Being 42

Saturday 28th March 2026, 11.40am (day 5,329)

What was formerly East Berlin still retains a sense of the Communist era, particularly thanks to the rather uniform tower blocks that sprout over most of it. And then there’s the former HQ of the Stasi, the secret police (officially the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). This is now a museum. And while it could do with a bit more technology and a bit less running through the basics of Cold War history one does come to appreciate what insidiously awful wankers they were, and also how it was all proppsed up by a wide network of informers and ‘voluntary’ agents. The Stasi wouldn’t just surveill you — if they thought you were in any way subversive they were quite prepared to engage in the systematic erosion of your personal and profesional identity, setting you up to fail, turning your friends against you and giving the truth to the old saying, ‘are you still paranoid if they really are out to get you?’. This equipment is displayed in the place where it was used, concealed in the walls of a washroom on the Ministerial floor of the building, and so being used to spy even on those at the very top of the Stasi. Not that we’re a great deal different now — it’s just all done digitally instead. Orwell was close enough.