On a balmy summer night in 2017 I came to Minsk. Everybody was out on the streets, dancing, drinking, schmoozing, watching an impressive fireworks. By day I went to the great market mall. Stands were overloaded with delicious cheese, sausage, vegetable and fruits. I loved the great humor of the market women. Like in other Eastern European metropolis like Belgrade, Tirana, Riga, Kiew and Odessa tomatoes tasted like tomatoes and cherries like cherries. I bought fresh hot flat red which came right out of the wood-fired oven. I thought about Aldi, Lidl and Rewe and how we had readily allowed “super”markets to kill our market hall tradition in Germany. On my second evening in a wonderfully manicured park surrounded by ponds and and streams there was a band covering AC/DC’s Highway to Hell – a bad omen for markets and politics?