After walking through the entire length of the train we finally managed to nab some free seats at the very back. The very accommodating German lady asked if she should move her bags and kept adjusting her luggage so that I would have space to sit down.
I opened up my laptop and started writing. There’s something which I find highly meditative about train travel (when the air con works, you have a seat and it’s quiet).
As the ICE train pulls away from the station I sink into a deep creative flow and am fully engrossed in my own thoughts.
As the big 40 draws closer I find myself thinking more and more about the kind of life I want to lead and if I am still in the right place. Rapid change, political and cultural upheaval and rampant technological evolution makes the future wildly uncertain… while some things remain maddeningly predictable.
On 11 September last year I wrote this piece here: Some things are coming to an end. When my partner and I moved to the apartment that we currently live in, the area was being quietly rebranded - Stylish bars, young artists and a quiet sense of optimism. That promise has collapsed, and while we haven’t moved yet the pressure has increased.
The city of Frankfurt plans to open up (yet another) supervised injection site just around the corner from where we live. It is planned to be housed in a beautiful red sandstone building surrounded by residential apartments.
The hope is to reduce addiction and help people get clean needles and clean drugs. The reality is (and we know this because there are already 2 injections sights within 100 meters of this newly planned one) that they act as a centre for drug addicts.
It attracts more and more addicts. People may get some care inside, but they also get their needles, leave the facility and shoot up outside on the street. This drives away local businesses, investment, and the middle class - leaving a wake of poverty, crime and degradation.
Two years ago I started writing freelance for a creative agency in Frankfurt. The owner is well connected within the city and loosely involved in politics. He also lives directly in the Innenstadt. One day when we were driving to an event he said something which still sticks with me to this day.
He said that all the decision makers in the city - The people in business and governance - they don’t live here. They live outside in the surrounding small historic towns. They have no idea what the actual situation is like here. It is one thing to pass through a street on your way to somewhere else. It is another to experience it everyday.
The tragedy is that before covid this area around the central station had been pumped as the up and coming district of Frankfurt. Magazine and newspaper articles gushed over cocktail bars of a quality that could rival new york, The newly opened Kaiser Passage was heralded as a centre for small artists and business owners but it hasn’t worked.
This is just one of many things which seem to not be working right now. Culture is shifting.
A year ago I wrote this piece here: Why I hate pride month (as a gay man), which I subsequently put behind a paywall because it started to attract too much drama.
The reason I hate pride month is because it has been hijacked by an ideological movement that is in and of itself exclusionary, intolerant and violent. It stands in direct violation of the very values that Pride initially was founded on.
Arguments based on race, gender and identity should alarm us. The fact that they are positioned as preventing discrimination is not reassuring. A quick glance at the cultural reality lays the hypocrisy bare for all to see.
In today’s contradictory world to be born gay is now (the last 10 years…although maybe not for the next 10) something to be applauded in the west. To be born British, German or American is something which you should be ashamed of and distance yourself from.
I also expressed my frustration at the commercialisation of homosexuality. This is of course an over generalisation - but gays in the western world are educated and have high disposable income. This makes them ideal customers.
Now that the west has gotten over its moral repulsion (although maybe this was just a phase…) of homosexuality the capitalist system is desperate to attract this lucrative customer base by any means necessary.
The virtue signalling that you see from massive cooperations such as basically all of American tech, financial institutions and insurance companies is done for a reason. They are trying to milk the pink pound.
In Europe it is now not so much pride month as in pride summer. It generally stretches from May into September.
The idea that you can just slap a rainbow on your product and add a diversity or inclusion slogan to your brand is quite frankly offensive.
And it seems, that just a year later…maybe they heard me…industry giants like Mastercard, Citi, PepsiCo, Nissan, PwC, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, and Diageo have withdrawn sponsorships from major Pride events in New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C, and according to this article here, 39% of corporate executives say they are reducing public pride efforts this year.
This coincides with a disturbing rise in anti-LGBT violence across the Western world in 2025. As the political and cultural winds shift, so too does the mask begin to slip. Sentiment hardens. The room changes. And people’s true colours are starting to shine through.
What comes next will be shaped not just by policies or markets, but by something deeper: values. What we choose to protect. What we’re willing to lose. What we hold up as sacred and what we quietly erase.
In a global economy, cultural capital matters. And whether we like it or not, a society that can no longer attract investment, talent, or trust will begin to decay from within. Not because it lacks infrastructure, but because it has lost the narrative of who it is and what it stands for.
I love Europe. I love the West. But I’m not naïve to the undercurrents. Culture isn’t just shaped by reason it’s shaped by emotion. By identity. By a story we tell ourselves about who we are. And lately, that story has started to fray. We’re no longer at the frontier. Not culturally. Not geopolitically. And that’s a hard pill to swallow.
As the train left Hamburg behind, I thought of what the boat operator said as we explored the immense harbour: that there are at least 25 towns named “Hamburg” in the United States. A legacy of departure, but also of transition. Back then, people didn’t just pass through. They often had to wait, due to delays, sickness or personal circumstance. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years. They became part of something, even as they prepared to leave it behind. That’s the moment we’re in now not quite here, not yet gone.
The question we all have to answer is: what do we want to take with us and what are we willing to leave behind?
Interesting observations. For decades I chose to only ever live in cities. Toronto, London, Manchester etc. I know I am a fair bit older than you, but you reach a time in life where you cannot tolerate the amount of people, the aggressiveness, the lack of space, the pollution including noise, the high speed and some of the anti social behaviour any more. I now live in a small town 30 mins from Düsseldorf and it is very pleasant, while still being able to access the cultural aspects of the cities I am near.
Forgive me for sounding Pollyanna-ish, but you sound a bit down and I thought I'd comment from a country where everyone with a heart and a brain is depressed, and we're trying to keep our spirits up to preserve what is left of our democracy.
There are cycles in the lives of cities. I'm a native of Washington, D.C. and for my entire childhood, the city was a basket case, with schools not opening on time or at all, drug addicts in downtown parks day and night--I think diplomats received hardship pay if they were stationed in DC. I left at age 18, inn 1978, determined never to return. Well, work brought me back to a city transformed. The parks and neighborhoods I had to promise my parents never to enter, day or night, are now safe and hip and green. The city is wealthier (key point) because we finally were led by a mayor, Anthony Williams, with strong business ties. I love it here! God knows we still have our problems, and there are neighborhoods I won't enter at night, but the city improved greatly thanks to a handful of people. It took too long, but know hope. And yes, it's important that people making local decisions live locally and feel the repercussions of their decisions.