difficult to explain how funny this is but oh my god https://twitter.com/DougSaunders/status/1247804289914826759

for over a decade the german govt has been laboriously demolishing a former communist showpiece and parliament building in east berlin called the palace of the republic, and replacing it with a facsimile of the building that was there before it, the kaiser's berlin palace...

every single step of this process has been hilariously, ubergermanly persnicketed and debated to death. the Palace of the Republic was detested as being ugly and a symbol of a now-hated regime, and it was also basically made of solid asbestos

on the other hand the kaiser's palace was never a particularly celebrated building and it's not like anyone has any especially fond memories of *that* regime either

every tiny detail has been fought over endlessly, and the budget has ballooned while the project delays endlessly. the fight over whether it should have a full-size dome could alone be like a 50-tweet thread

ok fine this is true but i do think (having seen it from the outside as a wee lad in Berlin in like 2004) that it is one of those lost buildings whose reputation will grow greater the longer it has been gone https://twitter.com/owenhatherley/status/1247856318372818944

ANYWAY now it's on fire (? - developing) and the budget will probably explode again and they'll delay it again and lmao

we haven't even talked about how part of the original palace does still exist, moved and glued onto another building for propaganda reasons

alas, i have committed ddr discourse