I don’t always stop and look at trains…

Oh wait, yes I do.

The first night train between Berlin and Paris will depart on Monday evening after a nine-year hiatus, plugging a significant gap in Europe’s increasingly comprehensive overnight rail timetable and giving a boost to travellers looking for a realistic alternative to flying…

Demand for tickets is high, with many on the most popular routes selling out minutes after they had gone online.

Gardner said the buzz and the demand was so considerable, that “it’s now as hard to get a place in the compartment of a deluxe sleeping car on the night train from Paris to Berlin as it is to reserve a table at Paris’s best restaurants”

Lone Muslim + terror attack = “undergoing psychiatric treatment”

That’s the standard European media formula used in cases like this.

They have ready-made templates for “stories” like this, all prepared in their top desk drawer, so-to-speak. They are meant to absolve the powers that be (and “the religion of peace” itself, of course) from its duties of addressing the real problem. And it works like a charm. Every time.

German tourist killed and two others injured in central Paris attack – Police arrest a man known to authorities as a radical Islamist after passersby attacked near Eiffel Tower.

Wow

Or something.

First of all, the new high-speed direct connection train thingy between Paris and Berlin won’t open when they say it will. Nothing opens as scheduled here.

Secondly, the time saved doesn’t justify a headline (nice foto, though). Instead of the 7 hours hours and 30 minutes it takes now the new connection will only take, hold on to your seats, seven.

But at least it will somehow reduce carbon emissions and that’s the main thing, I guess.

This Will Show Them Russkies

And if lighting up stuff in the national colors of Ukraine doesn’t help, we may have to consider building a Menschenkette (a chain of people holding hands). As a last resort, we MIGHT even ask them to sing We Shall Overcome. So, like watch it, Putin. Give peace a chance, or something.

Berlin and Paris illuminate buildings in Ukrainian colours in show of unity – The German capital lit up the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s most famous landmark in blue and yellow, the national colours of Ukraine, on Wednesday evening in a show of unity with Kyiv as the crisis with Russia deepens.

Now Is Your Chance To Become An Über Driver

Über, get it? Hardy, har, har. That means over or above in German.

Über

German-made Flying Taxi Unveiled in Paris – A German tech company, along with French regional officials, have unveiled a prototype of a flying taxi that could begin demonstration flights in Paris as early as 2024.

At a news conference Wednesday at the Pontoise airport near Cergy, west of Paris, the Volocopter company presented the VoloCity air taxi, an electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, which the company will begin testing at the airport in June.

Let’s Pretend It’s Not

Let’s pretend it’s not what everyone else immediately knows it is. Until we’re forced to admit what it is a few days later, officially. It’s some bizarre new game of hide and seek government officials are playing all across Europe these days.

Terror

Similar to the way French officials behaved after last week’s knifing “incident” in Paris, German officials too now bend over backwards seeking any explanation they can find to explain Monday’s truck “incident” in Limburg – other than the most obvious one. Why is it so hard to admit that you have just witnessed yet another terror attack from someone Angela Merkel inexplicably invited to the country in 2015? Could it be that these authorities have a guilty conscience? Better late than never, I guess.

German authorities are investigating a man who drove a stolen lorry into a line of cars in Limburg in the western state of Hesse, injuring eight people.

The 32-year-old had pulled the driver of the vehicle from his cabin at a red light before using the lorry to plough into eight cars waiting at a light near the town’s central railway station at about 5.20pm (1620 BST) on Monday.

The man, a Syrian national named as Omar AI by the national broadcaster ARD, was arrested at the scene.

“My thoughts are with the injured victims of the accident and their families.”

Adis A.?

Maybe he’s Aris A.’s brother.

Bataclan

Bosnian arrested in Germany in connection with Paris Bataclan attacks – Dresden prosecutors say a Bosnian man linked to the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan nightclub in Paris, is under arrest in Germany’s state of Saxony-Anhalt. An extradition to Belgium is being considered.

Den Namen des Verdächtigen gab die Staatsanwaltschaft mit Adis A. an. Ob auch die internationale Suche wegen der Beteiligung am Terroranschlag mit Waffen zu tun hat, konnte zunächst kein Behördensprecher sagen.

Modern Art For Modern Sensibilities

I know, modern isn’t modern anymore but being a martyr is about as modern as it gets these days.

Art

At least that’s the case at “The Other Eye of The Tiger” art exhibition in Berlin Kreuzberg.

This “martyr museum” places one of the Islamist terrorists responsible for killing 89 innocent people at the Bataclan in Paris next to people like Martin Luther King. One of the artists explains it thus to us dumb folks: One has to differentiate when considering the term martyr, he says. And it always depends on the context. Indeed it does. Always. Even I knew that. How do people get this confused?

Don’t try to understand art, people. Just experience it. Then after you’ve vomited it all out move on to the next exhibition.

Am Ende der Reihe steht Ismaël Omar Mustafaï, einer der Islamisten von Paris, die am 13.?November 2015 im Konzertsaal Bataclan in Paris 89 Menschen ermordeten.

Paris?

Germany can’t even reach the climate targets it has set for itself (see objective media coverage below).

Earth

A thirty-three page report has just confirmed what most German global climate saviors already knew: There is no way in hell that the more than ambitious climate target set by the federal government some ten years back will ever be reached. Emissions were to drop 40 percent the year 2020. They haven’t quite dropped 28 percent yet. The main problem – now get this – being German cars. Like, duh. Ever hear of Volkswagen & Co.?

Ein wesentliches Problem: Der Verkehrsbereich hat seine Emissionen kaum reduziert. So notwendig ein allgemeines Umsteuern beim Autoverkehr ist, so unpopulär sind die Maßnahmen im Einzelnen.

“We in Germany, in Europe and the world will band together to take more decisive action than ever to confront and successfully surmount major challenges to humanity such as climate change.”