BERLIN — With coalition talks dead after the CDU's historic collapse, Berlin's parties agreed to choose the next governing mayor by public lottery, drawing the name of a 34-year-old bike courier who will now run the city from a construction trailer in Treptower Park.
The lottery, held in a packed Tempodrom, required every adult Berliner to register at a polling station and physically pull a numbered ball from a rotating drum. More than 2.4 million people queued for up to nine hours; the winner, identified only as Katrin, was carried to the stage on a cargo bike while the crowd chanted the names of tram lines.
The Linke's Elif Eralp, whose party finished first, will not hold the office but will sit on a bench outside the trailer and decide all substantive policy between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily, including rent caps, school openings and the colour of the city's rubbish bins. A spokesperson said the arrangement «preserves the voters' clear preference for socialist governance while respecting the lottery's binding outcome.»
By Thursday, the trailer had acquired a fax machine, a coffee maker and a queue of district mayors waiting to be told what to do. The CDU's Stefan Evers announced he would enter exploratory talks with the trailer itself, then clarified he meant with whoever was inside it. The first lottery decree, issued at dawn, ordered all construction sites to stop at 6 p.m. and all U-Bahn announcements to be read by children.