Back from being back

I should have read Irvine Welsh before I moved there. In “Porno” Sick Boy describes my old neighbourhood exactly. I should have known better.

I recently went back to lovely London. It was great. The city showed off its beauty. I strolled around places that shaped my London experience. My old neighbourhood in Hackney for example. That was a tricky rebound. I liked my house and my neighbours. I hated my flat and my flatmate. Some of you will know and experienced it yourselves. The flat was - exceptthe bathroom, kitchen and doors (you could slip your two hands under them) - fine. I even had double-glazed windows (!) and a pet. Sadly, the windows were so badly installed that the curtains moved when it was windy outside and the pet was a mouse. I heard also a rat running beneath the walls. But it was alright. That’s London.

Surviving my flatmate and his habits was my everyday challenge. First I thought that he was a nice guy and we would get on. I wasn’t really interested in being best friends so I didn’t think much of the rejection of my invite for a beer on my moving in day as an omen for this living nightmare. But as time went by I recognised the sweet smell coming under the door every evening. And through the blinds of the window hole in the wall from the kitchen to his room. No it wasn’t a scented candle.

“That’s not upgrading his IQ, but fine with me”, I thought, having a Greenpeace history. A few months passed with some of his strange weekend benders ending at the flat with friends and a dog called “Chaos”. I was a bit pissed off with them, because they turned techno music on at 4 am and pooed the bathroom so well… full that I rather had a shower at the gym than home. Plus the gas was constantly empty, anyway. I made a few remarks that he must have had fun and that I could hear the music. I didn’t want to be the boring flatmate. I had a reputation to defend. I’m from Berlin.

-       “Do you know Berghain?”

-        “Yes.”

-       “Man, I love that city. The nightlife”

-       “Yes it’s fun”

-        “When I was there, I went to clubs until the morning and slept the whole day and went clubbing again. Berlin is so great!”

-       “Well Berlin has some other things to offer too”

-       “Yeah, do you know Simon-Dach-Straße? I went there!”

This was probably the longest conversation we ever had after I moved in.

Last December he met a girl. The weekend benders (Thursday to Monday) were then relocated to home, evacuated on Saturdays to a techno car park rave. Orders from the dealer were made at home: “I need some hash, ex and ketamine”. One point I found an empty bottle of methadone in the kitchen. When telling that in a pub to friends I was comforted with the comment: “At least he’s doing something against it”. Well, that doesn’t help me when the flat smells of fart, alcohol, sweat, shit and spots of blood in the basin. But the worst was the music. I cannot listen to any techno anymore. It hurts. Weeks of sleep deprivation imprinted my mind in disgust with this genre. I live in Berlin. The London experience has decreased my clubbing options in this city tremendously.

Of course I complained. I tried. But how do you get through to someone who’s never sober, always on uppers or downers? The neighbours didn't manage it, either.

You ask yourself why I stayed there for almost half a year? Because it was bloody cheap for London prices. Yes, I paid the same amount for my flat in Berlin for the room in hipster-Hackney. But hey, that’s a reasonable price!

That I never got my deposit back goes without saying.

Hackney Downs. I tried you and, no thank you. I rather enjoy my Kiez.

Back in Britain

This is how a proper supermarket stroll looks like. I was craving these products for almost half a year. Still not satisfied.

https://t.co/8GRoSvI6xm
— Laura Varriale (@LrVrrl) September 5, 2013

German crisis in Greece - the story

Yes, this is a provocative title. And I know that you were thrilled by the trailer I posted two weeks ago. So here it is. True story. The horror scenario of families of the 21st century.

It is a hot day. 38 degrees on Corfu, Greece. The only possibility to cool down is by jumping into the sea. Yes, you could stay in your hotel room with air-conditioning. But hey, this is not America. Greece is in Europe (and still part of the EU). Air-conditioning is for losers. Enjoy nature!

This nature-loving and romantic thinking of a day at the beach is the reason I found myself at the same beach spot as this German family. Mother, father, son. Let’s call them the Michels. It’s their first day of the holiday. Careful steps on the sand. Checking the water. “The water is much clearer than in our sea” and “But colder!”. As these major differences between German sea spots and Ioanian sea spots were screamed out to everyone at the beach, the father joins mother Michel and son Michel to relax under the parasol.

Instead of talking, everybody takes out their e-book readers. Fair enough. At holiday you are supposed to do what you want. You can talk to your family back in Germany. Every reader was – in wise foresight – in a plastic case to protect it from billions of evil grains of sand.

Art in crisis. On the plate in the back it reads "odyssey".

As time goes by, the son gets bored of reading and gets suddenly excited about being at the beach and throws himself on his father’s belly. This unpredictable interruption of being a relaxed tourist on a family holiday, caused by a member of his family, got him mad. Not only that the child is behaving like a child, the son also broke the e-book. The father initially claimed that it’s the son’s fault. The son, not sure why his father got so angry, says that it was an accident and apologises. Father Michel doesn’t want to forgive him and says: “These things always happen by accident! First everything is nice and then something bad happens!”. It is said that this grown-up learns this rule of life so late. “190 Euros are gone!”. Yes, gone due to the love of a child towards his father. Probably son Michel will never hug his father again. It can cost him 190 Euros. Then he continues: “This has turned the whole! holiday! into a catastrophe!!” I have to use so many exclamation marks because Germans talk! in! exclamation! marks!

It’s a horrible situation. I can’t hide behind a book any more and am interested in what happens next. I’m just staring at the Michels. The mother too, because she is just looking as if these two people under her parasol were strangers that decided to make a scene there. The father is obviously the bad guy in the family. Frustrated with his working life. Probably underfucked. All the anticipation of a holiday, far away from everyday life, gone. And as bad guys do, they blame the weak. And the mother sits and does nothing (reminds me a bit of our Living German family)

To emphasise his rude behaviour, father Michel has a very heavy Bavarian accent. But as he tells his son that he turned the whole (!) holiday (!) into a catastrophe (!), the situation reminds me of the movie “Sightseers”.

The couple in the movie were quite like the same. (“You ruined the holidays”) only with a Birmingham accent. And they killed some people. But still.

I wish the mother and son killed the father, because he went on lamenting that he didn’t want to talk about the incident anymore. But I think they didn’t.

The family left the spot right after the incident, because you can’t enjoy the beach without an e-book. And also, it was around six. Dinner time.

Yes, Germans can also be in a crisis. In a country, where people earn 190 Euros a month and living costs are higher as in Germany. But still, the 190 Euro e-book reader is gone. Forever.

German crisis in Greece

...there'll be some moving images and ancient greek holiday fairytales soon. Perhaps not everything in one go. Who wants everything at once? I certainly don't. Except for 2 for 1 Extra Mature Cheddar offers at Tesco.

This is a time lapse of me jabbering in the sunset. If you want more videos (with audio) tell me.

Germany – Federal Republic of Bananas aka Bananenrepublik

 

In the GDR there was a lack of bananas. This was because the German army, the Bundeswehr, wasn’t there to protect sea routes for the packets of bananas for GDR citizens. Different country, no Bundeswehr, no bananas.

In the new trailer for the Bundeswehr, „Marine Trailer Bananen“ (why waste time with catchy titles) the army tells us plebeian citizens that – thanks to guns and soldiers – we can enjoy the sweet taste of these exotic fruits. The video really does enlighten my understanding of economy, wealth and the food industry. The army fires at the pirates, who board merchant ships, kill the sailors and make sea routes dangerous. Piracy must be the reason for why they came up with this bananas idea. You cannot actually see a pirate in the video. I guess Johnny Depp was too expensive and they couldn’t cast people with darker skin because that’s racist.

But the video does seem like a trailer for the army or at least the arms industry (but where is the difference anyway, Thomas De Maizière?). The content: Bombs exploding, guns firing senselessly into the sea. Smiling soldiers. Protecting the prosperity of Germany, wicked activity. A blond female soldier looking at screens (women can also do technical stuff in the Bundeswehr!). Ships and ships and ships. A clip for 16-year-old kids from the countryside with no clue what to do in their life. Join the army! Train on the Gorch Fock!

But for me, it’s conveying a deep, uncomfortable feeling that Germany has too many weapons. All that for a stupid banana? A banana that puts a smile on the blonde girl’s face (why is every woman blonde in that clip by the way?) at the obvious REWE supermarket in the beginning of the clip? Or is it all about publicity? Come on. As Stefan Kuzmany puts it in his Spiegel Online article, it’s weapon porn.

It is such a sad video. Even the shining sun in the video pollutes the atmosphere with awkward pride. We are proud to be soldiers, we are proud to make the way free for bananas for our affluent society. Disgusting.

But most disgusting is that they seem to use the same font for their text in the video as the right wing party NPD on their campaign posters. Yes, I am proud of you, Bundeswehr. Do some research before you produce videos. Or do you want to have this commonality? I guess not.

I want more of these ridiculous videos. I am so proud to be back in the Federal Republic of Bananas. Next time with some drones, please. Let’s forget the famines of the world. Germany wants bananas? Germany gets bananas!

Living German II: The mother does nothing. She sits.

After the last trip to Cologne, we are now heading to Miesbach, the village, where “The Family” lives. The Family has no surname. Reminds me a bit of la famiglia, whichoften refers to the Mafia groups. But as the language book is written in post-war Germany, I guess that the Italian guest workers were just about to find themselves miserable in Italy, so there was no scene for la famiglia in Germany – yet.

In chapter 3 “Was macht die Familie?” (“What is the family doing?”), we get to know the family members a bit better. They are:

-       Anton, the father, teaches, tells anecdotes

-       Marie, the mother, sings, domestic habits

-       Liesel, the daughter, characterless

-       Karl, the son, musical

-       the dog, old and lazy

-       the kitten, young and playful
-    Paula, appears mysteriously in the text

All in all an average family in Bavaria. I think the names are becoming en vogue again.

While the readers are sweating over the accusative case of the German language, they are being indoctrinated about roles of old-fashioned German families. Again, the book is written in the 50s but published, like that, in the 80s. By R.W. Buckley, M.A., a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry. The suffragettes didn’t come to Coventry I guess.

The hobbies of the kids are boring: Liesel is playing in the garden, Karl is playing the violin (first indication of a middle-class family). The mother sings. Hopefully well.

So the story goes like this:

“Anton doesn’t play when Liesel plays: he is working. He is a teacher (second indication of German Bildungsbürgertum, 60 years later also named as Wutbürger). The village has a school and Anton is the schoolteacher there. He is a village schoolteacher (God, yes I think we all got that).

But Anton plays in the evening: he plays the piano: he is musical. Also his son, Karl, is musical and plays the violin. Marie doesn’t play an instrument. She sings. (I guess very badly, because it is not indicated that she is musical too, but probably she doesn’t have a lot of time to practice because:)

What does the mother do, when Anton works and Liesel plays? (probably shagging the postman) She works too. (does the postman give her money?) Her work is big (and sinful), because the house isn’t small. (damn the Bourgeoisie!)

Marie cleans the house. (Booh) She makes every bed and cleans every bedroom. She cooks. (shame that there are no wives of the guest workers yet, they could do the cleaning and Marie could concentrate on her singing and paint some watercolours of the Bavarian landscape) The house has one kitchen, where the mother cooks. The kitchen is nice and clean. (sedulous mother).

The Family, apparently Paula looks like a boy?

Every child has one bedroom but the house only has one living room. The living room is where one sits and lives. (well, I do live also in other rooms, but maybe the family has transcendental experiences in the other rooms and can only be down-to-earth there). Here Anton plays the piano. Here Marie sings in the evenings (you wannabe rockstar). She likes to sing.

The father drinks wine or beer, the mother likes to drink coffee (Marie has to be sober to cook, the father has to relief himself from the school stress), Paula and Karl like to drink tea (Paula??) and Liesel drinks milk. (Wait, who is Paula?)

The day is nice, but it has come to an end (the arc of suspense!). The sun isn't shining anymore. Because it is evening and then comes the night. Liesel doesn’t play in the evening, she sleeps. What does Marie do? She doesn’t do anything. She sits. (no comment) What does Karl do? He also has work. He is studying. (but lives still at home). He likes to study his book. (I think he never had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend.) He works day and night. (At least that’s what the parents think)”

So, a typical evening with the family: father comes home, eats, drinks, plays the piano, drinks, tells anecdotes, drinks. The mother sings a bit, and sits and watches her husband getting drunk. What a middle class family.

Living German I: American pomposity vs German wittiness

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Because I worked for an educational publisher, I still have a thing for language books. Especially when they are serving stereotypes under the guise of German grammar. Which is perfect because German grammar is one of the nasty ones. The syntax is so complicated that you focus on every single ending of a word instead of the content.

So you don’t realise that you are being brainwashed.

In the fabulous book Living German by R.W. Buckley, M.A., who is (or was) a „Lecturer in German, Technical College, Coventry“, first published in 1957, you can see the patriarchy in German families, written by a Brit and feel the resentments of Brits towards Americans after World War Two in Western post-war Germany. I have the third edition from 1981 on my table. It is remarkable how old-fashioned the dialogues are and it makes me wonder how much they changed during the editions or how little. I guess the latter is the case.

Living German: a guide through cultures

The first dialogue I want to show you is about an American in Cologne who gets guided through the city by a local. Chapter 16, “Karl erzählt eine Anekdote (Comparison of Adjectives)” I translated into English:

(…) An American visits Cologne. This man is a very nice guy (You have to make that extra clear when you describe an American). But he has one bad habit: he shows off too much (well…no comment needed on that). His friend from Cologne shows him the oldest buildings in the beautiful city on the river Rhine. The stranger finds everything smaller than in his country (!). The German shows him the Kölner Dom.

-       “What’s the name of this church?”, asks the American. (beginning of teasing)

-       “That’s the cathedral of Cologne”, answers the German. (poor guy, ignoring the rudeness of the American, might be a slip-up?)

-       “The church of Mary in Boston is much bigger and higher than this dome. Also, reinforced concrete is better than stone. (no, no slip-up, it’s simply rudeness) Do you know our skyscraper, the Woolworth building? (yes, it’s an old book) It’s the biggest building in the world.” (told you)

The German gets tired: he is fed up and searches for a practical answer. (oh these task-orientated Germans) They arrive at the Rhine. There’s the Rhine-bridge, the longest of all bridges. (I think this anecdote is full of phallic metaphors)

-       “What’s the name of that bridge there?” asks the American

-       “What bridge?” asks the German. “I can’t see a bridge.” The foreigner points at the bridge. “Ach so” (I didn’t want to translate this part, because it’s… a very good reflection of Germans being surprised) answers the person from Cologne. “That’s new. I was here yesterday and there wasn’t a bridge before.” (how can you respond to that!?)

The American isn’t so stupid at all. (why this sentence, did it occur to the reader that the American might be stupid?) He laughs and says: “I understand. I have everything better than you, (at least that’s what your insisting on) and you’re making a mockery of me (in original it’s und Sie halten mich zum besten which means to mock s.o, but it is also a word game because it is playing with “best”)

That is how Karl’s anecdote ends, and all the family laughs of that word game. (…)

So, while you were learning about the comparison of adjectives, you also learned that Americans are competitive arseholes and Germans are witty and task-orientated. This doesn’t come from me, it comes from the British person R.W. Buckley. What does that say about the relationship between Brits and Americans? I think Buckley has some resentments towards Americans and really does like Germans. Who else would say that Germans have a great sense of humour?