Fußball fans never forget.
“Some (Germans) have even got religious about it, praising the god of football for handing down divine justice in the form of a blatant referee error that robbed England of a crystal-clear goal on Sunday. At last, commentators say, Germany has been avenged for 1966, when England had a goal wrongly allowed in the legendary World Cup final at London’s Wembley stadium, which England won 4:2.”
Death and transfiguration, although glorification is probably the more accurate term. Nothing new here, folks. Just move along now and go about your business.
Death as in the GDR, of course, as in dead as a doornail, long, long ago. Transfiguration/glorification as in the twenty-five percent of East Germans (or Germans of the East, if you prefer) that still thinks old communist Germany wasn’t such a bad place to live after all.
This wouldn’t be so bad if these were all just old communists thinking this, of course, but that’s clearly not the case.
Eine Studie der Linkspartei.
Ya gotta have luck (no, not that old GDR gameshow).
Seven crew and passengers were injured when a DC3 “raisin bomber” that takes tourists on flights commemorating the Berlin Airlift had to make an emergency landing on a street leading to a construction site at Berlin’s Schoenefeld airport.
„Wir waren vielleicht 15 Meter über dem Boden, da fing das linke Propeller-Triebwerk zu stottern an.“
We knew that already, right? But sports commentators can be pretty dumb too, you know.
Nobody knows what this lady was thinking when she said it, least of all herself I’m sure, but after Germany’s Miroslav Klose shot this beautiful goal against Australia the other night (and ended a long dry spell everybody had been ragging him about), she said “That’s a real inner Reichsparteitag (Nuremberg Rally) for Miroslav Klose, that he scores a goal like that here today.”
Huh? That’s a new one for me – although it’s clearly not a new one for a bunch of other folks around here. Dict.cc just told me that it’s an idiom meaning “a feeling of deep satisfaction over the outcome of something.” Oh. That makes it, uh, better, I guess.
“Es war eine sprachliche Entgleisung im Eifer der Halbzeitpause.”
Grassroots political activism in action – again.
Not particularly interested in Christian Wulff, the presidential candidate the current ruling coalation is pushing through, German internet activists are activating the Internet for Mr. No Chance in Hell Joachim Gauck instead.
More power to ya, folks, but he’s just too impartial and unconnected and doesn’t have a chance, like I said. But hey, do the right thing. You never know. Like the German saying goes: You don’t have a chance, so use it.
“Gauck has a rich life story shaped by the Cold War. At the age of 11, his father was arrested by communist authorities and sent to the Gulag in Siberia. After the Berlin Wall fell, Gauck ran the state-run archives on the Stasi, earning recognition for exposing the crimes of the dreaded East German secret police.”
Although it’s about the same size. Tempelhof was a pretty cool airport though.
But the bulldozers aren’t finished with Tempelhof just yet. Starting in 2013, the new park will undergo a four-year, 60-million-euro ($48 million) facelift to become the home of the 2017 International Garden Exhibition. By then, it should look a lot more like its storied New York counterpart.
Happy Tag der Befreiung (Liberation Day), Berlin! Tomorrow, I mean.
“For many others it took a long time for the certainty to come through: It was a day of liberation for all.”
The new “Topography of Terror” documentation center opened in town today.
Who exactly were the men who planned and administered the Nazi crimes?
The index cards cover an entire wall, several hundred of them in pink, beige or green, containing names, dates of birth and handwritten notes. They are the details of some of the 7,000 former employees of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the amalgamation of the feared SS paramilitary group and Gestapo secret police force — the men who worked at the very epicenter of the Nazi terror regime.
Just stop holding hands and singing We Shall Overcome!
Not even those rugged German army types can take this kind of abuse forever. After years of moaning and sniveling and peaceniking about saving the heath and health of the so-called “Bombodrom” in Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide near Berlin, the Bundeswehr has finally rolled over and decided to close down its infamous military training area.
It had been a shocking Vorgang (course of events) or something. They actually practiced dropping bombs here once, I think. Maybe twice. Fake bombs of course, but still. Damn, where is the Bundeswehr going to drop their fake bombs now?
Bundesverteidigungsminister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) erklärte in Berlin, die Bundeswehr löse diesen Standort mit seinen 80 Mitarbeitern vollständig auf.
Well, it’s official now. Turned down for work in the German West because she hailed from the German East, a woman took the company to court on racial, or at least ethnic, discrimination charges – and lost.
No ethnic group, no tribal breaks here, Easties. Nice try though. If you are an Ossi (East German), you stay one. So like wake up and smell the Kaffee. Life’s a Schlampe and then you die. Get used to it already. You’re now just like the rest of us out there who aren’t like the rest of us out there, I mean you (out there). That’s life. Here’s a hanky. Blow your nose. Now go out and get a job in Friedrichshain or in Dresden or in some other awful place like that. OK, I’m finished.
Als Gabriele S. vor Monaten ihre Bewerbungsunterlagen zurückbekam, prangte neben dem Lebenslauf der handschriftliche Vermerk des Fensterbauers. “(-) Ossi!”. An mehreren Stellen stand “DDR”. Eine üble Diskriminierung?
Observing Hermann 
