Jan 28 Canisius College, a posh Jesuit school in Berlin, starts off a wave of Catholic abuse revelations that ends with the outing of Germany’s very own child abusing bishop, Walter Mixa.
April 5 Ilse Aigner, Consumer Affairs Minister and sexy scourge of online privacy violators, threatens to delete her Facebook page and writes an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg explaining why. His flying fuck is still in the post.
April 19 Angie is forced to take a bus back to Germany from Italy because of a giant cloud of volcanic ash. Everyone panics when they realize Guido Westerwelle might be chancellor.
May 7 Topping-out ceremony for Berlin’s 20-years-in-the-making BBI airport. A month later Klaus Wowereit admits the airport may be delayed a few more months. “It’s not a fetish for us,” he says about the deadline, averting everyone’s fears.
May 8 Reclaim Tempelhof, the opening of Tempelhof Park. 50 people show up to protest and boo Wowereit a bit. Then they have a go on the skate park and go home.
July 10 The air-conditioning on an ironically named ICE train from Berlin to Hamburg breaks down on the hottest weekend of the year. The train stops and people collapse on the platform, then try and get back on when they realize they’re in Bielefeld.
August 30 Thilo publishes his book, deciding it’d be a shame to waste all that 1930s propaganda he found clogging up the attic. Germany goes mental at the originality of it all: “Wow, no-one has ever had the idea of blaming the economy on immigrants. He’s so honest!”
September 26 After months slaving over a hot calculator, Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen gives Germany’s unemployed €5 extra every month. There is dancing in the streets.
October 12 Berlin is united in embarrassment as Düsseldorf gets the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. “Düsseldorf is also representative,” says an ecstatic Lena Meyer-Landrut.
November 2 The German postal service’s terrible inefficiency showed up again. “We sent Angela Merkel a package and it doesn’t seem to have got through,” a Greek pressure group complains.
November 6 Green party leader Renate Künast announces her candidacy for next year’s Berlin mayoral election just as her party is riding a nationwide wave of anti-nuclear sentiment. At the moment, it’s hard to see her losing, seeing as Klaus Wowereit is about as popular as chlamydia.
