I spent the final part of my vacations in Berlin this Agust but my only impression of the World Championships in Athletics was this stand.

I doubt Russian sport fans were the biggest crowd here but the equipment for them tells a tale. Italian, American, Australian, German stuff (humble “My Motherland”) is poor and inexpressive compared to them. “Russia, we are with you”, “I am Russian and I am proud of it” and an angry bear.

For me it is the most obvious illustration of “Resurgent Russia” (as Western media put it) and of the main trend in Russia nowadays – of growing nationalism.

“Begin the story in Estonia, with a reference to its 2007 attacks; make sure to play up the “E-stonia” tune and how the entire country was under online siege for a month (never mention that rioting in the Estonian streets was much more devastating and that the actual online siege lasted for twenty minutes at best). Setting the story in Estonia would also help to play up the Soviet threat that never really left the country. Blame NATO’s impotence, praise Skype’s genius, quote non-existent local Web entrepreneurs who lost all their savings in the 2007 cyber-attacks”.

What a hilarious text! Evgeny Morozov from Foreign Policy indeed knows the nature of journalism. He writes about contemporary threats in the Internet but in fact it is about eternal problems of media: hysterics and incompetence.

Buying railway ticket online? Of course!

I tried it twice in Germany – both times with a problem, with a scandal, loosing money. Unbelievable!

Last time I chose the train and time, wrote my bank card number, got a confirmation by email. Is it the end? It’s the beginning!

Then one has to click a link in the email, write login and password, see the word “e-ticket” – and print it? Wrong answer!

-It is not a ticket, – I was told in the train on my way from Berlin to Munich.

-Why not a ticket? It is written here – “e-ticket”. Here is my name, destination, my seat number…

-It is not a ticket. You had to print out the ticket.

I had to pay second time, with cash, right in the train.

Later I learnt that one more step should have been made. You get the email, click the link, write your login and passwod, get the page with “e-ticket” and all other info – and click one more time. Then print it out.

Triple protection!

Today’s story.

My friends came to Berlin from Russia. Well I am experienced guy! I found the site, wrote passenger’s name, paid with my bank card, got confirmation by email, clicked the link, wrote login and password, and clicked, and clicked one more time. And printed out.

I just got a call from my friends from the train: “It’s not working!”

According to the rules of “Deutsche Bahn”, passenger must pay for his ticket himself.

-Why? – I was shouting on the phone. – It is unconvenient! It is inhuman! What’s the difference for you?

-It is the rule and I have to follow it. Your friends refused to pay and will be taken out from the train.

So that’s how I heard about rules in Germany for the first time.

But this story is not about Germans. Russians see unconvenience and dullness in their country often enough, too.

I have been flying with German “Air Berlin” for about three years and I never had any problems with paying, registering, showing documents etc. You write your bank card number – that’s all. No clicking, no passwords, no printing. You paid it. All the rest is the company’s business.

Sometimes it is so plain simple:

there is private business caring about customers,

and there are state behemoths who don’t give a spit about clients. They follow their own rules. The other day the head of “Deutsche Bahn” resigned with a scandal but it won’t change anything: there are no other companies one can use when travelling from Berlin to Hannover.

The rules of market and monopolies are the same everywhere.

Lada was a dream for Eastern Germans. Indeed, one would dream even about a Soviet car when there are just cardboard Trabants around you. When the Wall fell normal cars from the West arrived and Volkswagen even built a plant in former GDR.

But I noticed an interesting thing while making a report about today’s sales of Lada in Germany.

Right after the reunification Eastern Germans despised Lada: a communist car, from the USSR… But demand reappeared after some time. Nowadays 60% of all German sales are in the former West Germany and 40% in the former East one – approximately equal to the territory ratio.

So the Soviet shade disappeared during the 20 years. The image has been reinvented, so to say. Now it is just an inexpensive car standing close to Suzukis and Kias in car sales centres. It is far not a leader on the market: just 2400 Ladas were bought in Germany last year while its population is 82 mln. But still people buy it: ”A car for the youth”, “low price”, “a second or a third car for your family”.

Dark legacy of the past disappears during just one generation time. At least on the market.

Some topics are supposed to unite people but it doesn’t always work. For example, world’s “green worry” doesn’t exist in Russia at all compared to other countries. Indeed, a typical story about wind energy in Germany had to wait it’s turn to be shown in my company’s news for more than a month. But the “crisis” suddenly worked: nothing unites Russia and the world better than news about crisis and the way people cope with it. Who the hell in Russia would be interested in some German car-sharing companies? Or some German tricks to boost consumer interest in cars? Now we are making the third story about cars in Germany during  just a couple of months – and all this thanks to a simple approach: how do they deal with the crisis?

Common values, so to say.

Thank you, crisis!

Today in Berlin I was supposed to meet two people in two different places – and both of them complained to me about delays caused by the road traffic. Berlin is a rare big city I have seen where driving is easy and non-problematic, and only force major can be the reason for the chaos. And indeed – with sounds of barraging helicopters a representative of a big gas supplier visited Berlin today. By the way in Deutsch Putin is still president : prime-minister is called here “ministerpräsident”.

“He is a neighbour” (“on sosedskiy” in Russian) – a delicate phrase from the Soviet times. Apart from obvious meaning it was used in journalistic circles to describe a KGB officer working in a foreign bureau of a Soviet medium under cover. I have been working as a foreign journalist since 2007 and never knew the term, an older colleague just mentioned it. I never heard of the same practice either – there are so many other covers for intelligent services nowadays. But my knowledge is obviously limited.

Agents of the military intelligent service under similar cover had a definiton, too (the service is called “GRU”). I would never guess what it was but there is actually some logic in it. Let’s see if anybody who reads it can suggest something.

Nobody reproached me while I was walking along the former Berlin Wall and made a report about today’s perception of it. Even though so many people were killed when trying to cross it, the city and the country are still divided, and it was over just 19 years ago.

Nobody said a word about Soviet ideology, communists from Moscow etc.

As if the Wall appeared from nowhere and vanished by itself.

We didn’t have long discussions with people on the street but if I were asked by a television crew about the Wall I would have mentioned the Soviet authorities, if not the USSR. At least I would have asked back a Russian journalist, “what do you feel?”

So if I ask myself the question – I am ashamed. And I am really interested how many Russians share the feeling.

I wonder who is the author of this phrase. Really.

Every single foreigner drinking and playing a la Russe says “Na zdarofie!” Why? The meaning is far from “Cheers!” (which people mean). “You are welcome”, that’s what it means. It is what a doctor can say in Russia to patient’s “thanks”, or one can hear it in a pharmacy, again as a reply to “thank you”.

I heard “Na zdarovie” from Brits, French and just recently from Germans – there must be an explanation! So far I have two versions, both from the readers of my Russian language blog:

-it is a quotation from another Slavic language;

-people once heard ‘Za zdorovie’ and made mistake.

Yeah, everybody makes the same mistake everywhere… I am really puzzled.

P.S. Drinking Russians say very many different things, an article can be written on the topic. Among the most well known are:

“Cheers!” (literally “For your health” – “Vashe zdorovie”)

“Let dreams come true” (“Za sbychu mecht”)

“For all of us and f*** them” (“Za nas s vami I khren s nimi”)

“For the ladies present” (unpronounceable “Za prisutstvuyuschikh zdies dam”)

Old Soviet planes AN-2 fly above Berlin regularly these days, it is actually the high season. Till Thursday, October 30, when Tempelhof airport closes down.

Here is our ticket. And that’s what AN-2 itself looks like.

This particular plane was made in Poland in 1968 – the pilots say the bi-planes were made in two places outside the USSR – in Poland and in China.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are 9 passenger seats in this AN-2. It used to be a training plane for skydivers during the GDR times, later it has been transformed for sightseeing flights and the seats have been added. As a tenth passenger I got a seat near the pilot…

…but everybody wanted to see everything and take pictures…

so we swapped places and others could enjoy the view.

Old Soviet planes flying above the Brandenburg Gate wouldn’t be nice memories for the Germans, I presume. So we didn’t fly towards the Berlin center.

Tempelhof is situated to the south from the center and the sightseeing route goes away from it. Actually AN-2 has been designed after the WWII, in 1947, and has being produced ever since. The AN-2 history site claims the plane is even in the Guinness World Records Book. Well I don’t know whether it is true but AN-2 is indeed a classic for Russians. “Annushka” is a tender name for it (sounds just like a diminutive from the name Anna); “kukuruznik” (to be pronounced “kookoorooznik”) is a common name, it comes from the word “kukuruza” (“maize” or “corn”). AN-2 is universal and has been used a lot as an agriculturial aeroplane. It works quite well as a tourist plane, too – personal ventilation tools are particularly impressive.

So no Reichstag or Brandenburg gate in view – the only real “Berlin thing” we noticed was the television tower. I will show it in my report on NTV on Friday and will give the link to the video here, too.

UPD Here is the link.