A quick visit to Krautland

Last Monday around noon I set off from Oslo to spend a week in an apartment in Berlin. It belonged to some friends of mine, who had graciously agreed to lend it out for free (they must not know me very well). I set off and drove down Sweden and then through Denmark and reached Germany without any incident.

I stayed the night at the Ibis hotel just across the border with Denmark, ouside Flensburg. It was a very typical roadside hotel in that it was next to a gas station, was reasonably priced (at 10PM reception closed, but you could still check in via a machine) and that there was a sex shop not ten yards away from the hotel entrance. The one strange thing that befell me was that as I walked out of the gas station around midnight, having loaded up on snack and water, I was hailed by a young girl on roller skates. Apparently she was looking for a ride up through Denmark.

Tuesday morning I set off for Berlin, and I was actually in a fairly good mood as I entered the city. The heavens opened up as I started navigating the streets, but I managed to reach my destination in one piece. I parked on the street, grabbed my bags and hauled them up to the fifth floor apartment (narrowly escaping a heart attack) and then went to put money on the meter. And then hell commenced.

First, the center of Berlin has no free parking, absolutely everywhere is a payment zone with the same exact ticket machines. I quickly resigned to this, and was ready to fork over the 13 Euros (appx $17) it would cost me per day to stay in town. But, these machines would not accept my VISA card, nor my mastercard. I had no Euro coins on my person.

Cursing the poor state of German technology, I went to ask a policeman what to do, thinking that in such an advanced nation as Germany, any local representative of official Krautdom must surely be able to communicate with me in English. No luck. He pointed to the machines, but when I said it didn't accept my cards, he only shrugged. Thankfully, a random guy on the street overheard the feeble attempt at a conversation and was able to direct me to a place where I could withdraw Euros; the local post office.

I ran around the block (which was effin huge btw) and got out 250 Euros in paper money and went back to try and change some of it into coins. Just before the last corner, a disgusting little man who would not look out of place in a Gestapo uniform, came from the other direction. He was carrying a small apparatus that looked suspiciously like the ones traffic wardens in Norway have started to use to write out tickets with.

I approached him wearily, and as I suspected he spoke no English. I was able to ask him if he had ticketed my Norwegian car, feeling fairly certain that I could explain that I was coming back from taking out Euros and therefore was not to blame for the car's lack of a permit.

He answered, in German, that he had indeed ticketed me, and then proceeded to explain why. First, I did not have some sort of environmental sticker on my car, which apparently all cars of a certain age or model needed to have to drive in central Berlin. There was nothing, absolutely nothing about this on any signs along the main roads into town, at least not in English.

Secondly, and it was this that made me blow my lid, I had parked in the wrong direction.

Let that one sink in for a minute.

I... had... parked... in... the... wrong... direction...

This is the kind of insane attention to absurd rules and regulations that allow a nation to build BMWs and concentration camps. My opinion of Krauts and Krautland should by now be well known to most regular readers (both of you), and this was the final, fascist straw that broke this poor camel's back. I thanked him politely through gritted teeth, went to the car to find a ticket which consisted of two small, tightly written pages in German - not a word of English - climbed the stairs again, retrieved my bags and got the hell outta Berlin. I swore a holy oath never to return to that horrible country ever again, and I intend to keep it.

We bombed these fascist fucks back to the stone age not 70 years ago, I'd like to think primarily so that I wouldn't have to deal with the German language in our day and age. We fought a war; English won. Even here in potatoland Norway, we post signs in English along every road into Oslo about the fee you need to pay for driving with studded tires in the winter. And we were on the winning team.

Any country which has supposedly been an ally of America for nearly 70 years, but where its officials still speak no English, yet insist on giving tickets for completely absurd reasons to foreigners, can go fuck themselves, in the ass, with a blunt object. Meanwhile, I shall plan all my future holidays around Germany - literally.