ne day in October, after a thousand years of evening gloom, a work crew arrives and lines the main avenue with LED street lamps. The lights are a concession to the villagers – all 102 of them – from their political masters in the nearby town of Amt Neuhaus, who manage Sumte’s affairs and must report to their own masters in Hanover, the state capital of Lower Saxony, who in turn must report to their masters in Berlin, who send emissaries to Brussels, which might as well be Bolivia, so impossibly distant do the villagers find that black hole of tax euros and goodwill.
It’s this vague chain of command that most alienates the people of Sumte. They are pensioners and housepainters. They are farmers, subsistence and commercial. They are carpenters, clerks and commuters who cross the River Elbe by ferry every morning, driving to jobs in Lüneberg or Hamburg, 90 minutes away. More than a few are out of work. Nobody tells them anything. [...]
Until the moment Richter received the phone call, the most contentious municipal issue Amt Neuhaus had ever faced was the proposed construction of a bridge across the wide and placid Elbe – a project that has united residents against the feckless local government for approximately a century and a half. A bridge would shorten commute times and attract more investors. A bridge could change everything for these dying towns. Now imagine that your mayor gathers the entire community into a cramped and crumbling East German banquet hall and announces that the federal government has ordered not the long-desired bridge, but a refugee centre, one that will require expensive renovations and have unknown consequences. The atmosphere in the room is not good.
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