Hear our triumph, in our roar, we’re gonna drink a barrel or much, much more is a line in a typically violent end-of-the-year classic of the glorious ’80s, namely “Swords of a Thousand Men by Tenpole Tudor”. Normally, now would also be a fitting time to report on the triumphs of my year were it not for some shocking failures of my job. Fortunately, they do not affect me directly, but my suggestion that the defenseless people voting for the Greens be the first to forcibly turn off the tap on the central heat supply of the cities – I don’t think it was meant seriously. I’m not that bad! That was more of a sarcastic warning of the political caste, a bit exaggerated of course, a bad joke, but not an instruction! But now it turns out: The Bundestag lawyers ennoble my nasty spitefulness as lawful. What kind of year is it when you get promoted from buffoon to visionary by the very people you’re actually writing against. But it got even worse, because to be honest: Of course I don’t think that the dismantling of the standards of civilization should lead back to the warm brick in bed. That was a gross exaggeration. And then at the end of the year comes exactly the horror scenario of my contribution as a sign of virtue from a recognized journalist of the Viennese “Standard” in Brussels.

So you see, no matter whether in the Reichshauptslum or Europe’s cesspool: I and my taunts are not perceived as criticism of the degenerate conditions, on the contrary, I of all people can be considered the mastermind, advisor and innovator of the right attitude. Well, others invent machine guns in the hope that this will end wars, or believe that people in Europe will survive the winter with heat pumps – my writing isn’t that bad, I’m not responsible for mass murders. However, getting it right like I do isn’t much fun, especially since this is actually a silver can blog from the West Quarter, beyond the lowlands behind the boundaries of class society. But I’ve been writing this for almost 14 years now, and outside, in front of the double garages with the heated driveways and on the other side of Lake Tegernsee, the world has changed significantly since then. The Greens are finally in power and finally they even have direct mandates in Munich, and they want upper-class nutrition with little meat and all sustainability to finally become the norm. But in Munich, the large organic retailer Basic is going bankrupt, like various other organic and bulk shops before it. The young, well-earning and conscious people are obviously running out of money for this desired lifestyle in times of 20 percent food inflation. And the former SPD workers’ party, which promised people advancement and prosperity, is already praising itself for free hot meals for the impoverished. Like in the really bad times of the soup kitchens 100 years ago:

In addition, the state radio, which has been challenged by civilization, booms that you should do unspeakable things like the, excuse me, but that’s how we say it, Grattlers who can’t deal with modern sanitary facilities and, on top of that, as non-profiteers of compulsory fees, refrain from doing it, the earlier matter of course of the consider air travel as a fundamental right. One cannot avoid seeing the years of Merkel and Scholz and the development of society as a whole in this country as an era of decay. If that had been told 14 years ago as a vision of the future – well, many would have looked around for an escape route. And obviously this realization is now gaining ground among broader sections of society who can afford it – there is a well-documented shift from the big cities to the wealthy surrounding areas. There, the probability of being confronted with all the consequences of global inequality on the way to the train station is relatively low. Especially since a certain layer of digital service providers prefers working from home with their families anyway. Ideally in your own home. In the garden. Behind the fence which allows enclosing a double garage.

Exactly what has been branded for a few years now by the socially disadvantaged, activists and now also by the Minister of Construction as a climate-damaging and resource-guzzling undesirable development: Because it is exactly what the majority of the people much prefer to being close to direct neighbors in the Block would have, or whatever one will call the prefabricated buildings for the minimum needs of the coming decades. That would be a fate to which one submits, but no fulfillment of life’s dreams. Forgive me, but if you get upset about a district administrator from Bautzen who doesn’t want to let groups of male refugees move into vacant apartments, that’s a bit bigoted. In the lived reality of the homeowners’ meetings in beautiful Munich, the tolerance limit of owners and expensive tenants is reached much earlier. Nobody has to roast mutton in the bathtub, or whatever the German fears are. It’s enough if a hedge grows too high, an elevator squeaks, or a move leaves a mark. I’ve also sat for an hour debating whether the new glaze should cover the shutters or let the structure of the wood show through… The best way to avoid arguments like this is to decide everything yourself in-house. In the very worst case, pardon me, they say it differently, the value of the property may be impaired, you will also find well-connected comrades-in-arms in the villa district who work discreetly and effectively to ensure that any collective camps for the consequences of open borders and millions in taxes for ships in the Mediterranean are far away be built away, for example near block developments.

That’s the beauty of the country: on the one hand, you can live out wonderful aspects of the ideal and, on the other hand, spatially avoid the suboptimal consequences. You can turn up the heating as much as you like above your own oil tank and deny access to the section authorized to save energy. (That’s another joke! That’s not meant seriously! That’s not a suggestion to the rulers in the capital of the GDR and their central organs to demand an Energy Stasi!) Where was I… oh, yes, you can justify this existence in an elegant way, for example to the effect that the children simply need a garden in the village in order to grow up close to nature, and can get a socially acceptable place in a day care center without any major problems, as in the cities, without having to address questions of origin and skin colour. It is precisely such better-off families who lose purchasing power when they move and then no longer shop at Basic in Leopoldstrasse or at Elisabethmarkt – the latter, by the way, is currently being renovated and is getting a lot, because it is the greenest of all Schwabing, and a nice, big one at that Underground car park for all the SUVs that shouldn’t actually exist in the district with the highest green quota in Germany. Outside there are farm shops and dairy cooperatives and free-range chickens and first-class coffee roasters and organic bakers and there is always a free parking space in front of it and therefore every opportunity to practice the right lifestyle in what may not be quite the right country house.

Lately I’ve been wandering around a bit between Bad Endorf, Großkarolinenfeld, Kolbermoor and other third-class locations next door without access to lakes and mountains, and you meet them everywhere again, the refugees from Munich: Because here the acquisition of property is at least for this special one Class still affordable. Here you can still get the semi-detached house with garden share with the smooth million. Of course, the district administrators groan under the influx and try to prevent the construction of single-family houses, especially for foreigners. But that’s a free market. When social classes agree that they don’t want to be bothered by warming rooms for poor seniors and that the organic market in Schwabing with its stale spring onions is too expensive for six euros, and they can also afford it professionally because they don’t have physical work: Then come, like after the Second World War, the shifts are slipping, leaving the centers and creating new areas to live according to their ideas. The morally nice justification, such as the lower fuel consumption when driving to the riding stables, is usually found quickly, and then it says with Tenpole Tudor: Hear our roar, hear our sound, we’re gonna fight until we have won this town, hoorah, hoorah, hoorah, yeah, over the hill with the swords of a thousand men. Because under the ideals, all colonizers are equal, and what is emerging are the new western neighborhoods of the 21st century, with new rites, beliefs, and multiple opportunities to lustfully go against them in private.

An acquaintance, for example, sold an old, dilapidated castle in a forgotten side valley for a record price to a couple of doctors who now want to grow wine again here in Germany with the climate change – the acquaintance has of course kept the associated forests, wood from them is used for heating here my tiled stove at a special price. Recently I was in a former stable just above the Ammersee, where four families who had moved from Munich found their new home. Thanks to the interior designer, it was tasteful and natural with old wood, and overall had as much to do with rural life as the flights of the Bavarian Green Party politician Katha Schulze had to do with climate protection. Here at Tegernsee, very expensive, brand new condominiums have even been built that look as if they were built into a former barn. In other words, fully insulated luxury buildings whose brand-new wood paneling looks as if it were a converted shack.

You treat yourself to that today, and in further planning at Tegernsee are a brand new, fake alpine village and a lavish solar system, which is intended to represent the will to self-sufficiency and the preservation of creation. I read in the media that saunas and spas understand the dire need and should reduce their services in view of the energy crisis. With our holistic lake sauna, the operators therefore require reservations on the weekends, because otherwise it would be overcrowded. It’s like the hungry pensioners in rich Munich, there are two realities that just don’t seem to go together. And then there are those who are forced to stink for six days because the bath is too expensive and the state radio thinks that’s a good thing, and others on my side of the class boundary who leave the well-warmed sauna ship for the sparkling lights of the evening lake under the snow-covered Look out over the mountains and order the almost vegetarian, home-cured graved salmon with hash browns and honey-mustard dip.

You know, I’ve been doing this for almost 14 long years, first at the FAZ and then at WELT, and actually it should be over after ten years: I’m now writing more out of bad habit than out of inner drive, like others despite purulent stomach ulcers do not go to the doctor or have voted as FDPler for Ferda Ataman and her racist statements. Of course, from time to time one thinks about whether it would be better to leave it as it is, and I’m sure that out there in Bad Aibling, in Fischbachau or in Seeshaupt, a rebellious student from better circles like me was told at the time that he for heaven’s sake shouldn’t try to write anything, because that can only fail. These offspring may then have a better sense of the new western neighborhoods, which are no longer as thrifty and ambitious as those I have known, and which have their roots not in their parents’ wealth but in the aftermath of the world wars.

The new western neighborhoods will be characterized by people who can afford the generosity of inheritance and isolate themselves from the consequences of their beliefs. The less beautiful pictures around the main train station and the possible blackouts without tiled stoves are paid for and endured by others in those cities that the new country dwellers have turned their backs on as a precaution. These people don’t think of themselves as bad or evil, just as Somali pirates don’t do when they travel across the Mediterranean to Germany after the demise of their old homeland. I just miss the proximity that I was born with to the former western quarters, which at that time did not yet build stables after Merkelscholz’ descent, but rather rustic castles with round arch windows and imitation slugs of the era from Erhard to Schmidt. Also, I’ve gotten the impression that if I write something absolutely bizarre and it comes true against my will in a year’s time, it’s bad luck.

But as already mentioned, I can take a hot shower or even a full bath every day and choose from four different tubs that no Habeck will ever monitor. I’m sitting on a huge tank of heating oil, with which one could burn a new Rome to rubble like Nero once did, why should I fear an old Berlin with its provincial Messalinas newly whitewashed for 7500 euros a month? After me, the deluge and until then we can continue chatting here – carefully, of course, without waking up sleeping dogs and unintentionally whispering something to them. In any case, it was a splendid pleasure for me again in 2022 to chat without hesitation, and if you, dear readers, have suggestions and suggestions, criticism of course or special requests, please write to me here in the comments.

In the next few days I have to do household bills, and in view of the increasing costs imposed by the state, I feel like… how should I put it politely… Moments when you are an avid user of the whole immensity of Bavarian verbal insults against the authorities, and so am I I’m very grateful for any distraction in a civilized dialogue if eam causam.