Germany Inefficiency and Lazy Berlin Delivery Men

Or:  "I Got Yer Package:  RIGHT HERE."

I just had to tell a Deutschbag to go fuck himself.  Yes, I tend to over-react emotionally in all sorts of situations where most normal people would simply keep a stiff upper lip and bend over and take the sheisse.  But I'm not normal people (scroll down through the past posts and say "yup").

By now we all have figured out the Berlin is not Germany; it's more of an island of poor in a rich country, a chaotic, spastic lily pad in the otherwise still lagoon, and many more metaphors I have yet to think up.  So flush your stereotypes of 'German Efficiency' right down the no-standing-while-pissing shelf toilet and hitch a ride on the inefficiency express.

Enter:  delivery deutschbag.  "Package for Herr Hasenpfeffer."

db: "Not here.  Note doorbell.  Not Hasenpfeffer."

dd: "But do you know where HH is?"

db: "No, sorry."

dd: "Then can you take this package for him?"

db:  "Ummm.  Just said I don't know the fella.  Why in HELL would I take a package for someone I don't know?"

dd:  "But I can put a note in his mailbox and you can bring it to him."

db:  "You know where his mailbox is, know he's in the building, and want ME TO DO YOUR JOB FOR YOU?"

dd:  "JaWOHL."

The dialog above has been slightly fictionalized for theatrical purposes, but this rant/spleen vent/whinge is all to say that there seems to be a serious problem with Deutsche Delivery Dudes in my 'hood.  I understand that in an uberefficient world, there would be flat numbers, floor levels and colorful maps next to each name on the buzzer/mailbox.  But after about 44 different DDDs from a half dozen delivery companies asked me to hold their plain, light brown, sweaty packages I just had to cry 'BULLSHEISSE!' and let slip the dogs of db.

I'm thinking that there's only a dozen flats in our building.  I'm also thinking that it would take the DDDs all of 5 minutes to investigate all 3 flats on all 4 levels to find their Herren and Frauen.  Lazy fuchsen. Better yet:  HEY!  Here's an idea:  your company delivers to this building every single business day of the year. WRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE/FLATS AND GIVE IT TO YOUR FUCKING DRIVERS FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

End of rant.

This particular DDD today happened to be the last in a long line of lazy fux who ring my bell, dragged me away from my kung fu theater flix and hit me with their deutschbaggery.  I had to yell at him and tell him to go fuck himself, this is true.  But in my defense, this occurred right after I politely refused to hold his package and he stormed off muttering in a pissed off tone. THAT's when he got the business end of my foul mouth.

db

Eating Berliners in Grand Style

I'm sorry:  2 months since my last blog post.  I blame the total lack of Berliner jelly donuts in my diet.  It really is difficult to get my fix:  wake up with bars of light burning through the slats in the window shades into my red eyes.  Check the clock:  DAMN.  Missed the window.  If you don't hit the window of donut opportunity you are SCREWED.  Nothing worse than walking bleary-eyed and bed-headed several blocks to your donut dealer--only to find they are completely out of Berliners.  This happens sometime between 10am and 11am.  Bastards.  "Would Herr Berlinermunchenmensch like a piece of cake instead?" the nice donut lady might ask.  "Would you like me to rip your lungs out through your NOSE?"  I might reply.  No, really:  if you are hooked on Coca-Cola (or some other evil chemical substance), would you settle for DIET?  Didn't think so, Sunshine.

So without my donut panacea to sooth my violent tendencies, I've fallen into different/normal patterns and rituals.  Like work.  Suddenly, as if getting up before 10am mattered for an Artiste, I suddenly got a pile of photography work.  And by a pile, I mean one of those types of months wherein I work every day without pause for a donut day off.  Hence the lack of my favorite drug.

So you can imagine my surprise when, upon finishing the morning sessions of a Berlin conference in a fancy-shmancy hotel (Grand Westin), I saw a beam of light pierce the hotel skylight, miss my bleary red eyes and light up the biggest slice of Heaven a donut muncher can behold:  pristine plates FULL of little mini-Berliners.  Sure, this was a French company holding the conference, but NO, the hotel wasn't going to give them croissants.  When in Berlin, do as the Berliners do:  roll up them there sleeves and dig into the donuts.  Yes, in the photo you may see some OTD (other than donuts), some kinda Fancee Frawnch FrittAIRS or something, but fret not:  the Berliners outnumbered the fritters 2 to 1.

While these hotel mini-drugs weren't the same as the lard peddled by my local pusher at Siebert (There are no better jelly donuts on the planet.  Really), at least I could take as many as I wanted for free and not be forced to stand in a queue and be told that there was No Joy in Donutville and have to be jailed for ripping a nice woman's lungs out through her nose.

I'll try to get back to y'all soon with more violent, drug-and-donuts-addled stories soon.  In the meantime, I also got paid to write about Berlin beach bars.  Well ain't that a hoot?

Pseudo-Deutsch

In the true spirit of the uberliteratii, those of Joycean stature who reinvent the language whenever it bleedin’ well suits them, I offer the following blog post, written (almost) entirely in Pseudo-Deutsch, a language composed of equal parts bier and schwein, just like the Deutschbags who speak it.  And as always with any Germanic words of more than 4 syllables and 12 letters, look for the root words; apply your decoder ring, and guten apetit!

Das ist mein erste sheisseblog mit alles pseudoDeutschsprechen.  Die bloggen ist uber:

-         Farhtenauslanderbarfen

-         Auslanderhorden befuckenmeinherzlichzitty

-         Auslanderschweinen

-         Pissung und Shittung

-         Die bestestbiergarten und Schweinerei in Berlin

Ein auslandergebarft in mein U-bahnfahrten in die weg das mein haus.  Die grossebarf kommt in mein direktion! Ich!  Ichy!  Das schweinenauslandergebarf rannt in die direction auf mein fuss!  Mein neue shuhe un mein perfektlich uberkleen diskohosen war in danger!  Das is NICHT die erste zeit ich zee die schweinenauslander machen SHEISSE in mein herzlich zitty.  Ebertag ist schweinentag mit auslander.  Warum?  Das ist fakt: alle auslander gestinkt.  Nicht auf bier-und-wurst-gestinken, das ist normal.  Die auslander gestankt von pissung und shittung. Aus dem gutterhausen und die schweinerei kommt die auslander.  NichtsprechenDeutschenschweinen kommt to Berlin und betaken die bestest bier, die wurstschwein und die frauenmitgrossenbusen.

Scheisse!  Auslander RAUS! Sniffenmeinfahrten! Suckenmeinshaft!  Das ist mein zitty, mein schwein, mein frauen und mein bier.  Runst du von Spanien oder Norgeland.  Du art NICHT wilkommen hier.  Also:  Spanien ist besser fur auslander, naturlich!  Und Norgeland, nicht getten mich startet…

This post goes out to all the Nazi Deutschbags who are alive and well in Germany.  They know who they are.  They block MY STREET and march with cops protecting them, they sneer and laugh at foreigners when we walk down the street (saying things loudly like DEUTSCH! when they hear us speaking English) and yell at us when we try to do something simple like buy a fucking train ticket.  Fuck you, Germany.  Time to clean house, bitches.  If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  Guess you never heard that one because a black man said it.   Word.

db Community Service #44: Mexican Food Stores in Berlin

At this precise moment my system is completely devoid of donuts and strong, black coffee.  The bad news is that this blog post will contain no satire, comedic rants or bullshit.  It will, however, contain a review of actual cool shit and 0% faggy poetry as per usual.

If you are from a region where a large part of your diet is Mexican food (like California, or maybe Mexico, but there they just call it 'food'), and you are somehow stuck in a region where the spiciest dish on offer is a hot dog with ketchup and a pinch of curry powder, you will no doubt crave spicy food.  Sure, you can be a chump and buy Chio salsa (90% ketchup) and 8 scrawny tortillas made in Belgium for around 8 EUR for the both of them.

Once you've made that mistake, you will then proceed to make the same mistake with all the other overpriced fake Mexican brands on offer.  Then dump a ton of money hitting all of Berlin's 'Mexican' restaurants and leave feeling like all the expat bulletin board posts you've read recommending the places were really written by the restaurants' owners (they are, btw).

Enter Mitte Meer and Pfefferhaus.  Look no further.  I have pesonally tasted and tested these places (though not everything for sale at these stores, that's impossible) and I can therefore give it the db Seal of Approval.  Mitte Meer has a few branches in Berlin; a new one recently opened in P'berg just up the road from me (though it could be in Pankow proper, as I live in the top part of P'berg away from most of the yuppie douchebags).  There you can find in abundance:  real tortilla chips (2 kinds), tortillas (2 sizes), jalapenos, red jalapenos, red salsas, green salsas, picante sauces, refried beans, refried black beans, chorizos of many varieties, and many, many other foods from countries which don't live on kebabs and currywurst.  The best part is the price:  a huge pack of 18 small tortillas = 2 EUR, a large sized tortilla 18 pack = 3.75.  They even give you discounts for buying in volume (30, 40, 50 EUR, etc.).

RED HOT SAUCES FOR RED HOT PEOPLE

I'm not sure if it is called Das Pfefferhaus or Die Pfefferhaus, but they do ONLY hot sauces, hotter sauces and ring stinger sauces.  That place is no joke.  They've even got brands of hot sauce called "100% Pain" and "Colon Cleaner."  I haven't tried those, mainly because I'm not a frat boy and I would like to keep some living nerve endings on my tongue and in my colon (just in case).  When you walk into the shop (located directly beneath the Alexanderplatz S-bahn tracks on the Alexa side) you will be greeted by the only living German who likes spice.  I say this because A) I love sweeping generalizations, B) Herr Mann opened up a can of hot sauce whoopass on me.  We sampled several types of sauces from a wide variety of regions:  Caribbean, Floridian, Texan, Mexican, Calfiornian and even some evil shit from Tennessee that was called something like Evil Shit From Tennessee.  As I kept sampling, we anted up on the spice scale with each tasting.  By the time we got to the Habanero line, I was coughing and requesting a sip of water, while he was saying that the next hottest one was his favorite.  Though in retrospect, I didn't see him taste the spicier ones.  He may have been a currywurst sucker in disguise.

Suffice it to say, these two places have enough !ay carumba! to keep your tongue flapping while you fall into Johnny Cash's infamous burning Ring of Fire.

Pfefferhaus: http://www.pfefferhaus.de/index.php?page=index
Mitte Meer: http://www.mitte-meer.de/

ATTACK OF THE KILLER CUCUMBERS!!!

The theme to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” was running through my head as I read the news:  Germans are stuffing cucumbers into their mouths, ruminating, swallowing, digesting, expelling-bloodily-out-the-wazzoo, then, sometimes, dying.  This is the Dunkin’ Berliner Way™ of saying the E .Coli has hit the fan and nobody is safe.

I’ve never been a big fan of veggies.  Even years ago when some crazy hippie girlfriend talked me into being a vegetarian, I mainly ate french fries and beer.  And donuts.  If someone would say to me “Dude!  You KNOW that donuts are fried in animal fat and what the HELL are you doing?!”  I would then rip their liver out and serve it with a nice Chianti.  I was a shitty vegetarian.

I digress.  How did I get from Killer Cucumbers to jelly donuts?  Rhetorical question.  Oh yeah:  so the other day I was getting my weekly kebab from Tayfun’s Bistro on Schoenhauser Allee near Wisbyer str. (I recommend it.  E. Coli free since 1989) and noticed they had none of the usual sliced cucumbers in their salad buffet line up.  If I were still suffering from delusions of vegetarianism, I might have said ‘WTF!  How can I like, get my like, falafel without cucumbers, dude!’  Fortunately, I’ve always hated cucumbers anyway (and most other raw veggies for that matter) so I am in no real danger of dying.  So I asked the kindly kebabman to sling piles of cayenne pepper into my kebab to induce bloody diarrhea in lieu of the lack of properly-tainted E. Coli cucumbers.  I totally appreciated the substitution.  And WOW! what a spicy kebab!!!  No, I really ate a kebab with a fistful of cayenne pepper just the other day.  This concludes the factual part of the blog.  We now continue with the comedic rant/satire portion of the blog, already in progress.

Some Germans just don’t get it.  First the Deutschbags on High played the Blame the Spain Game and managed to cripple Spain’s entire economy (apparently veggies, salsa, salsa dancing and Being Chased by the Bulls represent the entire economy of Spain) by suggesting that the Evil Killer Cucumbers were sent from Spain due to some ancient grudge incurred by some ancient treaty which wasn’t honored.  Ok, I made that up.

Germans REALLY don’t get it:  today at the REWE market, piles of plastic wrapped cucumbers stared up at me like some deliberate, phallic fuck you to common sense.  Like, HELLO? We are in NORTHERN GERMANY.  And the people dying from the Killer Cucumbers are in NORTHERN GERMANY.  But that won’t stop the steady march of Capitalist farmers from peddling their deadly wares on an unsuspecting P’berg neighborhood.  Apparently by wrapping them in plastic and putting a sticker on the cucumbers which proclaimed ‘NICHT aus SPANIEN!!!’ that people would still buy them.  Hell, if they wanted total safety they should have ditched the plastic wrap in favor of cucumber condoms.

The lady in line in front of me had not one but two cucumbers in her basket at the checkout stand.  I was just thinking ‘GUT GOTT, woman!!  How can you buy this?  Don’t you read the news???’  Then she turned around and I saw that she had other more pressing problems.  She had a hard face lined with years of abuse, alcohol, drugs, men/women or other types.  She glared at me as if she was reading my mind and presented the stern face of consternation which lines the face of all Berliners who live on sauerkraut and booze.  I then realized that the potential threat of death by bloody diarrhea was the LEAST of this woman’s problems.  And that maybe, just maybe, she had no intention of eating those sanitized, wrapped-in-plastic cucumbers, monster sized.  God DAMN, I’m a dirty fucker.