Tag Archives: Berlin

Stress and the City

June 24, 2011 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A shocking new study has come to the completely unexpected conclusion that German city dwellers are more “stressed-out” than their country bumpkin counterparts.

Researchers at the Zentralinstitut für seelische Gesundheit (too stressful to translate) found that a certain ganglion of the limbic system adjoining the temporal lobe of the German city brain involved in emotions of fear and aggression (the amygdala) was more fearful and aggressive than your every day German hick’s amygdala is, itself already much more fearful and aggressive than other human amygalas anywhere else in the world you can possibly think of.

“Who would have thought that?” one researcher asked another researcher, brutally shoving him aside in impatient disdain to confront the next one. “I grew up in Berlin and we’re not at all aggressive. That’s a myth. Or it’s just a show. Or do you think you’re big enough to tell me you think that we are?”

Städter erkranken häufiger an Depressionen, Angststörungen, Schizophrenie.

German Recycling Destroying Umwelt

June 23, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Bad consumer! Environmental groups are alarmed and warning that the entire German reusable bottle system as we know it may soon be on the verge of collapse. And it’s all because of you, ihr Flaschen (“you bottles,” a German idiom for losers). You’re recyling the wrong bottles (the plastic ones, these are “bad”).

Horror of horrors or something. Just when Big Green Brother finally got you to robotically return your bottles to the reusable bottle robots located at your local supermarket, like you should, for your own good, you start buying more plastic returnables (thinking that these are as “good” as good old glass ones), causing the share of environmentally friendly bottles in circulation to sink from 70 to 50 percent. If this continues, the whole system will become “unprofitable,” whatever that means.

It seems that Fearless Leader’s five-year plan actually called for a percentage of 80 percent of environmentally friendly bottles to be in circulation so you have all failed miserably and will now have to be reprogrammed at your own cost again so that you know better and start buying the good glass recyclable bottles instead. And returning them to the robots (the machine ones). After you have emptied them, I mean (the bottles). Ah, the hell with it. They’ll explain it all to you better later.

Eine bessere Kennzeichnung und ökologisch differenzierte Steuer werden verlangt.

Debt Expert Deutschland

June 22, 2011 By in Heconomy, History, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Ritschl, Germany is coming across like a know-it-all in the debate over aid for Greece. Berlin is intransigent and is demanding obedience from Athens. Is this attitude justified?

Ritschl: No, there is no basis for it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Most Germans would likely disagree.

Ritschl: That may be, but during the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history. It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe’s headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What happened back then exactly?

Ritschl: From 1924 to 1929, the Weimar Republic lived on credit and even borrowed the money it needed for its World War I reparations payments from America. This credit pyramid collapsed during the economic crisis of 1931. The money was gone, the damage to the United States enormous, the effect on the global economy devastating.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The situation after World War II was similar.

Ritschl: But right afterwards, America immediately took steps to ensure there wouldn’t be a repeat of high reparations demands made on Germany. With only a few exceptions, all such demands were put on the backburner until Germany’s future reunification. For Germany, that was a life-saving gesture, and it was the actual financial basis of the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle (that began in the 1950s). But it also meant that the victims of the German occupation in Europe also had to forgo reparations, including the Greeks.

“He warns the country should take a more chaste approach in the euro crisis or it could face renewed demands for World War II reparations.”

Dangerous Facebook Parties Threatening To Undermine Peaceful German State Of Peace And Quietness

June 20, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Unerlaubte (unauthorized) Facebook parties are popping up everywhere these days, shocking the general German public and keeping the nation at an unusually high level of nearly unbearable anxiety again already.

Many are beginning to ask themselves how something like is this is even conceivable, much less possible in a constitutional democracy.

In a recent incident, for instance, all a German Facebook user had to do was announce to everyone on Facebook that a Facebook party in Wuppertal had gone Facebook public and some 800 rowdy Facebook party makers (with Facebook police escort) soon descended upon the unsuspecting village inhabitants, reeking of beer and wreaking Facebook havoc in the process (the rowdies, not the villagers).

To save Facebook face, authorities are now considering the possiblity of forbidding Facebook Parties everywhere forever (don’t worry, they’ll announce it on Facebook first). Popular support is guaranteed.

Genau das macht Facebook-Partys so gefährlich: Es ist nicht nur völlig unklar, wie viele Teilnehmer kommen, es ist vor allem schwer zu kalkulieren, wer dem Aufruf folgt.

The Viennese Taliban?

June 19, 2011 By in Hate Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Austrian authorities have arrested an alleged Islamic extremist who had undergone flight training and was plotting to target Berlin’s parliament building by hijacking a passenger plane.

Not terribly original I know, but it’s the thought that counts.

This just doesn’t make any sense to me. Islamic convert or not, I have a hard time believing that anyone from Austria could ever disrespect an historic institution like the German Reichstag.

Germany has so far escaped a major terror attack, but several terror plots were foiled in their early stages over the past few years.

PS: “Germans are said to be correct, tidy, fast-speaking people, traveling around the world with sun-burnt faces, big cameras around their neck, drinking a lot of beer and eating sausages. Austrians, on the other hand, are considered slow, and described as placing great importance in coziness, eating fat food like Schnitzel, drinking Austrian wine, riding on white horses called Lipizzaners and singing beautifully like the famous Viennese boy choir, the Sängerknaben.” And flying airplanes into the Reichstag.

Skippy is approaching the Hauptstadt!

June 17, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hustle (Hoax), Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Germans are always finding wild animals that don’t belong in their natural German habitat. It’s just what they do.

The other day it was racoon attacks in the Government Quarter. Last October it was a mysterious black panther monster in Trier. Then there are the obligitory annual alligator/crocodile sightings. Now it’s a freakin’ kangaroo in Brandenburg.

I’m still waiting for the pink elephants, though. What is it with this Extrawurst (being something special) mentality here? Why can’t they just tell fish stories and get abducted by aliens like everybody else does?

Die Spur verlor sich dann. Es gebe bisher keine Hinweise, woher das Tier stammt oder wem es gehört.

“Nobody has the intention of building a wall”

June 15, 2011 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

It was 50 years ago today,
Walter Ulbricht lied his ass away (as in off).

He’s been going in and out of style (mostly out),
but he’s still guaranteed to raise a smile.

Some world-class lies are better (and more complex) than others, especially when they are answers to questions that nobody ever asked. Was his just a Freudian slip? Did he purposely bring up not building a wall to bring the issue (everyone leaving East Germany) to a head and finally get Krushchev’s permission to build the thing? Or was he just a fun-loving prankster. At the moment I’m inclined to think it’s that last one. If you listen closely to his little laugh, it sounds way too much like Barney Rubble’s (the German synchronization).

Das hämische Lachen, das die Dreistigkeit der Lüge auch 50 Jahre danach noch zu steigern vermag, trägt comichafte Züge. Kein Wunder, erinnert es doch stark an Barney Geröllheimer, den besten Freund von Fred Feuerstein aus der US-Zeichentrickserie „The Flintstones“. Zumindest in der deutschen Übersetzung gleicht Barneys – von Gerd Duwner synchronisierte – berühmte „Hehehehe“-Lache der von Walter Ulbricht, als der DDR-Staatsratsvorsitzende am 15. Juni 1961 in einer legendären Pressekonferenz Geschichte schreibt – in dem er auf eine Frage antwortet, die gar nicht gestellt worden ist.

A Country Named Sue

June 14, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Heconomy, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

You sue, I sue, we all do (sue). And here I thought Germany was the land of Konsens (consensus – not common sense). At least when it comes to doing this nuclear phaseout thang, I mean. Fooled again.

OK, it is logical and predictable that Germany’s power companies now have hurt feelings and are preparing to take legal action against the government’s decision to shut down their nuclear power plants because, well, the government is shutting down their nuclear power plants.

But what about all the thousands of lawsuits being prepared by power-line, wind energy and other regional resistance group apponents the nation over set to flood the lawsuit market once these big honkin’ power-line thingies start going up? You know, the power-lines that will transport the good offshore wind farm energy from the north to the bad industrial south?

Why can’t we (as in you) learn to live together in simple peace and harmony? Now that the nuclear power dragon has finally been slain, I mean. Come on, folks. Join hands, form a circle, sit down and talk.

Specifically, they will invoke Article 14 of the German constitution, which addresses the question of whether the companies’ assets are being expropriated, and if they are therefore entitled to compensation. After that, the amount of compensation would be negotiated in civil courts. According to internal calculations, the industry envisions a potential sum of €20 billion ($29 billion). The burden would ultimately fall on taxpayers.

“Frau am Steuer…das wird teuer!”

June 12, 2011 By in Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

“A woman at the wheel, that’ll cost you!”

Who would have thought that? According to Germany’s Federal Agency for Electricity, the German electricity grid is in a thoroughly chaotic condition these days. No one can explain why. And the cost of purchasing needed electricity (nuclear generated) at the European Energy Exchange has already gone up 10 percent and further increases are expected to follow soon. It’s bizarre. It’s almost as if some crazy person had shut down eight nuclear power plants here or something.

Yup, Angie Merkel’s Fukushima-driven German angst Atomaustieg (nuclear phase-out) may have indeed been absolutely necessary and of critical urgency (opinion polls, folks, you gots to give the people what they want), but hysteria does have its price. Even in Germany, I mean. But who cares? I know the Germans pretty well and I am convinced that they are all going to be more than willing to pay radically higher electricity bills in order to avoid the, uh, tsunami threat on the home front.

What I really don’t understand is the economics at play here. There is clearly an overabundance of hysteria in this country, right? Shouldn’t that make the price of hysteria, like, cheaper or something? I’d ask an economist but you know how the adage goes: For every economist there is an equal and opposite economist.

“Das Bundeskartellamt erwartet als Folge des Atomausstiegs steigende Strompreise. An der Strombörse sind die Preise bereits um zehn Prozent gestiegen.”

Über Euro Über Alles?

June 10, 2011 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Time for a new European currency yet?

“The real threat to the euro isn’t that a weak peripheral country like Greece might withdraw in an effort to devalue its way to competitiveness, but rather that Germany might want to pull out.”

This guy makes a very interesting point. He goes into what he defines as the three main problems that have led Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain (not yet, but soon) to the dismal position they are now in and suggests that because of the coming bailout fatique, the only way to save the union is, well, to divide it. This could best be done by introducing an Über Euro in the non-bailout nations.

“Germany’s incentive to leave grows with each bailout, and Berlin could ultimately make a simple calculation that extrication will be less costly than continuing the sacrifice needed to keep the euro.”

To avoid this, one could strike a grand bargain by creating this new currency. “These nations then announce that all obligations between their citizens will henceforth be denominated in the new currency, the Über Euro, which would eventually be managed by the Bundesbank. The Über Euro would initially be set at a value of perhaps 1.3 euros, setting the stage for an export boom for countries that continue to use the euro. This would allow the remaining eurozone members to restore their competitiveness without having their financial systems go bankrupt; it also would allow Germany to sell the plan as saving Europe without breaking up the EU.”

“Should the remaining euro countries continue irresponsible fiscal policies, the European Central Bank (which would continue to be their central bank), would slowly monetize their debt. The euro would continue to depreciate against the Über Euro and perhaps end up as junk currency. …The ECB’s stature would be diminished and its balance sheet probably trashed.”

Sounds like a good plan to me (for world domination?). But I’m not very good with money, either.

There is no inherent reason the European project cannot proceed with two currencies and the citizenry may force this outcome.

PS: Beware, Greece. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, there’s a Wolfgang at your door.