#309: Online Anmeldung coming soon?
Humbolt University turns 215 today
Hey 20 Percent!
We’ve talked about it before — the Sommmerloch, the summer void — when everyone is on vacation and news seems to take a break. It was a financial boon when I was a freelance journaist and copywriter because everyone handed me their work and then left for the rest of August.
But now it makes my life difficult because my job is telling you about the news.
It’s not just me — Berlin’s news outlets seem to be getting desperate. RBB has a piece Friday about a compact Peugeot whose owner forget to put on the parking brake and it rolled — wait for it — 130 meters into a nearby pole while she slept. News! I’d imagine several cars a day go rogue because someone forgot the parking brake.
And Tagesspiegel is over there whining about the size of trash cans because the journalists that work at Tagesspiegel are the same Germans who get up and stand in the train aisle ten minutes before arrival (are they afraid of missing their stop or what’s the rush?).
However, there is actually news this week — and it’s below.
Have a good weekend — I’m off to northern Germany for my August vacation.
Andrew
The lowdown on the Hamburg-Berlin track closure
Deutsche Bahn claims it’s finally doing something about its horrible reputation and is renovating infrastructure to win back our love. But first we have to suffer. The railway Friday will begin the first of a two-part upgrade to the tracks between Hamburg and Berlin — Germany’s two largest cities. The four-an-hour ICEs (two in each direction) will be halved to two during the project, which will run until December 14. The remaining trains will take a western detour, adding 45 minutes to the journey. Regional trains will also be affected, and the Wittenberge and Ludwiglust stops will only be served with the injustice that is Schienenersatzverkehr (bus replacement service). For train nerds: 74 kilometers of rail and 100 switches will be replaced. The second stage will begin next August and run until April 2026. 😔
Register online? How is that possible?
Berlin’s current government has held few of its promises so I’m not holding my breath but the city-state’s digital czar Martina Klement (CSU) told Tagesspiege (paywall) we’ll be able to register our addresses online (ONLINE!) beginning mid-October. Since 600,000 of the Bürgeramts annual 2 million appointments are for this activity, an online alternative would lead to more available appointments. But, as conservative politicians are wont to do, she also said we citizens are part of the problem — we’re not using the current digital alternatives enough (registering a car, for example, or getting a paper copy of your address registration).
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Right-wing magazine not as illegal as thought
A federal administrative court in Leipzig Wednesday overturned a ban on right-wing magazine Compact, saying the company wasn’t as evil as alleged by Germany’s interior ministry, according to taz. The ministry, led by Nancy Faeser (SPD), said the magazine foments racial hatred and anti-semitism and is working to thwart Germany’s democracy. The publisher, based in the western Berlin suburb of Falkensee, has close ties to the right-wing AfD party and said on Twitter (X) it would seek damages from the feds. The court said the government had other tools to counter-act Compact’s garbage reporting (like banning certain statements at events).
Germany-wide news
💥Germany issues arrest warrant over Nord Stream explosions
🛬Climate activists block 4 airports
☀️ Germany installs record new solar power capacity
Factoid
On this day in 1809, Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm III. told Wilhelm von Humboldt to found Alma Mater Berolinensis, or the University of Berlin, which is now Humboldt University. But it’s named after Wilhelm’s brother Alexander, the naturalist and explorer, in yet another case of the more exotic younger brother stealing the limelight from the industrious older brother. Inexplicably, neither of my kids study at Humboldt Uni, despite me assuming for much of their lives they would.
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