Things I Am Supposed To Do

AKH THERE'S so many things I'm supposed to do; I don't feel up to doing any of them. It's only because I'm such a misery, no real reason, no real excuse. And where does self-esteem come from? If anyone knows of any for sale I want to buy some. I think I was left with a short supply at birth

CHAMPAGNE SONG ~ ANGELIKA MANN: CHAMPUS LIED
this is genuine East German pop music from the early 80s



This is the film I got that song from. Doesn't this tune start like an evil flower opening stealthily in the dark...? Then it sounds deadly sad.



I can't stay on long. I have been watching a film called The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) about the Staasi secret police. I have a thing about the cold war. I would have loved to visit East Berlin or Soviet Russia...

Illustrated: Martina Gedeck "the German Meryl Streep"...

I want to get qualified

DO ANY OF YOU REMEMBER the language course I found in Germany that I was banging on about some months ago? It's the only course on the face of the earth that I actually want to do, because unlike a straight language degree it's actually a course in TRANSLATION, so it would qualify me to do something I know I'd be good at.

Plus I could study German and two other languages.

If you're reading this on American soil, you need to bear in mind that European university courses are always specialist honours degrees. There's no "major" as such. You do a degree in English or law or physiology or whatever with little scope to "read" much else. Which was part of my problem before. I had too many interests...

Last year's prospectus annoyed me because there's an undergraduate version (for me: I don't have a bachelor degree) plus a postgraduate version for those already in posession of a BA. The only difference so far as I could discern was that the postgraduate offered Chinese in the list of available "C" languages, whereas the undergraduate version didn't. Which really annoyed me, as I'd love to do Chinese. It's not that difficult, I never had trouble with tones when I learned holiday Thai some years ago, plus I have a good memory for characters. You might have noticed over time that I have a thing about foreign scripts. I think most of them look really funky.

Anyway I just checked and they've CHANGED THE PROSPECTUS so I could now do exactly what I wanted to: English-German/German-English Chinese-English (translation) + French (not to translate, just to speak it). I already have A levels in German and French.

Also I just found out that those German ICE trains, due to depart London-Frankfurt within a couple of years would take me to within an hour of Mainz, which is where that course is... is this a sign?

I have already started and dropped out of TWO uni courses... perhaps as the saying goes "third time lucky". I don't know how on earth I would fund this, though we ARE in the EU for the time being, so I ought to be eligable for local as well as European funding, especially as I would be studying two European languages. German tuition fees are a fraction of those in Britain (which are about to skyrocket). The only way I can think of paying my way through without ending up in huge debt would be to write a bestseller.

If this course is so unsuitable, I don't understand why I keep coming back to it in my mind. I've not found one like it anywhere else.

As the saying goes WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE'S A WAY. And you're supposed to keep your eyes on the goal, not the obstacles.

My legs are almost healed now. Valium Marilyn whose eyes are up the wall has STILL not seen a doctor. I told her to go to her own, who knows her, knows she hasn't got a "lazy eye" and will see straight away what's wrong, and probably know what it's likely to be.

Sprache, Kultur und Translation Brochure (sorry only in German) http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/fbpubl/brosch/FTSK-Broschuere.pdf

Huge Bag Found on Street!

SURELY THIS IS A SIGN! I found an enormous sports bag ~ almost big enough to hold golf clubs and hence lots of German books and clothes ~ with trundlesome wheels on the bottom at the end of the next road along from me yesterday afternoon, so I thoroughly enjoyed trundling it behind me, imagining I was on the way to the Saint Pancreas International for the beginning of my Berlin expedition.

I know what y'all are thinking: Let's wait and see what actually happens. I've heard enough bluster and guff from this blogger to keep a fleet of hot air balloons afloat!

Well I am going to Berlin. Berlin is one of my top three "most want to see" cities on earth, along with New York and Tokyo.

I don't know how on earth I'm going to get there, by the way. Not a single website I've found will sell me one all-in ticket London to Berlin return. I don't know why. Only last month I heard a government minister blustering about high-speed rail infrastructure. What's the point of all those whizzy trains and new tracks if you can't go where you want? I am NOT going by plane, unless I really have to. It's the stopovers along the way (and it's looking like Paris at the moment, with a €50 sleeper "couchette" each way, which would push the cost of tickets up to £170) that are half the fun. If I took the Eurostar out of London on a Sunday, I could see the Paris bird-market, which is amazing. All those feathery little pixies tweetling away on the pavements...

Today I found a book by my illustrious old German teacher, who (I found out years later) was being tipped as a potential Nobel laureate ~ until he died in a car crash in 2001. Austerlitz by W G Sebald. He was known to us at UEA as Max Sebald and he taught my German grammar class. OK, I seem to recall it might have been just once when the ordinary teacher was sick, but he did teach me German grammar!

Click here for a beautiful blogger's writeup on the marché aux oiseaux in Paris ...

I'm going to Berlin!

200mph/320kph GERMAN ICE TRAINS will run direct London to Frankfurt in three years' time, it was announced last week. I found out at the same time that Deutsche Bahn offer fares (one-way though ~ there had to be a catch!) from London to anywhere in Germany for under €50! The only (other) catch is you currently have to change trains at Brussels. A rail website gave two prospective rail routes to Berlin.
ROUTE 1: Eurostar London to Brussels Midi; Brussels to Cologne; Cologne to Berlin. Each journey taking about two hours.
ROUTE 2: Eurostar to Paris Nord in late afternoon; metro (or just walk 10 mins) to Gare de l'Est; night train direct to Berlin. If you don't get a berth and are willing to camp out in an ordinary seat the fare is under €30 one way!
I LOVE TRAINS anyhow, but it's the fact that you're hardly allowed any luggage on budget flights that really swung it for me.
I wanted to return home with a couple of year's worth of brilliant German books. That is, a weight-restriction-busting entire suitcase full of weighty tomes. Which you can't even keep with you on an aeroplane, and then if you kick off at the terminal because your luggage has basically been STOLEN, BA will prosecute and slap you with a lifetime ban (if you're Naomi Campbell)...
(A THIRD OPTION could be to fly, e.g. by Air Berlin ~ and buy a Kindle!)
SO I THOUGHT ~ if this is possible on one ticket; and most things are possible if you want them enough ~ it might be nice to overnight in Brussels, take a late night train to Cologne, spend the day there, moving on at night to Berlin arriving late at whatever room I've booked there (or park bench/space under a bridge (joke! I'm not into that kind of holiday any more. I "celebrated" new year 1991 going into 1992 with a crazed Japanese tourist, sleeping with homeless Berbers at Fez station. My Welcome to 1992 came at 6am when an angry station master started hitting my companions with a broom. He stopped what he was doing and looked aghast when he spotted my blond hair and pale face. In a way it was good he woke us up as I'd woken at five, convinced the poor old man next to me had died in the frosty night.)
Anyway, back to Berlin. I'm so excited. I'm going somewhere! At last!
Now I need my eyes and teeth seeing to. No cig-stained gnashers and new glasses or contact lenses. I'm not travelling Europe with my current intellectual scarecrow look.
Also I was looking into taking a night train to Budapest or Prague. (Budapest, I think. Everyone does Prague.)
I'm so excited! All these years of German and did you know, I've yet to set foot on German soil!
You'll all know when this happens as pictures of clean streets and exotic posts shall suddenly appear ...
In times past, I had always assumed this type of expedition would have to wait until I'd cleaned myself up enough to be OFF METHADONE.
I didn't realize, you see, that I'm allowed to travel with methadone ~ which they'd give in pills to prevent spillage tragedies. All I need do is provide proof of travel (ie a ticket) and enough notice and the druggieservice will give a certificate saying I'm entitled to hobnob across the EU with hardcore narcotics in my possession...
It's nearly 12 years since I went anywhere abroad. My feet are itching now, even more than that pussing wound on my leg!

***I JUST CHECKED AIR BERLIN's prices and was quoted €294.95 departing London Stanstead on September 28, returning from Berlin on October 7! Something tells me it's gonna be the train.***

Deutsche Bahn: bahn.de
Rail Booking: seat61.com
European Rail Ticket: raileurope.com
SNCB Europe: b-europe.com/Travel
British Rail Tickets: thetrainline.com

AN INTERRAIL (EURAIL) PASS valid for travel on 5 days out of 10 costs only £224!
http://www.internationalrail.com/interrail/interrail-global-pass.aspx

Famous German and Jewish American names and their meanings...

Calvin Klein, celebrated fashion designer. Klein means SMALL
Lucianne Goldberg, literary agent, famously embroiled in President Clinton's extramarital scandals in the 1990s. Goldberg means (surprise-surprise) GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
Dustin Hoffman, Academy Award winning actor. Hoffman means HOPE MAN
Jeff Katzenberg, film producer, studio-head, co-founder of Dreamworks SKG. Katzenberg means MOUNTAIN OF CATS
Helmut KOHL, German Chancellor 1982-1998. Kohl means CABBAGE
Judith Krantz, bestselling author of romantic sagas in the 1970s and 80s, married to film producer Steve Krantz. Krantz is an anglicized spelling of Kranz, which means GARLAND
Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor 1998-2005. Schröder derives from a Middle-Low-German root meaning TAILOR
Stephen Spielberg, film director extraordinaire and founder of Dreamworks SKG studio. Spielberg means PLAY-MOUNTAIN
Cornelius Vanderbilt, American entrepreneur. Of Dutch origin, "Byltye" meant a little hatchet or bill, so the name translates: OF THE HATCHET
Elizabeth Wurzel, author of the original self-indulgent misery-memoir Prozac Nation. Wurtzel is an anglicized version (with added T) of the German word for ROOT

A big welcome to Sam, my 100th Follower!

At the lesbian konditorei

I HAVE BEEN "improving" my command of German by viewing soap opera: Lindenstraße and Marienhof. They all seem to be full of lesbians and cake shops. Everything looks like it was shot in the same place. I also tried Verbotene Liebe ~ forbidden love ~ which airs at 6pm weeknights and is chock full of lesbians from start to finish ~ oo! those permissive Germans! ~ with little discernible plot. Exceedingly boring. Verbotene Liebe is said to have a cult following among gays and lesbians across the world. All I can say is they must have an astonishing boredom tolerance...

Apart from that I am depressed. Sleep afflicts me like a disease. I don't know what to do.

But my German's coming in in leaps and bounds. I know words for "protest at the pig farm" "libel" "barrister" (a legal advocate) and "please don't flush that cocaine, I'm not dealing, I promise you..!"

A random clip from Lindenstraße



Photos from Verbotene Liebe

IT WAS 5AM when I first thought of writing this... somehow an hour has flown by. I am dipping Turkish chockie biccies (Ülker Biskrem Duo ~ they have chocolate creme inside) in hot tea while the birds tweetle and chirp like crazy in the trees outside. On my road just now I saw a giant tubby pigeon. It flapped away the second it saw me. I don't know much about pigeons but there seem to be three types round here: gutter street pigeons (equivalent to me, a gutter street junkie); posh loft pigeons (equivalent to The Queen) these are kept by owners with whistles who race them or do whatever pigeon fanciers do... and finally, the type I just saw, which appears to be a different type, with white sash round the neck. These are wild birds of exquisite rareness. The supermodels of the pigeon world ~ Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell. And all I could think as I trotted down the street, chocolate biscuits in hand and spotted it was "that would make a nice pie!" (I must've been hungry.)

I have found the German equivalent to Coronation Street! (A lower-class soap opera. British soap is always working class. I wanted to make a new soap, a kind of modern Dallas-Dynasty combined set in London-Paris-New York (well you'd only need to shoot a few minutes of exteriors per season, most could be improvised in a studio garden anywhere). It would star an ageing Larry Hagman as evil patriarchal billionaire with Joan Collins as his bitchy matriarchal billionaire wife. Roger Moore would come in as Joan Collins's luurve interest. I would do all I could to get Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Lauren Baccal and the Hollywood old guard to put in guest appearances. The younger generations are all classless so I'd get some dogsbody to cast them. I would ensure that an international cast of actors with followings across the most important television markets of the world got parts, to boost foreign sales and ratings.

The German soap is called Lindenstraße, "Lime Street". Launched in 1985, it was the first ever German soap opera and was modelled on Coronation Street. I would say it is more similar in spirit to the British daytime soaps about doctors surgeries, or Australian soap, than British prime time TV (and this goes out 18:50 hours Sunday on Das Erste ~ which would put it up pretty much against the dreadful Larkrise to Candleford ~ a truly awful piece of British costume drama. I also had an idea for a costume drama soap, but trust me, it would be nothing like Larkrise! More Anna Karenina ~ all aristocrats and ballgowns, laudanum parties and duels. Not chatteringly dullard middle classes. Anyway, the episode I chose to watch on Flashplayer was called Schnee ~ "Snow". I thought "how lovely, a German winter wonderland on TV"... little did I realize the "snow" in question comes in little white lines for application straight up the nose! Of course when I realized it was drugs I was riveted. A butch lesbian dealer had an argument with her femme girl who has a motorbike helmet haircut. If I were her I'd worry about my hairstyle first and sort out the druggie girlfriend later, but that's TV for you.

My Mum has cancer. It came back. I saw her Thursday. I could see she was ill. I went out and bought a gram of heroin after that. My counsellor says I have to talk to my mother. She also says I see heroin as my Saviour. (How did the counsellor know that?!) But now the heroin has less appeal. I can't say why, but it does, and I say that sober. Usually junkies only want to be clean when they are high. Bring them down to earth and all they want is more drugs to get back up to la-la land, where they can look down and convince themselves they want to clean up yet again (but not now: "tomorrow") and on and on the cycle rolls. Eventually they give up on giving up and accept "I am an addict. I am powerless over my addiction, so I will simply go on using". Then they realize addicts DO have a choice and the choice is to STOP. (Using isn't a choice, using drugs is automatic to a drug-addict) ... eventually they might come to a place like NA where they say "I am powerless over my addiction, so I surrendered to a power greater than myself"... This is the mysterious "higher power" these 12-step groups talk about which "restores us to sanity"... I believe only God can save me now. But God would not be interested in someone who loves heroin more than him. (What a Catch 22!) My higher power is God Almighty. For me, no other power is high enough or powerful enough!

As things are, I have left it with the clinic that I'm not interested in reducing my methadone dose any more. That I would rather go on as I am and use several times each week and let nothing change.

I didn't tell the druggieworker this, but I thought, having such a great track record at breaking every resolution and promise I've ever made since Heroin Addiction, perhaps if I promise mediocrity and inaction ~ I might break THAT one too, and all for the best!!

... And you wonder why a mere AVERAGE length of heroin addiction is 14 years..?!


View Lindenstraße

PS I THINK the pigeons I keep seeing are WOOD PIGEONS ... they make the famous coo-coo you hear on hot summer days that is not a cuckoo... (they are musical cuckoos)

ILLUSTRATED: "DOUBLE UOGLOBE" is heroin from Burma's Northern Shan State; other pictures refer to Heroin Assisted Treatment, a scheme which might well have got me off drugs long ago ~ and would certainly have severed my connexions with dealers... but as it is ~ miserable methadone or street heroin. Or go through hell trying to stop (probably to use again at the first opportunity ~ let's be frank). What fine choices!

Results of Dutch supervised trial of injectable heroin hydrochloride or smokeable heroin base (for "chasing the dragon" though I have never heard ANYBODY except a journalist use that expression ~ most people either say chasing, or when they get old and can't be bothered to sound cool just call it smoking. Smoking or injecting.

www.opioids.com/heroin/holland.html

Mainz!

I HAVE FOUND a degree course where, even as a mother-tongue English-speaker, I could spend the entire three years studying BA German in a quaint historical town in Germany.

The idea of possibly having to move city in the UK to study a language spoken only a few hundred miles across the water always did strike me as bizarre. If you want to learn German, go to Germany!


The course is called Translation with Cultural Studies (Translations-, Sprach und Kulturwissenschaft) at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz. Instead of spending three years reading great literature (which would be very nice, but a huge indulgence; also the amount of reading required on a literature course is momentous) ~ I would study German as my main foreign language (the so-called B language; English, as my mother-tongue would be the A language). The goal being to be able to translate into and out of the B language with near mother-tongue fluency. I would then pick a C language (French), which would be brought up to “excellent passive fluency” ~ ie you translate out of French into German and English (but never vice-versa). There’s also an option to do a D language, in which case I would pick Dutch. As y’all can see from yesterday’s post, Dutch stands midway between German and English on the dialect continuum, so it’s not particularly difficult to pick up.


I don’t know any UK institution where I could learn German, French and Dutch all together. People have always queried why Dutch? Even a student of BA Norwegian expressed astonishment at this Wunsch of mine. Dutch-Flemish has over 24 million speakers in the EU (plus six million more in South Africa as Afrikaans), which is far more than all the Scandinavian languages put together. Looking at the map, French and German form a massive block of central Europe, and Dutch fills in the gap both geographically and linguistically. Dutch is the closest major relative to English, which is a cross between French and Germanic. So the four languages tie together nicely. See: there is some method to my madness! I just think it’s amazing I finally found a course where I can do everything I want in the right location. (I’ve always wanted to do German in Germany but until I found this course it didn’t seem possible.)


I’ve posted up some pictures of Mainz, a mediaeval town on the banks of the Rhine in Western Germany, about a hundred miles from France, Luxemburg and Belgium.

Named after Johannes Gutenberg, the father of modern printing, the university was established in 1477. It now has 34,000 students and is unusual among ancient universities in offering nearly all its facilities on a single campus. Most mediaeval universities in Europe are scattered across various sites in town.


If I want to get on this course I’m going to have to bring my German up to scratch massively. My fluency has improved since I read the Christiane F memoir. Dictionary in hand, I copied every single word I wasn’t entirely sure of into a thick notebook along with its translation and when this seemed laborious I told myself this is how countless people across the world have learned English...

I’ve reached a point now, where I’m starting to be able to use German practically, which is the whole point of learning a foreign language, surely. I can read German-language websites. It took long enough to get here. But I’ve a way to go before I’m ready for this course...

I would actually get a vocational qualification. I would be qualified to do something at long last!

Link: “German in Germany” at Mainz University.


Illustrated top to bottom left-right-left-right: panorama view of town and university; university main foyer; Roman Catholic cathedral; white statue; regional parliament; a tower ~ my ideal home; tudor buildings in Kirschgarten

German Writer Wins Nobel Prize...

OK: she's Rumanian-born, but Herta Müller grew up in a German-speaking village on the old East German frontier. Now resident in Berlin, she is famous for her tales of the Ceauşescu-era Communist East... Although translated into 20 languages, her books have never been especially popular in Germany. A situation that will surely change with the glare of attention a Nobel laureateship inevitably brings ...



... and as for Barrack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace... have the judges gone off their heads?!?

It's a Beatle's Life ...

I APPEAR to have found a university course where you can study German as a foreign language in Germany ~ at the University of Heidelberg (in cuckoo-clock-land!) ~ which, founded in 1386, is the oldest university in Germany.

... but I've barely had time to peruse the course-description. I don't find reading such information online much fun and will have to get a proper prospectus if the course sounds any good. See: I said I was looking at all the options ~ if I decided the uni route was right for me ...

... Apart from that I'm hacking through Kafka's Verwandlung ~ we did do it at school (and I barely understood a word) but somehow my comprehension has improved so well of late that I breezed through Kafka's surrealist prose ~ about a man who wakes up in bed one morning transformed into a monstrous beetle! ~ with less words-looked-up-per-page than Christiane F's memoir of teen drug-addiction!

So there we go: must fly. About to be timed out yet again ...

FRANZ KAFKA ~ "THE METAMORPHOSIS" ~ SHORT FILM
YOU DON'T NEED GERMAN TO GET THIS ...

A Big Day Out

INSTEAD OF DOING THE USUAL thing I inevitably find myself doing on Monday morning, I got up late and ventured to Central London in a hunt for German magazines.

I got off the tube at St Pancras International, where you get the Eurostar train to Paris and Brussels. St Pancras is surely the most beautiful station building in London if not Britain:



I found Der Spiegel and Stern on a newsstand outside. The hubbub of French voices drew me into the hi-tech inner hall where screens displaying 13:28 Paris Nord set off a frisson of excitement and longing inside me. It's been such a long time since I travelled anywhere at all except just down the road...



The last time I saw a newsstand with a half-decent selection was near Baker Street tube. Baker Street of course being famous for Sherlock Holmes... Madame Tussuad's museum is right by the tube station so the place is thronging with tourists (unlike in this snap!)...



Madame Tussauds is next to the Planetarium:



I picked up a weekly Take-a-Break -style magazine called Freizeit Revue. It is an old woman's magazine but I bought it for the endless crossword puzzles sandwiched next to advertisements for piles ointments and surgical support stockings ...

Then I meandered down to Regents' Park which is a Royal Park and so extremely well manicured.



The houses overlooking the vast greens are pretty impressive too ...



... then it was nearly rush hour so I had to fly home before the trains were too crammed to breathe.

And there we are! My first day out in London-London in over a year!

*******

Have a look at the arrogant French woman in the bottom clip ~ this is absolute classic telly!!

THE LATE, GREAT KEITH FLOYD was one of the most classic TV cooks of all time. There was a retrospective on his life and work on TV last night and these were the best clips shown:

Here from his best series Floyd On France, is his attempt at a mushroom omelette ~ with "angry dragon lady" "simmering" behind ...



And here's the most classic clip of all. This wasn't a set-up ~ the French-Basque lady was for real! "FLOYD CAN'T COOK!"

Google Translate Ain't That Bad

THIS is what Google Translate made of "Cleaner Dispatches Robbers With Mopwater" from Bild yesterday:

(The newspaper's title "BILD" means "picture" or "image".)

NEW FROM IMAGE: housekeeper chased robbers with dirty water

Berlin ~ Clean! With her mop bucket had a cleaner in a Berlin arcade two robbers hunted. The men had penetrated beyond the opening times in the salon, the 50-year-old had been threatened with a knife and demanded money. But the woman responded presence of mind: She picked up her mop bucket and poured one of the robbers, the dirty water over his head. Both culprits then fled without any loot.

Multimillion-Pound Anglo Saxon Treasure Find!

FROM THE SUN:

THE biggest-ever hard of Anglo-Saxon gold has been found in a farm field ~ by a bloke using an old metal detector bought for £2.50 at a car boot sale.

The collection of gleaming artefacts ~ thought to have belonged to 7th-Century royalty ~ is worth MILLIONS.

Containing around 5kg of gold {from Byzantium} and 2.5kg of silver {including Sri Lankan garnets}, it is made up of around 1,500 gem-encrusted items including parts of swords, helmets, strips of precious metal and biblical inscriptions and trinkets believed to be trophies taken after battles. The hoard ~ officially declared teasure by a coroner yesterday ~ was found by Terry Herbert, 55, just under the surface of a ploughed field in Brownhills, West Mids.

He said: "Imagine you're at home and somebody keeps putting money through your letterbox. That's what it was like.

"As soon as I closed my eyes I was seeing gold patterns. I didn't think it was ever going to end. I just kept on thinking of what I might find the next day."

The collection ~ dubbed the Staffordshire Hoard ~ eclipses the famous Sutton Hoo find of 1939, when 1.7kg of gold was dug up from an Anglo-Saxon burial ground near Woodbridge, Suffolk.

Eager archaeologists moved in after Terry's initial discovery to help uncover the entire haul.

It may take more than a year to value and experts will probably argue about its origins for decades.

One of the most intriguing items is a strip of gold bearing a warlike Latin inscription from the Old Testament.

It translates as "Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."

Under a 1996 law, owndership of such a find switches to the State once it is declared treasure.

But there is likely to be a substantial reward shared between Terry ~ who lives on disability benefits with his three cats ~ and farm owner Fred Johnson.

Mr Johnson said: "We've had eight people from a metal detector club searching the land over the years. They must be kicking themselves because they couldn't find a thing."

Three bodies want to acquire the treasure once it is valued ~ the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham Museum Art Gallery and Staffordshire County Council.



Man Strikes Gold with Record Haul Report from Yesterday's Sun

Daily Mirror Saxon Hoard report ...

ITN VIDEO:





DOG VS LOBSTERS
Ignore the first 45 seconds of some man gabbling to camera. Some people are in love with the idea of being internet TV stars. After about 40 seconds the first lobster comes onscreen. Such a disgusting piece of sea-vermin I have never seen and how on earth anyone can EAT such a stalk-eyed scavenger I've absolutely no idea ... But have a look; this is really entertaining ...



NEW FROM BILD: Putzfrau verjagt Räuber mit Dreckwasser

Berlin ~ Sauber! Mit ihrem Putzeimer had eine Reinigungskraft in einer Berliner Spielhalle zwei Räuber bejagt. Die Männer waren außerhalb der Öffnungszeiten in den Salon eingedrungen, hatten die 50-Jährige mit einem Messer bedroht und Geld gefordert. Doch die Frau reagierte geistesgegenwärtig: Sie nahm ihren Putzeimer und schüttete einem der Räuber das Dreckwasser über den Kopf. Daraufhin flüchteten beide Täter ohne Beute.

Cleaner Drives Out Robbers With Mopwater!

Berlin ~ clean! A cleaning lady dispatched two robbers from an amusement arcade with her bucket. The men broke in after closing time, threatened the 50-year-old with a knife and demanded money. The quickwitted cleaner grabbed her bucket and doused one robber over the head with dirty water. The pair fled with no loot.



PS MERLE ~ just for you. I couldn't find "Mother Shelling Peas" as exhibited in the Tate Gallery, London, so this photo is just for you ...


... + as you can see, though I never found the London "Mother Shelling Peas" here's a painting from the Australian national collection by Frederick McCubbin entitled "Shelling Peas" ... it's in the National Gallerry, Melbourne ...