The Fin­an­cial Crisis has hit all around the world. Inspired by the Arabic protests of this years spring has led people to start anti-capitalist move­ments like the notori­ous Occupy Wall Street in NYC, which in effect has spread out to European cit­ies like Lon­don and Ber­lin.

Although Europe has its very own fin­an­cial issue to deal with, the prob­lems always seem to be the banks and the lack of insti­tu­tional con­trol over where money goes. Two weeks ago, people were called to take part in a big uni­fy­ing protest sur­round­ing the Bundestag in Ber­lin. The demon­stra­tion was peace­ful and we were happy to see people from all sorts of life­styles sup­port­ing the move­ment and call­ing out for more eco­nom­ical fairness.

I think, to some extent, the Regier­ungs­vier­tel marks a very dis­tinct feel­ing of cold­ness which matches the spirit of the protests. The con­crete, the grey col­ors, the not-so-subtle pres­ence of police officers and other small details make our gouver­ment look stern and massive in com­par­ison to the rest of Ber­lin. Espe­cially now that it’s turn­ing winter, the stale ser­i­ous­ness of the build­ings make a very con­trast­ing back­drop to the col­or­ful and rich pro­test­ers sur­round­ing it.