Two summit meetings will take place in Berlin in the coming days.

The Prime Minister's Conference is back in action this Thursday, primarily virtual.

Politicians are desperately looking for a suitable strategy in the pandemic, which threatens to get out of control.

Two days later the top game of the Bundesliga takes place in the capital: Union against Hertha BSC on Saturday (6.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky).

A very real encounter - in front of a full hut.

Hard to believe, but true: the stadium may, for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, be filled to the maximum, regardless of the dramatic increase in the number of corona cases. 22,012 spectators. The Berlin Senate allowed it. The 2G rule applies and all fans must wear masks. Hertha defender Niklas Stark finds it all “a bit strange”. But not just him.

In Berlin, full utilization of the stadium is desired and approved - and next door there is a risk of overloading the intensive care units in the clinics. Even at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, which recommended that major events be canceled the previous week, the derby will be given goose bumps, but only from a medical point of view. In the Netherlands, the government has already decided this week to return ghost games to partial lockdown. That, in turn, is the great horror scenario for German professional football.

However, it would be a bit easy if you just said that professional football hadn't heard the shot in the third Corona season, even if that's the case at the Alte Försterei. But many clubs have been working intensively on corresponding and constantly changing concepts for weeks and months, whether 3 G, 2 G, 3 G +. Now 2 G + also comes into play. Rather, it is in the stadiums like everywhere else in the country: Everything is possible, there even blocks for vaccinated and unvaccinated people - and yet hardly anyone can see through.

Absurdities are now part of everyday life, even in professional football.

The fact that all fans have to be vaccinated or recovered in order to watch unvaccinated players at work caused heads to be shaken across the country with the Kimmich case.

And now FC Bayern, which is increasingly affected by corona infections, has to ask itself after the new corona rules in Bavaria whether its unvaccinated stars are even allowed to go to the hotel before the away game.

It is now said that they are allowed to spend the night.

This is where the exception rule applies: an accommodation stay that cannot be postponed.

But just coming to the hotel for a team meeting is not possible.

Then 2 G applies again. But tomorrow everything can be different again.

Before the second Corona winter, only one thing is clear: the encounter with uncertainty has only just begun.