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Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
Lufthansa told its customers that passengers should be at the airport four hours before departure.
Where?
Well, where?
At the beautiful, new, expensive Berlin airport BER, where too few counters can be opened, where numerous switching points are understaffed, where nobody could have foreseen the beginning of the autumn vacation and where broken treadmills make traveling a torture for the elderly or the disabled.
It also does not seem to have been foreseeable that the belts would be subjected to more stress in normal operation than in the test run.
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Capital bureaucracy: I want to have my passport renewed.
In Berlin.
No punch line by Alexander Osang
Finding out who is responsible for which grievances and how they can be remedied is likely to be a tedious task. It is certainly not the same people who are to blame for the fact that appointments with authorities in the capital often take months to come, so that a birth certificate or a new passport feels like a glittering, unexpected surprise package.
For the series of almost unbelievable mishaps during the elections in Berlin, others are responsible, of course.
But the problem - or at least one problem - is: once inability, indifference and sloppiness have become the expected rule, at some point it doesn't seem to matter who exactly when and where shrugged their shoulders instead of his or her To do job.
Then it's just annoying.
The serious shortcomings in the Berlin administration have been proverbial for years.
On several occasions experts have made precise, detailed proposals for reforms.
Little has happened.
Those who live in Berlin often cannot help but feel that the city's population is being treated with one attitude above all else: indifference. This became particularly clear when the catering trade was closed during the pandemic. Hardly surprising: people drank more at home than usual, that is, they produced more glass waste. Not at all surprising: the administration obviously didn't care. Empty bottles piled up in the backyards of the city. Didn't disturb a great mind. Another example. It took months before public toilets were set up on the edge of large green spaces that thousands use for sports and walks - even though cafes and restaurants offered no alternative.
There are worse things? Yes, there are worse things. But at some point it simply makes you angry when the administration is not even sufficiently interested in the everyday life of the general public to initiate measures that cost little or nothing. So now we know that the city is even incapable of ensuring that democratic elections run smoothly.
As a reporter, I have reported several times on elections in African countries that were also followed by international observers. When they declared that there had been "irregularities" but that the result was still acceptable because it reflected the will of the voters, I and others were stunned: what a hypocritical mendacity! We considered such analyzes to be political statements that were owed to the desire for stability in the respective country and had little to do with whether an election had actually taken place correctly.
How do these African states differ from Berlin?
Frankly, I don't know.
What is certain is that the result of the federal election has already been accepted.
The state election management now wants to appeal against the result of the election to the House of Representatives, possibly that the vote will have to be repeated in two constituencies because legal violations may have affected the distribution of the mandates.
And then?
Then probably nothing more.
When has Berlin recently drawn conclusions from the failure of those responsible?
And after all, according to the outgoing state return officer, the election in over 2000 polling stations, i.e. around 90 percent, went off without any problems.
If that's not a reason to be happy.
No it is not.
It is to cry for.
Before the future course is discussed at coalition negotiations in Berlin, it would be nice if we could agree that the prerequisites for successful political action must first be created.
An administration that works at least halfway is a minimum requirement for this.