Author Archives: Hermann Observer

Only In Berlin

December 13, 2013 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Speaking of paying more for more of nothing…

Wowereit

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD), the guy personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project, will be chosen later today to become the new chairman of the board of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company and thus once again become personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project.

What part of that don’t you understand? I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that if this were a comedy project we were talking about here it would be a raving success.

Wowereit had already been chairman of the board for the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company from 2008 to 2013 (not all that long ago), of course, until some trifling misunderstanding cropped up about the airport still not being completed after 10 or 20 years or something like that, I forget, but that is all now Schnee von gestern (long forgotten, “yesterday’s snow”) and everything will be OK again because if there is any one person in all of Germany who can possibly get this job done it is most definitely and certainly Klaus Wowereit himself.

By the way, he has to be reelected today because there is no other opposing candidate. Don’t be bothered by that, though. That kind of thing has a long tradition here in Berlin.

Ausgerechnet der vielgeschmähte Klaus Wowereit soll erneut den Aufsichtsrat der Flughafengesellschaft führen. Er erhält damit eine zweite Chance, das Projekt doch noch zum Erfolg zu führen.

PS: There’s more Klaus stuff here, if you like.

I Love You, You Big Dummy

December 12, 2013 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Come to Berlin Country! Come to where the City Tax is!

City Tax

The city of Berlin loves youz tourists, honest it does. Sort of. In fact, the local yokel politicians here love youz guys so much that they feel the pressing need to show you just how much that is. And it’s a full 15 percent more than any of you out there were expecting. And that’s 15 percent more for getting absolutely nothing in return!

That’s right. Starting next month you will be permitted to pay an additional 15 percent City Tax on top of your hotel room bill here, at no extra cost to them and absolutely not free of charge for you! Now that’s what I call big City Tax hospitality!

I love you, you big dummy. You big dumb tourist. Book your flight to Berlin now!

“Es ist absolut nicht rechtssicher und wird ein bürokratisches Verwaltungsmonster sein.”

Swords To Pflugscharen?

December 11, 2013 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

You can stop the import of Mein Kampf in Germany, why not stop the export of expensive weapons systems out of Germany?

Mein Kampf

The Munich Institute for Contemporary History has been working for years on a “scientific edition” of Hitler’s book. In 2012 the state government gave the green light, now it wants to stop the project*.

Weapons

Meanwhile… On the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, Helmut Schmidt has called on the federal government to stop German weapons exports.”It is time to raise an objection,” the former chancellor wrote in the ZEIT. Germany is the world’s third largest weapons exporter and ranks before China, Japan, France and England, directly after the USA and Russia. “A development that displeases me greatly. And one that needs to be stopped by the coming coalition government in Berlin.”

Er habe Verständnis für “die Unlust der heutigen Deutschen”, “Aber ich halte es für abwegig, statt Soldaten Waffen zu schicken.”

* Germany does not ban “Mein Kampf,” but Bavaria has used its ownership of the copyright to block domestic publication until now. Late Tuesday, the state premier’s chief of staff, Christine Haderthauer, said that Hitler’s anti-Semitic memoir amounts to incitement and that the state would file a criminal complaint if anyone tried to publish it in the future. In Germany, copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death.

Berlin Loses Coveted “Capital Of Debt” Title

December 10, 2013 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

But only for this season, I’m convinced of it. Debters never quit and quitters never… something. The German cities with the highest per capita debt all seem to be “out west” right now. The Angeber (showoffs).

Debt

But there is more to Berlin debt (61 billion) than first meets the eye. The city has cut spending, as anyone who lives here sees on a daily basis, but the money being saved isn’t really from tax revenue generated here in Berlin. Berlin is being kept alive by money coming in from the so-called Länderfinanzausgleich (inter-state fiscal adjustment) system. The rich German states (Bavaria, for instance) get milked for those less inclined to, uh, be rich (Berlin, for instance).

You know, solidarity. Or Umverteilung (redistribution) of other people’s money, if you prefer.

Es bleibt dann leider noch ein Schuldenberg von 61 Milliarden Euro übrig. Das kostet jährlich rund 1,9 Milliarden Euro Zinsen, trotz des immer noch extrem niedrigen Zinsniveaus.

Günter Wallraff Dresses Up As Günter Wallraff To Appear As Günter Wallraff On Günther Jauch

December 9, 2013 By in Habitudes, Hate, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Günter Wallraff, disguised as the unspeakably annoying undercover reporter Günter Wallraff, appeared undercover last night on Günther Jauch to explain to Günther Jauch how he, as Günter Wallraff, just went undercover to uncover at Amazon ITSELF how Amazon is now single-handedly causing “our entire culture to atrophy” and how it is a “monster” that is using its “slave laborers” to bring “our entire society” in imminent danger (when he says “our” here, folks, he actually means “our” as in the “German our”).

Günter

Other than that though he appeared somewhat lucid at times, or at least until the end of the show when his hallucinations began to resurface again and he started foaming at the mouth once more and got in a few of his more predictable anti-American swipes but by that time it was time for me to go to bed and go undercover myself so I had no other choice but to shut his ridiculous ass down.

Günther Jauch stellt in seiner Talkshow den Boykott des Onlineversenders zur Debatte. Dabei fällt der Streit um unmögliche Arbeitsverhältnisse bei Amazon glatt in sich zusammen.

Wow. A Clear Decision.

December 8, 2013 By in Hideology, High Art, Higher Education, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

We don’t see many of those that often these days. Cool. Business not as usual, for once.

Gauck

Human rights violations? Harrassment of the opposition? Let the Sochi Winter Games begin? Nein, danke! Not with me. Gauck. Finde ich gut.

Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor who played a key part in the East German protest movement before the fall of the Berlin Wall, has declined any official visits to Russia since coming to office in March 2012 and repeatedly criticised the country’s “deficit of rule of law” and “air of imperialism”. 

UN Called In To Protect German Cultural Treasure That Gets You Drunk As Shit

December 5, 2013 By in Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Reinheitsgebot may be “intangible” here, but the beer behind it sure isn’t.

Beer

German beer brewers have applied to Unesco for their Reinheitsgebot law to join a list of “intangible heritage” that includes Spanish flamenco and Turkey’s Kirkpinar oil-wrestling festival.

Are the blue helmets on the way yet?  Blau also means drunk in German, by the way.

But, as Simpson points out, the Reinheitsgebot law’s inception wasn’t about purity. “It was created to free up the baking grains so that there was less competition with the bakers,” Simpson said. “The bakers were up in arms because they felt the brewers were taking all the grains so the Reinheitsgebot restricted the grains that the brewers could use to malt, strictly malted barley.”

Storm Xaver So Horrific That The First Christmas Markets Are Actually Being Closed!

December 5, 2013 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Supersturm! Angst everywhere! People are running for shelter wherever you look. Berlin has been closed for business. Germany is shuddering with fear. And all of this due to global warming. Or something.

Sturm

If we must die now, let us do so in an orderly manner and close the Christmas markets first. Then we can head home and die there in dignity. Where it’s safer. After the Tagesschau.

LEIPZIG SCHLIESST WEGEN „XAVER“ JETZT SOGAR DEN WEIHNACHTSMARKT!