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
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Tag: Berlin
Cameron tantric speech won’t keep his backbenchers and Angela Merkel happy. Who will he try to please?
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
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Rick Falkvinge and the Pirates
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
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A visit to Berlin tinged with sadness – am I just doing everything wrong? Or everything by halves?
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
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Nordic bloc politics – the solution for a fractured left?
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
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What’s an acceptable level of disruption when a summit is taking place?
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
Continue reading A bigger kick than politics can ever give… Berlin inline skating
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
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re:publica 11 – get your tickets quickly!
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
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If a camel is a horse designed by committee then what’s this contemporary Routemaster?
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
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Rail payback
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
Continue reading 70th position in the Berlin Half Marathon (inline skating)
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
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Berlin Hohenschönhausen Prison
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.
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