I don’t need an Advent calendar to tell me that Christmas is hurtling towards us like a train without brakes. No, I don’t need to open the doors of a calendar with plump little cherubs, all I have to do is read Bild Zeitung. Precisely three weeks before Christmas – same procedure as every year – it carries an article with the headline: Krebsgifte in Kinderspielzeug; wie schlimm ist es wirklich? All Bild wants to do, of course, of course, is protect our children (tip: “Sie sollen keine Speilwaren kaufen, die stark nach Chemie riechen”). Or is it perhaps a subtle attempt to persuade Oma to buy (boring but non-toxic) German-made wooden toys rather than Chinese plastic junk?
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Just down the street, on the way to the pub, an executive with two young boys has rented a house with a long front garden. There is no discreet back garden since the S-Bahn runs directly behind the house. So, in the summer life is lived in public view. We see the lady of the house arguing with the au-pair girl; we see one boy hit another and pretend that he didn’t; we see toys scattered over the grass, wooden trains and plastic bricks and lifeless Action Men like some miniature disaster. In the winter, the garden furniture is covered and the au-pair girl back in Australia, but the wooden train catastrophe is still there and so are the boys. I peeked in through the gate briefly the other day and one of the boys spotted me and came running down the path, shouting “Opa, Opa!” Until then it had been a perfectly agreeable day; there had been a cheque in the post and the receptionist from the doctor’s in the downstairs flat had smiled nicely. Put crudely, you do not, in your upper-mid 50s, want to be mistaken for anyone’s grandfather.
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I come from a military family and so I can well remember my (English) father’s withering contempt fort he Bundeswehr, its concessions to the individual, its subversive concept of „Bürger in Uniform“. He was, by the standards of the time, an enlightened man but he was sure of one thing: armies had to be strong, otherwise they had no function.
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Germany is governed by ritual, as strange and as rigid as those of the Japanese. Instead of the oriental tea-ceremony though, the Germans have the Second Breakfast, the elegantly packed, lovingly unpacked Leberwurstbrot, which must be consumed between 09.30 and 10.
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Modern romance began with the film Casablanca. The smouldering saga of Bogart and Bergmann had everything one needed to structure a 20th century emotional narrative: adultery, betrayal, forgiveness, jealousy, bribery and a spectacular parting. I remember one horrific argument with a girlfriend in the 1970s which ended with her shouting: “I’m leaving the country – don’t try and follow me!”, a line which surely carned a place in Casablanca II. But most of all I remember – as everybody does – the tragic departure in the airport.
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Guido Westerwelle disappeared from view for a few hours last week and the word among my compassionate colleagues was that he was just exhausted; emotionally, physically. In need of sleep. Well, you can certainly understand that. A few weeks ago he could buy mangoes at my local greengrocers; now he has to discuss his daily movements with his security team. His world has shrunk at the very moment when his political career expands.
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Being a foreign correspondent is a bit like being an airline pilot. There are long periods of boredom, interrupted briefly by a stewardess bringing coffee, followed by short surges of adrenaline dealing with a crisis or political turbulence. So you have to imagine election night as the equivalent of a crash-landing: from 18 Uhr until about 20.30 you are absorbing masses of new information, interpreting it, making it sensible for British readers. With the clock ticking in the background, you have to take a rough guess as to the future of the government and the future of the country.
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Did you see the woman athlete, a pole-vaulter I think she was, who lay down in the middle of the Olympia Stadium, covered her face with a towel, put her feet up – and went to sleep? How I admired her ability to switch off. Let me say, right at the beginning, that the theme of this Glosse is self-discipline. I have of course (of course!) never been to journalism school but if I had the instructor – I can imagine him now, a corduroy jacket with leather patches – would surely have said: State your theme at the beginning! And then: Stay focused!
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One of my New Year resolutions – the one that did not involve sex – was that I would stop complaining about Berliners and here we are, in the First week of September, and I am still staying true to my honourable principles. But racism, that’s something else: you have to say something. Last week a Swabian friend of mine, Brokka, had a leaflet pushed into his hand saying “Blockwartschwaben go home!”
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It was a long flight from Japan. But who cares? Not Akiko. Not when she has landed in the coolest city in Europe. Even honourable father sent her to Germany with a paternal blessing. What is the Japanese for work? Arubaito. The Japanese for potency? Potentsu. The Japanese feel a kinship with the Germans; the Prussian virtues are also Asian. As for Berlin, it is a dream destination. The Japanese for Führer? Fyura.
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