German Of The Day: Bewaffnete Bürger

No, that doesn’t mean Waffle Burger (do you want fries with that?). It means armed citizens.

Guns

And yes, believe it or not, many Germans actually own so-called “guns.” Although a lot of them are just Schreckschusswaffen (alarm guns that fire blanks).

And word is out that the number of Germans wanting guns of any kind has increased dramatically the past year or two, for some inexplicable reason.

“As of June 2016, there were 402,301 small arms carry permits in the National Weapons Register,” the Interior Ministry said. The first half of 2015 recorded slightly less than 270,000 requests for permits – that’s an almost 50% jump in permit applications.

German Of The Day: Negerkuss

That means “negro kiss” and is a somewhat antiquated name for a popular chocolate covered marshmallow here.

Negerkuss

And using this name can get you fired in this highly sensitive, politically correct day and age we are forced to live in, too. A manager who works at the tour operator Thomas Cook just found that out.

It didn’t matter that no offense was intended when he ordered one of these things at the company cafeteria – from a black employee to boot – the company acted as it was expected to act and fired this otherwise irreproachable employee of ten years without notice.

Den Thomas-Cook-Mitarbeiter jedenfalls hat die drastische Reaktion des Unternehmens auf den Eklat in der Kantine erschüttert. Er zog vors Frankfurter Arbeitsgericht – und bekam dort Recht. Da der unbescholtene Mann aus dem mittleren Management mehr als zehn Jahre ohne Beanstandungen gearbeitet habe, sei ohne vorherige Abmahnung weder eine außerordentliche fristlose noch eine ordentliche Kündigung gerechtfertigt, befand das Arbeitsgericht.

Does The BratWurst Bot Automatically Short-Change You, Too?

Like the guy at my Imbissbude (snack stand) always tries to do, I mean?

BratWurstBot

BratWurst Bot was built using a set of common parts run by a flexible, adaptive software package that can interact with members of the public. It’s based on a Universal Robots UR-10 arm equipped with Schunk PG-70 standard parallel gripper hand and a very standard pair of grill tongs. The bratwursts were conveyed from an ordinary tray to a regular gas grill before being plated and served.

German Of The Day: Under-reported

OK. That’s English. But still.

Under-reported

Authorities now say that more than 1,200 women were sexually assaulted across Germany that night, including about 400 in Hamburg and more than 600 in Cologne, by more than 2,000 men. Previous estimates had ranged in the dozens, both for the victims as well as suspects.

About half of the 120 suspects whose identity has been established had come to Germany from a foreign countries within the last years.

Uhm… Why was it under-reported? I mean, what could possibly be the reason for doing so? Does anyone know?  I’m just asking.

“There is a connection between the emergence of this phenomenon and the rapid migration in 2015.”

Elfmeterhelden

Eleven Meter Heroes“?*

Germany

I’m there, dude. I just hope this flick is half as good as Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.

Woman

Germany had to negotiate the equal-longest penalty shootout in Euros history but they finally managed to overcome Italy in a competitive game to set up a last-four clash against hosts France or Iceland.

*Penalty kick heroes.

Whaddya Mean 501 German Oddities For Only 99 Cents?

Why that’s almost 5.060606060606061 oddities per penny!

Critics

What a steal.

Just ask Marina. If you happen to know her, I mean:

“Hermann, thank you for your blog and books, I am hooked. I recently picked up 501 German Oddities and couldn’t stop laughing. I am German, but live in Boston with my husband, who is from the area and grew up here. We cracked up so many times and just had a blast reading your book. It was actually eye opening at times to the both of us and explained some “odd” behaviors of mine to him. Super grateful for the book and can’t wait to see more blog entries. All the best, Marina.”

Limited time offer or something.

PS: Also available at Smashwords, iTunes, etc.

German Of The Day: Selbstmord

That means suicide. You could translate this literally as meaning self-murder. Or as the kids these days probably prefer to say, selfie-murder.

Selfie

German tourist at Machu Picchu plunges 100m to his death ‘after selfie goes wrong

Der 51 Jahre alte Mann, dessen Name mit Oliver P. angegeben wurde, war offenbar über eine Sicherheitsabsperrung geklettert, um zu fotografieren.

German Of The Day: Verantwortbarkeit, Verantwortlichkeit und Rechenschaft

Take your pick, all three mean accountability. Sort of.

Brexit

You know, like the kind of political accountability the British just voted to get back again? They soon won’t have to comply to the whims of unelected Eurocrats anymore.

Funny, but in German (and in other European languages, it seems) there does not seem to be a clear-cut translation for that very simple word.

Großbritannien wird aus der EU austreten und erschüttert damit den Staatenbund in seinen Grundfesten. Es ist die größte Krise der EU in ihrer bisherigen Geschichte. Jetzt greift Plan B, doch gibt es den überhaupt? Bislang scheint niemand genau zu wissen, wie es weitergeht, der Schock steht den führenden Politikern Europas ins Gesicht geschrieben.

German Of The Day: Arbeitslos

That means unemployed. You know, like this loser of a European Football Championship koala oracle at the Leipzig Zoo?

Koala

„Oobi-Ooobi’s” job was to predict the outcome of the German team’s soccer matches and after two big flops in a row they fired his furry Australian ass. Dumb animal You have to perform over here in this part of the world, pal. And there is no such thing as free eucalyptus.

„Der unparteiische Australier zieht die Konsequenzen aus seinen beiden falschen Tipps. Als sportlich fairer Verlierer überlässt er das Orakeln ab sofort den Anderen.“

More Gun Control Needed

In Germany.

Gun Control

The citizens of this predominantly pacifist nation still refuse to address this very grave issue (no pun intended) in any meaningful way and therefore remain the world’s third largest exporters of deadly firearms.* Again and again and again. Like, when will they ever learn?

The only nations that export more arms than the Germans are US-Amerika and Russia, much more violent and less enlightened societies that have not yet learned to make atonement for their dreadful, awful pasts like Germany has – thus making it OK for them to be the world’s third largest exporters of deadly firearms, I assume. Es ist einfach kompliziert (it’s simply complicated) over here sometimes. No, make that all the time.

Die umstrittenen Lieferungen an Saudi-Arabien haben dazu beigetragen, dass Deutschland 2015 drittgrößter Waffenexporteur war.

*And tanks. And submarines. You know. And other stuff like that?