A Gigantic Aquarium Exploded in Berlin. Some Germans Are Worried It's a Metaphor.

[marmar]

A Gigantic Aquarium Exploded in Berlin. Some Germans Are Worried It’s a Metaphor.
When is a crack in the glass not just a crack in the glass?

BY BRYN STOLE
DEC 19, 20225:40 PM


(Slate) Firefighters had already cleared the dead fish from the frigid street by the time I showed up, on Friday morning, outside the smashed front doors of Berlin’s five-star Radisson hotel.

Just hours before, the hotel’s massive AquaDom—billed as the largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium tank in the world—had exploded suddenly, causing a surge of more than a quarter-million gallons of saltwater, along with roughly 1,500 fish, to course through the hotel’s lobby and onto street.

Much of the immediate area—a bustling, tourist-packed hub of broad Communist-era boulevards, shadowed by the red-brick spire of Berlin City Hall—was temporarily closed off. Bemused tourists and locals gawked from the sidewalk.

....(snip)....

That the explosion happened in Berlin, often cast as the dysfunctional and mismanaged stepchild to a nation otherwise known for quality engineering, struck many as fitting. Several online pundits were quick to draw parallels between the spectacular aquarium failure and the city’s sparkling embarrassment of a new international airport, which ran billions of dollars over budget, opened a decade late, and remains largely a nightmare for travelers.

Der Spiegel ran a column describing the explosion of the aquarium as “the perfect symbol for 2022” and a potent metaphor for the last year in German public life. Germany had, in recent years, appeared to be a marvel of stability, until a crack appeared—created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and, all at once, everything gave way.

....(snip)....

It has been an unsettling year. The country that seemed to coast through crisis after crisis apparently unscathed during the Merkel years has finally faced some major reckonings: a winter without cheap Russian gas, an economy sputtering amid inflation, a major war on the EU’s border. ..............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/berlin-aquarium-explosion-germany.html

[brush]

1. Better call Merkel.

[GreenWave]

2. I would worry if it is a megalodon rather than metaphor.