The friendship didn't go that far after all.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz celebrated their friendship extensively at the beginning of the week, recalling early invitations to Hamburg and joint walks at the G7 summit in Elmau, Bavaria.
For almost three days they hardly left each other's side, held public appointments and confidential meals, assured themselves of solidarity against Russia and a climate-friendly future, basic democratic values and common economic interests.
Patrick Bernau
Responsible editor for economy and "value" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
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Ralph Bollman
Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.
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The good-looking Canadian head of government just didn't want to make any promises on one issue, which the German side claimed was quite important: on the question of whether the country could deliver LNG, i.e. liquid gas, to Europe in the short term in order to to get out of their self-inflicted energy crisis.
"One of the problems with LPG is the infrastructure that needs to be built and the investment that requires," he said at the joint press conference.
"The liquid gas plants on the Baltic Sea coast are not yet in place." That was a rather cloudy answer that could just as easily be summed up in two succinct words: Forget it.
The German chancellor, who doesn't like to walk alone ("You'll never walk alone"), will probably have to do that in this case.
It wasn't the first time Scholz had to listen to something like this.
"Norway delivers what we can deliver at most," the Prime Minister there, Jonas Gahr Støre, had told him shortly before during a visit to Oslo.
"It's not that we could simply decide politically: we just do more.
This is about access to new resources.
That's also a question that needs some time.” In May, on a short trip to the Netherlands, it was similar.
"We will never open Groningen to lower prices," Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the German head of government, referring to the gas field in the north of the country where production is to end.
"Obviously we're not going to put hundreds of people at risk of earthquakes for low prices."
Not a single contract
The Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister felt the same, not only on the trip to Canada with Scholz, but also on his solo trips around the world.
It began shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in March when he visited the Emirate on the Qatar.
He was sharply criticized afterwards for bowing deeply to the oil sheikh, who doesn't take democracy and human rights very seriously. A contract has not yet been signed.
When he went to Israel in June, whose government wants to develop a gas field off the coast, he lowered his expectations from the outset.
In between, he also went to Norway, where he got a similar answer as the chancellor.
After all these trips, a fairly sober summary remains: the contacts that Scholz and Habeck tried to initiate for the German suppliers on their trips have not yet led to a concrete contract being signed in a single case.
In addition to capacity problems like in Norway or civil protests like in the Netherlands, in most cases there is a very simple economic reason.
It takes time to develop new gas fields and it costs a lot of money.
The German desire to replace the missing Russian raw material for the next two years, but then to stop consuming natural gas as quickly as possible, can hardly be satisfied in a profitable way.