Stop all this austerity and savings crap and start burning up some euros already.
Yours truly,
Obama
Merkel’s savings measures, touted as Germany’s biggest austerity drive since World War Two, aim to deliver savings of 11.2 billion euros next year and lower a deficit set to exceed five per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year, according to an official draft of the plan.
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.“
Everything goes from one extreme to the other here, that’s just what Germans do.
Selbstzerfleischung means something like self-destructive criticism and with German Fußball it goes like this: Just a few hours ago, what seemed like the entire German nation gathered together at public and less public viewing locales everywhere to watch their team beat Serbia mit links (with the left hand – hands down). They won’t necessarily admit that this is what they were thinking but this is precisely what they were.
Then they lost for some reason. So now it goes back the other way: The entire German nation is now down on the same team they were so confident in a few hours back for being the biggest bunch of losers they’ve ever seen since the last time they saw them lose – although it was a different set of losers then – only now they admit openly that they were thinking this would happen all along.
Then come the reasons why they lost, and they are legion. Blah, blah, blah. Everybody knows why afterward, and the venom gets on everything. It’s a real mess and practically impossible to get out unless you use Ariel at 60 Grad, twice.
But they’re trying this time, the Germans. I must say that they’re doing their best to spread the blame around a little more unfairly, as best they can, although the way they’re spreading it isn’t all that terribly original: They’re blaming the referee this time too.
“Der Schiedsrichter ist auch nur ein Mensch – aber kein guter.”
I knew Germans were a nervous bunch and all, but geez. A German teacher has accused one of her German schoolgirl high schools pupils, as in before court, of drawing rabbits on the blackboard and telling fellow pupils that she (the teacher) was afraid of rabbits and would flip out just seeing one.
The teacher denied this, of course, then flipped out anyway and hasn’t been back to work since.
It’s about the principle of it all or something. Or was it the principal?
Die Deutsch- und Erdkundelehrerin hatte bereits 2008 eine andere Schülerin wegen der gleichen Sache verklagt.
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.”
For cryin’ out loud. German Fußball viewers everywhere were mad as hell at all that obnoxious vuvuzela noise drowning out their own even more obnoxious German screaming and blowing up stuff sounds as Germany beat the vuvuzela out of Australia last night.
Television channels here even received complaints thinking the noise was due to some technical problem. Which it is, I guess. It’s technically a technology that works way too well.
“Vuvuzelas belong to South African football like battle songs belong to German games.”
But the contract with Emirates Airlines announced during the Berlin Air Show is even bigger.
No Hintergedanken (ulterior motives) here or anything, though.
Dubai’s Emirates Airline ordered 32 additional Airbus A380 superjumbo jetliners, and deliberately announced the $11.5 billion deal in Germany’s capital to fight a trade battle with flag carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG.
Emirates, which had already ordered 58 of the world’s largest passenger plane, wants Berlin to grant it greater access to the huge German aviation market. Lufthansa argues that its home market of 80 million people shouldn’t be thrown open to a carrier from one of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has a population of roughly 3.5 million people. Carriers from the UAE may now serve at most four German cities.
Erst 2015 sollen die Produktionskosten so weit gesenkt sein, dass der Flieger Gewinn abwirft. Im Klartext: Die meisten der 32 an Emirates verkauften Maschinen werden Airbus einen Verlust bescheren.
What happened to the all the panic, recriminations and chaos? Nobody seemed to have even noticed this last one in Bonn. This latest climate conference, I mean.
I remember when this used to be a life or death matter. Now it’s just a deathly boring one. Now we even have to find “reasons to be cheerful about climate change talks.”
Hearing that type of thing certainly cheers me up. And I just can’t wait for the next climate change conference to come around. So I won’t.
“It also remained unclear if the document would be accepted as an official negotiating text for further talks leading up to the U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of this year.”
While watching World Cup at work, work, work.
You got to set your priorities, I guess. And when it comes to the soccer (some say football) World Cup starting this weekend, Germans have clearly set theirs. Even the head of the national employers’ association believes his countrymen should be allowed to watch the World Cup on television at work without getting into trouble with their superiors.
This is a sensible thing to say, I think, because they’re going to be watching it one way or the other anyway.
“Watching soccer together encourages team cohesion and staff motivation.”
Observing Hermann 