Category Archives: Home Cooking
The German Petty Bourgeoisie At Its/Their Best
One thing that all Germans have in common is their absolute disgust for all things kleinbürgerlich (petty bourgeois). You know; being small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square?”
Another thing that all Germans have in common is that they are small-minded, scrupulously orderly, old fashioned, reactionary, banal, provencial, dilettante and, well, “square.” You know, kleinbürgerlich?
Take this latest tourist-bashing craze going on by the Enlightened Left in Berlin (the way coolest, least kleinbürglich city in Germany), please:
“Noisy tourists go home!” reads one hostile sign in the eastern district of Friedrichshain. “Berlin doesn’t love you,” say stickers plastering traffic lights in nearby Kreuzberg.
A gallery in an area known for its trendy bars featured for months a scrawled sign in the window: “Sorry, no entry for hipsters from the U.S.”
Being petty bourgeois here isn’t pretty, folks. It never has been. But it sure is petty. And somebody’s got to do it. I just wish they’re weren’t so many volounteers here all the time.
Citizens Of Düsseldorf Least Miserable Germans This Year
At least according to this year’s Glücksatlas (Happiness Atlas) they are. Oh boy and good for them or something.
But why they don’t just come out and call the damned thing the Misery Atlas, I’ll never know.
Am zufriedensten sind die Deutschen in den Regionen Hamburg (7,23 Punkte), Niedersachsen/Nordsee (7,16), Süd-Bayern (7,11) und Franken (7,10). Auf den letzten Plätzen rangieren Brandenburg (6,63), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (6,58) und Sachsen-Anhalt (6,56).
Berlin Air Show To Be Held At Creepy Unfinished Ghost Airport
In a move meant to liven up the world’s oldest and perhaps stodgiest air and space trade fair, organizers of Germany’s ILA have decided to hold this year’s show on the grounds of Berlin’s infamous haunted Berlin-Brandenburg Ghost Airport.
Local legend has it that the abandoned ghost airport, originally planned to actually be completed one day and used as a real airport with real airplanes and passangers and the whole bit, fell under the curse of a group of disgruntled Brandenburg witches protesting potential Fluglärm (fly-over noise) and can never be completed until Berlin’s city government presents its first balanced budget or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.
A spotless new runway, so far unused for commercial flights, will finally feel the burn of rubber.
Well Banks Are Bad, Aren’t They?
So what’s the big deal? Now all of ze Europe officially has a bad bank, too.
It’s called the ECB and is the “bad bank for all the junk debt of Europe.”
“Blank cheque for the indebted states,” was the headline of the top-selling Bild newspaper, a harsh, populist critic of the bailouts for Greece and other struggling euro zone nations, adding that the ECB move could render the euro “kaput”.
“Financial markets cheer the death of the Bundesbank.”
Germans Finally Manage To Bring Muslims And Jews Together
To protest against restrictions on circumcision, that is. They’ll be getting together in Berlin to holler and shout and raise hell this Sunday, for instance. Warms your heart, don’t it?
When it comes to “flagrant interference” in religion, Germans may indeed have a long and proven track record and all, but as expected, they have clearly bitten off more than they can chew this time with their latest perfectly pointless and completely unnecessary stab at this ancient Jewish and Muslim practice.
They’re backpeddling as fast as they can, of course, but it’s too little too late and now everybody has hurt feelings and, well, that’s what you get for fixing things that ain’t broken.
“Gut gemeint ist leider nicht unbedingt gut gemacht.”
German Wind Offensive More Offensive Than The Rest Of Us Thought It Was
Well that didn’t take very long. Now it’s “Germany’s offshore fiasco.”
Germany wants to pepper its northern seas with offshore wind turbines as part of its ambitious energy revolution. But strict laws, technology problems and multiple delays are turning the massive enterprise into an expensive fiasco. Investors and the public are losing patience.
The Latest Radical New Concept
After years of deliberation, the German Justice Department has finally decided to take a bold leap into uncharted legal waters and official declare that theft should be punishible. OK, in this case it’s “data theft.”
Wow. Talk about a great leap forward for German Gerechtigkeit (justice) or something. The background: Like junkies in need of their next fix, German tax officials (usually from SPD led state governments) have been regularly purchasing stolen goods in recent months; data CDs containing lists of German tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts. Needless to say, the SPD & Co. are unhappy about this rather belated juristic revelation.
Is this the beginning of the end of the means justifying the end? Or was it vice versa?
“Datendiebstahl soll strafbar sein.”
Grid Your Teeth
And just keep on paying. Or how about grid and bare it?
Germany’s power grid hasn’t kept up with the explosion of new alternative energy sources — particularly the offshore windparks being built in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea off the country’s north coast. Many of those projects are at a standstill, with no way to deliver the power they generate to the mainland.
On Wednesday Merkel’s cabinet hopes to agree on a stop-gap measure to compensate power companies for losses accrued as a result of the delays, but again it will be German consumers who will ultimately suffer.
“The primary reason for the problem lies in the ‘third path’ policymakers have chosen to lead us into the renewable future. There is neither a centrally planned economy to steer the energy system nor are the rules of the market economy allowed to regulate the system according to the laws of supply and demand. Instead, a model of ‘decentralized planned economy’ is being pursued. Municipalities, states, the federal government and the European Union are all creating plans independent of each other and of those affected. There is no coordination…. The result is a fair amount of chaos with policymakers struggling to keep up. Everyone is aware that the situation cannot continue if the renewable energy revolution is to be a success. As such, the question is whether we want to move from where we are today in the direction of a centrally planned economic model or rather in the direction of market economy principles.”
The 30 Percent Solution
That’s how much more German households will likely have to pay for energy in the coming years due to the country’s way cool “energy turnaround.”
Investments of at least 150 billion euros will be needed in the next few years and that’s just the beginning and absolutely positively nothing is working out reibungslos (smoothly) as not planned. And that’s the crux of the biscuit: This is what happens when you do your panicked decision making first and your planning later.
“Wir müssen davon ausgehen, dass die Gestaltung der Energiewende länger dauert als geplant.”
Observing Hermann 