Against all odds and my own conviction that something dead shouldn't be revived, here it is: The resurrection of
The Chronicles from the German Province.
Bringing someone or something back from the dead is a strange endeavor, I am sort of reminded of that odd episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yes, I used to be huge fan of the show), when she is brought back to life by her friends… she is slightly different than before… Let’s see what will happen to the Chronicles, since they have not even been too alive, when I first started them. Anyway, let’s hope that their fortune will turn out better this time.
More than a year has passed since I moved back to N., and of course quite a lot has happened. Since I am unable to summarize all of the events that went by without having been noticed or mentioned in this blog, let’s just pick up some of the stuff that went on. In March, the reform of the
German spelling was changed. As with other reforms in this country, it always takes ages to get some sort of result, and when the opponents have finally reached a so called compromise, it usually stinks more than a French cheese left in the sun for a week. Therefore, reforms in Germany are commonly loved and appreciated as much as a bad form of stomach flue, and normally within no time a general outcry for the reform of the reform is heard throughout the whole country, and
we go from bad to worse…
In June the Football World Cup started, and for four weeks life was just one big treat. The weather, the atmosphere, our team, simply everything was even better than one could hope for. Now, one year later, even our relationship with the Italians has almost normalized. We still do not want to talk football with anybody born south of the Alps, but we stopped boycotting Pizza, Italian ice cream and Parmigiano.
July is worth to be remembered for its weather: Simply the hottest July since recordings. I renovated my apartment during that heat wave and have some very personal memories… my sweat dripping into the paint… the paint drying on my brush… me almost fainting on the ladder…
Well, August then was as wet as July was hot.
Saddam Hussein’s trial started, and
Fidel was operated on his bowels… (Was I the only one secretly hoping that he would not make it?)
September was the month of “Gammelfleisch”, Natascha Kampusch, and the
Pope saying something about
Mohammed that was generally not appreciated in the Muslim world. After the big crisis with the Danish cartoons, even a Pope should have known that these days one has to watch his mouth. More than 300 years after
Spinoza and 200 years after
Kant, the
free world is forgetting about enlightenment and lets the mullahs tell us what to say or not. In general, I think one can conclude that it is recommendable not to say anything about Mohammed and his closest relatives. What else happened in September? Of course, André Agassi finished his career. Tennis lost its last great player and is finally no longer what it used to be. I am from the same generation as Steffi Graf and Boris Becker. I started to watch games when Mr. McEnroe was still playing, when Evan Lendel started his career and Navratilova already had one going for ages, still playing brilliantly. As with politicians, one wonders where did all the big players disappear, the one with charisma and character? Who really cares for a Federer or a Williams? Who cares for a Steinbrück, a Balkenende or a Blair? I want Steffi and John back and Brandt and Scheel and even Ms Thatcher. Politically not my cup of tea, but at least the bitch had an attitude!
I used to think that nothing worse than the cowboy Reagan could happen to the presidency of the United States, but boy, was I wrong. In comparison to No. 43, No. 40 almost seems reasonable... But I am losing track.
In October the government passed another reform that was not worth its name, this time on the sanitary system, and quite a lot of people went on the street to demonstrate that they were not amused.
November was living up to its expectations, with All Saints and its general morbid character, it was the month of death. It started with Saddam Hussein being sentenced to dead, went on with Alexander Litvinenko dying after having been poisoned with Polonium-210, and finished with Sebastian B. who killed 37 people, before shooting himself at his old school in Emstetten.
In December two of the most hated dictators left the face of the earth, Saddam was executed (not to my liking; one is either for or against the death penalty and this includes even figures as him) and Mr. Pinochet was killed as your regular Joe by a common heart attack. The world did not have too many tears for either of them.
This year, so far, was ruled by three big topics: Knut, the ice bear, Paris Hilton and all of her endeavors, and the climate change. The focused changed over the months slightly from Knut to Paris and with G8 to climate change, now with her little prison episode Paris is back at the centre of attention. It’s kind of amazing that an ice-bear-baby and the blond inheritress of a Hotel chain, both with a brain activity lower than that of a chimpanzee, are able to fill the titles of newspapers and magazines for months. However, this is exactly what happened. Welcome to tittytainment. We are already there.
But to come back to global warming, it kind of grew on me during April and May, when I was lying on my roof terrace, enjoying an early summer. But now, in late June, everything is back to normal. It’s raining cats and dogs. Just when everybody started to expect the nice weather to continue until autumn, it gets as unpredictable as ever. Let’s see what July holds for us…
