Happy reunification!

Yes, it is 17 years since the events sparked by David Hasselhof singing Looking For Freedom on top of the Berlin Wall led to the formal act of reunification between East and West, a date that was remembered today by a Day of German Unity across the land. The important thing to note is that this meant I did not have to go into work today, so I decided it would be in the spirit of things to head into the unknown east and take a glimpse behind the iron curtain. Not that the iron curtain still exists, of course. I am trying to insert some drama and history into an otherwise unglamorous blog post about a day trip. Please grant me some artistic licence.

Anyway. The closest place in former East Germany to visit from Bonn appeared to be Eisenach, a small-ish town just inside the border of Thuringen. So it came to pass. As I sped into the land of the former DDR, I felt the hand of history on my shoulder (actually, it was the train conductor). When I disembarked, I looked in vain for a sign that Things Were Different here. Some of the beautiful timber-framed buildings were a bit shabby, I suppose, but the only thing I established with real certainty is that the local culinary specialities are a sausage in a roll or pork with potatoes and cabbage. This was not Cortes tasting chocolate for the first time.

I discovered Eisenach is a veritable city of gold (ha ha!) in tourist terms. It has a super-cool castle, is the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (calm yourself Mike Saunders, if you are reading this), once sheltered Martin Luther and, most impressively, appears to have been the template for the Playmobil Market Town set:

The fearless journalist in me decided to visit some local bars and gathering places to get under the skin of Eisenach since the Wende. But the lazy tourist in me swiftly distracted the journalist with the sight of old men wearing Bundhosen and felt hunting hats with edelweiss brooches, and decided instead to follow about a million other lazy tourists on the trail through the woods to the Numero Uno daytripper magnet: Wartburg Castle.

On the walk up, the woods reminded me of a painting by Gustav Klimt:

Beech Forest II… (© Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna)

… and a photo I took this afternoon (sorry about the quality; it’s a bit underexposed).

(By the way, the German name for the Klimt painting is Buchenwald. The concentration camp of the same name was also in Thuringen, a bit farther west. Terrible traces of history are everywhere here.)

At t’castle, I saw lots of really, really old stuff, including a twelfth century “undergarment” which, I read, Saint Elisabeth of Hungary used to wear “during self-flagellation sessions”. Er, is that a euphemism? Sorry, that’s probably a bit disrespectful. I also saw the room where Martin Luther, having fled to the castle of his home town after being excommunicated by the Pope, passed the time by translating the Bible from Greek into German. Well, good for him. I am not overly fond of Luther. He was a monstrous anti-semite, for one thing. Also, he is a major reason why I got a D in my history A Level (the facts about him were just so dashed difficult to remember). At any rate, you musn’t feel too sorry for him being exiled in a drafty old castle. Obviously he would have got plenty of good Thuringen sausage to eat, plus he got to look at views like this, which is more than I had while I was revising about the Diet of bloody Worms:

Ready when you are?

Well, the fuss surrounding the two climate change meetings (the UN meeting in New York and the US gathering in DC) has died down. In the end, although both events have done a good job of keeping climate change in the public eye* and winning political commitment to the Bali process, I am not sure if delegates (particularly those invited to Washington) and the watching media were so much invigorated as frustrated.

Much of the media reaction (admittedly I have seen only a tiny sample) seems to have been along the lines of, “Climate change is a big problem: we get it. Now when will you stop talking and start implementing policy?” Some observers suggest decision-makers still underestimate or refuse to countenance the radical changes that are needed. It makes me think of a few articles I’ve read that argue the challenge of climate change is so great that governments need to adopt a wartime mentality, with (carbon) rationing and all the rest of it.

Given this apparent desire among many parties for substance, it is perhaps not surprising that the speech to UN delegates by Arnold “action, action, action” Schwarzenegger, who is seen to have spearheaded unusually proactive and aggressive climate change mitigation policies in California**, was particularly well received.

You may have noticed that so far, this post contains no mention of rabbits whatsoever. Don’t worry – please keep reading.

I can’t comment on the subject of government action and possible lack of it because I know hardly anything about it I need to maintain my neutrality as an international civil servant. So it is with no judgement or incitement that I present a link to this article from the NGO Share The World’s Resources, which may or may not be an interesting addition to the debate.

In other news, I have started to cycle along the Rhine to work, because I was missing the countryside. It means I don’t get to race cars any more, but I do get to race barges, which I have a better chance of beating (when they are going up-river, anyway). Plus I get to see several orders of magnitude more ducks and rabbits. The other day, for example, I saw a rabbit head-butt a tree. I hope it’s all right.

And the views along the way are so-so, I suppose:

*More meetings like this, and the American public might even start to believe in anthropogenic climate change. A poll of 1,000 Americans has just found that, currently, “84 per cent of respondents think the idea that the world’s temperature may have been going up slowly over the past 100 years is probably true”. Progress!

** A slightly out of date summary of California’s recent climate change policy may be found here; if you don’t mind press releases, a summary from the Governor’s Office can be found here. A sceptical assessment by Stavins, Jaffe and Schatzki (I don’t know what they’re like as academics but they have AWESOME names) of the claim that California’s ambitious Global Warming Solutions Act can be implemented at no extra cost may be found, er, here!