When I grew up, Berlin was this famous city surrounded by the GDR (\u201cDDR\u201d). There had been the stories about the Berlin airlift, when there was no supply for food and other critical things. And when you wanted to get there, you had to pass a \u201ctransit highway\u201d through the GDR, that you were not allowed to leave.
Later in my life I lived in Berlin for a year. The wall was down for a long time and Berlin was this city that had the glamour from the west, but the eastern influence made the entire city vibrant and kind of exciting.
At the same time, in Berlin everything is kind of different than in any other city I know\u2026taxi drivers can be super charming or truly unfriendly; the infrastructure is a disaster; cycling in the city is kind of suicide and politics never got the city under control or even developed the city.
What happened for sure was, that people made a lot of money out of this kind of unstructured melting place.
Yesterday, the city wanted to constitute the new government and the mayor in the parliament. A coalition was negotiated beforehand between the parties and the new government should be put in place in this democratic formal act. Typical Berlin, it took the parties three (!!!) voting rounds to institute the new government. Although there is an agreement, some parts of the political parties just wanted to express their unhappiness\u2026In the third round all was back to normal. Just another lousy start of a government in Berlin\u2026
It is true that you either love this place or you look at it and wonder\u2026and keep wondering. I am the later. Although this city has all it takes to become a wonderful place where people and society can thrive and develop in the right direction. At the end, it all comes down to the people and their behavior and their voting – but the majority of the people in Berlin claim, that there isn\u2019t the right alternative to vote for. Well, then the city should start an build one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I grew up, Berlin was this famous city surrounded by the GDR (\u201cDDR\u201d). There had been the stories about the Berlin airlift, when there was no supply for food and other critical things. And when you wanted to get there, you had to pass a \u201ctransit highway\u201d through the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-berlin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":472,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/03\/26\/berlin-climate-neutral-2030\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":0},"title":"Berlin – climate neutral 2030…","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"March 26, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Today the Berlin citizens are asked to vote a referendum to become climate neutral in 2030 instead of 2045.The actual Berlin Senat is declining this initiative in total. Time, money and people would be missing to get this done in 7 years. In addition it is not only the duty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":477,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/03\/27\/berlin-climate-neutral-2030-part-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":1},"title":"Berlin – climate neutral 2030…part II","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"March 27, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Well..yesterday Berlin voted and the referendum was not successful. Why? Because just 30% (!!!) went voting! There had been just about 900K voters out of which 51% were voting for the referendum.Guess the other 1.6M voters enjoyed a nice Sunday...most likely some debating what could be done about climate change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":596,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/05\/01\/prohibiting-books-in-florida\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":2},"title":"Prohibiting books in Florida","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"May 1, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"For a couple of weeks I read stories about the fact that Florida is prohibiting books in schools. At the beginning I was curious and thought \u201eok, what\u2019s the story?\u201c, but then I slowly figured out, that they are really prohibiting books from public schools in Florida.It is an initiative\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Advise"","block_context":{"text":"Advise","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/advise\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":567,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/04\/18\/girona-a-place-to-visit-even-without-biking\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":3},"title":"Girona – a place to visit (even without biking)","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"April 18, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Spending a couple of days at a new place is always refreshing and exciting. Girona is Southeast from Barcelona, about 80km away from the airport. You have 30 km to the Costa Brava to enjoy the beach. But in the city, there are many things to explore.It\u2019s a super famous\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/travel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":549,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/04\/15\/best-cycling-area-ever\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":4},"title":"BEST cycling area EVER!","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"April 15, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Wednesday we arrived in Girona. We liked the city during our last visit and we decided to use it as a hub for my last two weeks of training and to explore some creative photography work (done by my partner and not by me ,obviously).Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I did 3\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/travel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":571,"url":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/04\/22\/living-a-good-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":592,"position":5},"title":"Living a good life","author":"Frank Obermeier","date":"April 22, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"I am spending now about 10 days here in Girona. We are here for road cycling but also for a creative photo project of my partner. So we are meeting all kind of different people\u2026young, local, international, black, trained, untrained, and so on.First thing to experience: We have not met\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Advise"","block_context":{"text":"Advise","link":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/category\/advise\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peGXXf-9y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frankobermeier.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}