One time I got stopped by a camera crew in the street. It was right after the London transit bombing. They were interviewing people to ask if they thought it could happen in Berlin.
I went off on a rant about how, no, it would never happen here, and how dare Berlin feel so important that they deserved to become a big nasty symbol of Islamic terror. I went on to describe how terrorists hit either a.) big western centers of international commerce and culture (New York, London) b.) western cities with big disenfranchised northern African a/o middle Eastern populations (Madrid) c.) or Eastern centers of percieved Western privelege and decadence (Amman, Bali, etc.)...and that if the terrorists had half a brain in their heads, and were seriously interested in a German target, they'd hit Frankfurt (the money) or Munich (the big romanticized heart of German national culture).
They didn't put me on the air.
Last night, people started coming to the opera really, REALLY late for their rehearsals. One breathless mezzo came in talking about how Unter den Linden...the huge commercial center of Berlin (and the street where the opera is located) had been cordoned off by police, and how everyone on the street had been evacuated (besides us, unfortunately).
The Christmas markets, the stores, Humboldt University...as well as the dress rehearsal at the Staatsoper---all closed down.
A bomb, they said. Fuuuuuck, I thought. Bleeding Murphy's law. I should've kept my mouth shut. Oh, how my karma had doomed Christmas in Berlin!
It was, indeed, a bomb. But let me continue.
Some construction workers tinkering on a project (an underground parking lot on UdL) were boring through concrete when they stumbled across a live explosive from...
1945.
Apparently this happens a lot. They find an old bomb, or anti-personnel-explosive from WWII in the subway, or under a playground, or in the basement of a shopping mall, etc., etc., then call in the army to remove it, and then drive it deep into Brandenburg where they can explode it with robots in a field.
Pictures of the bomb were in the papers today. It's about the size of a human torso, and quite badly rusted. Apparently the metal on the head had decayed down to only a couple of milimeters in thickness.
That means, just one tap with a hammer and pow, Berlin's center becomes a crater.
If only W could invent a time machine, eh?
God I spend too much time in this buttfucking internet cafe.
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