Observing Hermann...

In a highly-theatrical and pitiful show of shameless self-indulgence, a Berlin school director has officially asked for the closing of the school she is in charge of running.

In what is supposed to come down to being a public capitulation to school violence but is in reality an admission of the inadequacy of Germany’s archaic school system in general and the failure of it’s pampered and anti-authoritarian teachers in particular, the director claims that “school violence is no longer under control” and that “the most violent aggressors have now become the role models” here.

When asked about her own personal contribution to the establishment of good role models, the director refused to comment.

That there really isn't all that much school violence here (at least compared to, say, the USA) isn’t really the issue. Or the fact that only about 20% of the kids at her school are “real” Germans. The real issue is that none of these “educators” are prepared to do their jobs and are stressed out because of it (but they don’t understand that) and expect someone else to do their work for them so they can retire when they’re 50 like they planned to do when deciding to become teachers in the first place.

Of course, that most parents here think exactly the same way when it comes to raising their own children does not exactly make matters any easier.

I know! They should reform the school system and then everything will be fine again! When was it again that the new government was planning to check that off its list of reforms? Let’s see. They’re doing the medical system reform this week. With any amount of luck maybe the school system reform can be unter Dach und Fach (all finished and tucked away) before summer vacation comes around.

Ich muss unbedingt noch eine Kur machen!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum!

Media Markt, the huge European electronics discount chain where you can buy a television set for like 5 euros or something unless they’re on sale at which point you can really get them cheap, has had to cancel one of its television commercials (these cost more than 5 euros, by the way) in which Germany’s Polish neighbors are depicted as being thieves.

In the spot, Polish soccer fans (the World Cup is almost here, remember?) outsmart the store’s employees so thoroughly that they are afterwards left standing dumbstruck and speechless, their merchandize is missing, and so are their pants.

“We apologize for any misunderstanding that might have come about due to this unfortunate, uhm, misunderstanding,” said a store manager. “It was wrong to depict the Poles as being thieves and we apologize for this. We have taken the proper measures to insure that something like this will never happen again and  will soon be bringing out a new commercial in which Rumanians will be doing the stealing. Aren’t they awful? Poles are just lazy, everybody knows that."

Ich bin doch nicht Dieb oder Diebstahl ist geil oder wat?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich warte schon die ganze Zeit!

In soccer, I mean - in Fußball (football), of course. You know, Befreiungsschlag as in breakthrough. No, I’m referring to the United States, for crying out loud! The Germans beat the pants off us last Wednesday (4 to 1) and they are celebrating it as a major big-time Befreiungsschlag. And I can’t blame them, either, considering their disastrous defeat against Italy recently. They’re terribly nervous about the World Cup being hosted here this summer you see, and now they can finally ausatme (exhale, as in relax) again.  

Which made me think (and that’s always dangerous). Why is it that Germany is so frightfully good at (re)organizing their sporting teams and well, sub-optimal when it comes to reorganizing their country? If a German Fußball club starts to sputter and spurt around a bit for a few weeks and, heaven forbid, drops slowly but steadily in the ranking table, that club’s manager will do something about it or he is out of a job. As in: What part of “you’re fired” don’t you understand?   

Everybody understands that here. It’s called consensus. We’ll give you a little more time buddy, but we’re measuring it in days not in weeks and the clock just started ticking so make it happen NOW. And in a country world famous for consensus in practically all areas of its “social order”, it is all the more strange that this type of urgency seems to be missing completely when it comes to the government, that is, reform level.

Something happens to the c word on its way up, I guess. It evaporates at higher altitudes. The only thing that any recently elected German government (and opposition) has ever been able to agree about is the need for reform (the r word): Reform of the employment system, reform of the retirement system, reform of the health system, reform of the medical system, reform of the education system, reform of the federal government system itself etc. 

And make it happen NOW! Right? No, es hat doch  noch Zeit (there will still be enough time for that), it seems. Or so it appears. And this “so it appears” appears to be so regardless of how low the government drops in the ranking table. Perhaps that’s the problem. The government can’t be fired immediately. And besides, the Germans have been world champions so often in the past (see export, industrial innovation, financial power), that nobody here really believes it won’t stay that way in the future. That kind of a Befreiungsschlag can come later. Oder (right)?

And so when Angela Merkel openly supported German coach Jürgen Klinsmann recently, convinced that he and his team were on the right path to victory at  the World Cup this summer, she seems to have been right on the money.  Now they (and maybe she now, or what?) can sit back and relax a bit. They’ve won some breathing space, some more time. 

Even if it was done so by beating “so eine Mannschaft” (a team like) the USA - just like they walked all over us at the Winter Olympics too, by the way. The dirt bags.

I’m told that the medical system reform is on the agenda this week. Will the two big coalition partners have agreed upon anything here, say, this time next month? 

And more importantly, when will the USA ever get the chance to play Germany in baseball?

Submitted to Carnival of German-American Relations

Who would have thought that? Not me. And that’s even how one of the German articles about this rapidly developing story begins. With that first sentence, I mean. Never mind.

A professor from the University of Ulster figured all of this out yesterday (not that guy up there). It was unclear as to whether or not said professor is of German descent, however, so let’s take all of this with a grain of salt. 

Anyway, he thinks that it’s the cold temperatures up here in Northern and Middle Europe that make the native brain swell up so much like it does. Apparently they had to hunt more in the past and eat more meat in the winter and meat makes you smart or something. Or so the theory goes.

I don’t know if I can buy that, though. Maybe they were just lousier shots and had to hunt more because of that or were real gluttons or just watched less TV than the other Stone Aged peoples did. I think I’m going to have to write this guy.

But before I do, here are some of the results (in average IQ): Germany 107, Poland 106, Sweden 104 and Britain 100.

The French got one of the lowest rankings by the way (94), but won hands down in the special category of Smartest Ass European. Just kidding. I am told that the Americans will be evaluated next year. If they can ever figure out how to take the damned test, that is.

I haven't the slightest idea what any of this is acually supposed to mean. But then again, I'm one of the ones who hasn't had his IQ checked yet, so perhaps that's part of the explanation. 

Ich bin doch nicht blöd.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Na gut, aber nur intelligente.

We had something like a Denglish party yesterday. We were watching a little TV and suddenly decided to start counting all the English-lingua-franca-Euro-idiomatic terms or whatever it is you want to call them terms we could find while switching around channels and gave up after about twenty minutes. Es war like absolutely unglaublich. Even Hermann was shocked. And he’s the worst (as in best) Denglish speaker I know.

I mean, it’s well known that English has successfully infiltrated the native speech patterns of natives here and  there all over the world and all but it’s one thing if you want to try and express some new marketing concepts or some new technical development and quite another when you can’t order a pizza anymore because you (as a native English speaker) don’t understand the English terms they are using to describe what’s supposed to be on it (the damned pizza, I mean). It’s a two-edged sword, you see.

But hey, that’s the Entwicklung (development). I’m just going to have to live with it – like the rest of us i.e. you. And besides, I for one refuse to speak German “in accordance with its syntactical norms”, whatever that means. This may sound arrogant but it really isn’t because I also refuse to speak English in accordance with its syntactical norms. I guess there’s no need for me to expect this from anybody else.  

Or how did Gayle Tufts, the American entertainer popular here in Berlin, put it? “Dinglisch is eine ganz besondere Sprache, it’s halvest Deutsch halvest English and basically what most Americans speaks for the first zehn bis fünfzehn Jahre that we live here in Deutschland.”

Hey, da werde ich ja richtig enthusiastic.

Deutsche Kommentare? Absolutely!

German President Horst Köhler has made it clear that he expects the Bundeswehr to have clear plans for getting out of the Kongo should they ever actually go there on a planned (sort of) peace keeping mission but that’s still open and those kind of details have yet to be worked out in detail by detail by detail but regardless of that we have to be ready for all eventualities because one doesn’t just überstürze (dive head first into) things and should German soldiers ever actually go there we must make it clear to all parties involved that we can really only stay for a minute honest and okay just one more cup of coffee but then we really must be getting back home again and don’t forget to stop by and visit us whenever you’re in the neighborhood.

The current turmoil down there in the Kongo is expected to end magically after a short four month German i.e. European Einsatz (mission) at which point the Bundeswehr can then exit strategically and return home to a ticker-tape parade along 5^th Avenue in New York City or something.

Claims that the planned Kongo mission is “the purest show” and that by placing about 100 soldiers in a metropolis of 9 million (Kinshasa) to keep the peace in country larger than Western Europe is “dummes Zeug” (absolute nonsense) are views obviously not shared by President Köhler.

“Okay,” he said when pressed on this. “100 soldiers may not seem like much at first but hey, these are German soldiers, dude.”

Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen. Okay, mit wenig Waffen. Aber ohne Soldaten, ja?

German comments? Logisch!

Sonja gave up being a vegan a few weeks back. Hermann thinks that it had to do with the raging (not) bird flu pandemic that was about to break out at that point but didn’t. You know, like she must have been thinking that we were all going to die soon anyway so hey, she figured, I might as well have a decent meal or two before it hits.

She’s a very practical person, Sonia is. And she’s also been porking out like crazy since then, too. She sometimes gets this really weird Tasmanian Devil look in her eyes when she comes into the kitchen and then klingt aus (checks out for a bit) and objects start flying around in the air and stuff (yeah, that cartoon Tasmanian Devil one). Will and I still have to scrounge around for food here like when she used to be a vegan, but only now we can do it openly. It’s just as hopeless as it was then, though. Now she’s always been there first.

At any rate, most natives seem to be bored with the coming pandemic these days. And I suspect that eating habits have changed here and there in other households, as well. Some adventurous souls have even started speculating (in public) that there may not even be a coming pandemic at all. This hasn’t slowed Sonia down, though. She is also a very skeptical person and would never buy a harebrained theory like that.

Anyway, she and Bettina have invited us to diner sort of tonight if we do the potatoes and the salad and wash up afterwards. We’ll be having chicken, I’m told. There will be three chickens, to be exact. But they won’t be there for very long.

This is stupendous news, in more ways than one. Will and I have already flipped the coin. He has to sit next to Sonia. Sein Pech (tough luck, pal).

Brust oder Keule?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Remember her?

Gone.

How about her?

Retired.

And now the air is even getting thin for all of that Nachwuchs (next generation) talent on Germany’s Next Top Model TV show. I’ve been keeping an eye on how this has been developing these past few weeks and months because I’m a professional and that’s just what professionals do and well, jeez, it’s like one of these girls seems to get tossed out every single episode or something!

Now they’re down to three. If this keeps up much longer there will only be one left. I mean, how much longer can this keep going on (other than twice)? What do we watch then? This obviously hasn't been thought through properly. I’m going to have to write a letter.

And just between you and me, of course Yvonne will win.

Sie werden ja wie Fleisch behandelt! Wann kommt die nächste Sendung noch mal?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

So do the right thing and give them back already. Like immediately even. Please, Ismael, Selcuk and Fatih, otherwise it might come to some ugly extradition procedure or something.

“Sonnenlischt” (sunshine, but with a Turkish accent) or something like that is the name of this way big hit (not) that all “die Kids” (the kids) are listening to and/or making fun of these days.

Grup Tekkan is three Turkish kids from Germersheim wherever that is (but it’s not in Turkey) who are riding this fluke of an unexpected gravy train as far as it will let them go and they’ve already signed a record contract and are now even going to get a few more miles out of the deal publicity-wise because it’s turned out that some kid in Winnipeg recorded something amazing similar to Sonnenlischt a few years back and left it lying around in the Internet and forget all about it and believe me that’s where it still belongs. Forgotten, that is.

These beats are amazingly bad. You know how when you say something is so bad that it’s good? Well, this song is so bad that it’s bad. Listen to it and/or watch it at your own risk. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Es hat was. Gegen mich, meine ich. Und ich will, dass es aufhört.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Lobisch.

Natives sehen schwarz (see black) all the time. No, not black as in black and white television. Black as in dark as in negative. That’s just what they do. Deal with it.

And the latest results of a poll conducted with 50-year-and-older natives only confirm this. Germany came in last place (again) among the other European countries surveyed when it comes to the outlook about the future.

Of course generally, when you’re over 50, there’s not all that much more future to get optimistic about anyway I suppose, hardy har har, but specifically, when asked about “the social system”, “the economic situation” and “old age care” in particular, native reactions were reported to be “close to depressive.” And that was the good news.

That’s right. These results seemed to cheer up some of the poll-takers a bit. “The Germans tend to exaggerate, both in the good and in the bad.” And these latest negative results seem to be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to taking that all important step toward finally seeing the future in a more positive light. Huh? Yup, apparently the perception out there is so negative, that even the most enthusiastic pessimist can’t help but start expecting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel sometime soon.

But wait… Let’s think this through (you know that they will). Once this new optimism about the pessimism is out in the open, it can only lead to more skepticism about the future because… Oh the hell with it. Let’s just let them figure it out.

Es geht mir jetzt schon viel besser. Wirklich.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Ich bitte darum!