You know, it was actually nice having no government for three weeks. You barely noticed. For a while it even looked as if one of the Polish twins was going to turn up as chancellor in Berlin while somebody wasn't looking; and on cool placid autumn afternoons in the cafes along Friedrichstrasse that hardly seemed to matter. Germans aren't overjoyed with their new leader, but they don't mind that she's a woman; they just want more jobs, a stronger economy, but the same enormous welfare state, and since that indigestible contradiction has been voted into parliament and now rules the cabinet as a massive "grand coalition," living here should be exactly like having no government for a couple more years.
