Something like this was waiting to happen.

Here's the background: Smoking in Hamburg's public buildings has been banned since January 1. But Hamburg's most famous citizen, ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt, is also his country's best-known Qualmender (heavy smoker). The leader of West Germany from 1974 to 1982, Schmidt puffs away on menthol ciggies wherever he goes -- no-smoking signs be damned -- except in church and, earlier, in the Bundestag, where he switched to snuff. Hamburg's prestigious weekly newspaper Die Zeit, which Schmidt has co-published since 1983, even launched an interview series with him last year called Auf eine Zigarette mit Helmut Schmidt ("A Cigarette With Helmut Schmidt").

Here's what happened: At a New Year's reception in a Hamburg theater, guests of honor Schmidt and his wife, Loki, also a chain smoker, did what they always do: They lit up. The popular Bild tabloid published pictures of the puffers, prompting a non-smokers group in faraway Wiesbaden to report them to the police for violating the no-smoking ban and "causing bodily harm."

The online edition of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel quoted Hamburg's chief prosecutor as saying late Friday that while smoking was unhealthy, "it is not to be assumed" that the Schmidts caused bodily harm -- certainly not to the people who've accused them. Loki and Smoky, as the Schmidts are fondly known, may yet get nicked for flouting the ban, though.

Loki, by the way, is 88. Smoky, who's had four heart bypass operations and wears a pacemaker, is 89.

I should be happy.

Germany, at long last, is cracking down on smoking. Much of Europe already has. Smoking has been banned at workplaces in Ireland -- including pubs, where having a cig with a pint of Guinness was a way of life -- since 2004. This past February even La Grande Nation, land of the late, great Gauloises smoker Jean-Paul Sartre, stubbed out the weed in many public places. Germany's ban, covering federal government buildings and public transport, takes effect on September 1. Naughty nicotine fiends risk fines of up to 1,000 euros. What's more, the minimum age required to buy tobacco products rises from 16 years to 18. The under-18 crowd won't be allowed to puff away in public anymore, and that includes the bus stop outside our bedroom window -- opposite a middle school I fondly call Monkey Island.

So far, so good.

Germany fell short of a general smoking ban in public places because the federal government lacks constitutional power to regulate facilities under states' control. Meanwhile, leaders of the country's 16 states have agreed on smoking bans of their own -- with exceptions. Restaurants and large pubs can permit smoking in rooms closed off from the rest of the premises, for example. That's fine. Soon we'll be able to go out, tip an elbow, and return without smelling as if we'd sat all evening by a campfire.

I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, strange to say. Sticking rolls of burning leaves in my mouth was never really appealing, even before the health hazards were hammered home to everyone and his uncle Dudley. I did, however, puff on a couple of cigars in my youth, as a joke, with my buddies, à la big shots, on payday. My wife quit smoking about five years ago, thanks to a gradual process of enlightenment encouraged by gentle badgering.

I should be happy.

Our Hamburg surroundings are getting more smoke-free. Not so the place where the air should be freshest though, namely our apartment's balcony. At the back of our building, facing the North and Baltic seas some 60 miles off, our little flower-filled paradise looks out on a stand of tall, leafy trees along a proverbial babbling brook. Behind the balcony's western wall -- upwind, in other words -- lies another balcony, the lair of the Smoke-Spewing Monster, our new neighbor.

I don't know which brand of cigarettes the monster devours. Stinky Strike? Dunghill? Magnitogorsk Fats? I only know that I can even be sitting in my workroom, at the apartment's farthest end, and my nose tells me when the monster is OUT THERE, lighting up for the umpteenth time.

Home, sweet home.