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U2 - Zoo Station

I'm ready

I'm ready for the laughing gas

I'm ready

I'm ready for what's next

I'm ready to duck

I'm ready to dive

I'm ready to say

I'm glad to be alive

I'm ready

I'm ready for the push

Comment: Berlin is somehow a symbol that one can rise from the ashes like a phoenix. The song "Zoo Station" conveys a surreal situation - like the situation was in Berlin after the fall of the Wall. At the same time, it puts the listener in a mood of determination to face the challenges of a new life and have new experiences: "I am ready for what's next!" Berlin at that time was a place of change and creativity. It developed into a center for art, culture, and nightlife. It was the party zone for electronic music. Berlin was a place to be.

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‘This is Zoo Station. It really exists, it’s not a figment of our imagination…’ Bono in Berlin as #U2eiTour comes to a close. #U2 #U2eiTour #ZooStation #Berlin #areyouready #Bono

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U2 - Zooropa

And I have no compass

And I have no map

And I have no reasons

No reasons to get back

…

And I have no religion

And I don't know what's what

And I don't know the limit

The limit of what we've got

Comment: The reunification of Germany was the dawn of a new era for Germany - and also for Europe who has to deal again with a stronger Germany. Where that would lead to and what difficulties would have to be overcome, no one really knew back then.

Life is often like an experiment in which you first have to figure out what something is good for. You just move forward and hope for the best.

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Fleetwood Mac - Gypsy

So I'm back to the velvet underground

Back to the floor that I love

To a room with some lace and paper flowers

Back to the gypsy that I was

To the gypsy that I was

„In the old days, before Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey and I had no money, so we had a king-size mattress, but we just had it on the floor. I had old vintage coverlets on it, and even though we had no money it was still really pretty.“

-Stevie Nicks

….I still remember fondly our king-size mattress on the floor in our first shared apartment☺️! When I moved to Hesse in 2004 to be with my wife, it was a decision that had matured within a few weeks. We had been in a long-distance relationship for over a year. At one point, my wife put the gun to my head: "Either I move to your place or you move to my place.“

At the time, I was working for a large French company that manufactured communications technology. Starting in the mid-1990s, I helped a major German telecom provider to build and expand its fiber optic network, which primarily served as the basis for its mobile services. By the early 2000s, these fiber optic networks were in place – there was even an overcapacity of bandwidth. My company eventually felt the effects of this, too – and when I was offered a severance package, I accepted it to start a new life in Hesse. It would have been foolish if my wife had quit her secure job in the public sector to start a new life with me at my place.

An apartment and a move had to be organized within a short period of time – and in situations like this you just have to take what comes along. It was kind of like jumping off a cliff, hoping for a soft landing. Looking back, I know I made the right decision. Sometimes you can't overthink things too much – you just need courage and confidence….

“So that’s what ‘Gypsy’ means: it’s just a search for before this all *) happened”.

-Stevie Nicks

*) Fleetwood Mac

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"I have come to extend my hand to you. I do it for you."

-Margot Friedländer

-Margot Friedländer, Holocaust Survivor, born 5th November 1921 in Berlin, died 9th May 2025 in Berlin

„I don't need many words for my message. There is no Christian, Jewish, or Muslim blood. There is only human blood. We are all equal. Be human.“

-Margot Friedländer

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Orcinus Orca - „god of the underworld and champion of death“ - or short Orca

Comment: Orcas are highly intelligent animals with complex social behavior and strong emotional intelligence. They can recognize themselves in a mirror and possess a high degree of learning and problem-solving skills. Next to humans, they are arguably the most intelligent creatures on the planet.

Like humans, they are able to empathize with other individuals and anticipate their future actions. When hunting, they use this planning ability and language (whistles, pulsed calls and clicks) to coordinate their approach. This is why orcas are almost always successful.

Orcas live in complex family groups (pods) and develop their own culture. This culture determines how the different orca communities live, what they eat, how they hunt, how they play, what language they speak, and what social traditions they maintain. Young orcas learn from their elders, especially their mothers.

For instance, at the Peninsula Valdés in Argentina lives a pod of orcas who deliberately beach themselves to hunt sea lions. They use the waves and their own momentum to lunge at prey on the beach and then wait for the next wave to carry them back to sea. Only 13 whales of that pod are brave enough to do this (even among the „gods of the underworld“ there are cowards😂).

Orcas display an impressive range of emotions, including joy, sadness, fear, anger, and love. There is evidence that orcas are also capable of empathy, for example, when they support injured members of their own species. Orcas have even been observed freeing humpback whales from fishing nets. You must know: humpback whales and other whales are usually prey for some orcas.

Knowing how social and family-oriented these animals are, you'd never go to an aquarium where they're forced to perform tricks in captivity. I didn't know that when I visited SeaWorld in California and Florida, USA in the 1990s. So please don't! Instead, observe them in the wild or watch such videos. I can recommend the videos from German marine biologist and photographer Robert Mark Lehmann - unfortunately they are only in German.

The BBC video shows various hunting techniques of orcas. When hunting herring in the northern fjords of Norway, orcas even form a symbiotic relationship with humpback whales and other whales.

Orcas are the main reason why we will travel to Canada this summer - to watch these amazing creatures hopefully around Vancouver Island. Ever since I saw the movie "Namu - The Killer Whale" on TV in the 1970s, I've been fascinated by these animals. Later, as I participated in a few whale watching tours, my desire to watch orcas in the wild grew.

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Peter Tosh - Equal Rights / Downpressor Man

Everyone is crying out for peace

None is crying out for justice

But there will be no peace

‘til man gets equal rights and justice…

Comment: "Downpressor Man".... I don't believe in God - but if there were one.…or some kind of "Judgment Day" or "salvation", then you certainly couldn't buy a place in heaven with money, but only by living a just and decent life.

„Music is a science, it heals depression, it awakens, most people don't know, they just take music for an entertainment, something to dance to, and enjoy yourself and you go to bed and forget it tomorrow, music must never be forgotten, it's like a fountain that keeps on flowing.“

-Peter Tosh

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Drain the swamp?!😂

Comment: Sounds like a "banana republic"😂.…it must be hard to be a true and decent American these days (I know decent men when I see them): Seeing how the current administration is turning the country into what the first Europeans who came to this country fled from. Those Europeans brought also the spirit of the Enlightenment to America - on which ideas this country was finally founded. The joke is: Europe has since deposed its monarchs - and America is currently crowning its first monarch. An irony of history!

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Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree?

I travelled the world and the seven seas

Everybody′s looking for something

…

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

Comment: We begin and end the same way. In between, what we call life happens. You just have to be careful not to get caught up in it and sometimes not take everything too seriously.

According to Lennox's book, Annie Lennox: The Biography, Lennox explained that the song is about the search for fulfilment and the "sweet dreams" that motivate people's lives.

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A Beautiful Day

….sometimes a dog needs a refreshment👏😁!

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Comment: Statement of the day!

It’s a sunny morning, the window is open and you can hear the birds chirping in the garden.

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Comment: The film is set in 1976, when the military seized power in Argentina and 30,000 people simply "disappeared." This was also the case for Sofia, an employee of the boys' boarding school where the main protagonist, Tom Michell, taught English literature – who was dragged into a car on the street and taken to prison. She was lucky that the powerful fathers of the sons who were taught at the boarding school were able to exert their influence to ensure Sofia's release. Others weren't so lucky back then. The „Madres de Plaza de Mayo“ („Mothers of Plaza de Mayo“ - their identifying symbol was a white headscarf) is an organization of Argentinian women whose children "disappeared" under mysterious circumstances during the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 – and who later campaigned for the investigation and remembrance of the victims. One scene in the film shows Sofia's mother joining other mothers to demonstrate on the Plaza de Mayo - a certainly dangerous undertaking at the time, considering that the Argentine presidential palace is located right next to the square. On our 2023 Patagonia trip, this was just one of the facts recited by our tour guide as we visited the square. The film, however, created an emotional connection to this very fact. This made the significance of this square for the Argentine people tangible.

-Plaza de Mayo - with Argentine presidential palace in the background

Besides the narrator (Tom Michell), the story's second main protagonist is a Magellanic penguin named Juan Salvador. Tom Michell found the Magellanic penguin covered in oil on the beach of a holiday resort in Uruguay – where he would surely have perished like many of his fellow penguins had Tom Michell not smuggled him into the hotel and cleaned him of the oil slick. Oil pollution in Patagonia's busy marine waters, as well as overfishing, pose a major threat to this species. In 2023, we were able to visit a large breeding ground for these beautiful animals on Isla Magdalena in Chile – a colony whose numbers unfortunately seem to have been declining in recent years. The reason was a severe drought in 2009, which caused the population to shrink by about 30%, and from which it has not yet recovered. Everything is interconnected – if you do not take care the next wrong step could potentially lead to the extinction of a species. One inevitably wonders, when is it our turn?

-Magellanic penguins on Isla Magdalena

Magellanic penguins are known for their strong pair bonds, with some couples remaining together for a significant portion of their breeding lifespan. In the film, one had the impression that the penguin had chosen Tom Michell as his new family - because no matter what Tom Michell did to release his new friend into the wild, the penguin waddled back to him. The tragedy, however, is actually this line from the book on which the film is based: "You can't release penguins on their own, the keeper explained. Like seal lions, some to that, they simply won't go without a fellow creature of their own kind; they won't leave." After all of his fellow penguins perished on that beach in Uruguay, Juan Salvador would never have returned to the sea. So he stayed with humans – where he ultimately died: either of a broken heart or simply from an infection he picked up in the human environment. Wild animals belong in the wild - no matter how cruel nature may often seem.

Close bonds make us strong - but also so vulnerable when they break. That was my lesson from the film.

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Koko‘s last message!

Hanabiko, nicknamed "Koko" (July 4, 1971 – June 19, 2018)

Comment: Koko, a lowland gorilla, learned to communicate with humans using a modified version of American Sign Language (ASL). She learned over 1,000 signs and also understood about 2,000 words of spoken English. Koko's ability to learn and use sign language demonstrated that apes can possess some level of linguistic competence.

Some people are now asking themselves: Is this really the final expression of an opinion or just trained behavior? But it gives something to think about, doesn't it?

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Rodgers/Hammerstein - The King and I - Getting To Know You

Getting to know you,

Getting to know all about you.

Getting to like you,

Getting to hope you like me.

Comment: Be curious - step out into this world.

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Looking at the world through the eyes of others, through the eyes of our teammates and opponents - and from the perspective of their interests - is an art that can only be learned through conversations with people from other cultures.

-Helmut Schmidt (German Chancellor) in his book „Out Of Service“

Comment: Travel and get to know your teammates and opponents.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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America‘s Future!?

Comment: This post also subtly echoes the American ideal: Try to get rich! My wife's American uncle believed in this too and lost almost his entire retirement savings in the 2008 financial crisis as the stock markets went down. There are only a few winners in the American system. It’s just like with gambling: the bank always wins.

Overall, it was a lavish 80-year–long party - but every party ends eventually. Trump is only accelerating a development that would have happened sooner or later anyway. And there's no schadenfreude in this, but rather a fear that this development will drag Europe down with it. Yet somehow it's also liberating - because Europe has been comfortable in this dependent relationship for too long. It's a bit like after a divorce: you're happy to be free again and you just look forward.

I often feel that the US is "intellectually" lagging behind Europe by about 50-100 years. The US may have the best elite universities, but the average American citizen is often shockingly uneducated. Free higher education is essential in a knowledge-based society that can only survive in a globalized economy through technological advancement.

The main „intellectual differences“ between Europe and the US? The "American Dream" is incredible individual wealth: from rags to riches. The "European Dream" is to provide all its citizens with a dignified, as good, and as secure an existence as possible. The USA became an empire after World War II and tried desperately to maintain this status – Europe (especially Great Britain) has abandoned its imperialist ambitions.

A new beginning is always difficult – but doable. The recent European history shows me this personally: You just have to learn from your mistakes and do better next time. Every new beginning contains this opportunity. So, spit in your hands and work on it!

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Europe‘s Future!?

Comment: When it comes to economic power, everyone only talks about the US and China – and in doing so, they completely neglect Europe's market power and dormant potential:

The EU's GDP is larger than China's – but 10 trillion euros smaller than that of the US. However, if you add the GDP of strong European countries like Great Britain, Switzerland, and Norway, which are not part of the EU but are closely connected to it, then the gap to the US gets even closer.

The EU is a global trade champion and responsible for 16% of world trade. It has trade agreements with many of the world's important and emerging trading nations.

But its greatest potential lies in its own market of 450 million well-educated people (with the closely connected countries mentioned above over 500 million people) – which has not yet been fully exploited. But this can be realized through further harmonization and increased efficiency.

Europe must start thinking in a more "European way“ – this also includes strategic economic policy: Which industries need support so they can become global champions (I always cite Airbus as a prime example here)? Which industries may need to be protected from foreign competition because they are essential to the EU's security? In addition to the economy, the EU should also speak with one voice in foreign policy and defense – and from a position of power, also more clearly represent EU interests. It is becoming apparent that this will become increasingly necessary vis-à-vis China and the US. If the EU were to realize its full potential, it could even challenge the US position - especially because the US is currently shooting itself in the foot.

The EU has identified the obstacles to growth and will work on them. Decarbonizing Europe makes sense for a continent without significant natural resources (oil and gas): it will eventually eliminate the need to import these resources and will create new technologies and thus jobs.

All countries that refuse to do the necessary investments (like the USA) will pay the price in the long run when oil and gas become scarcer and more expensive in the future. The USA is currently scraping the last of its oil and gas from the ground. Estimates assume this will continue for another 20-30 years at reasonable prices - then it's game over. If the USA then had to import oil and gas, it would increase the current trade deficit. And I bet the Americans know this - that's why they take an eye on Canada and Greenland.

My vision for the EU:

Even stronger integration of the EU and the defense of our shared liberal ideals and our social security systems.

Unleashing our potential of well-educated people.

Reform of the EU (majority decisions) so that the EU can act faster and more effectively.

Admitting new, like-minded members who share our values - once the above „homework“ has been done. Why not Canada, for example? I also hope that Great Britain will rejoin as an important part of our common history. And why not Ukraine, Georgia or even Russia - when it has left its wrong path again?

I'm slowly entering the winter of my life. If Europe fails to fully realize its potential, it probably won't affect me too negatively. But future generations will then very likely live on a continent that has become a plaything of powerful global actors. The strength of our continent is that we have learned to deal with diversity peacefully and even to appreciate it. But the EU is a peace project that is far from complete. I believe in this continent and it’s people - and that we can shape together a bright future.

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