Pegida? Kögida? Bärgida?

This is all starting to bug me a litta…

Pegida

Germany is preparing itself for the first wave of PEGIDA demonstrations of the new year. The anti-Islamization movement has been steadily growing in popularity as the demonstrations reach their fourth month.

On Monday, the first marches of 2015 will also see the first turnout of protesters in the country’s capital, Berlin. Playing on the city’s bear mascot, “Bärgida” currently has just short of 600 people listed as attending on the Facebook event page. More are expected to march on Monday evening, however.

Germans Worried About Being Liked

Or at least they’re suspicious about it. And rightly so, I say. I mean, wouldn’t you be worried if you were a German and people claimed that they liked you? As a country, I mean? It just doesn’t make any sense. It must be an international conspiracy of some kind and the very idea of being liked as a country that is Germany needs to be rejected out of hand before being thoroughly analyzed by German German popularity experts and then officially rejected out of hand for good, officially like.

German Popularity

Amazingly, people outside of this country like Germany. According to the English, Germany is the most popular country, even! Yes, the English! The very ones who used to hate us are now celebrating us. Only question is … why?

German Soldiers Build Schools

And roads. And they train the police and only do the things that other bad soldiers won’t do because they reek of goodness and niceness.

Kill Lists

And of course they also select insurgents to be placed on “kill lists” when nobody else is looking (so the bad soldiers can kill them later). But still.

A so-called “Target Support Cell” was based at the German headquarters of Mazar-e-Sharif. The group’s mission was, according to the report, “to collect information for the nomination of individual targets.”

Would Numbers Lie?

News products can be that way. On the one hand the numbers tell us today that the mood in the German economy has picked up yet again and that German companies are looking ahead to 2015 with renewed confidence.

Positive

At the same time we read how Germany’s National Office for Statistics has determined that one in every five Germans is a victim of poverty.

A contradiction? Not necessarily, I guess. That’s why everybody’s kind of happy sort of around here these days. And that’s why I, for one, believe everything I read.

Die Stimmung in der deutschen Wirtschaft hat sich im Dezember erneut verbessert: Der Ifo-Index legte zum zweiten Mal zu.

The Fall Of The Berlin Mall Of Berlin

Jeepers. That didn’t take very long.

Mall of Berlin

This is not just any mall, mind you, but the hubristically named Mall of Berlin—the largest Germany’s capital has ever seen, including not only shops but (as yet unfinished) apartments and a hotel. And guess what? While it’s only been open since the autumn, the whole project is already bombing…

It’s not that Berlin’s government and developers don’t have the guts to take on major projects to transform the city. They just really suck at them.

The Stammtisch Unchained

Everybody who is anybody who is politically correct in Germany is all hot and bothered about the marches being staged by PEGIDA or the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West” in Dresden these days. They have to be. It’s their job or something.

PEGIDA

I say take a chill pill already and don’t take these folks so seriously, you other folks. It’s just diffuse bitching and moaning pur (pure). All this is is the biggest Stammtisch party we’ve seen yet. It’s Oddity 384 all over again (shameless ebook plug), in other words.

Oddity 384. A real German is always being “verarscht” or taken for a ride by somebody “da oben” or up there. All Germans belong to a symbolic “Stammtisch” or regular’s table, whether they actually belong to a real local regular’s table or not. This is the place where the unappreciated man on the street regularly complains about the abuse he is receiving from his employers, the rich or the ruling political caste and how they are all personally out to get him. Strangely, at least with regard to this ruling political caste, these same men on the street regularly reelect said politicians with large majorities or enable them to remain in power by not going to vote at all.

Die „Pegida“-Bewegung habe einen Nerv getroffen. Bisher sei Deutschland nicht für Populismus dieser Art anfällig gewesen.

The End Of An Aura

It’s amazing these sleeper trains have lasted as long as they have, if you stop and think about it.

Night Train

Saturday marked the end of the line for this Paris-Berlin sleeper, at any rate. Slow food might be able to make a stand here and there but it looks like slow travel is definitely out.

Deutsche Bahn, the German rail network which operates the sleeper said the service was incurring debts over €20 million a year and losing out to cheap bus connections and easyJet which offers a regular service between the two capitals. Along with the Paris-Berlin sleeper, overnight train services linking Berlin with Copenhagen and Amsterdam are also being axed.

World Pain In The Butt

Why do Germans always have to pick out these fancy-dad-gum-new-fangled German words of the year like Lichtgrenze (light border or boundary) when they’ve already got a perfectly wunderbar selection of traditional German words of the year or at least I think they ought to be for crying out loud?

Weltschmerz

Weltschmerz (world pain), for instance, has to be one of my all time favorites because, well, it’s just about as moany, whiney, lamenty and Germany as you can possibly get.

Now available in the U. S. of Amerika for a limited time only! I hope.

Disillusioned? Has your initial idealism been ground into cynicism? Dismayed by discovering how things really work? There’s a term for what you’re suffering: Weltschmerz.