EU elections

The ballot doesn’t really fit into the envelope. It’s totally crumpled right now. Epic FAIL! Anyway, if you’re living in Europe, vote. Tomorrow, on Friday, on Saturday or on Sunday, depending on where you live. The parliament doesn’t have to say as much on EU policy as it should have, but it’s gaining influence. Some people say that European policy affects up to 80% of your local legislation right now. While I do not necessarily agree to such statements, it’s probably a good idea to vote anyway. That much for a public service announcement.

Back from another (mostly ambulant, but exhausting) CC15 cycle. Back to work. Back to real life ;). As usual, I’ll need a few days to clear up the backlog so bear with me please. First thing I did today was attending a public expert hearing of a parliament commission. The gatekeeper greeted me with friendly words: Watt ham’ Sie denn jefrühstückt? Die Tür jeht uff, wenn ick dit saje un sons ja nich! (In English: What did you have for breakfast? The door will only open, when I say so!). I wont get into the details of this incident. Anyway, the correct answer would have been: Nothing. Just a few cups of coffee. Full CC15 impact, actually. While I might still have been a bit dizzy and random, it was the first day for me in a while where I could do something useful again. However, her colleagues treated me better and eventually I became today’s guest #38 of the Federal Parliament of Germany. I attended a few public hearings and commission meetings of our local Hamburg parliament. But this was nothing like it. At federal level, you have to go through a security check and trade your electronic passport for a parliament visitor pass. At our local city state parliament, you can walk in and out as you wish. And I remember times, when a commission meeting room was quite crowded, fellow interested citizens everywhere in the room – and even on the corridor in front of the meeting room. Although the outcome of a meeting might not always satisfy you and some processes could surely be improved upon, this feels very democratic. Not so at the federal level. Although a lot more people should be interested in the topics of those meetings (Hey, it’s federal policy after all, isn’t it?), there generally seem to be more delegates than interested fellow citizens at those meetings. While we talk of policy: After the meeting, I needed to buy a few things (mostly fair traded coffee and milk). Only to discover that the milk price decreased by 9 cent since my last visit to a supermarket a few weeks ago. And many products I used to buy were missing, due to the Netto-Umstellung (English: merger with another supermarket chain). E.g. there was no yoghurt and no corn flakes or muesli at all. Only butter milk. Lot’s of butter milk. Actually too much of it for my taste. I really liked the headline of Focus: Trotz Netto kaum Plus. Didn’t like the article that much, though ;). Also, for certain reasons I’d rather not buy from Netto. And now Plus will be Netto. I guess I’ll need to find another supermarket soon. Life is so unfair… In many different ways. Doh!