At 1747 on Saturday October 26th my train will pull into Berlin Hbf and I will be arriving at the place I hope I will be able to call home. Since a short period living in the German capital between October 2001 and March 2002 I have longed to return,...
So David Cameron’s long-trailed EU speech is due to be held on 15th January. I cannot remember any speech by a UK Prime Minister being trailed so far in advance, prompting Cameron himself to say “This is a tantric approach to policy-making. It’ll be even better when it does eventually...
A few weeks ago at a meeting in London, one of the Labour Party’s best known bloggers literally snorted at me when I said that Labour had much to learn from the Pirate Party. But I’m undeterred by that, and having spent the last week in Germany, I’ve been looking...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
I’ve had a nightmare winter on the rails of Europe – stranded 3 days thanks to Eurostar (and missing a friend’s wedding as a result), delays with SNCF, and mess with a journey to Germany. Yet today, back home in Brussels, everything looks just a little better. Almost 2 months...
I’m absolutely stunned – I finished in 70th position (among the ‘fitness’ skaters – i.e. anyone except the absolute pros) in the Berlin Half Marathon inline skating 10 days ago, with a net time of 47:01. I knew the race had been OK – that time is 1 minute slower...
I lived in Berlin for 6 months in late 2001 / early 2002; since then I feel I have been playing catch up, trying to understand a city that I was too young to fully appreciate when I lived there. Perhaps I should rephrase: I reasons I enjoyed my time...