Reflections on Berlin
I came to Berlin late. A corporate career working exclusively for Swiss and German owned businesses has at times made European cities like Zurich and Hannover feel like second homes. The regular rounds of meetings and conferences have at some point in the last twenty years taken me to most of the major European capitals. But for some reason, until this week, Berlin had eluded me. To be introduced to Berlin properly for the first time in 2017, post-Brexit, post-Trump, and in the week of the French Presidential election, was a sobering experience, even more so when I found myself listening to a line-up of senior German politicians sharing their thoughts on the future of Europe, in German, to a mostly German audience… and me. It hard to describe exactly how Germans view the result of our EU Referendum, especially when you only have anecdotal evidence collected on a two-day visit, but on a walkabout in Potsdamer Platz (more of which later) I struck up a conversation with a local. W...