Here are a few more observations about Germany, even though I have already been in London for a day and a half, but there is a lot going on in Germany at the moment.

On Sunday, Germany held Federal elections and the results will bring about a significant change in the governing coalition.  Germany will move from a CDU/CSU+SPD coalition to a CDU/CSU+FDP coalition.  Now if the alphabet soup of German parties doesn’t mean anything to you, think of CDU/CSU as fiscally and socially conservative, SPD as closest to the Democrats in the US and FDP as free-market and socially liberal.  I find this outcome quite surprising, but then again I haven’t lived in Germany in a long time.  The three parties to “the left” (SPD, Die Linke, Gruene) which would most likely represent those being negatively impacted by the current economic changes managed to net do more damage to each other than attract voters (Die Linke and Gruene gained but less than the SPD lost).  It will be interesting to see what kind of changes the new coalition will bring about.  As a fascinating aside, the best link for this in English appears to be Wikipedia, which is already completely up-to-date.

Another fascinating observation (for me anyhow) was to learn that Germany’s official language describing its troops in Afghanistan is “Auslandseinsatz” (literally: “Foreign Deployment”) and not “Krieg” (war).  The idea of being involved in a war is still anathema to many Germans.  Having grown up there in the 60s and 70s, I understand the impulse.  Yet, this approach has a distinct Orwellian feel to it, with bizarre consequences.  For instance, soldiers injured in Afghanistan have to rely on private insurance contracts for decent coverage (German insurers in the meantime are protesting that clearly this is a war and “accident” coverage was not meant to apply to being shot at).  It is unlikely that this will change with the new coalition, as the FDP has called for a withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan.

I look forward to meeting with entrepreneurs in Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday to get their take on what (if anything) the outcome of the election means for startups in Germany.