🚨 This guide is now over 6 years old. And I am now looking for a new flat in Berlin. You can read about that here. And a whole new guide will be written at the end of the process as well! 🚨 I moved to Berlin on 26th October...
Germany
I’m back. Today is my first full day back living in Berlin since leaving here in March 2002. Then I had spent 6 months living in the city as a 21-year old recent graduate from the UK, trying to scrape together a living. I left for Brussels, and resolved one...
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,...
David Miliband set out his concerns about the predicament of the European left in a speech at LSE this evening. The full text of his speech is available at Labourlist here, and Next Left has a little post from earlier here. As you would expect from the elder Miliband, the...
I heard a short speech in Berlin yesterday evening by Ulrike Guérot from the European Council on Foreign Relations at an event organised by Europa Union. The essential gist of her presentation was that, now, 20 years on since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and indeed that’s half as...
It seems it’s the season for high level German politicians of yesteryear to have a go at the EU. Former Bundeskanzler Schmidt is quoted by Euractiv.de (Google translation here) as saying: Es ist im Augenblick keine Führungsperson da. Das ist eine schlimmere Situation, als wir sie jemals in 60 Jahren...
No fanfare on this blog about today’s 20 year commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not because I’m not super happy to commemorate such an event, but because understanding the division of Berlin, the division of Germany, and the division of Germany has been a fascinating, personal journey...
One of the arguments that my German friends like to make against the Atheist Bus Campaign (and especially it’s German equivalent) is that ‘because there is no religious advertising on public transport in Germany atheists do not need to advertise’. This is the sort of reasoning why companies such as...
What’s up with Germany? What do they have to hide? I attended a press conference organised by farmsubsidy.org yesterday entitled “Who wants to be a farm subsidy millionaire?” where Jack Thurston, Brigitte Alfter and others presented the latest data on CAP payments using the latest statistics on agriculture spending due...
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...