Like everybody I know in Germany, I bought the so-called 9-euro ticket this summer. Three, in fact — one each for June, July and August. I put the QR codes in my cell phone’s digital wallet, and was free to hop on and off all buses, trams, local and regional trains nationwide. This all-you-can…

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said it best in a tweet this week: “What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?” Kuleba and his compatriots, along with their friends all over the world, are celebrating the heroic rout by Ukrainian forces of the Russian invaders in Kharkiv over the…

The history of warfare has no precedent for what is happening right now in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Never before has a nuclear power plant been on the front line of a major war, and indeed a main object of the warring parties’ strategies. How Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world handle this…

You can’t step into the same river twice, the philosopher Heraclitus said in a different context. If he were alive in the era of anthropogenic climate change, he might add that you may no longer even have that river to step into. And even if you do, you might not want to, because its fluids could…

If you want to know why Europe’s largest economy is a digital laggard — indeed, if you want to know why progress is difficult anywhere — regale yourself with a trip into the fine print of a new German law governing employment contracts. The occasion for the anecdote is a directive from Brussels…

The 27 national leaders of the European Union love to extol the solidarity that binds their countries together. Even the words signal destiny. “Union” comes via French from the Latin unus for “one,” and solidarity from solidus for “firm, whole and undivided.” Like a good marriage, the bloc is…

What makes our current situation so unnerving is an outbreak of “non-simultaneity.” At least that’s what I recently heard Robert Habeck, Germany’s energy and commerce minister, tell a gathering of German industrialists. What a big word, I thought to myself. And what a difficult — though…

Here’s a great idea that unfortunately won’t become reality any time soon: Germany should recognize English as a second official language. So should most countries, in fact. The idea popped up this month in a 10-point program put forth by the Free Democrats, the business-friendly and liberal…

Russian President Vladimir Putin must be delighted that Germans, Poles, Israelis, Ukrainians and others are suddenly in each other’s hair about a historical figure named Stepan Bandera. Part of Putin’s web of lies is that Ukraine, a democratic country he attacked without provocation, is…