ALDI?

January 7, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, High Art, Humor Tags: ALDI, Bananas, Berlin, Cocaine, Columbia, Drug Busts, Drugs, German, Germans, Germany, Supermarkets Leave a comment

As in ALDI drugs you want?

Workers at five stores in and around Berlin were surprised to find cocaine packed into crates of bananas on Monday. Olaf Schremm, the head of Berlin’s anti-drugs squad said the crates had come from Colombia via the German port of Hamburg and the discovery was “pure chance”.

140 Kilo Kokain wurden in Aldi-Filialen in Berlin sowie in Velten (Oberhavel) entdeckt. Das Rauschgift war in Bananenkisten verpackt. Den Ermittlern zufolge handelt es sich um den größten Berliner Drogenfund seit Jahren.

But Our Battle Drones Will Only Be Used For Goodness And Niceness

January 2, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Arms exports, Berlin, Bundeswehr, Drones, German, Germans, Germany, Military, Weapons industry Leave a comment

And they won’t stink, either.

The Bundeswehr Association and the commander of German troops in Afghanistan have expressed their support for the acquisition of battle drones to protect their soldiers.

Let the long, agonizing and hypocritical debate begin!

“Wenn Soldatinnen und Soldaten in den Einsatz geschickt werden, dann muss ihnen auch das Optimum an Ausrüstung zur Verfügung gestellt werden.”

L’Etat, C’est You

December 29, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt, German, Germans, Germany, Government spending, Government Waste, National Debt, Politics, Public Sector Debt, Spending, Taxation Leave a comment

Or at least the national deficit is all yours, my German friends (and mine – I live and pay taxes here, too).

But there’s good news, at least. Sort of. It’s only going to get worse!

It’s a paradoxical situation: The economy is braving the euro crisis, tax revenue is making the coffers ring and the German state still goes further into debt. The public sector deficit climbed to 30 billion euros during the first nine months this year. First and foremost the federal government, but also social security and other benefits have gone into the red.

And economists fear that this is just the beginning. Billions of new burdens have been tucked away in the coalition agreement just signed between the Union and the SPD. Tax, social insurance and other contribution increases are right around the corner.

Hey, you voted this coalition government into office, Germany. Oh, that’s right. You didn’t.

Trotz guter Konjunktur und steigender Steuereinnahmen macht Deutschland Milliarden neue Schulden. Jetzt befürchten Ökonomen: Das wird die Bürger teuer zu stehen kommen – und zwar schon bald.

From Russia With Love?

December 22, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Hurt Feelings Tags: 007, Berlin, Chodorkowski, Cold War, Films, Genscher, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, James Bond, Khodorkovsky, Merkel, Movies, Oligarchs, Politics, Putin, Russia, Satire Leave a comment

I think it’s more like Goldfinger.

Or maybe Live and Let Die?

Khodorkovsky will make a statement to the media from Berlin later on Sunday.

Chodorkowski verlässt Russland – wie viele Milliarden Dollar vor ihm (Khodorkovsky leaves Russia, like the many billions of dollars before him)

PS: I think it’s really Edward Snowden in one of those Mission Impossible mask thingies.

I Got The Power

December 20, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Coal, Consumers, Electricity, Energy, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Nuclear power 2 Comments

The power bill, I mean. The Power Bill Blues, actually. Just like everybody else here in Germany.

The electricity prices in Germany are the highest in the EU. A household here shells out 1000 euros annually (approx. $1,370). The French pay half. The EU average is around 700 euros.

Is this what they meant by the Energiewende (energy turnaround)? The power may be renewable here but I’m not sure how much longer the money is going to be.

Well, at least the electricity prices in Germany will be going up even higher again next year.

Bei den Strompreisen gehört Deutschland innerhalb der EU zu den Spitzenreitern. Ein Haushalt zahlt mehr als 1000 Euro, der EU-Schnitt liegt bei 700. Und im kommenden Jahr dürfte es noch teurer werden.

“On The Run From The Henchmen Of His Homeland”

December 18, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Brazil, Edward Snowden, Espionage, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, NSA, Russia, Satire, Surveillance, Treason, Whistleblowing Leave a comment

Concerned Germans everywhere (note the red scarf) weren’t quite concerned enough to actually offer poor and misunderstood professional leaker/Russian tourist Edward Snowden political asylum, but now they all hope in unison that Brazil will (tons of Germans have found refuge there in the past, you know).

Otherwise those awful henchmen/bogeymen from that horrible homeland of his might just get him and, well, we don’t even want to THINK about what could possibly happen to him then!

Ex-NSA-Mitarbeiter Edward Snowden will auf seiner Flucht vor den Häschern seines Heimatlandes offenbar nach Brasilien weiterreisen.

GroKo Is Just What It Sounds Like

December 15, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Government, Grand Coalition, Language, Neologisms, Social Democracy, SPD, Words 2 Comments

Whoopee or something. Germany’s grand coalition is finally here – a government the Germans didn’t vote for.

GERMANY’S language boffins were first: they coined “GroKo” (short for grand coalition) the German language’s word of the year 2013 (an accolade that is not automatically flattering). To some Germans, this neologism might evoke a “great crocodile” or something otherwise sinister.

What does this really mean? It means that the tail (SPD) has succeeded in wagging the dog (CDU/CSU) and will now force enough of its social democratic agenda (“social” = free lunch) upon the German ship of way-too-big-state to veer it off the proper course, once again. It had been heading, however timidly, toward more private initiative = responsibility and away from your typical German been-there-done-that world of ever more government waste, meddling and control. The CDU/CSU has now become thoroughly social democratized, in other words.

Just like with the “energy turnaround,” everybody will wake up again once they figure out that this is actually going to cost them personally way too much money. Hey, life is a zigzag course. They’ll get back on track again eventually.

PS: Something actually happened on German TV last night that was apparently worth watching.

Only In Berlin

December 13, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Airports, BER, Berlin, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, Erich Honnecker, German, Germans, Germany, Government Waste, Humor, Incompetence, Klaus Wowereit, Satire Leave a comment

Speaking of paying more for more of nothing…

Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD), the guy personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project, will be chosen later today to become the new chairman of the board of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company and thus once again become personally responsible for the German capital’s world renown BER Berlin Brandenburg still-not-an-Airport project.

What part of that don’t you understand? I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that if this were a comedy project we were talking about here it would be a raving success.

Wowereit had already been chairman of the board for the Berlin Brandenburg Airport Company from 2008 to 2013 (not all that long ago), of course, until some trifling misunderstanding cropped up about the airport still not being completed after 10 or 20 years or something like that, I forget, but that is all now Schnee von gestern (long forgotten, “yesterday’s snow”) and everything will be OK again because if there is any one person in all of Germany who can possibly get this job done it is most definitely and certainly Klaus Wowereit himself.

By the way, he has to be reelected today because there is no other opposing candidate. Don’t be bothered by that, though. That kind of thing has a long tradition here in Berlin.

Ausgerechnet der vielgeschmähte Klaus Wowereit soll erneut den Aufsichtsrat der Flughafengesellschaft führen. Er erhält damit eine zweite Chance, das Projekt doch noch zum Erfolg zu führen.

PS: There’s more Klaus stuff here, if you like.

I Love You, You Big Dummy

December 12, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, City Government, City Tax, Debt, German, Germans, Germany, Government spending, Humor, Satire, Taxation, Tourism 3 Comments

Come to Berlin Country! Come to where the City Tax is!

The city of Berlin loves youz tourists, honest it does. Sort of. In fact, the local yokel politicians here love youz guys so much that they feel the pressing need to show you just how much that is. And it’s a full 15 percent more than any of you out there were expecting. And that’s 15 percent more for getting absolutely nothing in return!

That’s right. Starting next month you will be permitted to pay an additional 15 percent City Tax on top of your hotel room bill here, at no extra cost to them and absolutely not free of charge for you! Now that’s what I call big City Tax hospitality!

I love you, you big dummy. You big dumb tourist. Book your flight to Berlin now!

“Es ist absolut nicht rechtssicher und wird ein bürokratisches Verwaltungsmonster sein.”

Swords To Pflugscharen?

December 11, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Bavaria, Berlin, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Helmut Schmidt, Hitler, Mein Kampf, Profit, Weapons Exports Leave a comment

You can stop the import of Mein Kampf in Germany, why not stop the export of expensive weapons systems out of Germany?

The Munich Institute for Contemporary History has been working for years on a “scientific edition” of Hitler’s book. In 2012 the state government gave the green light, now it wants to stop the project*.

Meanwhile… On the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, Helmut Schmidt has called on the federal government to stop German weapons exports.”It is time to raise an objection,” the former chancellor wrote in the ZEIT. Germany is the world’s third largest weapons exporter and ranks before China, Japan, France and England, directly after the USA and Russia. “A development that displeases me greatly. And one that needs to be stopped by the coming coalition government in Berlin.”

Er habe Verständnis für “die Unlust der heutigen Deutschen”, “Aber ich halte es für abwegig, statt Soldaten Waffen zu schicken.”

* Germany does not ban “Mein Kampf,” but Bavaria has used its ownership of the copyright to block domestic publication until now. Late Tuesday, the state premier’s chief of staff, Christine Haderthauer, said that Hitler’s anti-Semitic memoir amounts to incitement and that the state would file a criminal complaint if anyone tried to publish it in the future. In Germany, copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Berlin