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This is going to be fun - and they say Germans are efficient!!


Twigman
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Just had the itinerary through for Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig this weekend.

We're flying out to Berlin and then getting shuttled to Leipzig.

Our flight is scheduled to land in Berlin at 17.25

Our shuttle to Leipzig is scheduled to collect us from Berlin at 14.15 - before we've even taken off from UK!

So the itinerary falls at the first hurdle.......

and here I am thinking the Germans are efficient and good organisers....

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Twigman said:

Just had the itinerary through for Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig this weekend.

We're flying out to Berlin and then getting shuttled to Leipzig.

Our flight is scheduled to land in Berlin at 17.25

Our shuttle to Leipzig is scheduled to collect us from Berlin at 14.15 - before we've even taken off from UK!

So the itinerary falls at the first hurdle.......

and here I am thinking the Germans are efficient and good organisers....

 

 

The Germans (Deutsche Bahn) own Northern Trains (Northern Fail).

Just sayin'...

northern-20e72cedf4822a27acfa24003337867da0a27e610919c02f5ad2f0e9d30e2c52.png.58bf21acdc740b577b0690c85430f2ea.png

smiley

 

Edited by Teebs
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IME, ruthless Teutonic efficiency is very much a thing of the past.

The last time I encountered a ruthlessly efficient Teuton was about 1987, since which time they've all been wishy-washy Green types driving around in cars with 'Atomkraft? Nein Danke' stickers on the back.

That said, it was a slightly eerie experience travelling on Chiltern lines a few years ago and seeing the ticket office people with their DB (Deutsche Bahn) staff lanyards. 

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11 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

IME, ruthless Teutonic efficiency is very much a thing of the past.

The last time I encountered a ruthlessly efficient Teuton was about 1987, since which time they've all been wishy-washy Green types driving around in cars with 'Atomkraft? Nein Danke' stickers on the back.

That said, it was a slightly eerie experience travelling on Chiltern lines a few years ago and seeing the ticket office people with their DB (Deutsche Bahn) staff lanyards. 

errm '... wishy washy green types' ?

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2 minutes ago, M-rek said:

Deutsche Bahn is a catastrophe. I'm a not very efficient German either, typing this while at work...

Luckily we're not using the train - although I've had nothing but good experience on Deutsche Bahn, the trains are clean and comfortable compared to UK trains.

The shuttle I mention is a mini-bus.

 

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7 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

errm '... wishy washy green types' ?

That's right.

(i) Wishy-washy

Adjective: insipid in quality or character.

Synonyms: (Food, drink) Thin, watery. (Personality) Vapid, milk-and-water, effete, limp, namby-pamby, wet, pathetic, weak-kneed

Example: "So he said 'The world's about to end and we're all going to die!' and I said 'Don't be getting all wishy-washy' "

Adverb: Wishy-washily - in a wishy-washy manner
 

(ii) In the 2019 German EP elections the Greens increased their vote share by 9% and nearly doubled their number of Europarl seats to 21. This reflects a wider trend where the previously ascendant centre-left SPD has rapidly been losing ground to GRÜNE. In the event that the SPD withdraw from the current grand coalition (GroKo) it has been bruited by some that the Greens could strike a deal with the CDU/CSU and enter government, thereby displacing one of the two great parties who have dominated German politics since 1949. Or not. Who can really say?

Either way, we face the possibility that the nation of Frederick the Great, Bismarck and Moltke the elder might be run by a bunch of tree-huggers. Personally I blame Udo Lindenberg, Ton Steine Scherben and Nena for this frankly terrifying development.

Edited by skankdelvar
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59 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

Personally I blame Udo Lindenberg, Ton Steine Scherben and Nena for this frankly terrifying development.

Nena for sure. Fancy a grown woman playing with balloons! The signs were all there, but we just chose to ignore them. How are the mighty fallen...

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3 minutes ago, lozkerr said:

How are the mighty fallen...

I really couldn't agree more. As has often been said: '"If a mighty falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

A point to ponder given the importance of the forest in the German cultural psyche as exemplified by the works of Grimm, Von Kleist, Hebbel, Stifter and Rainer Maria Rilke.

According to my old drinking pal and wing-man the ethnologist Albrecht Lehmann, the German national self-image is still nourished by the forest: “The Germans are the people of the forest par excellence”, he maintained in 2001 in his essay Waldbewusstsein und Waldwissen in Deutschland, a magisterial work completed only a few weeks before we rampaged together through the bars and bordellos of Hamburg in a feat of heroic decadence perhaps unmatched in the history of that city.

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21 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

I really couldn't agree more. As has often been said: '"If a mighty falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

A point to ponder given the importance of the forest in the German cultural psyche as exemplified by the works of Grimm, Von Kleist, Hebbel, Stifter and Rainer Maria Rilke.

According to my old drinking pal and wing-man the ethnologist Albrecht Lehmann, the German national self-image is still nourished by the forest: “The Germans are the people of the forest par excellence”, he maintained in 2001 in his essay Waldbewusstsein und Waldwissen in Deutschland, a magisterial work completed only a few weeks before we rampaged together through the bars and bordellos of Hamburg in a feat of heroic decadence perhaps unmatched in the history of that city.

2001? I think i followed you through Hamburg just a few weeks later.

They were still assessing the damage ("Even ze Lancasters went home after a few hours - zis, zis vos dayz unt dayz mitout any end")

I was on antibiotics for months.

Never go back - they have long memories....

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6 minutes ago, Skinnyman said:

They were still assessing the damage

TBH, I think Albrecht did most of the smashing and trashing. He looks like a harmless, rather bookish ethnologist but put a few Jägermeisters into him and he's a total beast.

Anyway, the details are all in my privately-published monograph 'Debauchery In Europe: a vade-mecum for the degenerate traveller'. You may judge for yourself.

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13 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

TBH, I think Albrecht did most of the smashing and trashing. He looks like a harmless, rather bookish ethnologist but put a few Jägermeisters into him and he's a total beast.

Anyway, the details are all in my privately-published monograph 'Debauchery In Europe: a vade-mecum for the degenerate traveller'. You may judge for yourself.

The copy I picked up had all the pages stuck together.... 😮

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When I mentioned earlier that the Greens might displace "one of the two great parties who have dominated German politics since 1949" I spoke too soon. It seems they might displace both great parties as two recent opinion polls show them ahead of Mrs Merkel's CDU / CSU alliance. Ach du meine Güte!

650746842_germanygreenspolljun2019.jpg.4755515204575162d6fa2e65bf90cc5b.jpg

Is a Green Chancellor in a broad left coalition with the SPD on the cards? Or is this simply mid-term blues for a tired administration? Either way, it points to a fragmentation of the traditionally dominant broad left / broad right alignments. 

This is Skank Del Var for BassChat Euronews. Now back to the studio.

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On 07/06/2019 at 13:53, M-rek said:

Deutsche Bahn is a catastrophe. I'm a not very efficient German either, typing this while at work...

With all due respect, as wobbly as DB can sometimes be compared to it‘s earlier self, a poor day on the Deutsche Bahn lies well above the level of Southern Rail‘s highest aspirations.

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