Happy Vatertag!

German of the day: Tradition. That means tradition.

“The Führer gave a holiday to any woman who bore at least one child, the men he sent to the front! What an asshole, we see yet again.

The man had to conquer Father’s Day laboriously himself. His choice fell on Ascension Day, a movable fest, lying around quite meaningless in the calendar anyway. And lo and behold, the choice was good! Outside it’s already quite warm and the annoying relatives haven’t taken over your place like they do during Christmas.

Now all that was left to do was fill the event with content. The choice fell on a classic of male leisure activity: DRINK UNTIL YOUR PUKE TASTES SOUR! In addition, howl around like an idiot, piss everywhere and tell dirty jokes. Virtually paradise on Earth, in other words.

Aware of being the stronger of the sexes, the man can also afford to run around dressed like a complete dumbass. He doesn’t get gussied up on his holiday like his haughty wife does on hers, oh no, he puts a buffoon’s hat on his red beet head, wears rolled up corduroy pants and screws a bicycle bell on his walking stick. Dressed like that, anyone can easily see that he’s been transformed into a complete idiot while he and his fellow idiot companions stagger through the forest like containers for Pawian shit.

But because a man is a man, he needs a task. In this case: Pulling a little wooden wagen. On it stands the fuel for the drunkard horde: 50 liters of Pils, 10 bottles of Appelkorn and 30 rubbers, still originally packed from the previous year.

By noon, the weakest are already beginning to flounder, the green slime oozing out of a body orifice that once was called the mouth. All the wagen wheel nuts are loose and the only thing that keeps them going is their sense of duty. That is, to drain the last 20 beers down their swollen gorges.

The greatest joy still awaits the man at the end of Father’s Day: Call home to have his battle axe pick him up from the jungle, drool all over her new dress while she carries him in to dump him on the sofa, and throw the puke bucket at the stupid cat.

Because this is the ONLY day of the year where father belongs to himself. And the rest have to shut their traps!”

The Perfect Storm?

Inflation is up. Beer sales are down.

Let’s party!

German inflation levels exceed 3% for first time since 2008 – It’s the first time since the 2008 global financial crash that inflation in Germany has reached such levels.

German beer sales in this year’s first half were 2.7% lower than a year earlier, dragged lower by closures of bars and restaurants that stretched through winter and into spring, official data showed Friday.

We Can’t Leave It For The Enemy

It’s your typical German scorched-earth strategy. Or scorched-throat stategy, in this case.

And drinking alcohol would only lead the Taliban to commit violence or something.

Germany to ship army beer home from Afghanistan – Germany has announced it will fly more than 22,500 litres of beer home from Afghanistan, as Nato forces prepare to withdraw.

Bavarians Test Positive For Beer

Sort of.

But there’s a Helles at the end of the tunnel.

Bavarians were able to enjoy a tall beer in the spring sun Monday in several areas, as some outdoor beer gardens reopened in the southern German state.

Bavaria had an overall seven-day average rate of increase of 119.5 new cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people, but areas below 100 cases per 100,000 were allowed to reopen their iconic beer gardens.

What? No Ten Euro Beer This Year?

And no Wiesn-Madl? Now we know this is getting serious, folks.

Oktoberfest

Germany cancels Oktoberfest beer festival due to coronavirus – Germany’s Oktoberfest, the world’s largest folk festival, where revellers from all over the world gather to swig large quantities of beer, has been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis, the southern state of Bavaria said on Tuesday.

Endgültiges Aus für die Wiesn 2020!

Brewed In Accordance With The Rassenreinheitsgebot?

Oops. Not racial purity, I meant of course Germany’s Reinheitsgebot or beer purity law.

Purity

Nazi-branded Beer Sells Out at German Drinks Store – Thuringia police have already established the brand itself is legal.

Images were circulating on German social media on Friday showing a Nazi-branded beer for sale in a drinks store in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The images showed bottles labelled with the name “Deutsches Reichsbraeu,” or German Reich Brew, in a font favored by the Nazis on sale for 18.88 euros.

The numbers 1 and 8 correspond to the second and eighth letters of the alphabet – the initials of Adolf Hitler. The 88 stands for “Heil Hitler.” The new beer brand was announced online at the beginning of the year by a well-known right-wing extremist from the neighbouring state of Thuringia.

Eine Konsequenz gibt es bereits für den Getränkemarkt: Der Franchise-Geber kündigte die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Eigentümer des Geschäfts am Morgen nach eigenen Angaben auf.

German Of The Day: Andere Länder Andere Sitten

That means other countries other customs.

Vatertag

Finally, a holiday for the rest of us.

German Oddity 391. Only in Germany is Vatertag or Father’s Day commemorated by hordes of oddly dressed men pulling little wooden wagons overloaded with beer and snaps through wooded areas (or right through the middle of your town) roaring and swearing and pissing all over the place until they vomit on themselves and pass out but not before having called their wives to pick them up and drag them back home again.

Isn’t Anyone Going To Do Anything About This?

The great German beer crisis? Demand is falling, people. And I can only drink so much on my own.

Beer

Demand is falling in a country where there are more than 6,000 different brands of beer. The theory goes that you could drink a different one each day for more than 16 years without having to taste the same one twice. In fact, today fewer Germans regularly drink beer at all. Since the early 1990s, domestic consumption has dropped by more than a quarter. Consumption per head peaked in 1976 and has been falling ever since. The result has left mass-market brewers suffering from overcapacity and fighting a long-running price war. More than two-thirds of all the beer sold in supermarkets is offered at a discount.

“How is it that one of the world’s biggest export nations, and one so obsessed with beer quality, fails to woo international drinkers?”

Today The Bottles, Tomorrow The Cans…

Germany marches on. It must. Even though Germans don’t like beer cans very much.

Beer

Germany running out of beer bottles as heatwave fuels demand – The situation is so acute that one local brewer has issued an emergency appeal to drinkers, calling for them to return their empties.

“We need your help!” the Moritz Fiege brewery in the city of Bochum wrote on Facebook. “Great weather + great beer = serious thirst. The catch: although we regularly buy new bottles, we’re running out. So before you go on your summer holiday, please be sure to return your Moritz Fiege empties to your local off license. Make your motto: first the empties, then the holiday!”

“This issue is causing an industry-wide drama.