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EDUCATION

Merkel wishes she could be a gymnast

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted she would like to be a gymnast in an interview for Frau im Speigel women's magazine.

Merkel wishes she could be a gymnast
Photo: DPA

While she may have been voted the “World’s Most Powerful Woman” by Forbes magazine, Merkel still has a few things she’d like to achieve.

“I would love to be able to do gymnastics on the balance beam,” she told the magazine. “But I’ve found it’s not my strength.”

The 54-year-old German leader would also enjoy increasing her historical knowledge, learning French, and perhaps even devote a semester to courses in law, she said.

“But it looks like I won’t be able to achieve even one of these in the near future,” she told Frau im Speigel.

Merkel also said she had never intended to be a politician, and that she’d hoped instead to be a school teacher.

“The reason for another choice of career was that teachers in former East Germany were told to make the Christian beliefs of their students problematic. And I couldn’t imagine doing that,” she said.