Somehow the time of wheat harvest has been always a melancholic moment for me. It always strikes me, how fast the first half of the year has passed. Even many crops and fruits are not in their harvesting season yet in Central Northern Europe, the grains start this season of closing down the year early. Of course, this is disproportionate, because there are still 5 months to go for the new year. Perhaps it’s also, because I just arrived in this season into my home landscape. So, it had a bit of touch of Heinrich Heine’s “Heimkehr” in “Neue Gedichte”. Until there is the German Thanksgiving on October 5th, there are still two months to go. In North America it falls this year on October 15th. The character between European and American Thanksgiving is very different. Modern America has been built on a few religious utopias and the results are obviously more pronounced, while in Europe things go along quietly in religious communities. Even the Munich “Oktoberfest”, which actually happens in September, has a connection to Thanksgiving.

I had the chance though to go down South for some business meetings in Munich, which I enjoyed. The city is still very detached from the world’s worries. More than the other nice large German city: Hamburg. Hamburg is traditionally a port city, so naturally more connected, for the better and the worse. In Munich, I had the chance to visit the first time since ages, the new office of my former employer, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). My time was still in Sendlingerstraße, but they moved soon after to Ludwigstraße 21, into a former building of the insurer Allianz. And it’s really amazing.

While staying some weeks at the upper Middle Rhine Valley, I noticed the “hunger stones”, appearing in the river bed. These stones were in the past pointing at a bad harvest. When the water level of the Rhine river is low, you can even see it in the German GDP nowadays. The river has a major logistic role and when ships can’t move freely, for example BASF (a big German chemical company located in Ludwigshafen) gets limited supplies. BASF is anyways under pressure for many reasons, one of them that it is highly dependent on the natural gas and other energy prices. It’s not the river these days, but politics, which defines the odds of the company. It’s the same with the harvest. Today it’s not the “hunger stones”, but politics defining the output. That’s why I was very worried that under the previous German government, the “Green Party” has in charge. Imagine a bunch of Yoga-teachers and vegetarians playing with the food system! Nothing wrong with Yoga-teachers and mindful vegetarians. But if things go wrong, a country like Germany will buy up supplies from the world market and let others starve on their behalf. “Mindfulness” seems very much a concept of actually being out of their minds, and with food production this tricky and can easily turn evil.

Last but not least, I was in Malta. I bought a summer hat (it was hot!), had lunch and dinners with friends and swam in the turquoise sea, overlooking Valletta. There was the Malta Jazz Festival, and I am always surprised what niche performances draw a large enthusiastic crowd in Malta. With all the challenges it has, Malta is a great little country. It’s always somehow at the edge of ruing it, but then succeeds.

Now I am back in Toronto. People complain about a heat wave. I don’t quite know what they mean, but okay. I would say, it’s just summer. Lake Ontario is a bit eutrophic on our side. I stopped my dog drinking from it, to avoid trouble. The only thing bad about summer in Toronto, is that you see a lot of fat people with tattoos. The rest is just how it is.