In the last update I mentioned a jewelry heist at a major department store here in Berlin. Well, that story has taken a bizarre, movie-like twist. The matching DNA of the twins arrested for it has given each a reasonable-doubt alibi - simply blame the other. Who knew this stuff happened in real life?
Last month Jen and I went to the Stasi Museum, located in the former building of East Germany's secret police force. Although the museum turned out to be more about East Germany in general than the Stasi in particular, it was nonetheless interesting. It's actually not well signposted in its area - I guess the Stasi is not exactly something you make a big deal of in the former East, given its nasty history. Still, even as much as I already knew about its activities, it was jarring to see its spying and propaganda tools.
Surveillance equipment hidden in a hollowed-out log
Plaque
at Stasi HQ.
Translation: "Communists, Fighters, Educators, Role Models"
Translation: We are everywhere
It's always intriguing to me to find out how Europeans view Americans. I've mentioned before that there is a pretty tangible resentment in Europe toward the US as the origin of the current financial crisis. But, that's not the whole picture. One day I was in an elevator and a guy got on, asked if I was American. When I said yes, he started going on about how much he likes Obama, and how good it is that Bush is out of office. It was pleasant, but a little odd.
Still, if you really want to figure out how Europeans view us, here are some clues from local stores:
This is the "American" foods section of our local grocery store. Apparently, the US contributions to the world's culinary culture are brownie mix, barbecue sauce, squeeze bottle nacho cheese, Swiss Miss hot chocolate, Pop Tarts ($8 a box, and now sold out!), and nasty Hershey chocolate. And then, at another store I saw this:
I don't even know what they think this might represent...
Last time we lived here, a decade ago, I learned a lot of German from watching five channels of TV on an old, East German Friedrich Engels brand black and white TV (not kidding, that was really the brand). This time around we have a newer set and 30 or so channels of digital TV. At any given moment the crime show "Tatort" is on at least 15 of these channels ("Tatort" makes "Law and Order" look underexposed by comparison). And then there are the TV movies, always with titles involving Mord (murder), Blut (blood), Tod (death) and Killer (you can figure that one out). I do believe they just mix and match 2-4 of those words to come up with every title. Thus, the perfect German TV movie title is the one I made up above: "Bloody Murder: A Killer is Dead".
Another odd thing is the dubbing. I swear, it sounds like the same man and woman do the dubbing for just about every TV show - one day they're Dharma and Greg, the next they're James Bond and Miss Moneypenny. There are also variations in translation - Dora the Explorer in the US speaks English and teaches kids Spanish; in Germany, though, she speaks Deutsch and teaches kids English.
There are other oddities. Once every few months they air a show called "Schlag den Raab", literally "Beat Raab", in which one chosen contestant competes against talk show host Stefan Raab in up to 15 rounds of different competitions for a huge prize (this April it'll be 2.5 million Euros). This thing runs for 4-5 hours or more, and Raab usually wins. What's interesting is the array of contests - ice hockey without skates gets followed by identifying trees from pictures of leaves; one-on-one basketball might be followed by catching cherries thrown up in the air in your mouth; guessing the year 1848 from a list of events will be followed by target shooting. It's all very odd (reminds me of the bad casino in Vegas Vacation), but it draws huge ratings, and it is kind of impressive that Raab can be so dominant. Raab is one of German TV's omnipresent figures. He has a nightly talk show, a monthly poker night with stars, and just this month hosted the Wok Weltmeisterschaft - an annual competition in which teams and individuals race in woks down a luge run (this year it was actually won by luge legend Georg Hackl). There are videos available here (hopefully they allow them to play outside Germany).
So, next time some European wants to condescend about the crassness of American culture because we love Pop Tarts and bad chocolate, remember this - behind Europe's ancient churches and great literature lies a culture that secretly loves watching celebrities wipe out in cookware at 60 miles per hour.