Snapshots of Berlin on the Eve of the Federal Election

For the second weekend in a row, I've gone to the crash course in darkroom photographic techniques.

This week I did make black-and-white prints from the negatives I'd developed last time. I was pleased with my prints. The borders are topsy-turvy at times or the margins too large, and as I'd often photographed 19th-century buildings they were old-fashioned and it looked like I'd just filched a few images from a Victorian album. But as long as the photograph itself is clear and its motif modestly dramatic, I'm happy. For example, I'd forgotten that when shooting the arch over an U-Bahn entrance, birds had been flying in the background, and by happy coincidence they looked (at the instant they were photographed) like proper birds instead of like amorphous extraterrestrial projectiles...

I wasn't especially pleased about being out-and-about before 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday, but after two more weekend classes I can wallow in my indolence. Besides I saw a purple crocus, snowdrops, and yellow winter aconites on the way home, as well as lingering pools of snowdrifts and a red crabapple tree.

Tomorrow will be the day of fate in Germany — in other words the federal elections. It wasn't too noticeable today except insofar as a Green Party supporter was handing out leaflets at a street market in my neighbourhood.

I'm a little worried that yesterday evening's news that a 19-year-old Syrian refugee has stabbed a Spanish man at the Holocaust memorial here in Berlin will lead to more votes for the far right. While I go by there reasonably often, I'm still not afraid of being stabbed myself, and I really think that Berlin would not be Berlin without its cultural mix and (idealistically speaking) respect for international humanitarian law.