Speaking Of Construction Projects…

August 6, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Berlin, Berlin Brandenburg International, Construction Projects, Egypt, German, German Efficiency, Germans, Germany, Klaus Wowereit, Language, Myths, SPD, Suez Canal Leave a comment

So just let me get this straight. After one year Egypt has opened a major expansion of the freakin’ Suez Canal, deepening the waterway and providing ships with a 22 mile channel parallel to it.

Meanwhile, in Berlin…

The non-working airport, Berlin Brandenburg International (some prefer to call it Klaus Wowereit International), should have started working three years ago. It may start working in two years’ time. No one knows.

The most important thing to remember is German efficiency – both the term and concept – exists in our English-speaking world but not in theirs. You never hear Germans talking about German efficiency. Anyone who lives in Berlin knows why… While Germany may have a system for everything, Berlin proves every day there’s no system for when the system fails.

German Sommerloch Update: Two New Mysterious Extraterrestrial Phenomena Found Near Berlin

July 31, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hustle (Hoax) Tags: Berlin, Crop Circles, Extraterrestrials, German, Germans, Kornkreise, Language, UFOs 2 Comments

No, not in Friedrichshain. NEAR Berlin. In a place called Großziethen. The Germans in this area call these phenomena “Kornkreise” and they appear to be designs or patterns laid down gently in a growing crop, leaving the surrounding crop untouched. By aliens.

Here is a picture of a German Kornkreis taken earlier this year.

Needless to say, German Kornkreise are not spread randomly across the countryside but always appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population and Ortschaften (places) like Großziethen where there is obviously very, very little to do.

Two new crop circles have recently appeared in a suburb of Berlin and Dave Keating reports…

English Of The Day: Fancy

July 30, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Actors, Comedians, English, Flula, German, Germans, Humor, Language, Los Angeles, Videos 2 Comments

Flula: “I tried to eat items. You know, food? And I was in a restaurant to eat some food. But the salad that I did like it was having like a weird thing. Some strange cheeses…”

“Get away from my fancy. It’s my fancy.”

Or check out the “he is from, where are you from?” pseudo-dirndl-gal who’s way too excited about learning how to be German. In Los Angeles.

German Of The Day: Bombenstimmung

July 27, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Bombings, Fear, Freital, German, Germans, Germany, Intolerance, Language, Nazis, Racism, Refugees, Terror, Xenophobia 1 Comment

That means a tremendous, “bomb-like” atmosphere. And that’s definitely the kind of mood some of those fine, wholesome folks down there in that little old one-horse town called Freital, Saxony seem to be in.

A local politician who supported a plan to house refugees in the town of Freital outside Dresden has been the victim of an arson attack. The Left party said that Michael Richter was the target of right-wing threats…

In recent weeks, Freital – just 10 kilometers (6 miles) southwest of Dresden – has been the scene of increasingly tense political rhetoric and sporadic violence after city authorities announced in June that the town of around 40,000 would house 280 refugees in a former hotel. Some locals responded by launching a series of increasingly virulent anti-asylum seeker demonstrations, culminating in a July 6 town hall meeting which saw protestors clash with town politicians.

Sheesh. Ugly Germans of the week? These folks have now been awarded the entire month of July.

German Of The Day: RIAS

July 19, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Hi-tech, Hideology, Higher Education, History Tags: Berlin, Cold War, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Radio, RIAS, West Berlin 4 Comments

That stands for Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor and means radio (or broadcasting) in the American Sector – of a place they used to call “West Berlin.”

Now Father Time has managed to take care of something that the East German jamming stations were never able to do back then in the good old bad old days: Shut this broadcasting tower down. With explosives, in this case.

Von Britz aus ging 1946 der Rundfunk im Amerikanischen Sektor (Rias) auf Sendung. Später entstand dort Europas damals leistungsstärkster Mittelwellensender, mit dem jahrelang auch die Störsender aus Ost-Berlin überwunden werden mussten. Heute gilt die Übertragung per Mittelwelle als veraltet.

German Of The Day: Hand Over The Money Or I’ll Shoot!

July 3, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: EU, Euro, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Grexit, Humor, Jokes, Language, Tsipras 2 Comments

And here you thought that Germans didn’t have a sense of humor. Galgenhumor (gallows humor), OK, but humor all the same.

Public broadcaster ARD, in its Morgenmagazin breakfast show, lampooned the tit-for-tat battle that has ensued between German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis, 54, in a video clip based on the 2011 French film The Intouchables, depicting the unlikely friendship between a wealthy quadriplegic and his African carer. Schaeuble, 72, has been confined to a wheelchair since he was shot by a deranged man in 1990.

German Of The Day: Amerikanische Verhältnisse

June 24, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Crime, German, Germans, Germany, Gun control, Hamburg, Language, Robberies, Self-Defense, Shootings Leave a comment

That means “American conditions” or “the American situation,” meaning really, really bad, of course, and is most often used when referring to crime and the use of guns there.

But then there’s this homeowner guy in Hamburg. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking but when two thieves forced their way into his house he pulled out a gun and shot one of them. At this point the thieves decided to leave. The guy that got shot, however, only made it about two hundred meters down the road before dropping dead. A very similar incident also happened recently in Hanover, by the way.

Shocking, isn’t it? Talk about your amerkikanische Verhältnisse. But even more shocking, I find, is how these news items are quietly being ignored and how you will be hard-pressed to find anyone here in Germany who doesn’t think this guy was right in protecting himself and his property. After all, this isn’t Wild West US-Amerika we’re talking about here, folks.

Einer der Männer soll dann bis in den Hausflur eingedrungen sein. Daraufhin gab der Hauseigentümer einen Schuss auf den Täter ab.

Practice Your German Tonight

June 17, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: BRD, Cold War, East Germany, GDR, German, Germany, Language, NATO, Nuclear Arms, Putin, TV, West Germany Leave a comment

And your Cold War attitudes from the 80s, while you’re at it. Looks like we might be needing them again.

“Deutschland 83” premieres 11 p.m. Wednesday on SundanceTV.

SundanceTV’s “Deutschland 83” is the first German-language series ever broadcast on a U.S. network. The eight-part fictional spy thriller is set in 1983, when the then-split Germany was the hot spot for escalating nuclear tensions between NATO and the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin: “More than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems will be added to the make-up of the nuclear arsenal this year.”

Bavarian Codebreaker Needed

June 7, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Bavaria, Demonstrations, Elmau, G7, Humor, Language, Merkel, Music, Music Videos, Obama, Protests 1 Comment

Not everybody can speak this lingo. I assume it has something to do with the G7 demonstration festivities going on in Elmau, Germany right now but I can’t say for sure.

I am also assuming here that “Yes Mia Spuin” must be in honor of Obama’s visit and can only mean “yes, we can.” The guy with his face all up in the camera has sure got me stumped, however.

Dorf empfängt Obama mit Alphörnern und Weißwurst

German Of The Day: Auf Dem Linken Auge Blind

May 28, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: AfD, Frauke Petry, Free speech, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Left-Wing Extremists, Nazis, Paint Bombs 1 Comment

That means “blind in the left eye” and that’s what mainstream media in Germany is. When it comes to politically motivated attacks, I mean.

More German n-word nonsense here. Apparently, if you’re a eurosceptic and anti-immigration – and a top dog in the AfD protest party – that automatically makes you a Nazi these days.

This woman isn’t a Nazi, of course. Not by any means. But her views are troubling for a lot of people in Germany because it’s how they think, too, only they are not able to speak their minds out loud. So the enlightened left just just took over the conversation for them and attacked her with a paint bomb at a meeting in Göttingen, calling her a Nazi because, well, they can. And, when in doubt, everybody uses the n-word here so this is nothing new. And extreme left-wingers are, I dunno, cute or something.

See Goodwin’s law if you’re confused on this point. These folks just refuse to grow up.

“Sind Sie Frauke Petry?”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

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