Taking a few days off…

Gonna enjoy the Fall of the Wall Anniversary festivities and stuff. Hope you do too.

Andrea S.

Beautiful German of the week.

Because somebody has to admire them.

U2 too?

Nobody has the intention of building a wall unless it’s a U2 concert

There’s freedom and then there’s free, OK?

Who says that the MTV generation folks (and those generations that have followed them) don’t have a sense of history or very much sense of any other kind of sense at all? Clearly aware of the historical significance of the venue they have chosen to hold tonight’s big-time flashy and designer-drugged MTV Music Award extravaganza, organizers have erected a wall around the area to keep the unchosen many out.

Or is to keep the 10,000 lucky free ticket holders in? You know, like from, well, escaping to the West? Then maybe they do have more sense than I thought.

“The Brandenburg Gate is the symbol of our unity, the view should be open to all, at all times.”

GM as in Gottcha Money?

Clearly upset about German Opel jobs staying here in Germany now after all, under such intolerable conditions, I mean (Opel will now remain with that yucky General Motors mother of theirs), a German government spokesman has announced that Berlin regretted GM’s decision to keep Opel and has demanded that the US-American company repay the 1.5 billion euro bridge financing package that German banks and re-election campaign strategists put together in order to convince GM to sell Opel down the river to Russian-backed Magna instead.

I don’t wirklich (really) understand this huffy German reaction, to tell you the truth. Unless of course maybe you consider that Germans are notorious anti-militarists (see Afghanistan, for instance) and hate the thought of working for any kind of general, whatever his or her name may be. This is just pure speculation on my part, however.

“Merkel had personally been involved in talks, offering substantial German government financial aid in return for assurances that jobs in Germany would be protected.”

Lecture time

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be addressing the United States President and Congress later today.

A little background: The United States wants Germany and other NATO partners to make a bigger contribution to the war in Afghanistan and support tougher sanctions against Iran.

Germany, on the other hand, would like to see the United States make deeper cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, which some scientists say cause global warming.

Hmm, I wounder who’s going to get what first?

But first they’ll be a short commercial break: “She is expected to highlight the special postwar relationship between Germany and the United States and Washington’s role in helping bring down the Berlin Wall with its tough stance toward the Soviet Union.” Those were the days. When it came to taking tough stances, I mean.

Germany Gets Pregnant?

Well you’ve got to call the show something. Other than bizarre, I mean. And no, it’s not a science fiction program.

Germans really love watching these, well, let’s call them reality-TV-advice-giving-practical-handbook-or-guide kind of shows these days. There’s one out there on how to be an adult, one about how to have somebody else raise your kids for you, and even one about how to get out of debt, to describe just a few. You know, stuff like that.

But what if you don’t have any kids to be raised by somebody else and therefore no debts to get out of? This new Germany Gets Pregnant show is here to help, I guess. Apparently a lost art, this program (twelve steps?) will show those interested (not many, really) everything they will need to know to, you know, have babies.

“Nach der Baby-Show kann RTL kaum tiefer sinken.”

Back in the DDDR

China blocks Berlin Wall Twitter page?

“Of the roughly 3,300 comments left on the virtual wall, around 1,500 have been in Chinese, said Carsten Hein, coordinator of the “berlintwitterwall.com” project.”

Monika K.

Beautiful German of the week.

Because somebody has to admire them.

And Happy Halloween already.