Been on the road for a week—a nephew’s destination wedding in Bavaria. That’s been a lot of fun; this part of the world is as beautiful as I remember from a family trip fifty years ago (sic!); the food is excellent; and the tourist culture of the area is pleasant and welcoming. So all good.
Plus, in the rather fancy hotel in which the wedding itself took place, I rediscovered the joy of a proper sauna, made all the more wonderful by the discovery of what it does (palliatively at least) for my recently diagnosed osteoarthritis. (See that fifty year interval above…)
But as far as the jackaltariat is concerned, though, it’s the moments of the absurd that seem worth sharing.
This was the keeper…clearly, someone in the south German hotel snacks industry has a wicked sense of humor:
As a lagniappe…
Who’s a good plastic doggo? You are! (From the Lego store in Munich):
All right you insomniacs…
Over to you. This thread is so open it’s agnostic about the Oxford comma.
MagdaInBlack
The Lego pooch is pretty cool.
And my eyes keep trying to un-pixilate it 😊
Joey Maloney
I was just in Munich a few weeks ago. Pretty much every sentence in German I saw looked like it was trying to make a dirty joke in English.
Tony Jay
I passed by you on a train around midnight last night after 36 hours in Vienna.
Vienna, btw, I would advise as a long weekend destination to anyone. The buildings are as impressive as you’d expect from a city that ruled an Empire for centuries, the food is awesome (if you like meat, which I do) and there’s something about reclaiming the Bierkeller from images of Nazi campaign meetings that I find very pleasing around Large Bier Fünf.
If we hadn’t just been to Venice, it would have been the best city of our trip.
Splitting Image
I’m agnostic about the Oxford comma. I’m also agnostic about the devil and his servants, Ayn Rand and Donald Trump.
Spc
I think there is some awareness. Under 40s have become highly functional in Englush (they start in the 3rd grade). I live in Munich and some of the names of the brand-name ripoff cereals (usually named in English) you see In supermarkets like Kaufland feel like they were created by younger marketers trying to see what they could get away with.
NotMax
@Spc
When it comes to idioms, though₀.
;)
Anyway
@Joey Maloney:
Every trip as we leave the airport my inner Butthead sniggers at “Ausfahrt”
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I sometimes wonder of its Vienna venue was one reason last year’s JCPOA negotiations were so drawn out. The EU diplomats would meet the Iranians at their hotel in the morning, and the Americans in their hotel in the afternoon. Then they had to decide, “What fine restaurant do we dine at tonight on the EU dime?
The Iranians ate at their hotel, with food prepared by Iranian chefs. I expect they ate pretty well too.
In the end, the tentative agreement reached did not fly, but everyone involved probably left Vienna heavier for the experience.
Betty Cracker
I drove from Vienna to Salzburg once with a couple of friends, and when we stopped for fuel, one of our trio saw a large truck that said TUMFART (I think?) on the side and thought that was so hilarious that he had to take several photos of it.
Central Planning
How can you be agnostic about the Oxford comma?
If you use it sometimes, your list might be unclear. If you always use it, you know the intent if the comma is missing.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Ulysses Grant visited Venice in 1877, while he was on his world tour. Grant commented, “Venice would be a fine city if only it were drained.”
BellyCat
Re Oxford comma: Hazily recalled from an architectural contract class years ago was a case regarding a will. Something like, “All assets to be split equally between children A, B, C and D.” The argument—and I think the outcome(?)—was a three way equal split, with C and D each getting half of one third.
The Jackaltariat’s Flying Legal Wedge can undoubtedly provide better insights.
Betty Cracker
@Central Planning: Because most of the time it’s pointless and therefore a waste of time?
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
The boy lived on Wiener Schnitzels, each one getting progressively bigger as time went on. I thought I’d mix it up a bit and go with toast suckling pig leg and sauerkraut for the last meal and by the ever-growing humerus of St Otto the Canalhopper was I heavy as a lead biscuit by the end of it.
Also too, (almost) everyone there was lovely. They seemed genuinely delighted that I was trying out my very, very limited German skills and were always eager to help out when needed. The boys at the Grösser Bierclinik especially. The snooty fuckers at that cafe/restaurant we grabbed a quick frühstück from near the Spanish Riding School, not so much.
Street sausage is sehr lecker too.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
So speaketh a man who never saw a military strongpoint he didn’t want to reduce through digging. 😂
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Grant’s remark about Venice is sometimes used as proof of his dullness and lack of imagination. But Fuller, his British biographer, said it showed Grant’s relentlessly practical nature.
I think Grant might have made the remark tongue-in-cheek. He probably had heard about how wonderful Venice was, and may have wanted to puncture an inflated reputation with his dry sense of humor.
Another Scott
@BellyCat: +1. That’s the way I would read it too, but for legal documents I would hope that it would be spelled out much more explicitly (in case there’s a typo in the transcription).
IANAL.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anyway
@Tony Jay:
I took a Third Man (it’s a favorite, seen it numerous times) walking tour when I was there. Fun way to see some off-the-beaten path sections of the city. It was me and two others!
Montanareddog
@Tony Jay:
I was taken to a famous schnitzel place last time I was in Vienna. Not particularly fun for me as the only dish available for me, the vegetarian, was a green salad. Even the roast potatoes had bacon in them. But, Lordy, were the schnitzels big! Larger than the full-size dinner plates they were served on. Not many of the party managed to finish them.
Torrey
@Geminid:
I’ve always understood Grant’s comment as an example of the dry midwestern sense of humor.
Anyway
@Spc:
Most of my German colleagues are big fans of The Simpsons — and US humor in general.
Omnes Omnibus
@Torrey: I have always thought that it was a joke, but, as apart of the Lost Cause myth, there has been a tendency to denigrate both Grant and Sherman and portray them as dull pedestrian butchers in contrast to gentlemen scholars like Lee. All bullshit of course.
Geminid
@Torrey: I got a good sense of Grant’s dry humor in his Memoirs. Grant was conscious of his dignity as an ex-President and military hero, but he still managed to poke fun at people including himself.
Grant ends the narrative at the end of the Civil War, but he makes some interesting observations in the last chapter he wrote shortly before his death. One was that when he was growing up, most Americans seemed to rarely go outside their own county. Since the Civil War, Grant said, Americans had become a mobile people.
Geminid
@Omnes Omnibus: You would probably appreciate J.F.C. Fuller’s The Generalship of Ulysses Grant (1929). A military man himself, Fuller had a very high opinion of General Grant. Fuller used his study of Grant’s generalship as the center of a general history of the Civil War.
Carlo Graziani
@Montanareddog: One word: Schweinhaxen.
Best Bavarian pork entree (which is the same as saying “best Bavarian entree”—how those people don’t all weigh 300 lb and die of congestive heart failure at 35 is a mystery to me).
BigJimSlade
After the Honeybal lecker, maybe you get dickmilch?
I took some pictures of this product in the store when we were there just over a month ago (I’m working on the OTR stuff), but for now it was easier to just grab something from google than export/upload mine. Also, the first items (both in the first picture) here.
Almost Retired
@Betty Cracker: I have two photos of Copenhagen, and about 15 of the ferry station in the nearby town of Sofartsgarden. To be fair, I was 19.