Before she's off, Merkel Wednesday rounded up the press corps in Berlin for one final pre-holiday news conference.

This year, the chancellor should be more ready than ever for a vacation. A new poll by Forsa for news magazine Stern has been an unpleasant slap in the face for Merkel. It unveiled the worst-ever popularity ratings for her conservative coalition government, which has proved to be a rather shaky team after nine months of name-calling and loud differences over virtually anything from taxes to healthcare to painful budget cuts.

Yet despite the bad press, Merkel appeared relaxed and smiling Wednesday, sporting a new summer haircut and brushing off the criticism of her leadership style by focusing on the positive -- Germany's economic comeback after the economic and financial crisis.

Due to high demand for German products from Asia, the motor of Europe's largest economy is comfortably purring. The jobless rate is lower than before the crisis began, a fact international observers rate as a "small miracle," Merkel said. The steps Germany took to rein in the national budget -- Merkel aims to cut some $100 billion until 2014 -- and her efforts to stabilize Greece and the wider eurozone paid off, she said.

"Decisions we took during the past months were sometimes criticized but they are now proving to be correct," she said.

And inside her feisty Cabinet, things are back to normal -- at least that's what she says.

The chancellor insisted her coalition would survive the next three years and is already showed signs of improvement after an admittedly "bumpy start."

"The coalition has pulled itself together a bit now, though I can't promise there won't be any more discussions," she said, well aware about a bumpy fall that might lie ahead of her. It will include decisions on the country's future energy mix, the look of the future military and an extensive welfare reform -- at a time when Merkel's coalition has lost its majority in the upper house of parliament.

The public, angry about the political infighting of the past, doesn't seem to trust the new-found peace.

A poll released Wednesday by the independent polling institute Forsa indicates that the governing parties together got 34 percent support, 14 points down from the September election. It was the lowest support level for the conservative coalition in in 24 years, and one that would leave Merkel and her conservative allies no chance for winning a federal election.

"Voters were unhappy with the way we were discussing things inside the coalition," Merkel conceded. "You can disagree on issues but the way we disagreed was unacceptable."

So unacceptable, actually, that voices surfaced that were calling for Merkel's resignation -- especially after having to replace a total of six conservative leaders (state governors and the federal president) due to resignations and job changes.

Toward the end of Wednesday's news conference, one journalist asked Merkel how long she felt doing her current job. In other words, was she thinking about stepping down?

"Right now it's fun for me and we'll leave it at that," Merkel answered, drawing laughter from the journalists, before sending out one final friendly warning, "You can be quite certain that you will see me again after the vacation."

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