Category Archives: Hard Facts

Global Warming called off in Germany

January 10, 2010 By in Hard Facts Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I mean at least for a few weeks, people. Don’t worry. Like Arnold, it’ll be back (most likely with a vengeance too, right?).

But damn it sure is cold here in Berlin these days.

It’s cold I tell you. Why it’s so cold that pickpockets in the U-Bahn here are sticking their hands in strangers’ pockets just to keep them warm.

Cold? Why it’s so cold here that people who normally hate McDonald’s actually go there in the hope that somebody will finally spill scalding hot coffee on their lap.

You want cold? Why it’s so cold in Berlin that German car cleaning fetishists have actually stopped cleaning their cars. They just defrost them all day now instead.
 
Global Warming bis zum Umfallen.

Export ist Mord

January 7, 2010 By in Hard Facts Tags: Leave a comment

I liked the old China Syndrome better.

In 2007 China overtook Germany as the world’s third-largest national economy. Now it’s taken away Germany’s mantle of the world’s top exporter.

But don’t worry, Germany. You’re certainly not alone out there. Trading partners keep trading places all the time. China’s right on track to become the pass Japan to become the second-largest economy too, for instance. And then after that there’s… Wait a minute. Then there’s…

China hatte Deutschland schon 2007 als drittgrößte Volkswirtschaft eingeholt.

212 minutes a day?

January 6, 2010 By in Hard Facts Tags: 2 Comments

That`s how much average TV the average German watches. On an average day, I mean, on average. Yawn. A real red-blooded American watches that much before breakfast. Or should, damn it.

And I somehow suspected this too: The real couch potatoes are in uns und um uns und um uns herum (like all around us, dude). If you live in Berlin, I mean. The Brandenburgers are the Germans who watch the most TV (262 minutes), that’s clearly more than we watch here in Berlin. I’m shocked and disappointed, sort of. But at least Berliners surf and blog more, or so I must assume. The slugs.

Den höchsten Anstieg im Vergleich der Bundesländer gab es in Sachsen: Hier verweilten die Menschen mit 182 Minuten im Schnitt 18 Minuten länger vor den Bildschirmen als 2008.

The Land After Time

November 19, 2009 By in Hard Facts Tags: 2 Comments

After our time, I mean. Not like this is really news or anything, but the German Federal Office for Statistics has just announced that a third of all Germans will be 65-years-old or older in the year 2060 (not in the year 3000 as Conan O’Brien might have you believe). The German population will keep on shrinking too, from 82 million today to around 70 million in 2060.

No force in the universe can stop this process or something, not even if the German birth rate were to pick up, which, as we all know, won’t. Of course one could consider officially opening up the flood gates and welcoming newcomers to Germany with open arms and having them become Germans and all that but that would be tantamount to letting Ausländer into the country so, like I said, no force in the universe can stop this process. Old people really don’t like Ausländer here, you see. And this constitutes a so-called vicious circle or something.

“Ein Faktor zur Dämpfung dieser Entwicklung ist die Zuwanderung nach Deutschland.”

Bike terrorists

November 16, 2009 By in Hard Facts Tags: 1 Comment

You would have never thought it possible, would you? Some 40 percent of German night cyclists are on/off the road these days without functioning bicycle lights.

She is broken, Herr Senor.

And I’m one of them. And I’m not even German. And I’ll tell you why: That little generator thingy that sticks out and is supposed to turn on the back wheel or something doesn’t make proper contact anymore. Hasn’t for a few years now (yes, of course I’ve tried to click it down like you’re supposed to).

So what else am I supposed to do, like get it fixed or something?

Dabei riskieren die Radfahrer nicht nur ihre Sicherheit, sondern auch Bußgelder, wie der Verkehrsclub (ADAC – an automobile club, get it?) warnte.

The ones I hear bitching and moaning all day long must be from somewhere else then

October 30, 2009 By in Hard Facts Tags: Leave a comment

A new study has revealed that the infamous “Jammer-Ossi” (that bitchy, forever-lamenting and ungrateful East German species we-all-themselves-included admire so much) does not exist anymore.

Jammern war gestern!

The study also indicates that we, as in you, should actually admire and even emulate them. The East Germans have made it through much harder times than the world is going through right now and blah, blah, blah and not only that, their Ostalgie about those wonderful-old good-old communist days isn’t what you think it is because, well, it just isn’t.

The study is entitled “The East Germans Twenty Years after the Turning Point” and certainly sounds scientific enough to me. The researchers actually went out there and interviewed some eighty (80) people between the ages of 18 (born after the fall of the Berlin Wall) and 70 (born after the fall of the Jericho Wall). They even used psychological tests or something.

Talk about another prime example of theory meeting practice, or vice versa. I still hear all kinds of jammering all day long over here (other than my own, I mean) and it has to be coming from somewhere, people. My theory is that this particular type of jammering has simply gone down in the greater jammering noise in the meantime. To West German ears, I mean. If everybody out there is jammering, and of course everybody is, you just can’t hear that specific East German brand anymore. Those sinus wave thingies have overlaped or something.

No, sorry. The Jammer-Ossies may not exist anymore, but they are certainly still alive – and kicking. I mean bitching.

“Die Menschen im Osten begegneten überzogenen Träumen mit einem konstruktiven Misstrauen und Realismus, der sich deutlich von den oft überbordenden Glücks- und Renditeansprüchen des westlichen Maximierungsdenkens abhebt.”