Author Archives: Hermann Observer
I Got The Power
The power bill, I mean. The Power Bill Blues, actually. Just like everybody else here in Germany.
The electricity prices in Germany are the highest in the EU. A household here shells out 1000 euros annually (approx. $1,370). The French pay half. The EU average is around 700 euros.
Is this what they meant by the Energiewende (energy turnaround)? The power may be renewable here but I’m not sure how much longer the money is going to be.
Well, at least the electricity prices in Germany will be going up even higher again next year.
Bei den Strompreisen gehört Deutschland innerhalb der EU zu den Spitzenreitern. Ein Haushalt zahlt mehr als 1000 Euro, der EU-Schnitt liegt bei 700. Und im kommenden Jahr dürfte es noch teurer werden.
Heul-TV
Or Cryin’-Time TV, if you prefer. Or how about it’s-time-for-those-particularly-crappy-end-of-the-year-flashback-shows TV? Anyways, I got really emotional watching this collection of “The 25 Most Emotional TV Moments of the Year” last night on RTL.
Then I got an upset stomach, a bad case of the hives and had to barf.
Natürlich durfte die Sequenz aus „Supertalent“ nicht fehlen, in der Dieter Bohlen überrascht seinen Entdecker Rainer Felsen als Kandidaten auf die Bühne gestellt bekommt.
Real Germans Don’t Tweet
According to Semiocast, an analyst, Germany ranks 31st worldwide in terms of public tweets, with 59m per year. Germany’s 82m people have just 4m Twitter accounts. That puts it 22nd in the world, behind not only European neighbours like Britain (population 63m, 45m accounts) or Spain (population 47m, 16m accounts) but also Turkey (population 75m, 11m accounts) and the Philippines (population 98m, 8.6m accounts).
But they do like to google, however. Although what they googled most in election year 2013 is another matter. The number one German search item was Wahl-O-Mat, an online election tool that tells you who to vote for.
And Amazon didn’t even make the short list. That’s because it’s “designed for world domination,” I assume.
“Innovation erfordert den Willen, über einen langen Zeitraum missverstanden zu werden.”
“On The Run From The Henchmen Of His Homeland”
Concerned Germans everywhere (note the red scarf) weren’t quite concerned enough to actually offer poor and misunderstood professional leaker/Russian tourist Edward Snowden political asylum, but now they all hope in unison that Brazil will (tons of Germans have found refuge there in the past, you know).
Otherwise those awful henchmen/bogeymen from that horrible homeland of his might just get him and, well, we don’t even want to THINK about what could possibly happen to him then!
Ex-NSA-Mitarbeiter Edward Snowden will auf seiner Flucht vor den Häschern seines Heimatlandes offenbar nach Brasilien weiterreisen.
That’s Almost German
The language, I mean. “Was Mir Sorgen?” Nice try. But way cool image, I must say.
Well, it is a weird state of affairs when you cannot give away free porn to anonymous people who only visit your site because it has free porn.
Yes it is. But welcome to Germany, sort of. What, me worry (was, ich soll mir Sorgen machen)?
It was originally thought that the letters were sent because of a court error. However, Thomas Urmann of the legal firm U+C told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that they plan to investigate more infringements on porn streaming sites next year, a move that would set a worldwide precedent.
Bah Humbug!
Hundreds of Amazon.com Inc workers in Germany went on strike on Monday, just as pre-Christmas sales were set to peak, in a dispute over pay and conditions that has raged for months…
The Verdi union said up to 700 workers joined the strike in Amazon’s logistic center in Bad Hersfeld, plus 500 to 600 in Leipzig. For the first time, the union also called a strike in Graben, where Verdi said 600 workers took part.
Now that’s what I call having the Christmas spirit. Just replace the Scrooge part below with Ver.di.
Fred: Merry Christmas, Uncle Scrooge!
Scrooge: What’s so merry about it? I’ll tell you what Christmas is. It’s just another work day, and any jackanape who thinks else should be boiled in his own pudding!
Cratchit: But sir, Christmas is a time for giving… a time to be with one’s family.
Scrooge: I say, Bah humbug!
Fred: I don’t care! I say, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas!
Cratchit: [clapping] Well said, Master Fred!
Scrooge: Cratchit, what are you doing?
Cratchit: [stops clapping] I was just trying to keep my hands warm, sir.
Amazon has recently announced it would build three new logistics centers in Poland and two in the Czech Republic, prompting speculation that it could seek to shift work across the border from strike-hit centers in Germany.
GroKo Is Just What It Sounds Like
Whoopee or something. Germany’s grand coalition is finally here – a government the Germans didn’t vote for.
GERMANY’S language boffins were first: they coined “GroKo” (short for grand coalition) the German language’s word of the year 2013 (an accolade that is not automatically flattering). To some Germans, this neologism might evoke a “great crocodile” or something otherwise sinister.
What does this really mean? It means that the tail (SPD) has succeeded in wagging the dog (CDU/CSU) and will now force enough of its social democratic agenda (“social” = free lunch) upon the German ship of way-too-big-state to veer it off the proper course, once again. It had been heading, however timidly, toward more private initiative = responsibility and away from your typical German been-there-done-that world of ever more government waste, meddling and control. The CDU/CSU has now become thoroughly social democratized, in other words.
Just like with the “energy turnaround,” everybody will wake up again once they figure out that this is actually going to cost them personally way too much money. Hey, life is a zigzag course. They’ll get back on track again eventually.
PS: Something actually happened on German TV last night that was apparently worth watching.
Observing Hermann 