We must not repeat the mistakes of history

June 4th, 2008

We live in a world of increasingly fast-paced change, but we must remain vigilant students of world history to determine what factors have caused great civilizations and nations to fall. The best reason to study the past is to learn the mistakes others have made and to work to avoid these tragic pitfalls. Quite obviously, Germany offers us an example of the downfall of great nation in recent history, even within our lifetimes. This is why you must not vote for Hillary Clinton.

My fellow Americans, we now stand before an historic election, where we can choose the direction our country takes. We can choose to become a country of whiny socialists or continue on our honored tradition of cold hearted capitalism and global terrorism battles. But under no circumstances can we afford to become a society that would tolerate a woman as its chief executive officer. Just look at Germany.

Germany was once a proud nation, that worked hard, spit in its hands and went to work increasing the gross domestic product. Now they sit down to pee.

Unless we want to be constantly confronted with signs such as these in our own bathrooms, do not vote for Hillary.

Sitzpinkler

If you see this sign at a party at a friend’s apartment, please be aware that this is not a joke. German women are dead serious about turning any man who sets foot into their humble abode into a Sitzpinkler. Telling them you thought their sign was funny will almost certainly get you sent home early without any Bowle.

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Quick Tipp - Getting in good with the colleagues

June 3rd, 2008

MettIf you work in Germany, you may want to make a good impression with your coworkers to show you are an integral part of the team. In America, you may spontaneously bring some donuts to the office to spread goodwill. Don’t do that in Germany. In Germany you should bring meat.

Germans don’t like things to happen spontaneously, so instead you should plan to bring a meat breakfast a few days ahead of schedule, and you should put together a spreadsheet to email out, in which each meat eating participant can write down exactly how much they will consume. In Schwabia you should bring exactly the amount written down, because it would be foolish of you to buy extra for the chance that any go to waste. Anywhere else you should throw in some extra portions, because some more people will always show up for free meat. Remember, Germans like to plan things out, so they need to be notified a couple of days in advance, so that they don’t have to eat an extraneous breakfast at home or fill their incredibly tiny refrigerator with extra food that will spoil if not consumed within 2 days.

The choice of which meat to bring is straightforward. Ask a colleague if you live north or south of the White Sausage Equator. If south, then your spreadsheet needs to contain the following columns: Name, Nr. Weisswurst, Nr. Bretzel, Nr. Weissbier. Again, in Schwabia, you can check to make sure that the people take exactly what they wrote down, which will be the case 99% of the time. In southern Germany it’s pretty much ok to have a beer at work now and then. It doesn’t look great if you are trying to climb the corporate ladder, but if you want to keep your position for life, it’s fine, enjoy a beer with breakfast. Don’t forget to bring some butter. You can impress your colleagues there by calling it der Butter instead of die Butter.

If you live north of the equator, then your spreadsheet needs to contain the column: Name. You will bring two freshly baked rolls per person, and a big bucket of raw beef with some onions in it. Your butcher will tell you how much of this Mett you need to satisfy the given quantity of meat eaters. Bring some orange juice along with it, because drinking alcohol at work in northern Germany isn’t really a common thing. Eating spreadable raw beef is pretty straightforward, just put it on a roll and enjoy, and try to cover your mouth with one hand while you pick the onions out of your teeth with the other.

WeisswurstEating Weisswurst is a bit more complicated on the other hand. First of all you need to make sure to bring lots of sweet mustard, because spicy mustard is unacceptable. The second most important step is to decide how you will consume this treat. The are basically two options with two distinct strategies. If you want to look like one of the local folks, alternate between dipping the boiled sausages into the mustard and sucking it straight out of the pig’s intestine down your throat. If you want to look like you are interested in advancing your career, carefully cut along the top, then cut the sausage in half, and gingerly remove the sausage wrapper as you dip each carefully sliced bite size bit into the mustard.

We recommend you only eat two of these, or else your stomach is going to bother you for the rest of the day, and you won’t get much work done. Also, never, ever break the rule of eating white sausage in the afternoon, as this is strictly forbidden.

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Quick Tipp - sweep week

June 2nd, 2008

If you have to live in Germany, live in Bavaria. If you can’t live in Bavaria, then live anywhere north of there, but avoid living in Baden-Württemberg at all costs, lest you be forced to deal with the dreaded Kehrwoche. There doesn’t exist an English translation of this word, because no other culture would choose to self-inflict itself with this absurdity.

If forced to live among the Schwabs, you may be tempted to live in a house with multiple families to save some money, thinking it will be something like an apartment in America. This is not the case, because in Schwabia, each family takes turns sweeping, mopping, washing windows, cleaning out the garage, doing yard work, or any other work your condo fees would take care of in a civilized society. This Kehrwoche is perfect for the Schwabs, because not only do they not have to pay a cleaning lady or maintenance crew to handle the upkeep of common areas, they also have the chance to nit-pick about the quality of work done by the neighbors, which can be used to add some extra much needed complaining to the local gossip.

If you do end up in a Kehrwoche situation, be prepared to receive a note like this one on your door to reinforce all the stereotypes about Schwabs.

Kehrwoche

Note here that this letter is an almost friendly reminder that all the information contained in it is posted elsewhere in the house, so obviously you aren’t doing a good enough job of following the rules. You will note that there is a small and a big sweep week, so that you can alternate between disappointing just your floor mates and the entire house with a cleaning job not up to their standards. Maybe that’s because you don’t like the idea of cleaning the trashcan used by 20 other strangers as instructed here.

Another interesting point about the note you will receive is that you will be thanked in advance with an exclamation point (In the German language, the exclamation point indicates a command), and that the note will be written on paper stolen from a tropical resort hotel, furthering reinforcing stereotypes about these people.

If you don’t want to be bossed around by neighbors who don’t know whether to capitalize a verb or not in their own language, please don’t move here.

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Culture shock

May 28th, 2008

The surprising thing about culture shock is that it is actually worse when you get back to your home country. When you move off to a foreign land, you expect that you are going to have to adapt to changes. But when you set foot back on your own shores, suddenly you realize that home is missing some of the things you have come to love.

100% of Americans returning home from Germany miss German bread and German chocolate, immediately. Although feeble attempts to recreate German bread are created throughout the country, you can still always mash the entire loaf into a pancake shape with ease. Pretty good bread is available in America, but certainly not on every street corner.

The chance to walk around a nice looking city center, without being inundated with cars and ugly billboards competing for your short attention span, is something most Americans returning home miss as well. Most of us would like to have the chance to walk or bike somewhere without imminent death waiting around each street corner.

Germany produces some of the worst software ever created, i.e. SAP. One need only compare the beautifully elegant Gmail to the hideous GMX, which the majority of Germans inexplicably continue to use. Despite Germany’s propensity towards poor quality software, Germany makes the best computer magazine in the world, c’t, which expat computer geeks severely miss upon their repatriation.

In America we speak our own flavor of English, which is missing the amazingly useful word doch. Normally German words are entire sentences strung together into a single word, but this little gem is actually the sentence, “I am right, and you are wrong”, all wrapped up into a single grunt from the bottom of your throat. The closest we have as Americans to this is “yuh-huh”, but that becomes unacceptable to say after you turn 7 years old, about the age where you are expected to stop saying exactly how you feel.

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Germans do things wrong

May 26th, 2008

In 1713, when the International Assemly on How to Do Stuff met to determine the acceptable standards of the world, the Germans didn’t show up. That’s why when traveling or living in Germany, you will have to get used to the fact that they do everything wrong.

Germans start counting with 0. When you go to a hotel, they will tell you that your room is on the third floor, when it is actually on the fourth floor, because Germans don’t understand that the first thing counted is always 1, not 0. This has the side-effect of causing Germans to start counting with their thumb.

Germans don’t realize a phone number should have a fixed number of digits. In America we always use the same number of digits, so that when we give our phone number out, we kind of have a tune that we all sing it to. In Germany, you never know when to put down the pen, since your phone number could be 472323412232 or 7.

Germans don’t know how to work a calendar. First of all they write the date, month, and then the year seperated by dots instead of a month, date, and year sperated by slashes, like any reasonable person. But the weirdest thing is that Germans think the week starts on a Monday, so you always have to shift around the calendar in your head to figure out what they really mean.

With numbers, the Germans put a comma where the decimal goes, and decimals where the commas go.

The one thing the Germans did get right is that you drive on the right side of the road, which they probably decided on just to spite the British.

The silliest thing the Germans do is use the metric system. Everyone knows the inch is better than the centimeter, because it is bigger. Also, if you want to divide up a Subway footlong sub among 2,3,4, or 6 people, you make, 6,4,3, or 2 inch sections, respectively. Try that with the centimeter. The sections would be 15.24, 10.16, 7.62, or 5.08 cm. That’s simply too hard to remember.

God made the 7 day week, but it was the genius of George Washington that gave the world the 24 hour day, which lets you divide the day evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, eigths, twelveths, as well as twenty-fourths, which is the same reason the mile has 5,280 feet, so that you can divide it into one-thousand seven hundred sixtieths evenly.

The circle isn’t made up of 100 degrees for a reson. Think about it.

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