IT WAS the Greens’ turn on October 10th to face the negotiating team of Angela Merkel, the chancellor, as she tries to find a coalition partner to form a new government. A pairing of the chancellor’s centre-right camp with a party that came out of the 1970s counterculture once seemed unthinkable at federal level. Even now, several of Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian allies barely disguise their perception of the Greens as hirsute hippies. To many Greens, in turn, conservatives are Spießer, staid bourgeois. Nonetheless, a partnership between the two parties has become more imaginable since the election on September 22nd.That has much to do with Mrs Merkel’s only alternative, the Social Democrats (SPD), who are due to meet her team for their second round of talks on October 14th. Several party elders appear open to a “grand coalition”, even retreating from categorical demands to raise taxes. But one SPD negotiator, Hannelore Kraft, the premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, seems bent on souring any good feelings, perhaps because she herself wants to run against Mrs Merkel in 2017 and would prefer to be in opposition until then.So Mrs Merkel may need the Greens, who will be the smallest party in the new parliament after getting only 8.4% of votes, down from 10.7% in 2009. This bad showing improves the odds of a deal, because it has set the Greens temporarily adrift…