All that remains

It is over, the soccer World Cup. Berlin is returning to normal. The flags have been hauled in, the tattoos are fading, we start having to cope with the realities of higher taxes and a very bad reform of the failing German health system.

What remains of the party? Well, just like during the Wrapped Reichstag in 1995, Berliners have shown that they can be mellow and enjoy a great party. What escapes me is why they can't be like that more often.

Germans are resourceful, as demonstrated in this picture. Here we have a nice café garden with a new tent roof in white and black with a little screen (Neuhochdeutsch: Public viewing area). A rather wobbly table holds a little stand (grandly wrapped in a white linen cloth, Friedenau has style), a TV tuner, and antenna, and a beamer. Since all this equipment produces a lot of heat, and it is beastly hot out, a smaller table holds a fan that has had a collar taped around it to focus the air to the machines. I wonder what the TÜV (German technical overseeing board, they tend not to be amused) thinks of this...

What else remains? Well, we didn't get the subway that was promised us. But the S-train still announces the airport now in English as well as German. The grass will grow back in the parks near the fan mile, but only after they survive the Love Parade and Christopher Street Day, coming up the next two weekends.

And we proved to ourselves that we can still organize some stuff - although the little things still go maddeningly wrong, such as the soccer fields around town being closed over school vacation (so where are the next generation of German soccer players to learn how to handle a ball??).