Yet another undetonated WW2 bomb has to be defused today in Berlin. Always a logistical nightmare since an area in a radius of 500 m or so needs to be evacuated (apartment blocks, hospitals, nursing homes, U-Bahn and train stations etc. etc., and streets have to be blocked off, all to be on the safe side.

This has happened countless times while I have been living here, and as far as I remember, this is the third one since Corona hit us. There was one near where I live – luckily I was JUST outside the zone that needed to be evacuated – while we were in full lock-down last year in spring, and a bit later, there was one on Alexanderplatz – can you imagine – with the number of people living there, plus buses, tram lines, a train station and four U-Bahn lines converging there?

Of course Corona makes it even more difficult since the whole thing takes the best part of a day and people who can’t go to family or friends need to be accommodated and fed somehow or other, whether they are in quarantine or not.

It is laughable that, reportedly, many drivers have kicked up a stink about traffic jams around the affected area today. Oh dear – Berlin’s much worshipped drivers in their noisy, stinking heaps of metal have been inconvenienced – how awful. Of course they would feel entitled to ignoring the information about this and insist on going to the area anyway – after all, they are drivers of motorised vehicles, so they have more rights than all us mortals. (It has been all over the media for the last week – even I knew about it and I have been out of town …..).

I have always wondered – and now more than ever – why these things have not been detected somehow – surely the technology exists – and defused a long time ago. Why wait until builders or construction workers stumble upon them by chance. Because it is not urgent, you say? Well then why defuse and remove them at all instead of just leaving them there?