Mexico City needs a new airport like it needs more people, but somebody managed to convince someone else that they needed to spend $9.15 billion (an amount which will of course double or treble, as with any other public procurement project) to build a fancy new airport, bringing yet more people to a crowded, polluted, smoggy city of more than 8 million.
Still on 26 June 2015, responding with their usual speed, efficiency and compassion, all Romanian municipalities and government agencies declared their joy and support by spontaneously and publicly displaying the rainbow flag, the symbol of LGBT activism.
This being Eastern Europe, we can’t really afford the full six stripes, but you must appreciate the effort. Also, negotiations with Hungary about returning the remaining three stripes which they kept after the Treaty of the Tricolor in 1920 are not going well.
Unlike in other countries where churches often are bastions of bigotry and backwardness, in Romania the priests are at the forefront of the drive for equal rights.
Just another thing that the world can learn from Romania!
During my upcoming travels in Latin America, I won’t need to worry about money. Whenever I will run out of funds, I can work at a college or university and teach German and European history.
The demand for such lessons is illustrated by this ballet performance in Guadalajara, Mexico.
This doesn’t seem to be the only long-term effect of the activities by the National Socialists in Central America. From the 1930s on, they supported newspapers in Mexico and in 1935 founded the “Community of the German People in Mexico”. Only in 1941 did Mexico cut diplomatic ties, before declaring war on Germany in 1942 after German U-boats had sunk two oil ships in the gulf of Mexico.
But Nazis are the very devil to kill! Even nowadays, self-proclaimed members of the master race and Aryans are marching in the streets, shouting Nazi slogans and showing off beer bellies.
Nazis are stupid everywhere. But those who would have been regarded as subhumans to be enslaved or exterminated according to the racist ideology of the real Nazis, but who so much want to be Nazis now, are the very dumbest among the stupid. I wonder if they are even allowed to sit at the same table with the German NPD when they meet for international Nazi conferences. Well, maybe because of the girls that they have with them .
Important tip for the Mexinazis: When you get to Germany, always wear your uniform! Particularly in Eastern Germany. Otherwise, you may be beaten to death by those with whom you share your Aryan descent, your ideology and your stupidity.
Apparently there is a “Partido Nacional Socialista de México” and organisations like “Brigadas Fascistas de México” or “Cuarto Reich” (Fourth Reich). According to this source, the letters confirming membership in the Mexican National Socialist Party are being mailed from Germany, and German party members travel to Mexico. I’ll be damned if this isn’t financed by the German domestic intelligence services, like the German Nazi parties are in part…
And this is how Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto began his first day on the job.
Granted, this gesture was around before the Nazis; but some historical awareness wouldn’t be harmful. And thus we return to my offer for some extra lessons. If you all want to be such great Nazis, I am sure I can give the lessons in German, can’t I?
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final passage in the majority opinion for the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v Hodges, in which the Court mandated all 50 US states to allow same-sex marriage. A bit too cheesy for my taste, but I welcome the result.
Even some of the dissenters were magnanimous, like Chief Justice John Roberts in his closing paragraph.
I am not sure I discover a right to marry in the Constitution and I actually don’t think this should be about heterosexual versus homosexual marriage. If the institution of marriage exists, then not allowing Andrew to get married to Paul, while Andrew could marry Paul’s sister Susan (which he might do to have an excuse to hang out with Paul more often), seems to be a clear case of sex discrimination.
Nobody would ever ask Andrew for his sexual orientation when he marries Susan, so why should it matter when he marries Paul? The truth is that millions of gays and lesbians were already married before same-sex marriage first legal became legal. It didn’t cause any harm to anyone, at least not more than marriage generally does.
As a divorce lawyer, I welcome millions of potential new clients!
Every day, I run down the stairs with excitement to unlock my letterbox with great anticipation, awaiting postcards from around the world.
Every day, all I get is another disappointment. I can’t even remember when was the last time that I received a postcard. Probably some time in the last millennium.
So, when I was in Montenegro, I embarked on the most desperate thing that a person can do: to write a postcard to oneself. It was my last day. I had just come back from climbing the fortress in Kotor and visited an exhibition about Jan Karski, when I bought one postcard, wrote a short message to myself, went to the small post office in Kotor and hoped that the girl at the counter wouldn’t notice.
When the postcard arrived at my home in Târgu Mureș in Romania a few days later, I was most excited about the positive and friendly words that I had bestowed upon myself and my journey. Finally, someone had thought of me.
But I didn’t fail to notice that even the gentleman on the stamps seems to wonder: “What is this guy doing?” By the way, you can see from the stamps that Montenegro – like Kosovo – uses the Euro as official currency although it’s not a member state of the European Union or the Eurozone. Maybe Greece can get some advice there.
Do you know this feeling: when you hear a song and it gets stuck in your head somehow, it remains connected to good memories and you would like to listen to it again, but you can’t remember the name of the song, the singer or the band? Many people will then simply hum or sing it until someone (or an app) will tell them what song they were looking for. Well, I can’t sing the least, so that’s not an option for me.
It was in the summer of 1996. I was in Israel on a youth exchange program and every day on the bus we listened to a rhythmic, South-American-sounding song which was played on the radio several times a day. It seemed to be a big hit that summer, or the station preferred by our bus driver just didn’t have many CDs to choose from. After a few times, we chimed in and danced to the song each time it came on.
Ever since, I was hoping to hear that song again. I didn’t even remember what it sounded like and I had no idea if I would still enjoy it now, but I knew it would bring back beautiful memories of a trip that went all the way from the Golan Heights to the Negev Desert, from Tel Aviv to Jericho, from Akko to the Sea of Galilee.
It took 19 years.
Two week ago I was in Băile Tușnad in Romania. As I walked back to the guesthouse one evening, the song sounded from the radio of a parked car as I walked past. I recognized it immediately, and this time I wrote down some of the lyrics to look them up on YouTube (an option not yet available in 1996).
To my surprise, the song is from Brazil, where I will move to in November 2015. Even more coincidentally, the video clip shows exactly the kind of boat on which I will travel across the Atlantic. But please don’t expect me to dance!
In Germany, on your first day of school your parents prepare a “Schultüte”, which is full of sweets and pencils and crayons and other useful stuff for school.
This must have been in 1982.
Links:
More about education, because I’ve come a long way since then.
I certainly won’t fly to an airport that looks like a woman giving birth. I’ll rather take the train.
