Tag Archives: Berlin
All Together Now!
Here’s where we say this had nothing to do with Islam (other religions have this kind of stuff done in their names all the time, you know).
And getting back to Pegida… How could anyone possibly have anything bad to say about the potential Islamization danger in Germany? Or, well, in France for that matter.
“All diejenigen, die bisher die Sorgen der Menschen vor einer drohenden Gefahr durch Islamismus ignoriert oder verlacht haben, werden durch diese Bluttat Lügen gestraft.”
Pegida? Kögida? Bärgida?
This is all starting to bug me a litta…
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.
3000 Bombs In Berlin
Oddity 12. Germany is the only place on earth where huge underground bombs are regularly unearthed all around the country and this barely even makes second page news. In fact most Germans directly affected by these excavations are more annoyed by them than anything else. They grudgingly leave their homes for a few hours until the bomb crews disarm or detonate the damned things.
Berlin authorities believe 3000 bombs still lurk beneath the capital and experts warn that some are growing increasingly dangerous as they rust and their fuses grow more brittle.
54 Tonnen Bomben, Granaten und Munition aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg sind im vergangenen Jahr in Berlin gefunden und entschärft worden. Seit Ende des Krieges vor 70 Jahren wurden nach Polizeiangaben mehr als 1,8 Millionen Sprengkörper vernichtet. Nach Schätzungen der zuständigen Stellen beim Senat liegen aber weiterhin 3000 Blindgänger aus dem Weltkrieg im Boden der Hauptstadt – auch in der Nähe wichtiger Verkehrsknotenpunkten wie Bahnhöfen oder dem Flughafen Tegel. Genau kann das aber niemand sagen.
The Fall Of The Berlin Mall Of Berlin
Jeepers. That didn’t take very long.
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 End Of An Aura
It’s amazing these sleeper trains have lasted as long as they have, if you stop and think about it.
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 (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.
You Better Watch Out
A base flying Santa? From the Park Inn Hotel on Alexanderplatz?
That creeps me out for some reason.
He sees you when you’re sleeping (in room 842)
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
Bad German Historian Woman Points Out Trümmerfrau Myth
… Every time another memorial goes up in the “rubble woman’s” honor, German politicians look to what former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in Munich in 2005. The rubble-clearing women in the aftermath of WWII are “a symbol of the German people’s wish to rebuild and of their powers of survival,” he said, adding that the Munich monument “commemorates the large number of women who volunteered to clear the ruins.”
Wrong, says historian Leonie Treber. Neither was there a great number of women, nor did most of them volunteer to clear the rubble, the researcher says. “The Trümmerfrau is a German legend.”
Yet it wasn’t just the women who were reserved when it came to clearing the war debris; men weren’t crazy about the task, either. In the eyes of the Germans, it was anything but honorable for people to show their “willingness to rebuild.” In fact, most Germans regarded clearing rubble as punishment – and for a reason.
During the war, the Nazis made soldiers, the Hitler Youth, forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners clear the bombed cities after Allied air raids. In 1945, after the end of the war, prisoners of war and former members of the NSDAP Nazi party took their place. When that turned out to be insufficient, the population was asked to help – on a voluntary basis in the West, but usually against their will in the Soviet occupation zone.
Gorillas Rock
In Berlin Zoological Garden. With gorilla rocks.
That’s why I always wear a football helmet whenever I go to talk to the animals there.
Observing Hermann 