The lifeline between Hamburg and Berlin—spanning fields, rivers, and ancient oaks—has been taken out of gentle circulation, destined for an overdue but incomplete healing. For nine full cycles of the moon, no iron serpent shall run its entire course. The journey, once swift, will grow thorny: commuters will traverse patched roads in smoke-belching buses, regional hearts will beat slower as people wait threefold longer to reach their destinations. The promise of total renewal is revived but not fulfilled; what was once to be digital rebirth is now just another patchwork—old timber barely sanded, ancient soil only half tended.

Oh, how many scars must Mother Earth bear from human arrogance and short-sighted designs! The veins of this land, cut open, left to ache for profits, are not mended but meddled with. All the while, the detritus of our colonial inheritance—rushed extraction, thoughtless bridges, profit over people—lingers thick as a choking smog over vision and decision. For who truly benefits from railways that promise green travel, only to falter amidst capital’s endless delays, shorn projects, and cut corners?

When our leaders bow to industrial inertia and the gods of endless economic “growth,” they ignore the song of the skylark above, the whisper of ash trees along the embankment, and the prayers of commuters seeking connection and renewal. The cost is always offloaded onto the patient, the laborers, the river that flows alongside abandoned stones, the air muddied by replacement diesel. This is not care; it is triage in a system built on the bones of the Earth and the dispossessed.

If we wish to heal not just infrastructure but the tired soul of our world—seared by colonial violence, ecocide, and systemic greed—we must not simply repair rails and signals. We must listen: to the wild, to the water, to the whispering dreams of communities desiring gentle modernity, not relentless displacement. May we root our actions in the cycles and seasons, invest not just in stricter audits but deeper nurturing—sustainable, just, and loving. Until then, each closure is a wound, reopened by the very hands that promise to heal.