If it’s true that 35 percent of all internet traffic is used for transferring porn, then the remaining 65 surely must be clogged up by the ramblings of elite Germans in skinny jeans and granny dresses who brazenly teach an unsuspecting audience about all those vapid little aspects that, in their acutely voiced opinion, make the particular part of Berlin they recently moved to the only place that’s still interesting to live at.

Yet, as the famous saying goes, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” it feels like most of these people are currently living in Berlin.

How so? Because now, as the hype they painstakingly created turns out to be working, in that droves of young, easily impressed people are crawling over each others’ shoulders to secure their place in one of the thousands of hyper-individualistic flat shares in the city of their uniformly predictable dreams, elite German people have come to the foreseeable conclusion that there is a downside to their desperate pursuit to become interesting by association with a trendy part of town. 

Upon closer inspection, the irritation seems to arise from the simple reality that it isn’t them who are in control of the immigration to their Altbau neighborhood. Although elite Berliners will argue that they are, in all likelihood, the most tolerant people on the face of earth, they throw tantrums as soon as someone moves in to the apartment next door who isn’t exactly like them. Oblivious to the paradox how they, arriving in Berlin as bumbling, provincial oxygen thieves barely able to hide their Osnabruck faces under a hastily grown, messy beard, resented being labeled as “gentrifiers,” elite Berliners tend to become extremely angry and insecure towards anyone who moves in after them.

That’s because the true German elite exists beyond the space-time continuum. Disproving Einstein’s theory of relativity, it is never them or their buddies who are gentrifying Berlin, but, you guessed right, the folks who move in a month, a week, a day, even just an hour, after them. The good news, Auslander, is albeit you might have been called a gentrifying yuppie pig, because, uhm, you didn’t obey the council of elder gentrifiers’ memorandum about the maximum acceptable salary for your specific neighborhood, you can rest assured that there exists one group of people who your elite German friends still hate more than you: Schwaben.

Any self-respecting and -appointed Mitte bohemian is obliged to despise anyone from the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg who dares to share their ubernonconformist fondness for Berlin’s trendy neighborhoods. Schwaben, so the insinuation goes, make Berlin less hip because they all are nouveau riche, culture-averse countryside simpletons with way too much money and way too little enthusiasm for alternative art, crowd-sourced creativity, or old geezers publicly pleasing themselves at the Kit-Kat Club.

The accusations that all original gentrifiers can agree on is that Schwaben a) talk in an awful dialect that’s only remotely reminiscent of proper German and b) drive up the apartment rents because they are “good with money”. No word yet on whether elite German people also reckon that Schwaben have a weird physiognomy, you know, like huge, crooked noses.

Oddly enough, the more obvious criticism -- that Schwaben are hopeless johnny-come-latelies still in firm belief of the Berlin hype who are all-too-ready and gullible enough to trade in their narrow, yet likeable south-western environment of well-paid jobs, favorable climatic conditions, and tasty cuisine, for the despicable ambition to belong to a crowd of equally uninteresting pseudo-urbanites living in a perpetually up-and-coming city which, on a good day, feels like an abandoned suburb of Moscow -- should better be kept to yourself.

To the curious observer, the true motivation for the hatred is quite easy to grasp: Your German friends hate the Schwaben for holding a mirror up to them. Watching the hordes of corn-fed Schwaben roam the Berlin streets in naïve amazement about having accomplished the unthinkable by moving to a bigger city than Stuttgart, even the most narcissistic, full-of-themselves elite German people will come to the sobering realization that, in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears spent in their effort to shed the marks of their own regrettably normal upbringing and become cosmopolites, all they are able to achieve is to barely stay two miserable months ahead of the average greenhorn from Tuttlingen.

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It cannot be stressed enough how important the ritual of moving is among elite German circles. Moving house is a tried and tested way to socialize with German people and stay in the center of their attention for a considerable span of time. From the announcement of your plan to move, the well publicized, crowd-sourced search for the “perfect” apartment, to the actual day of moving, a simple move of house can give you up to a full year of boosted interestingness if you play your hand cleverly. And that doesn’t even include the month-long aftermath of complaining about your stingy ex-landlord and the renovation nightmares that caught you, like, totally offhanded.

To dispel all concerns you might be a mainstream, career-driven person with more money than them, make sure to plan your move with the lowest possible budget. The biggest gaffe would be to hire professional movers to do the job for you. What’s that? You’d rather spend some money on the move than micro-manage every little aspect of it yourself, using two weeks of paid company holidays, just to return to work totally exhausted and ready for a proper vacation? What are you, some kind of silver-spoon-fed aristocrat? Doing your own move is beyond you, yeah? Well, here’s the problem: If you have your move done by professionals, chances are it will be an eventless, even pleasing experience that saves your sanity, or in short, an extreme fail. Still puzzled where the problem lies? Let’s spell it out for you: There will be nothing to talk about next time you meet your German acquaintances at that infamous new dive bar, and another person will quickly sashay into the center of their attention. What you want to do is aim for the maximum possible dramatic and error-prone course of events.

If you currently see no apparent reason for moving house, it is perfectly fine to invent one. You could purposely split up with your love interest, so the need to move out “and think things over for a while” arises. Better yet, you could move inside your existing apartment and shoot an artsy documentary about the process which you’ll then show at a guerilla art gallery in Wedding. Don’t bother with an explanation for the move. It is understood without saying to be a regular necessity in any elite German person’s life. As a rule of thumb, you can move house up to six times a year, but absolutely be prepared to move at least twice a year, just to appear normal.

So how do you cut down on budget? German people consider an expenditure on a service they could do themselves as an awful waste of money which could be invested towards owning property or recreational drug use. As most elite German people are self-employed with no imminent deadlines in the way, the resource they have easiest access to is free time, while the scarcest one is cash. The result is a blind understanding among elite Germans that nobody should ever be forced to spend money on hiring movers, hence the average elite German person will be very frank to invite everyone on his Facebook account to join his moving “partaay” featuring “cold beer, snacks, and live deejaying”. Take notice how the invitation to such a party always closes with a phrase like “if at least 5 people show up, which won’t be a problem, we’ll be done in 2 hours tops”.

Once the day of moving has arrived, on the way there, make sure to stop by a cash machine and take out at least 300 Euros - you’ll need them later. As a rookie Auslander, you probably feel obliged to show up at the exact given time. Oh well. You’ll likely be the very first person to arrive. The guy who’s moving will open the door still in his pajamas, and say, “Wow, you’re early. Thanks for coming, by the way. I kinda just got up because we had some artist friends over, so I’m in the middle of having breakfast and going through today’s feuilleton. Make yourself at home, if you can find a seat between all those boxes”. Once you sit down, glance over the scenery to find out the ratio of readily packed stuff to stuff that still needs to be put into boxes is less than 50%, meaning there’s no way the move will be done in the advertised two hours. If you have any further appointments that day, cancel them now.

Chances are the German person has repeatedly claimed to possess great taste in interior and product design. When a German person claims to “be into design,” it means they love to clutter their apartments with design classics which they source from eBay or flea markets. More often than not, the stuff is half broken or severely yellowed, which, as its new owner begs to differ, “only serves to give it that special charm which you don’t get from just buying it in a store like an ignorant yuppie would do.” Elite German people consider buying half-broken, nicotine-stained gadgets from the 60s or 70s to be an irresistible bargain up to 150% of the original price. The more times a German person stresses their individuality, the more likely you will find one of the following items in their apartment:

• A Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair
• A few original GDR cafeteria chairs that were stolen from an abandoned factory, to give the apartment an air of workaday simplicity and prove their owner has an “eye for the beauty found in simple and cheap things”.
• A shelf system by Dieter Rams, “which was a bitch to install!”
• several rolls of vintage GDR wallpaper which your friend never got around to actually put up
• At least one pricey fixed-gear bike displayed in the living room on special, imported hinges.
• At the very least 2500 vinyl records neatly kept in one or more Ikea “Expedit” shelves. In each compartment, one of the vinyl records, if it has a design the apartment owner deems “worthy”, is put face forward in front of the other vinyl records, creating a “wonderful collage of inspiring graphics design”
• A DJ deck with two Technics 1210 turntables and a small mixer, on which, upon closer inspection, traces of “piece” or other recreational drugs can be found
• Some pieces of self-made art, often with “crass” symbology showing phalli in context with 9/11 inspired stencil art, courtesy of the owners’ current girlfriend who’s an aspiring fashion blogger-slash-journalist from Copenhagen and the “number one fan of Banksy”
• A lava lamp which your friend will quickly comment on by saying, “I know, it is so lame to own a lava lamp, but I heard it contains really bad chemicals so I can’t throw it away”. You are expected to like your friend a little more for saying this.

Over the next 1-2 hours, a few of the people who promised to help moving will arrive, and, with no exception, have a bad hangover, the reasons for which they’ll discuss in at least 45 minutes of allusive weekend chitchat. There will always be significant less people showing up than promised by the mover, who will proclaim “you can be sure I’ll really scold those non-showing morons,” which of course will never happen because the people who’re missing are always his best mates who he regularly does coke with.

The gathering will then, finally, move their attention to start the actual move and you’ll likely assume that things are finally picking up steam. Don’t laugh too soon, Auslander. The person assigned to box the vinyl will soon discover some kind of musical gem, like a super-rare “Moodymann” vinyl that was only available to buy for a single day back in 1992, and whoever plays this record at a club will be considered really interesting and in the know about the history of electronic dance music. This person will be so excited to tell everybody about his discovery that the other guys, who are of course all massively into electronic dance music, will stop whatever they are currently doing and join the guy responsible for the record collection, abandoning their tasks. For the next hour and a half, your German acquaintances are caught in a blissful trance, in which they make little stacks of records they plan to borrow for an important upcoming gig, totally ignoring the fact that the move was supposed to be almost done by this hour.

When, finally, everything is packed into boxes, the moving German person will admit that he didn’t have time to pick up the rented van. That’s right: Even though elite German people always seem to brag about who they know and how many interesting people they meet, they are usually blanking when it comes to knowing someone with a car, much less so, a van. That’s why they usually have to resort to rent one. Now’s your turn: Ask the moving German person to accompany them to the car rental company. Why? Arriving there, the elite German person will be caught in total surprise to discover that there is a 300 EUR deposit for renting a van, which, after much huffing and puffing, he will agree to pay, but as he already maxed out his EC-Karte at IKEA the day before and is now broke, it looks like the whole moving party must be postponed to another day. Now is your chance to gain respect and gratitude by helping him out with the cash you prepared earlier.

Back home, the actual move finally starts. Check your watch. If the time is now less than 5 hours over the originally planned start time, you can congratulate yourself on finding some really get-things-done, no-fuss German acquaintances. Never mention the concept of “being late” to an elite German person. You would be seen as a very pushy, stuck up person with zero talent for socializing, improvising, or dilettante art.

Arriving at the moving person’s new apartment, don’t be confused by the fact it looks almost exactly the same: Of course it will be in an art nouveau building, on the 6th floor, with no elevator. It is now time to gather all the strength you can muster and start carrying those awfully heavy boxes of rare electronic dance music vinyl up to the new apartment. Once you’re done, there will probably not much life left in you and you’ll be, for once, excused for leaving “early”.

A couple of days later, you’ll be contacted by the moving person to be told that, on the way to the car rental company, he managed to put a dent into the van, losing the deposit. Patiently listen to his wordy promises how he’ll pay you back as soon as possible. This means it will take another 6-8 weeks and numerous phone calls on your part until you finally get your friend to meet you and pay you back, but never without passive-aggressively joking about how he never would have thought you could be so “pushy with money”.

Don’t let that keep you from helping your German acquaintances move in the future, though. It is one of the highest rewarded favors of the whole German friendship point system, and once it is your turn to move, you can be sure that at least a small percentage of the people you helped moving will show up to browse your vinyl collection.

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Feeling a little meta today? Then why not fire up the ole Retina display and read some interviews with Wash Echte...

Here's one at the Radio Fritz Website. Fun game: Try to spot the similarities between the English and German versions.

Or here at Fudder.de, only in German.

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With the World Cup upon us, it's about time you learn how to use the coming four weeks of football and partying to receive the maximum possible attention and affection from elite German people.

Remember: Your declared mission objective is to be accepted into the very inner sanctum of elite Germany, so you won't have much success acting like a typical football nut. Although the tens of thousands of impeccably unique, improbably brilliant, and undisputedly creative artists and intellectuals in and around your city's alternative Altbau quarters love to playfully associate themselves with the "working class" in self-important dive-bar small talk, they'd rather eat a battery chicken's egg than share a single interest with the proles.

Elite German people just can't bring themselves to be into football the same way normal people are. It's easy to see why. They'd have to deal with people who are different from them: Football fans.

Aren't they disgusting, with their genuinely enthusiastic, irony-free approach to football? Just look at them in their stupid wigs and jerseys, faces unabashedly painted in their own countries' colors, getting drunk on mainstream beer brands, and cheering their team on without the slightest sign of ironic self-awareness.

Then there's the players. More often than not, they too are inarticulate brutes with Guido haircuts, obscene, gas-guzzling sports cars, and wives and girlfriends that are the exact opposite of the universally accepted gold standard of elite German femininity, i.e. confused, dark-haired girls: The frisky blonde babe. I mean, come on...how could you ever idolize someone who prefers Gucci over American Apparel and would never make the Berghain door?

Most importantly, though, they are opposed to the commercialization of football. Elite German people are very good at telling the exact point in time somebody or something has "sold out," which means it has become popular with the wrong type of German people to a degree that flaunting it ceases to give them that sweet feeling of superiority and importance. Whenever an elite German person starts into another heated rant about how football has become a "multi million Euro" business run by faceless banker-types, and how this has destroyed the true spirit of the game, make sure to nod in perfect agreement, as if you were admiring their politically correct assessment of the evils of capitalism, though the real opinion forming in your head is probably more along the lines of: "Just look at this bitter little man's mouth open and close!"

Modern football, and especially the World Cup, poses a problem for elite German people. The way FIFA has "sold out" the World Cup to evil, multi-national corporations is an insult to their intellectuality and something they must always keep a critical distance to, yet they sense that standing around with a frown while everyone else is partying would give away the fact that they aren't the easy-going, free-spirited hedonists they always claim to be.

Elite German people solved this problem their way: By overemphasizing certain other, nonessential aspects of football, they created a complex hierarchical system to assess another person's interestingness, much like they did with popular music. They named this system "football culture." Finally, elite German people gained a way to show how far above of those football-crazy, drooling simpletons they really are. Suddenly, football became a very acceptable topic to impress other elite German people with in nasally spoken, vapid party conversation.

It didn't take them long to turn the straight and simple game of football into another nerdy gimmick to deck up their alternative image with. Thanks to elite German football fans and their bible 11 Freunde, the perfect football magazine for people who hate football, it isn't sufficient anymore to just know the results of the past match day. No, this new breed of hipster football connoisseurs won't shut up until they've overanalyzed each and every aspect, however minor, tiring, or gossip-y it might be, in endless pseudo-intellectual ramblings so boring they'd make virgin philatelists at a Finnish Trekkie convention roll their eyes. It is the elite German people's very personal little revenge for being ridiculed as overweight, mollycoddled four-eyes who were always getting picked last in gym class.

When you talk football to a bunch of elite German people, make sure to spare them lame and boring topics like scores or strategy talk. To convince them you're an interesting individualist, keep the focus on quirky, leftfield topics that revolve about all those hip little things your thick-rimmed glasses wearing friends care about. Topics like:

"Have you seen that awfully tacky haircut on Hertha's Marco Pantelic? He still sports a mullet! I am so glad he has left Bundesliga for good. If Union ever buy a player with a haircut that tacky, I'll have to look for another team to support!"

"We should set up a website that lets people vote which player has the best taste in music! I think it's really important to know which music each team member likes. Imagine you start to like a certain player and later you find out he listens to Katie Melua!"

"The World Cup? Big friggin' deal...to a true football connoisseur like me, there's little of interest happening at that over-commercialized, corporate event. Did you know the truly exciting football is played in the minor leagues? The spirit and sense of unity there really is unmatched. If you like, I will take you with me to the next match of my favorite team, FC Auf-Gehts-Konsteinburger. They play every Sunday on this totally cool, abandoned GDR factory lot near Ostkreuz. Chills man, chills!"

"I love how intellectual Paul Breitner looked in the 70s. He had this ubercool afro and I heard he even read Mao's theories. It really was the golden age of football, before the bankers and lawyers took over! And they had these great, retro-looking jerseys. I'd wear those to Panorama Bar in a second!"

Next, you should choose a team you are going to pretentiously associate yourself with. To elite German people, supporting Germany is just one of a number of options, often the least attractive one. To show everybody how special and cosmopolitan you are, you should repeatedly announce your support for a foreign country. Which one you choose depends on what image you like to portray to your elite German friends. Here are a few popular choices:

England: Elite German people love English football and often confirm to each other how fast and more exciting the Premier League is compared to "backwards" Bundesliga. German intellectuals love the idea that pretentious support for an English team will magically supply them with that much desired working-class air. Use this to your advantage. Tell them how you miss "getting down to" Anfield Road to chant "You'll never walk alone" with some "really ace chaps from Liverpool". Rooting for England may not be the most original thing you can do, but it is a safe way to gain respect as a true expert on the history of football. A quick word of advise: You should have a backup team ready from the quarter finals onward, in the unlikely case England gets eliminated early.

Brazil: The traditional go-to country for any elite German person who thinks they're clever. Rooting for Brazil means rooting for beautiful, winning football, and, more importantly, for not offending anyone. Every elite German person loves Brazil for its easy-going way of life, ethnic musical styles that sound great in lounge-y bars, and poor people who, despite being poor, smile and laugh a lot. Choose Brazil and you'll be seen as a relaxed, fun-loving person, and if Brazil gets eliminated at least you'll have everyones pity.

France: France's status for the 2010 World Cup is a bit of a mystery. It used to be the intellectual's choice, who, in their skewed minds, thought they could impress thick-rimmed glasses wearing girls in bars if they self-importantly talked about how they think Zinedine Zidane is the most "complete" footballer of our time. Since that guy ended his career, and Les Bleues are a bit hard to evaluate, it is a gamble to support France. Still recommended if you're an androgynous person who loves to wear black turtlenecks and smoke filterless cigarettes while discussing dialogue-heavy movies from the 60s starring Alain Delon.

Turkey: Rooting for Turkey will give you an instant morale boost. An elite German person rooting for Turkey will be seen as an ambassador of good will, someone who is clever and mature enough to not get involved in silly patriotism over a football match, but rather use the occasion to improve Germany's relationship with its minorities. If you root for Turkey, don't expect those Turkish guys celebrating down the street to give much of a shit about your noble ambitions, though. Think of it as a good deed that will mainly serve to make yourself feel superior to your peers. Don't let the negligible fact that Turkey this time didn't even qualify for the finals hold you back (thanks, Matt).  

North Korea: The North Korean team is the FC St.Pauli of the 2010 World Cup. The ultimate underdog. It goes without saying that associating yourself with this team will instantly make you a better person with built-in moral high grounds because everybody will feel bad making fun of you and your team will likely be sentenced to death unless they bring home the World Cup. As a convenient side effect, by rooting for North Korea you make a bold statement against US imperialism and pro "mild" stalinism, a concept the intellectual elite of Berlin has never fully written off. That, and you get to wear the most ironically fashionable jersey of this World Cup.

Germany: Supporting Germany in Germany is a difficult move only recommended for true masters of irony. Get a tiny detail wrong and you'll see yourself categorized as "the wrong type of Auslander," a label that is very hard to get rid off. If done right though, elite German people will line up to applaud you for taking a wildly interesting, down-to-earth stance against the "pretentious, try-too-hard Germans" who childishly support a foreign country. Say something like "well, I was so fed up with everybody rooting for other countries, so even if I am not a real fan of Germany's team, from now on I'll cheer them on to spite the hipster idiots!". German people will think of you as a postmodern genius and take turns to pay for your cheap, ironic beer in the coming four weeks.

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Introduction: An often repeated opinion you'll hear from German people is that it is extremely hard for a man to understand "the women". When you're with a group of German men, you can score some easy empathy points by saying: "Women - can't be with them, can't be without them!" Your German friends will respond by nodding contemplatively and think of you as a weathered veteran of complicated (meaning: interesting) relationships.

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Ask them for the reason why they moved to Berlin, the usual explanation given by Auslanders and elite German people alike is that they felt a strong urge to break free from the confinement of their original surroundings to live the unconventional life of an artist in what they believe to be a more laid-back, non-conformist, and artistically inspiring place.

The tried and tested way for anyone who strives to live like an unconventional, creative part of the Boheme is to adjust their lifestyle, looks, and attitudes to exactly match those of the people who moved to the place earlier. The mission objective is to be different in the same way everybody else is. As soon as you set foot on the stomping grounds of your adolescent dreams, you are automatically an avant-garde Bohemian, and you must act the part without any self-doubt. Getting a neon-colored leotard at American Apparel and growing a messy beard will buy you some time. But as German people take great pride in acting authentic, being an artist is not just a style thing. Well, on second thought, it is mainly just a style thing, yet elite German people like to think of themselves as non-conformist intellectuals who never even once stoop down to the shallow levels of pure aestheticism, so they constantly feel a certain peer pressure to have a true interest in intellectual matters.

That’s where they usually run into obstacles. Even the most progressive, city-slicking, counter-culturally versed, avant-garde, nonconformist German people are at heart country bumpkins with the very same unsophisticated cravings they constantly ridicule normal people for. Regardless of how much time they appear to spend on creating improbably brilliant music, design, fashion, art, or literature, for some reason they always seem to have a lot of free time for “networking” in cafes, dive bars, or the Berghain toilet.

The chasm gaping between their struggle to meet the stiff demands of bohemian Germany and the worldly desires their regrettably conventional upbringing irreversibly etched into their genes, inevitably leads to cognitive dissonances. It is fair to say that elite German people’s social interactions are driven by nothing but them. The behavior, attitudes, fashions, and ideologies that constitute Berlin-Mitte are nothing but manifestations of the raging inner conflict to resolve these very cognitive dissonances.

Unaware of the German way to tackle this problem, your approach would probably be to start working really hard to actually become the artist you claim to be. You know, put some old-fashioned effort into something, become an expert, then dedicate your life to it, try to reach beyond what others have reached for, fail at it, and fail at it over and over again, driving you into a severe alcoholism, then a drug habit that almost kills you, then outright madness that makes you obey the voices in your head telling you to cut off an ear, wrap it into tissue to give it to a prostitute, and finally taking you to the edge of suicide, because the very matter you dedicated your life to, has betrayed you, until finally, one day, in a time of greatest possible desperation, something else, something that has been hidden deep inside you, takes over, and suddenly every step you need to take is clearly laid out in front of your inner eye, and you walk the walk, ascending to a higher level of knowledge, forever shedding your limited comprehension of the world, leaving behind your entanglement in pretentious and shallow counter-culture kitsch, engrossing you with nothing but amused alienation from the activities and values that once mattered, because finally, life has turned you into a true artist.

Or, if that sounds too hard, attend a Tatort party. Elite German people at one point found out that they can gain the same amount of respect and interestingness that a true artist receives without putting in any effort. You simply have to redefine whatever painfully normal things you crave to do as being totally edgy, artistic, and non-conformist. Take some guidance from the masters: Attend a Tatort party. It’s the perfect blueprint of how elite German people take a mainstream thing they secretly crave, witlessly yet homogeneously change their attitude towards it, and call it the edgiest and most avant-garde thing ever. Attending a Tatort-Party means learning about the inner workings of the elite German mind.

So where do these elitists meet? Just walk around your trendy neighborhood on a Sunday evening. Tatort-Parties are usually held at “young” bars and cafes. Once you find a flock of German people wearing black, thick-rimmed glasses and T-Shirts with somewhat witty slogans, who are hanging out in a demonstratively relaxed “Sunday pose,” clutching on to bottles of ironic beer or Club Mate, while staring at a small, makeshift cinema screen, then congrats, you found a Tatort-Party. Enter and find a seat, then wait until the creepy, blatant staring at the new guy (you) ceases, then prepare yourself for the things to come by ordering the strongest coffee available. You’re just about to experience the longest 90 minutes of your life.

A new episode of Tatort is aired every Sunday. It is Germany’s longest running crime drama, a bit like a teutonic version of “Law & Order,” just a lot slower and less exciting. That’s the reason Tatort didn’t have a huge following among young Germans until about 10 years ago. 

In fact, Tatort is so slow, tedious, and deliberately low-key that one 1.5 hour episode feels like a whole day going by. Halfway into it, you’ll want to inject caffeine into your eyeballs just to make it through the next minute. In good German film-making tradition, everything about it feels painfully over-endeavored and every single character is stock beyond the worst stereotype. But that’s, like, sooo not the point, Auslander. German people love Tatort for its realism and dedication to pick up controversial topics and social developments to base its stilted plots on in a really contrived way.

Example: If someday, somewhere in Germany a guy who works at a bakery and whose day job is to make spongecake would kill another guy who makes, for example, danish pastry, then the producers of Tatort would waste no time to come up with an episode of Tatort which took a pretentious shot at „unmasking“ the immoral aspects of the spongecake business and „illuminating“ its „hidden dark side“. The spongecake chef would be borderline psychotic and overweight, and there would be long-winded shots of him in a white spongecake chef’s apron, wielding a palette knife in a sleazy, dark bakery back room, with the cameras slowly panning up from his palette knife-wielding hands, up and up, past his meaty chin, to finally reveal, to much “ooh” and “ahh”-ing on part of the Tatort party’s members, he wasn’t really making spongecake, but staring into nothingness with his totally crazy, murderous, psycho spongecake chef eyes, but the scene doesn’t stop, and we can hear, but never get to see, him stabbing at the cutting board in an increasingly aggressive way, all mounting in a wild crescendo of staring and stabbing, staring and stabbing, staring and…you get the idea, it’s an extremely powerful scene because of the things we don’t get to see.

Don’t blame that poor spongecake chef though. Because Tatort is at heart a very German show, each episode takes plenty of time exploring the „social conflicts“ and „circumstances“ that lead to a crime. Mirroring the German society, in Tatort, everybody is a victim. Even the detectives. That’s because German people love to come up with far-flung excuses for any wrongdoing that wasn’t committed by a well-off person, and go to great lengths to construct a theory which serves to blame all the usual things they fear or disapprove of: Capitalism, environmental pollution, and being identified as Germans when traveling.

In the above example, the spongecake chef’s murder would be explained by the brutal, dog-eat-dog world the spongecake making business has evolved into. There would be a huge, faceless, spongecake-making corporation that aims to rule the spongecake marketplace with cheaply made, but bland products, rendering life for the loveably privately kept, romantically small spongecake-shops extremely competitive and impersonal. The murderer’s deed would be explained by the unbearable fear of the future those evil capitalists brought to this simple, down-to-earth spongecake chef, yet, and this is very important, Tatort wouldn’t take all the guilt off him, leaving the audience at your Tatort-Party in an ambivalent state, resulting in statements like “I’m not exactly sure who’s to blame here, and I think nobody should jump to conclusions. All we can say is, capitalism brings out the worst in people, right? Right??”

When the Tatort is finally over, the Germans around you feel obliged to start an orderly debate discussing the “important questions asked„ by this Sunday’s Tatort. The majority of German people will agree that the evil, faceless pastry company should take 100% of the guilt. It is highly recommended for you to always join the anti-capitalist side of the argument and actively take part in this discussion to secure your role as a knowledgeable media commentator. Discussing a substantially boring, run-of-the-mill crime drama gives your German acquaintances the warm, fuzzy feeling of being critical, self-determined people who are aware of the dangers of blind media consumption, because they are way too intellectual to just watch TV for its entertainment value, which, in the case of Tatort, is close to zero.

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It seems the sole reason for the city of Munich to exist is to make Berlin people feel better about themselves. Whenever a conversation changes topic to the city of Munich, elite German people, without fail, will suddenly become very agitated, especially if they are die-hard Berlin-Mitte fans. At this point, prepare yourself for a thirty-minute lecture on how conservative, clueless, and backwards Munich is, compared to the cradle of creativity, individuality, and edginess, that is Berlin.

As it lies in the nature of rants, they reveal more about the sketchy self-esteem and fragile psyche of the ranter than about the subject matter at hand. To a neutral observer, it can be quite a revelation to learn that Berlin, the self-proclaimed capital of art, counter-culture, and affordable wooden-floored Altbau apartments, constantly feels challenged to validate its assumed superiority against a hinterland town that’s just a quarter the size, and advertises itself as being the stomping grounds for a pack of never-heard-of German D-List celebrities. It probably is clever to never ask your Berlin friends for an explanation why the self-proclaimed cultural center of the world obsesses about being cooler than Munich instead of working on catching up with proper metropolises - you would force your German acquaintances to speak very defensively and chances are you won’t be on the guest list for Ricardo Villalobos’ next gig. Rather, use your insight about this weakness wisely to reaffirm their image of you being an individual who’s not afraid to “think different”: Whenever possible, drop a snarky remark about “that aweful, backwards town in Bavaria that’s full of capitalists.” Generously ignore the fact that Munich is loved all over the world for being exactly that — a mid-size town with money and a charming lack of misguided ambition to compete with larger cities, like Berlin.

Because it is next to impossible to hear an unbiased opinion about Munich, you could be tempted to go there to do some researching by yourself. Shhh, not so loud! They can hear us you know. You must not tell anyone about your plan. If you do accidentally let your tongue slip, not all may be lost. But always be prepared to come up with an acceptable explanation for your trip. One excuse could be: “I have been asked to go to Munich to spin some indie electronica at a vernissage. God, what did I do to deserve this ordeal?”, which will earn you a lot of pity points and your German acquaintances might pay for your drinks that night. Second, and recommended, option: Say you were asked to visit Munich as part of a performance art project, which involves you ironically embracing the trademark Munich lifestyle, complete with spikey, geled up hair, popped collar polo shirt, a white VW Golf Convertible, and visit to a Bayern Munich match, all while filming it with a half-broken Super-8 camera you bought at a Berlin flea market, to later show it at a spontaneous guerilla exhibition in a pop-up gallery in the trendy part of Neukölln.

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The German people’s relationship with the internet has always been a conflicted one. Even though no German person of the right type would ever describe themselves as conservative, once there’s too much change in too little time, like the paradigm shift the internet has brought to media consumption, then that kind of change will freak German people out.

That’s why, up to until recently, the Germans preferred to use the internet more like a new channel on their television sets, and accordingly, most German websites consisted of gratuitous “Flash” animations of flying type and logos to a backdrop of futuristic, bleepy electronica. The major goal of creating a website for German people was to get the “design” right down to the single pixel, until it was a match for the static dullness of a lifestyle mag.

With the advent of the “Web 2.0,” Germans eventually got bored with watching animated type flying towards them, and their internet use finally picked up steam. Soon, they were using Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter like everyone else. If one can trust the ads, German people are nowadays able to relax and use the internet the way it was meant to: Lying on an IKEA rug in their sanierte Altbau apartment, on their stomachs, with a Laptop in front of them, having a Latte Macchiato that has a cute cocoa heart on top of the milk froth, with a dementedly smug smile on their faces caused by all that sweet convenience the internet brings to their lives. 

As it was established before, German people quickly feel uncomfortable when there is nothing to be offended or worried about. If they currently have no personal reason to be offended or worried about anything, they will go to a bookstore to buy a book written by what they consider to be a much more intelligent person, who happens to be altruistic and kind enough to lecture them about recent developments that they should better be offended or worried about, and that person, more often than not, is Frank Schirrmacher.

Frank Schirrmacher is a weathered journalist, essayist, and co-publisher of Germany’s well read “Frankfurter Allgemeine” newspaper, who recently has made himself a name to be the go-to guy if you’re in need for a bestselling book in the ubersuccessful German literary genre named “Betroffenheitsliteratur”. Because of his impeccable approach to journalism, Frank Schirrmacher won’t simply publish whatever confused, based-on-false-premises theory comes to his mind, but also go to great lengths to support that confused, based-on-false-premises theory by quoting from an endless stream of stark statistics and studies he researched.

His latest book, which is likely to become another bestseller, deals with the “dangers of the internet.” To Frank, the internet is at least 99% bad and a health risk for those little neurons who live inside that spongey stuff inside your skull called “brain,” so he highly recommends to go buy his book and read that until your brain turns numb from all the dull statistics and references to obscure studies. Admittedly, that will save you from having your brain turned into elephant poo by the internet because you can have a really, really intellectual German person do it for you instead. It’s the same tactical approach to health as cutting off your hand to keep your fingernails from growing.

Granted, asking a middle-aged newspaper publisher to teach you about the dangers of the internet is a bit like hiring Silvio Berlusconi as an Au Pair to watch over your teenage daughter when you’re absent. But let’s give him the benefit of doubt and look at some of Frank Schirrmacher’s key theses:

1. The internet will turn a person’s brain into a messy puddle of grey goo.

   It could be argued that the human brain, in terms of texture, isn’t too far away from being a ball of grey, gooey mud anyway, but while definitely not the first person to warn humankind of the grey goo problem, Frank Schirrmacher is the first person to cleverly “mash it up” with another beloved theory of German people: Health-related esotericism. But fear not, just wear the free, foldable tin foil hat you can find in tomorrow’s issue of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 

2. Google’s "robots" will soon know everything you think, say, and do, and will someday use this knowledge to your disadvantage.

   He might be on to something here. How so? Well, haven’t you seen Forbidden Planet? Man, that Robby The Robot dude sure f***d things up in the end, right? You know, that part when he didn’t shoot the monster because he was all like, “beep beep, error error, I was programmed not to shoot humans”, because, somehow, he didn’t have his Google sorted out, and therefore, with his big, stupid lightbulb-for-a-brain brain, figured that the monster was part human, so he wasn’t allowed to shoot it, which caused, like, real harm to his human space friends? See, that’s what happens once you trust those damn robots.

3. Some evil, all-encompassing internet entity, probably Google, is hard at work collecting all information about you (yes, especially you), which, any given day now, will enable a big German news website to have ads that are, by the wonders of cutting edge computer technology, targeted to specific demographics, like 25 year olds. Isn’t that shocking?

   The 90s called, they want their technology-related Big Brother doomsday scenarios back. Fortunately, due to the alertness of its co-publisher Frank Schirrmacher, there still is a news website that is definitely free of such tricky, targeted advertising, or, for that matter, any competitive or up-to-date content at all: His newspaper’s online version, found at www.faz.net.

4. The ubiquity of Email, SMSs (sic), Facebook and “Tweeds” will inevitability lead to the complete loss of your attention span, and skill to concentrate.

   Yep. He literally used the word “Tweeds”. Repeatedly. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you can get over that show stopper, or rather wrap the book up at the first occurrence of “Tweeds” and send it back to Amazon. You know, they have that no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Apparently, looking to middle aged men working in the old school media who’re afraid of losing their status won’t be of much help to a person who is desperate to get a grasp on this mysterious network of computers called the “internet” people have lately started talking about so much. If only there was a person in Germany who Germans could accept as the real internet pundit. You know, someone who is exactly as freaky, ke-razy and edgy as this new internet thing itself, and not afraid to show that edginess, craziness, and aversion to anything mainstream by sporting a pretentious hairstyle. You know, like, like…yeah, that’s it: A mohawk. If you see such a person, make him the figurehead of the “German internet user club” and follow him blindly, never questioning his expertise. Your concept of the internet will then, and only then, be in sync with that of a German person.

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Who roots for the underdog? Well, German people definitely do — and they won’t be satisfied until the whole world joins them. What’s not to like? Supporting the underdog against an overpowering opponent is a nice gesture and nobody in their right mind would opt to live in a cold-hearted society solely ruled by survival-of-the-fittest. Predictably, elite German people are especially partial to underdogs. In fact, they are so proficient in determining what side to stand on and then passive-aggressively forcing this view on you, they will be completely disappointed should you be so rude and ignore their brazenly worded offer to do your thinking for you. It goes without saying that any sign of being impartial to the underdog, or even rooting for the overdog, will destroy your progress with the Germans for good, and no amount of showing up as the “exotic overseas friend” at a trendy bar will make up for it.

In order to be accepted by elite German people, you will be expected to join them on whatever side they, or more likely, someone they admire have determined to be the underdog. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to not take any chances in this serious matter. Do not, at any rate, apply what you learned about irony and join the other side of the argument in jest — German people won’t consider this to be at all funny or quirky, because to them, the determination to always root for the underdog maybe be the most important, non-debatable character traits of all. Once they have drawn the line, it is understood that the underdog is exempt from criticism or relativization, and a very convenient way to show others your political correctness.

Furthermore, German people take some pride in being a very committed people; and indeed, this character trait also applies to their stance on underdogs. Once they acknowledge someone or something to be the underdog, German people will stick to their view until the end of days, broad-mindedly ignoring any new facts to the contrary that might turn up. Even when it is apparent that the table has completely turned and their beloved underdog has long become the overdog, German people are usually too entangled in their dogma to notice it. This sometimes makes it hard for a newbie Auslander, applying  common sense, to correctly determine who the underdog is.

In order to blend in with the Germans, and more importantly, to dodge embarrassing small talk moments, it is important to at the least know the three most beloved underdogs of German people: Cyclists, Palestinians, and the football club FC St. Pauli.

With cyclists being dealt with in another article and the Israel-Palestine conflict being a topic this blog wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, let’s take a look at the football club FC St. Pauli.

FC St.Pauli is an out-and-out mediocre football club based in the “cult” red light district of Hamburg. The club’s main claim to fame is its “pirate” image. The reasoning runs like this: Hamburg is located 100 kilometers from the north sea, plus the club has a quirky logo featuring a white-on-black skull and bones. There you go — they’re just like pirates, yeah? What’s that? You aren’t quite convinced of their underdog status yet? What are you, a moron? Eh? EH? All right, let’s not get into a fight just yet and lay it out for you:

FC St.Pauli has a very large base of supporters all around the world, despite playing mostly in the 2nd or 3rd league. Elite German people are required to have a critical stance towards the commercialization of football. That’s why they can relate so well to FC St. Pauli. Like them, FC St. Pauli seems to be eternally broke and constantly has to come up with quirky ways to make money, ie playing ironic exhibition matches against allegedly evil football clubs like FC Bayern Munich. Moreover, elite German people love give off an air of non-commitment, because in terms of coolness, it gives them an edge over anyone who puts a real effort into becoming good at something. To them, FC St. Pauli’s dabbling around in the minor leagues is akin to a political statement to never become like one of those awfully zealous yuppie football clubs.

People who already are a fan of another club, or even don’t care much for football love every little aspect of FC St. Pauli. Ask them why, and they will give you a 20-minute lecture why FC St.Pauli is “ze totaler Kult”, and why you should totally buy one of those cool, ironic St.Pauli “Retter” T-shirts. Both home and away, there will always be plenty of supporters present to cheer their team on. Moreover, judging from the ubiquity of FC St. Pauli merchandise being worn in the elite parts of any German town, the club should do pretty well financially. How popular is FC St.Pauli? It is so popular that, during a match, even players from the opponent teams are suffering from a conflict of loyalties because they’re secretly rooting for FC St. Pauli.

Granted, to the untrained eye, FC St. Pauli may not look like an underdog at all. Nonetheless, when a much weaker and smaller team with less supporters plays St.Pauli, German people will still consider St.Pauli to be the underdog in this pairing. Why, you ask? Because, you know, isn’t St. Pauli just wonderfully edgy with its pirate flag, uberdiverse fan-base, and that small, kitschy Disneyland of counter-culture of an arena with its proximity to that infamous Reeperbahn red-light district, which by the way has some really edgy bars and clubs where everybody goes for beers after the match, and how it every year manages to rise up against those evil, capitalist football clubs with their suspicious ambitiousness? How can you not be rooting for the good guys?

Every time St.Pauli is defeated, which happens a lot, the fans will soon claim there must have been some kind of conspiracy or bribing involved, because “the man” is trying to hold St.Pauli down. That man can be anyone with a suit on, like Hamburg’s mayor, the Bundesliga president, or Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand, once St.Pauli wins, it is always an uberheroic victory against all odds, made possible by the uniquely strong union between the club and its fans. Basically, there’s more pathos at a FC St. Pauli match than at an American veteran’s Pearl Harbour memorial celebration. A situation in which the St.Pauli players aren’t the good guys just isn’t imaginable. If you typed “FC St.Pauli is not an underdog” into Microsoft Word, a red squiggly line would appear underneath.

Use your new knowledge wisely. If you are looking for a convenient way to score some sympathy points with your German acquaintances, just proclaim you are a fan of FC St.Pauli, and that you are determined to support it in its never ending, incredibly courageous struggle against capitalism, fascism, and becoming good at football.

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