Green Tractors, Red Beer and Brown Coal

Colourful Adventures in Brandenburg

At a harvest festival in southern Brandenburg

I never trained to be a journalist. Whenever someone asks me why I get to write about German current affairs in the papers, my argument is the same: my skill set as a historian is largely applicable. After all, today’s news is tomorrow’s history. But there is one crucial difference with journalism: the people you write about are alive.

Writing about present-day people with live concerns is not an easy thing to do. Reporters are often parachuted into a community for short periods. They have no time to connect to the people they report about. Yet, the reason they are on site in the first place is to gather and convey authentic insights.

That’s the dilemma I have faced for the last few days. In an attempt to gain impressions for a magazine piece about eastern Germany, I’ve been hanging around in a rural community about 100 miles south-east of Berlin.

Here, the rightwing AfD stands to gain much ground from the traditional parties, and the political tension is palpable. My aim was simple enough: speak to as many people as possible about the upcoming regional elections and the general mood in the community. But this was easier said than done. Rural communities tend to be tight-knit and they don’t open up to strangers easily, especially not when these strangers say they are reporting on them.

But doors eventually opened for me, leading to dairy farms, offices and pensioner parties to beer gardens, harvest festivals and firestations. As ever, I greatly enjoyed these seemingly mundane adventures. As ever, they provided fascinating insights into the way other people live and think.