Angela Merkel's life after the chancellorship...sleep first

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the world's most powerful woman for 16 years, says she'd like to start her retirement "with a little sleep", but her reticence about her future is fueling a torrent of speculation.

A few days later, on the eighth of December, the chancellor took over the reins of power to her successor, Olaf Scholz, after four mandates at the head of Germany.

Then, the diplomatic summits, crisis meetings, and emergency plans to combat COVID-19 that occupied their days come to an end.

Indeed, the 67-year-old chancellor will not regret leaving the responsibility for solving the country's problems to herself.

"I will understand very quickly that this is someone else's responsibility," she said during a visit to Washington this summer, with her trademark smile on her face.

Its priority, as it has repeatedly said, is to take a rest after a thirty-year political career.

And she declared in the same statement in Washington that she imagines herself "trying to read something," adding: "I'll start closing my eyes because I'm tired, I'll sleep a little, and then we'll see where that leads me."

Writing or excursions in nature?

And if Merkel left the questions of all those who interviewed her about her future projects unanswered, it is because she herself seems to be really wondering about the matter.

She recently explained during a public meeting that since her first term as an MP in 1990, shortly after German unification, "I no longer ask myself, of course, what interests me most outside politics."

She continued, "I don't have unlimited time in front of me. This means that I now want to think about what I want to do in the next period of my life."

There are many possibilities in this regard, and Merkel asked: "Do I want to write, do I want to talk, do I want to take nature trips, do I want to stay at home, do I want to travel the world?"

She concluded, "I have decided not to do anything for the time being and wait for what comes next," disappointing once again those who wanted to see her announce a lecture tour, write her memoirs, or take a trip to the American Rockies, as she once mentioned.

And last week, she was seen in a video clip that spread widely on the "Tik Tok" application, in the sports shoes section of a supermarket in Berlin, and activists on the Internet concluded that she was preparing for an active retirement period.

Merkel's predecessors rarely went without work for long.

After leaving the Chancellery in 1982, Helmut Schmidt became associate editor of the reference weekly Die Zeit.

Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder also succeeded in exploiting their experiences. The former established a consulting company and the latter carried out lobbying missions, including taking over the board of directors of the Russian oil giant "Rosneft" in a controversial role.

Novelist David Xavier imagined another possible transformation for Merkel: In a comic police novel released a few months ago, he launched the character "Miss Merkel", inspired to some extent by Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple", in an investigation of a mysterious crime that directed the chancellor The former of Hana retired.

And it is assumed that Merkel will now have time to benefit with her husband, Joachim Sauer, from a modest house they own, 80 km north of Berlin, in the former East Germany, where she grew up.

Merkel, who is keen to give the image of an ordinary woman like other women and does not pay attention to socialites, told the weekly magazine "Ponte" that she would like to grow vegetables and potatoes in the garden of that house.

This program will not suffice to employ the seven assistants and two drivers who have been placed in the service of the former chancellor, who will receive a pension of 15,000 euros, according to a calculation carried out by the taxpayers' association, unless the former woman decides to engage in academic activity.

She has earned honorary doctorates from countless universities around the world, and has decided to take a tour after promising her to come back for longer discussions with the students.

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