Yet another Offal German Joke-Dictionary

I’m not much of a fan of comedy dictionaries.

You know the ones.

Woman -  English

Or some of the German Langenscheid series:

Boss - Deutsch, Lawyer - Deutsch, Parent - Deutsch

About as funny as an ex-accountant German comedian. (p.s. come to my show on Friday!)

No, if I were to write one of those dictionaries I would make a genuine attempt at something useful aimed at the German speaker (or non-German speaker of German)

Allow me to present my first attempt:

The ‘German – DANGER’ Dictionary

The ‘German - DANGER’ dictionary would admittedly be a slim volume. A much thicker volume would be the ‘German - No Real Danger* (despite what they’ll have you believe)’ dictionary,

·         *  ‘German -> (aye pal) No Danger’ – for the Scottish Edition.

The ‘German - No Real Danger’ Dictionary

This weighty tome would catalogue your average German’s hysteric reaction to everything. Everything from a mild itch or common cold to a failure to load the dishwasher in the proper manner leaves them clamouring for every 12,99 Euro homeopathic remedy left in the Apotheke.

Since I can hear the sound of a youtube orchestra of world’s smallest violins tuning up from all parts of Liverpool, Dundee, Cambridge, Göttingen and Kansas playing for my fake plastic sanity in a German world of my own design, I’ll move on.

Enough German-bashing

For an antidote to my German bashing – check out Harry Enfield’s entry to the Museum of Curiosity – it turns out successful comedians are much more complimentary about the learned Teutons. He put a stupid German into the quiz show ‘museum’ as he had never met one!

The ‘German – Danger’ Dictionary

Much smaller, but no less important is the German -> DANGER edition of the dictionary.

At present it just contains one sentence. One sentence to strike fear into the heart of every Brit ever to have set foot in a guest family / shared German living situation scenario. It is of course:

“Das musst du ja probieren. Das ist typisch Deutsch!” (You have to try this – it’s really German)

-> DANGER

NB:

THE FOLLOWING ITEMS, ALTHOUGH TYPICALLY GERMAN HAVE BEEN FOUND TO BE HIGHLY TOXIC 

1) Trumpf “Edle Tropfen in Nuss”
If noble deeds and hot baths are the best cure for depression, these ‘noble drops’ are most likely a cure for possession of a functioning set of taste buds.

The ‘fine’ collection comes in four equally poisonous flavours.

I’ll deal with the two ‘waters’ first.

Kirschwasser (Cherry Water) contains neither cherry, nor water Instead, just like all the other flavours, it contains some form of disgusting liqueur.

Zwetschgen Wasser is named after a Disney dwarf and the last two are no better…

Williams Christbirne - if William didn’t want it, why should I?

And the worst of the lot:

Himbeergeist (Raspberry Ghost) – never has horror and fruit been combined so successfully in a chocolate confection

2) Bregenwurst  

Since you’ve probably got “Wurst” by now all you’re left with is the “Bregen” bit.

You learn in secondary school language classes that false friends are something to always be wary of. WRONG – although in some cases a word which sounds like another word is your linguistic foe; in a few very important cases your linguistic instinct is perfectly poised to sniff out the danger.

In these cases, some earlier UK school lessons come into play. These are the lessons often taught by very serious looking policemen or actors from Grange Hill.

“Trust your instincts”

“Stranger Danger”

“Just say No.”

These are the words you should heed. “Hang on, Bregen … that sounds a bit like …”

Yes. Yes it does. And yes, yes it is.

Welcome, if you’ve just joined us. Welcome to the world of “brain sausage” Made from real cow’s brains.

Let’s run this one through another childish but revealing game:

Shag / Marry / Avoid

Until next time …

BUY IT NOW!
The German –> DANGER Dictionary. Available for 12,99 from your local Apotheke.

The To Do List

a.k.a. The List of Dead Intentions

For most people, a to-do list is a simple list of tasks to be achieved before the end of the day.

For me, the eternal procrastinator, it poses an almost herculean series of challenges, which morph over the weeks and months into a sombre role call of the deceased, to be read aloud and mourned daily or weekly. A record of good intentions, cut down in their prime and sent to their final resting place, the list.

My favourite item (#6 on the current list) is “Ring up about Piano Stool” (February)

For the last 8 months I have been borrowing chairs rather than giving the music company my real post-code in a 30 second phonecall. Fetching the chair from the kitchen takes longer than the phone call. Even formulating this short paragraph takes considerably longer than the phone required to render its existence as a written statement of fact obsolete.

Sometimes though, I have an excuse. Sometimes my inability to make headway down the list is through no fault of my own. Sometimes a 5 minute task expands of it's own will into an odyssey of wall-banging frustration.

A case in point is Task #1 on today’s list: Ring Landlord.

My landlord is a strange creature. And ringing him is somewhat of a conversational minefield. A minefield negotiable only by using Spud from Trainspotting’s tightrope. 

There are two conversational modes between which my landlord arbitrarily switches. The first is a warm, friendly, fatherly tone. The other; the manner of a grim, doom-prophesising bureaucrat, speaking hurriedly in small print capital letters like a sort of legally-obsessed version of Death from the Terry Pratchett books.

During the conversation: you sit there sweating. You’re the interviewee. He’s the dude in the chair. Talk too little, and his tone turns from friendly to suspicious. Talk too much and you get hit with the full weight of the German legal consequences of your suggestions.

With this in mind, talking to him is a fine balance between venturing neutral but friendly conversational patter and being hit with the German Law consequences.

I’ll give you an example.

Landlord: It’s important to me you feel at home in the WG.

Tim: (nervously) Thanks.

Landlord: And it’s important to me you look after it too, you know, things like reparing the chairs and painting the walls regularly.

Tim: That’s a good idea. You’re right. Maybe we could paint the living room another colour. Bit dreary all the white paint...  

Landlord/Death: YOU WISH TO USE COLOURED PAINT, YOU SAY?

Tim: Yes... you know, brighten up the place a bit.

Landlord/Death: ANY USE OF COLOURED PAINT ON THE WALLS SHOULD BE APPROACHED WITH CAUTION, SINCE WHEN YOU LEAVE THE FLAT YOU ARE LEGALLY OBLIGED TO REPAINT THE WALLS BACK TO THE ORIGINAL WHITE IN LINE WITH GERMAN MIETRECHT. I HAVE NO TIME OR PATIENCE TO REPAINT THE WALLS IN THE CASE YOU MOVE OUT AND FAIL TO MEET THIS LEGAL REQUIREMENT.

Safe to say, many such exchanges proceeded over the remaining hour and a half of phone call, and as if by chameleon magic the walls are now not the only thing to have turned a greying off-white.

Next time I’ll start with the piano stool.

A Perfect Circle

I’ve not tapped away at my keyboard for the last 4 months, other than to write an entry essentially saying: “I’m busy” so it’s high time I come up with something vaguely readable.

Problem is, the longer I put off writing, the more I have to tell you. And the more I have to tell you, the ramblier it becomes.

It looks like time for another Poulton Lancelyn Primary style “My Weekend News” feature.

Did you have to do this in your Grundschule / Kindergarten / Primary school? The teacher gets you to do a writing practice exercise every Monday describing “What I did this weekend.” With results something like:

“On Saturday I went to the beach and then I had a sandwich and then I played in the sand and then I fell down and I made friends with a monster and then I went to bed”

As is true for both primary school child, and Sun journalist:  I’m going for content over form.

The main theme, 11 months into the Great German Adventure seems to be “Es schliesst sich der Kreis” – things are going full circle. 

There are so many strands I’ve started which are coming back around.

Velkom to Deutsche Bahn

Last summer before I came over, I wrote some German Jokes about Deutsche Bahn’s terrible English.

In a cosmic twist, just yesterday I was offered some freelance work with a company designing English lessons for … German train drivers. Specifically improving the appalling but somehow comical train driver announcements.

I’m in a Zwickmühle (two minds) about this one. On the one hand it would probably be my finest gift to teutonic humanity to date. On the other, I’d be putting several German observational comics out of a job. “Has anyone noticed the excellent standard of English among Deutsche Bahn train drivers recently"

Maybe I should compromise and do it all in the style of Otto, professor of literal English …

“In shotglass, he to reach we Large Intestine Town” (In Kurze erreichen wir Darmstadt)

Sadly, this would still be an improvement on the current state of German train drivers’ English.

German Comedy on the big stage
 
But that’s not the only “shutting circle”. Months after thinking “wouldn’t it be funny if I were to one day compere a show in Berlin with “Frisky and Mannish,” the alter-egos of old uni mates Laura and Matthew, there I was. Introducing them on the Ufa Fabrik stage for a four night run.  

It was bizarre to see it happen so quickly. I’d imagined it quite vividly. Admittedly, in the version I’d dreamily thought up in my head, I was on German telly hosting a show, doing the big Jools Holland arms and puppy-dog enthusiastic intro “the wonderful… the marvelous…” but even without the TV cameras it was still really quite special.

If you’re around in the UK check them out on tour. It’s a phenomenal show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOYnov77So4

A Diplomatic Incident on the Small Stage

For the next circle, I’ll refer to my blog post, the pleasant bike ride, ruined by the weight of history. 

Despite the initial annoyance of my history obsession getting in the way of a nice bike ride, I was fascinated about the spy exchanges and all the encounters with Nazis, Russians and Berlin walls on my travels through the countryside around Wannsee.

And three months after my trip, sat at a table at my Buzz Club open stage: the ex-US Ambassador for Berlin. The man in charge of conducting the Cold War spy exchanges on the Glienicker Brücke, with all the world watching.

Excerpts from the program that evening:

- my barbershop quartet,

- the sultry dulcet tones of Cera Impala’s singing with bluegrass banjo

- and in particular: a little girl from the East, now grown up as a successful author in the West, telling about  her first encounter with an American.

It's a magic, funny story - and you can read it here.

On that evening, it all seemed to fit together. A former orchestrator of diplomatic events on the world stage watching an author telling a Cold War story of her own on my little stage.

And to put my stage into context: Another guest performer that same night was Johnny Hollywood – US comic, now based in LA (Landkreis Aachen) and apparently, the founder of the first English Comedy night in Germany, in his club in Cologne.

The links are there everywhere if you’re looking for them.

I wrote in a posting a few months ago that I felt the intense connectivity within Berlin, as if Berlin was a circuitboard and I was hooked up to it. A small, flashing L.E.D. shining a patch of happy green light on the surrounding area.

It's getting brighter.