About Election

Last weekend I was in Berlin and traveled by train. I ate meat-based food on two days there. Does the one balance out the other? Probably not. But I am aware that I did the wrong thing. Of course, I could have flown, which would have saved me six hours of driving. Did I abstain for ecological reasons? No, because the train was cheaper. Like pretty much everyone, I only do what's easy on my chronically tight wallet.

When I was in the capital, I had a look around and was often pleasantly surprised. Less crowded streets than expected. More green spaces than expected. Clean subway stations. It was almost 'beautiful'. But when I was in the museums, when I went on a city tour, I saw how different, how beautiful it used to be and how much was destroyed by wars and conflicts. We owe our prosperity to the generation of our first parents, but they were also the ones who built this prosperity on the backs of others and destroyed much of it at the same time. Some things that were beautiful, some things that were unique. The things built by their great-grandparents was rebuilt, restored or replaced.

We will become the generation of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren who destroyed the earth. And we still vote in double figures for a party that doubts this. But Germans don't like to learn from their mistakes, after all we are the only nation to have started and lost two world wars. But we cannot win this war against the world. Even if we didn't start it, we are still in the middle of it. And we have to save what can still be saved.