Black Sabbath

It has taken me quite a while to understand German Sundays. I quite liked Sundays in the UK, usually late rising, the guilt at not having gone to church (ever), the guilt at watching two hours of Hollyoaks. And generally by early afternoon, I was human enough venture forth into the world.
The only essential difference I can find in Germany is that no shops open on Sunday. ?Big deal I didn?t want to go shopping anyway? (btw I don?t know where people get their Sunday papers from). But the lack of commerce on the Seventh day seems to prevent the majority of Germans from doing anything. Having been into the deserted city centre on a Sunday I was half expecting to find out that I had missed some four minute warning or something. Certainly the only thing moving on the street was the tumbleweed (but at least it stopped at the crossing and waited for the green man, so I realized not everything was awry).
I went to a bar on a Sunday and the clientele were exclusively ex-pats, not a single pair of leather trousers, mullet or dodgy moustache in sight.
It took Saturday evening in Germany to help me understand Sunday in Germany.
I think there is something trained into the average Briton that closing time is not the latest time you can stay in a pub / club until ? it is the only time you can stay until. No matter what time you arrive, leaving before last orders or some fat necked landlord / bouncer has threatened violence towards you and your family seems somehow wrong. So transplant a Briton into the Altstadt Düsseldorf where there isn?t a legislated closing time and oh dear oh dear. ?It?s 5am and I just got served my 27th pint of whatever hehe!!?, ?Go and get another.?, ?Why?, ?Because you can!? seems to be about par for the course.
Staggering out into the street at dawn on Sunday morning means that you need to sleep for the next 24 hours in order to be arriving at work on time on Monday. So that explains why I feel so bad. But why are all the Germans still locked in their houses. Because the only reason the licensing laws are so relaxed is because the German national sport is ?Laffing at zee stoopit englischers?. So they hang around the bars drinking their weak beer and find the whole thing very amusing. ?Well the last laugh is on you, Fritz, because at least I got tanked up last night. C?mer ya bastad?

Tag-ging Along?

Not everything is peachy in this post-reunification utopia, however. Whilst the streets are clean and litter free, there seems to be a lot of graffiti. Generally it is not aggressive stuff or the ?Free Ian Brown? type of political tagging which we get in Manchester, and admittedly it often seems as though spelling mistakes have been corrected by a diligent parent or teacher in red spray paint. I did see one particular motif which read ?F*** Rodeo?. Now I started to wonder what this meant, was it someone who was very passionate about skiwear or an announcement about some kind of wild 5exual Olympics; in which case I wanted to see the bucking bronco.

Cross? You will be

On Saturday, my first day in Dusseldorf, I took the Ubahn (tram) over the river to do some shopping. The City centre was heaving with Christmas shoppers, there were decorations as far as the eye could see, and the German markets; I?m not sure what they call them here; lined every street. Now I have noticed that the Germans are very strict about crossing the road, only cross at a marked pedestrian crossing, and only when the green man is showing. However, the streets are crowded, the fear of everyone going feral and crossing the road willy nilly has lead to the dispatch of a small army of orange clad teenagers. They wait at either side of a pedestrian crossing with their arms outstretched as if crucified, preventing anyone passing them, once the lights indicate that it is safe to cross they raise one arm above their head and lower the other whilst marching forward to the centre of the road, thereby allowing everyone to cross safely. Genius.