Owner: Observing Hermann... URL:http://hermann.blog.com/ Join Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:50:46 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Obviously dazed and confused about Germany in general and Berlin in particular, an amnesic American (or so his claim) observes the world around him in quiet (not) desperation. Site statistics:Click here
It can’t happen here anymore because we’re above all that now, honest 2008-03-12 01:05:00 It happens here all the time, of course, just like it does everywhere else, every day of the week. Only it happens in small, bit-size and easily indigestible pieces. It’s not a five-day experiment aimed at teaching students about the rise of fascism at some high school somewhere, it’s the hard-wired willingness or rather need the human animal has to obey the higher-up of the day and ostracize whoever he or she can get his or her hands upon.
That’s just what we do, human being types in this so-called social context of ours. And if we don’t have the luxury of living in an ingeniously devised straightjacket system (some call it democracy) which keeps us from getting away with this type of misbehaviour indefinitely or getting too far with it (we're always getting too far with it Read more:above
, honest
Bed Bagging Bingo 2008-03-11 00:54:00 Although millions of British vacationers have observed and openly criticized this phenomenon over the decades (as recently noted here, for instance), this appears to be the first time that German “bed bagging” has led to an international incident on the open seas. Well, technically speaking it was the mere mention of this “Germanic behavior” which led to the incident. But the captain of the ship did the mentioning, so there.
Genetically programmed to reserve deckchairs with their beach towels whenever and wherever they find them (whether they will actually be using the damned things later is of course quite another matter) Germans are understandably quite touchy about any reference made to this bizarre compulsive behavior of theirs. That is probably why it has become a kind of l Read more:Bingo
Strike called off, strike continues 2008-03-10 02:50:00 You can’t even count on the GDL crazy person train driver union anymore, it seems. Just when everybody was looking forward to start biting and scratching their way to work or school or wherever else it might be against all odds today, now the big deal strike
they promised us last week has been called off because the dispute wasn’t such a big deal after all. Ja, wat denn nun?
At least Berlin has thought ahead as usual and will keep its backup strike up-and-running, continuing its wage disagreement with local transportation service folks here so that buses and subway trains still won’t be running and everyone still has hurt feelings although it also seems at times as if nobody here really cares all that much wirklich (really). So stay tuned. Or don’t. Whatever.
The strike is dead
Strikeville 2008-03-09 01:21:00
alt :
As long as the GDL doesn't take any more hostages than absolutely necessary, I'm sure that we'll all get out of this mess just fine, eventually.
German Justice 2008-03-08 01:34:00 The German
justice system is just as screwed up as it is everywhere else, only different. Not satisfied with merely having a flawed system, the Germans have devised one that regularly blows up in their faces, as well. And nobody even notices anymore. Or maybe I’m the only one that sees it that way. It’s another one of these think-of-our-history-let’s-be-über-politically-correct-and-turn-the-thing-on-its-head-again kind of things.
Think Dirty Harry without the happy end (well, I thought it was a happy end). A convicted child killer is demanding 10,000 euros Schmerzensgeld (compensation) for legal expenses from the state because a cop interrogating him threatened him with torture (a German Dirty Harry can only threaten, of course). The Federal Constitutional Court th Read more:Justice
The next useless Bundeswehr debate in early this week 2008-03-06 23:56:00 Or at least it seems to me like they have to start up one of these ridiculous German army “issues” every week around here these days. As if German soldiers didn’t have enough to worry about already; weight problems from not doing any combat, psychological problems from not doing any combat. Now these soldiers are going to have to worry about being awarded a medal for bravery while not doing any combat, too.
That’s right. Someone has seriously proposed the reintroduction of the Iron Cross 2.0 as a military decoration for “outstanding bravery” during the course of, uh, something, but it won’t be war.
This outrageous proposal has gotten everybody all hot and bothered, of course, but not for the reason you might think. Everyone here is outraged because of that German mil Read more:useless
German experiment backfires, initiates global warming on Mars 2008-03-06 00:07:00 Unconfirmed reports are coming in that a group of mad and moderately drunken German
scientists working at a place called the Innovationszentrum Wiesenbusch Gladbeck have not only succeeded in developing a refrigerator which has harnessed the sun’s energy to cool the little beer they seem to have left, the ammoniac-water absorption process they devised also suddenly went haywire and shot a massive gamma ray burst to Mars which then destroyed what little ozone layer was still available there and initiated Earth’s global warming on that planet, too.
Immediately after the unverantwortliche (irresponsible) experiment and resulting Martian ozone vaporization took place, images of a massive avalanche consisting of melting ice and alien dust particles were captured by a US American spa
German soldiers unfit for some reason 2008-03-05 00:15:00 Talk about fat and sassy. A German
parliamentary report has determined that 40 percent of all German army personnel are overweight, compared to 35 percent in the same civilian age group, and that 8.5 percent of these soldiers are grossly overweight, as well, which is just plain gross. They are also unfit, smoke too much, never clean up their rooms and fidget around whenever you speak to them.
"To put it simply: Our soldiers are just too fat and they don't get enough exercise,” said armed services lawmaker Reinhard Robbe at a news conference in Berlin, visibly angeekelt (disgusted) by the report he was being forced to read. “And I don’t just mean military exercise, either. What we ought to do here is actually have our soldiers do something from time to time. You know, like go to wa
Scottish expert reconstructs Bach’s face without his permission 2008-03-03 23:35:00 After many experts at first mistakenly assumed that the face actually belonged to that strange old fat broad neighbor lady from downstairs, Scottish
forensic scientist Kate Connolly has confirmed that the face she just reconstructed in Germany is none other than the one that once belonged to the legendary and long dead baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
Using Bach’s death mask, a “laser”, and other super-ultra-mega-modern technology, Connolly not only reconstructed the face in record time, she and those who hired her made good on their threat and have now unveiled it to the public, as well. Already having reconstructed the faces of Pharaoh Ramses II and Santa Claus (some call him Saint Nicholas), she is confident that Bach’s new face is 70% accurate.
“Like, this is likel
Dumb art gallery owners make dumb decision to close dumb exhibition 2008-03-03 01:14:00 After a few dopey threats of mindless violence made by some stupid Muslims visiting an idiotic art exhibition in which practically everything being exhibited there was labeled dumb (the Kaaba in Mecca included), the dumb art gallery owners knuckled under and stupidly decided to close their simple-minded exhibition ahead of time.
This dim-witted decision
was made after a group of numskull thugs demanded that the image with the Kaaba on it be removed immediately or else. It shows the famous black cubed structure in Mecca under the heading of “Dumb Stone” which is, admittedly, a dumb heading, but not nearly as dumb as the moronic reaction of the feebleminded simpletons demanding its removal, much less that of the dumb ox gallery owner dunces who then actually did it.
That the goofy Je
There’s one in every crowd 2008-03-13 00:58:00 It looked pretty good for the SPD in Hessen for a few minutes there. But after Roland Koch of the CDU shot himself in the foot with his foreign delinquent campaign that nobody can seem to remember anymore and lost his party’s majority there, the SPD tries and succeeds at topping that piece of brilliance by breaking a vow to voters of never absolutely positively never ever working together with the Left party to form a government. They did try it, of course, with support from their fearless leader Kurt Beck in Berlin even, and now the SPD’s foot is bleeding rather badly, too. And not just in Hessen, either.
Is there something wrong with the drinking water in Frankfurt these days? No, I don’t mean that the SPD shoots itself in the foot there (they do that all the time, wherever they Read more:every
, crowd
No headscarves, but the decision on banning German-grown suicide bombers is still out 2008-03-18 11:12:00 Now that a German
high court has upheld a regional ban on teachers wearing the Muslim headscarf in public schools, many German converts to Islam fear that future court decision
s could also infringe upon their right to carry out suicide bombings against Americans and other infidels, as well.
“This ruling is a clear reflection of the culture of intolerance, fear and injustice that is slowly and insidiously creeping into German society and is directed against peace-loving headgear-toting Muslims everywhere,” said one irate Islamic legal expert. “Like what are they going to forbid us to do next, from carrying out our religiously-motivated car bombing rituals in Afghanistan and Iraq? Germany has no jurisdiction there, you know. Jeez. What has this country come to?”
The heads
The end of the SPD as we know it? 2008-03-16 23:25:00 Understanding politics and government-building in Germany can be pretty complicated at times, even for Germans. So that’s why they introduced this colorful color-coding system of theirs here long ago or at least I think that’s why they did although it doesn’t really help much if you ask me but it goes something like this: The CDU is black, the CSU is blue, the FDP is yellow, the Greens are green, the Left is red and the SPD used to be red. And that’s apparently the problem with the SPD these days because they were once red as I said before the Left took their red. Now the SPD has pretty much been demoted from Volkspartei status or soon will be and is more pink than anything else although black and blue would probably be more accurate a term but these colors have already been taken
Curveball comes back to Germany 2008-03-22 20:44:00 It’s not very often that German disinformation gets blamed for contributing to the grim process that led up to the invasion of Iraq, so I feel it’s very important to get the word out as much as possible whenever the truth sticks up it’s ugly little head as, well, this kind of intelligence screw-up couldn’t have happened to or have been disseminated by a nicer country.
Of course no self-respecting politically correct person anywhere has ever liked being reminded of the fact that intelligence specialists from all over Europe and elsewhere were convinced that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was preparing weapons of mass destruction before the American-led invasion took place, just like the CIA claimed, but remember one must, or at least should, but you won’t have to of course, so don’t Read more:comes
, Germany
Sales of animal parts to China restricted 2008-03-21 10:57:00 Upset about the Chinese government’s violent crackdown on protestors in Tibet, the German government has announced that it will suspend the sales of Berlin Zoo animals and Berlin Zoo animal parts to China
until further notice.
Used by the Chinese to produce some of their wildly popular and traditional way cool mumbo jumbo medicine, this bold German move comes only a few weeks after relations between the two countries had been patched up sort of kind of. Tensions began after Chancellor Angela Merkel had had the unmitigated gall to receive exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama in her Chancellery last September.
The Chinese are upset because Mr. Lama and the rest of the people of Tibet still want them to leave the country (their country) which they have held under military occupation since Read more:Sales
BND hysterical again 2008-03-24 12:05:00 Well, not really. It’s just that whenever American intelligence agencies do this kind of thing, it gets laughed and sneered at and called conspiratorial at best and hysterical at worst, or vice versa. Well, at least it does over here. Germans are generally much more cool, calm and collected than Americans are, you see. So that’s why whenever the German BND issues one of its monthly warnings about imminent al-Qaida attacks to take place in Germany which never take place, this time because al-Qaida has set up a new base in North Africa somewhere (huh?), well, people get hysterical, I mean conspiratorial, I mean listen.
That Germany still has a lot of its North African operatives still operating down there shouldn’t really surprise anybody, but a lot of these guys must be pretty
Russian art critics active in Berlin again 2008-03-27 12:06:00 German police fear that a group of Russian
art critics
may have possibly abducted a Russian artist living in Berlin
who herself was critical to Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church which was probably the reason why she was living in a "safe" place like Berlin in the first place but these art critics are clearly of the big-time and international type and will stop at nothing to do their job and express their criticism and intend to show Russian artists like her that you can run if you wish but you cannot hide, at least not when it comes to creating and exhibiting controversial art critical to the powers that be in Russia, these being none other than the Russian art critics themselves, of course, and that if you want to live safely in the future it would probably be better for you
Hard as Jell-O as usual 2008-03-29 11:03:00 This video was promoting ideas which were not nice and unpleasant to hear, especially for those who might kill us otherwise, so it had to be verboten.
Just look at that poster. We don’t want to end up living in the US American Wild West, now do we? Did you know that in that country (in the non-virtual part of it at least) you can purchase and even read a book called Mein Kampf, for instance, and not be threatened with a car bomb because of it? It’s that Wild. You can’t imagine having that kind of Wildness in virtual America or even in Germany can you? Me neither.
Nope, this freedom of speech stuff only leads to hurt feelings and that would be a dog gone shame and that is why over here in Germany (or "out there" in virtual America) there are concerned watchdogs everywher
Wilder’s latest film out 2008-03-28 11:25:00 No, not Billy Wilder (this guy uses an s without the apostrophe), although the film is a new-fangled version of “Some Like It Hot”, I suppose. Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders wants to cause some anti-Islamic commotion by launching “Fitna” (“strife” in Arabic), his video attack collage expressly directed against the Koran, and he will most surely succeed at doing so. Is this a good thing? Probably not, his aim clearly being to distort the Muslim world as much as Islamic radicals seek to distort ours. But hey, somebody's got to do it, oder (right)?
These silly Europeans. Demonstratively speaking one’s mind is a wonderful thing, but if it never leads to concrete action, well, what’s the point? If you are not willing to confront Islamic radicals down at the grou
Power down and out in Berlin 2008-04-02 19:23:00 It looks like there’s a new twist to German plans to bury their excess CO2 when nobody else is looking and no one really is looking all that close if you ask me.
The new twist seems to be that piping their hot air underground was more of a pipe dream than anything else and won’t wirklich (really) work so they’ll just begin shutting down some of their coal-burning power plants this summer instead, in old-fashioned American-style rolling blackout fashion, and get rid of even more CO2 than they were not getting rid of before by not creating it in the first place.
That half of Germany’s electricity is produced with coal is bad enough, I guess, but that they won’t even be able to pump the CO2 created in the process into some super cool secret underground repository for future gene Read more:Berlin
Those were the days 2008-04-01 20:38:00 Or maybe they weren’t. Although most Germans probably don’t even know who the Red Baron was, the ones who do know also know, instinctively or otherwise, that they aren’t supposed to like him.
He was a so-called war hero, after all. And he was a German one, too. Worse still, he was one of those aristocrat types and therefore a class enemy and on the wrong side of history and all that. And to make matters even worse, some even claim that he was actually an emotional and sensitive and chivalrous man and not at all the cold-blooded killer all so-called war hero types like himself invariably have to be, German or not, past, present or future.
So when a “taboo-breaking” German film about the famous First World War flying ace Manfred von Richthofen premiered in Berlin the other nigh
Eight will get you fifteen 2008-04-08 01:39:00 Which will mean about eight again. You try and ignore this stuff for as long as you can, but when a German court rules that a woman who killed eight (maybe nine) of her newborn babies and buried them in flower pots in the garden of her parents’ home got sentenced to sage und schreibe (believe it or not) fifteen whole years of prison (which will break down to about half of that, of course), well, you really do start to wonder if something very strange is maybe not going on here after all. About one year for each baby killed? Not bad.
The latest baby killing the other day is just another in a very long line of recent infant murders which have practically all taken place in Germany’s Wild East. And when the Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt (himself an “Easterner”) suggested that Read more:Eight
More Gas 2008-04-07 01:36:00 Or is less gas more? The Germans call biofuel Biosprit but whether you call it that or bioethanol or biobutanol or biodiesel or whatever else kind of bio something you want to call this new poo poo power stuff, well, it’s all a bunch of gas in the end. Or at least it is whenever politicians get their hands on it (yuk), which you can’t really do because it is gas after all, come to think of it.
So now the German government has tossed plans to increase the amount of bioethanol to get mixed up in the regular gasoline next year and Mr. Big Environment minister Sigmar Gabriel himself is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore for a while. It’s the next admission of a failed policy mandated by politicians who maybe ought to should not not pretend that they know all that m
Russian space shuttle won’t fly in Germany, either 2008-04-09 00:59:00 So they shipped it up the Rhine at 5 miles an hour where it just spent the night in Cologne.
The Soviet Russian
Buran orbiter, which never orbited, designed to plant Cold War cold space mines among other things, is being put to rest at Germany
’s Speyer Technical Museum, of all places. Business-savvy museum technocrats figure that Buran will be better off drawing admission fees here than gathering dust in some long forgotten Russian warehouse somewhere. And I’m sure that they’re right.
I am a bit surprised at all of the sudden space race curiosity here in Germany, however. The Germans have always been a bit sceptical when it comes to space exploration and space racing and space militarization. And I don’t blame them, either
. After all, they invented it.
Looks like this is your
Thou shalt not use his moustache in vain 2008-04-11 01:53:00 Damn. First it was my guitar wants to kill your mama and now it’s my mama wants to kill your guitar.
Frank Zappa’s widow Gail is suing the organisers of the German open-air Zappanale, now in its nineteenth year, claiming that the organizers must cough up $400,000 for the right to use her husband's name and his trademarked (by her) moustache/goatee combo or else. She even wants a statue of Zappa in Bad Doberan, the small town in which the festival is held, to be removed. Huh? Whatever. The Germans really are crazy about Frank Zappa, I guess.
Come on, Gail. I am the slime (as in you), or what? You are absolutely free to do this, of course, but these guys can’t afford no shoes as it is already so wake up from your overnight sensation and drop the cosmic debris and stop pretending yo
Robotic waiters? 2008-04-10 01:41:00 I thought they were already. Here in Germany, I mean. Anyway, thanks to “modern food preparation technology” you can now go out to eat at a place in Nuremburg where you don’t have to deal with those annoying, snooty and pesky waiters at all anymore. The machines do all of that for them now. “Jeez. Just leave me alone, HAL. I’m tryin’ to eat.”
No tips necessary, either. And that’s probably why this place is so popular at the moment. Just think Jetsens only more non-cartoon-like. You place your order per touch screen and then your food slides down these spiral and futuristic metallic tracks directly to your table. And for a small additional fee I bet you can probably even have this stuff pre-chewed for you.
Talk about science marching on. In the land of ideas, I mean. Tha Read more:Robotic
You don’t mine, do you? 2008-04-13 11:43:00 In yet another futile attempt to overcome the decades of pacifism they and their fellow Germans have been forced to endure after that unfortunate World War II thing (and those rather unpleasant Nazi atrocities many still associate with it), a renegade and somewhat drunken German special forces unit has taken the initiative and attacked Great Britain once again, on their weekend off, this time using a rusty old German underwater mine they set off near anything-but-heavily-populated Stert Island in Sommerset. Several fish and a seagull were killed instantly.
The six drunken prankster German soldiers leading the surprise attack then disappeared just as quickly as they had come, into numerous pubs located all along Bridgewater Bay, repeatedly. British military intelligence officials are sti
You don’t mine, do you? 2008-04-13 11:43:00 In yet another futile attempt to overcome the decades of pacifism they and their fellow Germans have been forced to endure after that unfortunate World War II thing (and those rather unpleasant Nazi atrocities many still associate with it), a renegade and somewhat drunken German special forces unit has taken the initiative and attacked Great Britain once again, on their weekend off, this time using a rusty old German underwater mine they set off near anything-but-heavily-populated Stert Island in Sommerset. Several fish and a seagull were killed instantly.
The six drunken prankster German soldiers leading the surprise attack then disappeared just as quickly as they had come, into numerous pubs located all along Bridgewater Bay, repeatedly. British military intelligence officials are sti
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