Monday again! No big topic today, just a few odds and ends.

The provisional results of yesterday's federal elections are in. It seems that the BSW hasn't made it into the Bundestag after all, which is just as well. (Things are complicated enough as they are, and nobody needs Sahra Wagenknecht. Perhaps now she is no longer a member of the Bundestag, the talk shows will be less interested in the drivel she keeps spouting, and she will fade into well-deserved obscurity. One can hope.) This means that the CDU/CSU and SPD are free to negotiate a coalition because their combined votes command a majority; how that will work out in the end is anyone's guess.

Today's dinner is Serbische Bohnensuppe (Serbian bean soup, cooked by Marie). Back at university in the 1990s, this dish would suddenly disappear from the refectory's menus and be replaced with “spicy bean soup”. This may or may not have had anything to do with the fact that the refectory was mostly staffed by people from Croatia. Whatever its politics, the stuff sure is yummy.

On University Challenge tonight, UCL is playing Darwin College, Cambridge. Darwin is coasting to a very respectable win (225:120). One can think about Oxbridge colleges in the competition however one wants (I personally believe they're unfairly overrepresented), but Darwin College was doing really well today.