Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Doug Merrill 🌻

@bagatsen.bsky.social

640 followers 300 following 4.9K posts

Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Now Berlin previously Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, DC, Warsaw, Budapest. Hoya Saxa! YSR! (he/him) Book reviews and oddments at https://thefrumiousconsortium.net

thefrumiousconsortium.net

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 7h

"This was all preventable."

And 75 million Harris voters say, "Amen." (Though in many cases, "Amen" might sound a lot like "We effin' told you so.")

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 7h

Guten Morgen!

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 7h

Let's celebrate the victories where we find them!

I'm surprised opponents don't make more of the RU connection, esp. in the east. "We had 40 years of Russians, that was enough!" seems like a theme that would sell.

1 2

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 19h

In Potsdam, the state's capital and largest city, the new mayor will be Noosha Aubel, a non-partisan woman whose mother came to Germany from India. She won a majority in every precinct in the city.

Long may the AfD's losing streak continue. Pass it on.

2/2

1 18

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 19h

The AfD lost a bunch more mayoral elections in Brandenburg, one of Germany's eastern states. In Frankfurt on the Oder, Eisenhüttenstadt and Wriezen, the AfD candidate lost. In various other cities, they didn't make it to the runoff.

1/2

3 6 31

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 20h

That's awesome!

One of the German diplomats I knew in Tbilisi had served a tour or two in Australia, and yeah mate that's what his English was like.

So fun when expectations get confounded.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

When I lived in DC, I took a couple of years of Polish, and then more than a decade later when I engaged a Russian tutor ahead of a move to Moscow at one point she said, "MY GOD, you speak Russian like a Polish aristocrat!"

1 4

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

Vielen Dank!

1 1

Reposted by Doug Merrill 🌻

Emily ✨🎃 @emilyoram.bsky.social · 2d

God love Kew, this is incredible

12 200 520

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, please. What shall I bring for dessert?

Maybe some Tokaji to go along with everything else?

1 1

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

Over on the Russian side, there's 2-8km between the border and the lake. (Not that we could go and look.) All tiny villages—some not accessible by road—as forest gives way to swamp. In the 21st century, it's not exactly a staging area for a march.

Probably more than you wanted to know!

4/4

1 1

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

Anyway, there's a significant road and rail border crossing about 10km SW near Pechory. If there were going to be significant funny business in the region, that would be the place. Near the Saatse Boot, there's several miles of nature preserve: trees, ravines, gravel roads.

3/

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, it was a little weird: you're diving along through the woods and oops, Russia now. About a minute later, ok, no more Russia.

There really was nothing but forest all around. I'm not even sure there was a No Photos No Stopping sign at the border; I think that was before the line.

2/

1 2

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 1d

Ah, it was two summers ago and at the time just a bit of a quirk. Though when we were at the shore of a lake a bit north of there that divided Estonia from Russia, there was numerous signs posted in both Estonian and English that you should report any drones that you saw RIGHT AWAY.

1/

1 1

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

Berlin moment.

Looking north along the Schönhauser Allee in Berlin. The aboveground tracks for the U2 are visible along the right while a contemporary building frames the picture to the left. The dark trunks of the trees are starting to lose their golden leaves, some of which have been blown into piles along the sidewalk.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

So I would call this Estonian action prudent and the Russian action annoying but not worrying.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

2. Russians have a history of moving the border fence between Georgia proper and occupied South Ossetia, just to see what they can get away with, a practice known as "borderization." Estonia will want to stop this before it starts, even in an area that's all forests and ravines.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

1. Most importantly, armed Russians might snatch drivers passing through as hostages. Sure, free passage is allowed so long as you don't stop or take pictures, but troops hanging out on the road might well trump (you'll pardon the word) something up. Instant incident, with leverage.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

I've driven that patch of 800m worth of two-lane road that crosses a tiny bit of Russia. There's no border crossing to close because there's no border except the painted poles stuck in the ground.

Sure, it's prudent, if annoying to locals, of Estonia to close the road for a while. Two reasons:

2 1 1

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

In places still ruled by a Churfürst?

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

I'm told that one of the post-1989 Polish defense ministers was asked what his country would do in the event of another two-front war.
"First the Germans, then the Russians."
The follow-up: Why?
"Business before pleasure."

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

I trust you have the film rights to some of these interactions, because they sound like guaranteed hits.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

Wish I were! It would be a pleasure to hear you talk in person about your books!

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

Unsolicited — and utterly non-symbolic — schtick pic.

The Grunewald Tower in the aforementioned forest, erected in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1899. It is built in the Brick Gothic Revival style, festooned with a bunch of pointy bits, and not phallic at all. Photographed partially in silhouette against a partly cloudy early evening autumn sky.

Doug Merrill 🌻 @bagatsen.bsky.social · 2d

I grew up in South Louisiana and might know a thing or two about humidity.

1 2