not as focussed on style as Copenhagen Cycle Chic or Bobbin Cycles. It’s epitome - in design terms – is VSF Fahrradmanufaktur.
London has a couple of dedicated Dutch cycle shops, but no dedicated German cycle shop as far as I can tell. About time to work out a way to open one? A shop that also has a decent website and good promotion via social media would be a handy addition as well.
I seldom blog about it these days, but sport is important for me as a way to stay healthy and – to a large extent – to stay sane as a freelancer. Haruki Murakami talks about these sorts of things in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. While I do run and cycle to keep fit, inline skating is really my sport…
The Berlin Half Marathon is always the season opener – it took place yesterday. The map and graphs from my GPS watch are below. I’m tremendously happy with the result – 59th position in the fitness category in 41:14, knocking 5 minutes off my previous best, and for the first time averaging more than 30km/h in a race. The next British man was in 670th position, more than 30 minutes slower… Now how much training do I do for the rest of the summer?
Nothing in politics can possibly equal the kick of getting over that finishing line in a personal best time…
http://jonworth.eu/trailrunner-skate/trailrunner/4KDPNTQ.gpx
I’ve attended re:publica in Berlin for the last two years, presenting Atheist Buses there in 2009 and talking on a panel about the EU Citizens’ Initiative in 2010, and I’ll be there again in 2011. It’s a fantastic, creative, fun event, it’s in spring time in Berlin, it operates in German and in English, and you learn all kinds of interesting things by attending. So get hold of your tickets – the early bird tickets for bloggers have already gone, but some regular early bird tickets are still available at the time of writing.
At attempt to return to the past always gets the Brits drooling. Let’s get back to times when Britain ruled the waves!
This was essentially the sentiment behind Boris Johnson’s promise to get a new Routemaster bus onto London’s roads by 2011 2012, replacing the bendy buses he made such a fuss about. It’s time to restore a London icon was the refrain, and the original design proposals that I previously blogged about did at least look a bit like the bus of old.
But shock of shocks: the realisation that no manufacturer makes a front engined bus chassis, that an open back would require a conductor at all times, and that hydrogen power is not yet adequately advanced means that the plans have been changed quite a bit, culminating in the unveiling of the final design a few days ago – as shown in this Youtube film:
More from the Mayor’s website here.
The engine has now been moved to the back, the characteristic bonnet has been removed and the only two aspects of the traditional Routemaster – the curved rear and back entrance – remain. Only the back does not even have to be open all the time.
Interestingly the bus actually has 3 doors and 2 staircases – a welcome innovation… But where else in the world are there double-deckers like that? In Berlin of course – the MAN Lion’s City DD… This irony has of course not been noticed by ‘design critic’ Stephen Bayley who is quoted thus in a sycophantic and ill-researched BBC article about the new bus:
It proves the old rule that if you want things to stay the same, they have to change. And it was designed for London, unlike the hated and insulting bendy-bus, which was designed for Berlin
No Stephen. This bus has not been designed with London in mind. It’s a standard chassis, probably built in Sweden, with a slightly amended body on top of it and some odd bit of 1950s history bolted onto the back, making the bus work more like a Berlin double decker than a London one. It’s a horrible mess, designed with the heart rather than the head. And who’s to say it will even be on the roads by 2012?