tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35003060385152408202024-03-13T11:02:32.300+01:00rewbossThe official blog for the non-celebrity that is rewboss.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.comBlogger168125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-87035712306090753882019-01-04T13:48:00.000+01:002019-01-04T13:48:19.191+01:00Terminate the level: Bad in-game translations.Some years ago, I watched a German dub of some kind of forgettable family drama the details of which now escape me, save for one line. At the end of some sort of rant, the protagonist said something which roughly translated as: “And not only that, but I now discover that my mother-in-law is an illicit extraterrestrial!”<br />
<br />
I missed the rest of that scene and most of the next, because I was trying to work out when that particular film had transmogrified into a sci-fi spoof. I eventually decided that the original line must have been: “...my mother-in-law is an illegal alien,” which makes a lot more sense in the context.<br />
<br />
Inexpert translations can mar just about anything. Ever installed an app and been met with garbled on-screen instructions? It happens more often than you think, and sometimes it even happens to the more professional software houses.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zGQt7dCaA-w/XC9TSTzT_9I/AAAAAAAAAy8/hyVoIcmLuoYRdztufhaoU4cRyl082xXeQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Screenshot_2019-01-04-11-24-30.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zGQt7dCaA-w/XC9TSTzT_9I/AAAAAAAAAy8/hyVoIcmLuoYRdztufhaoU4cRyl082xXeQCEwYBhgL/s320/Screenshot_2019-01-04-11-24-30.png" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good. No translations here.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<br />
Which brings me to Simon’s Cat. I enjoy Simon’s Cat. At the same time, I’m not any kind of gamer, and the kind of game I favour is the sort that relies on basic problem-solving skills and little else. So when Simon’s Cat came out with a game called “Crunch Time”, it was perfect.<br />
<br />
In this game, you have to solve puzzles to feed treats to Simon’s Cat and his friends, catch moles and rats, and do battle with vacuum cleaners and angry neighbours. It’s not exactly Fortnite, but as I said: I’m not a gamer.<br />
<br />
Since I’m in Germany and use a phone set to German, I have the German version of the game. And I can’t help but notice that some of the translations are a little... off.<br />
<br />
For example, one button, which is obviously labelled “Go!” in English, is translated into German as “Gehe!” Which does mean “go”, yes; but “go” in the sense of “leave this place immediately, for I grow weary of your presence”. If you want to say “go” in the sense of “commence”, the more usual translation would be: “Los!”<br />
<br />
If I succeed in completing a level, the game announces: “Level beenden.” Well, okay: “beenden” does mean “complete”, but it’s a verb: the phrase “Level beenden” is actually the instruction “bring the level to its conclusion” or even “terminate the level”. Myself, I’d probably have translated it as “Level geschafft,” although I’d ask a native speaker for a second opinion on that.<br />
<br />
Basically, for those of us old enough to remember it, this is eerily reminiscient of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us" target="_blank">All your base are belong to us</a>.”<br />
<br />
The one that prompted me to write this article, though, comes in a kind of bonus round in which you have to complete five levels without losing a life to win some in-game goodies. This round is known to the German app as “Behandeln Raubüberfall”.<br />
<br />
Okay... so “behandeln” is a verb, and it has several different meanings, among them “cure”, “medicate”, “medically examine”, “discuss”, “highlight”. “deal with” in the sense of taking as a topic for an article, and a few others. “Raubüberfall” is the word for an armed robbery, like a hold-up or a mugging.<br />
<br />
So... what’s this? “Discuss the armed robbery”? Except that the word order is wrong: in German, infinitives go to the end of the clause, so it would have to be “Raubüberfall behandeln”.<br />
<br />
It took me a while, this one. Of course, “behandeln” has all those meanings connected with medicine — which can be summed up as “treat”, as in treating a patient or treating a condition. A quick sesson on Google confirms that the round is called “Treat Heist”, the “treat” here referring to the delicious treats you have to feed to the cats.<br />
<br />
In short, it’s as if whoever was tasked with translating the game looked up “treat” in a dictionary, then looked up “heist”, and just took the first words they found and typed them in. For the record, my suggestion — subject to approval by a native speaker — would be “Leckerli-Raub”.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-10840956331472179932019-01-01T20:55:00.000+01:002019-01-01T20:55:11.811+01:00The cinematic look: Not always appropriateOne of the things I’ve noticed thanks to my forays into “how to make videos that don’t suck much” tutorials is the emphasis apparently placed on the “cinematic” look — apparently crucial to making your videos look great and professional.<br />
<br />
It’s not just about the lighting and the colour grading and all the stuff you might imagine, but also about the... aspect ratio?<br />
<br />
Yes, the aspect ratio. To make your video look “cinematic”, you have to make it in ultra-crazy deluxe really-widescreen format. Kinda like this:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kdtVh9d-cMA/XCu-_c67_6I/AAAAAAAAAyg/ULvUwhFBPzIW7qNGdRGM9C5iMkyhP51NACLcBGAs/s1600/cinematic1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="638" height="166" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kdtVh9d-cMA/XCu-_c67_6I/AAAAAAAAAyg/ULvUwhFBPzIW7qNGdRGM9C5iMkyhP51NACLcBGAs/s400/cinematic1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is wiiiiiiiiide, man!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This, by the way, is a still from a YouTube short. It’s about seven minutes long. Incidentally, it’s a comedy short.<br />
<br />
Now, I don’t know about you, but I watch YouTube videos on a bog-standard 16:9 monitor, which is wide... but not that wide. This is how it looks on my monitor:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8oABfmBa4IE/XCu_AmZdP1I/AAAAAAAAAyw/5ytfMwNR2Tk-32syYo7CxA7f5ixFHDGDgCEwYBhgL/s1600/cinematic2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="638" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8oABfmBa4IE/XCu_AmZdP1I/AAAAAAAAAyw/5ytfMwNR2Tk-32syYo7CxA7f5ixFHDGDgCEwYBhgL/s400/cinematic2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Letterboxed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Okay, not too bad. It has letterboxing top and bottom, which doesn’t really get in the way. Apparently, we are conditioned to look at an image like this and think, “Wow, this looks epic!” for some reason, so... okay.<br />
<br />
Did I mention this was a YouTube short? Did I mention it was seven minutes long? Well, here’s the thing: these days people are consuming that kind of content on their phones. And most people hold their phones in portrait orientation. If it’s worth it — meaning, if they’re watching a Netflix Original — they’ll turn their phones to landscape orientation. But for this, they’re probably scrolling through a feed in portrait orientation, and this is what that looks like:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PgRoq83Utho/XCu_AUvfjFI/AAAAAAAAAys/d1j5zsjE8AoXgO-q_OYBrPF7gHZmBhzpACEwYBhgL/s1600/cinematic3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="638" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PgRoq83Utho/XCu_AUvfjFI/AAAAAAAAAys/d1j5zsjE8AoXgO-q_OYBrPF7gHZmBhzpACEwYBhgL/s320/cinematic3.png" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where is it?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Suddenly, it doesn’t look epic. It looks microscopic.<br />
<br />
Now, I’m going to continue making my videos in 16:9 format, at least for the time being. My point here is not that we should all switch to olde tyme Instagram 1:1 format: my point is that while striving for a cinematic look is great for films that are to be shown <i>in a cinema</i>, it may be counter-productive on other platforms. It makes the image smaller.<br />
<br />
The reason we associate letterboxing with epic cinematography is not because letterboxing in itself is epic: it’s because movies shown on TV have often been letterboxed. That’s all.<br />
<br />
For most purposes, landscape format makes sense because our eyes are arranged horizontally. Beyond that, I’d like to suggest that we bear in mind who is going to watch our stuff and where they’re going to watch it — and not make life difficult for them by making the image smaller and harder to see just because “it’s cinematic”.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-61538406577402951712018-01-22T16:22:00.001+01:002018-01-30T14:14:46.316+01:00Everything wrong with Professor Fair’s complaintI was going to discontinue this blog and simply allow it to atrophy, but every once in a while something comes up that I really want to respond to, but won’t go into a video or a tweet. This is one such case, so... here goes.<br />
<br />
On 12th January this year Professor C. Christine Fair wrote <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/framed-arrested-and-robbed-by-the-police-in-frankfurt_us_5a58f270e4b01ccdd48b5bbf" target="_blank">an article in the <i>Huffington Post</i></a> detailing an incident at Frankfurt Airport, claiming that she was “framed, arrested and robbed” by the German Federal Police. The allegations she made were so serious that the Federal Police took the unusual step of issuing <a href="https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/74262/3844730" target="_blank">a press statement</a> while the investigation is still in progress.<br />
<br />
Professor Fair has already caught a lot of flak over this article; and as the police statement mentions, her comments (including other public comments she made elsewhere) are now part of the evidence against her. Basically, she has been charged with insulting a police officer, a charge which she denies, and yet she has since insulted them in public.<br />
<br />
Rather than simply add to the general roar of the crowd by complaining in vague terms about her attitude, I thought it would be helpful to go through her article and list all the problems with it. Be warned: this is going to be a long piece.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Frankfurt Airport is routinely decried as one of Europe’s worst airports.</i></blockquote>
While it’s true that Frankfurt Airport is not universally loved, Professor Fair gets off to a rocky start by confusing it with a different airport. In the space of two paragraphs she links to four articles to support her claim. However, two of those articles refer not to Frankfurt Airport, but to Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. One of those two lists Frankfurt-Hahn as one of the top ten least convenient airports for its destination (unsurprisingly, since it’s basically in a field halfway between Frankfurt and Cologne), while Frankfurt Airport is one of the top ten <i>most</i> convenient.<br />
<br />
It’s a small matter, but suggests that the Professor wasn’t that interested in ensuring she got her facts right.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>An officious woman with the professional pleasantries of a grave digger</i></blockquote>
One of Professor Fair’s complaints is that the staff at Frankfurt Airport are famously rude. As a frequent traveller to far-flung places all over the world, she should be aware of cultural differences: Americans frequently interpret as “rude” or “cold” what to Germans is professional efficiency. Germans don’t want their officials to pretend to care about you or waste time exchanging pleasantries. That kind of thing is regarded as fake, and therefore untrustworthy. You only smile if you feel like smiling, anything else is a lie. All German airports are the same in this regard: Frankfurt tends to be the one to make international lists because it’s the airport international travellers are most likely to go through.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Her English of course is much better than my non-existent German!</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair claims not to speak any German. This will be relevant later.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>She came over and announced with scowl that the “police will be called as my bag tested positive.”</i></blockquote>
According to the police account, at this point her bag hadn’t been tested: they had merely seen something suspicious on the X-ray. I can’t say which version is closer to the truth, but the one time I had something tested for explosives at Frankfurt Airport, it was done in a separate office and involved taking, essentially, a kind of a swab which was then analyzed in a special machine.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>You would think if this was in a fact a significant crisis with a
potential terrorist with explosives in her bag in terror-stricken
Germany, the police may have come a bit more alacrity.</i></blockquote>
That would certainly happen if you were wearing a suicide vest and threatening to detonate it. What happened here is something that happens all the time. They call the police, the police come when they’ve finished whatever thing they’re dealing with at the time and then arrive at a walk. What they don’t do is send an entire phalanx running through the terminal like Bruce Willis, yell at everyone to take cover and wrestle you to the ground. This is Germany, where the police don’t fly into a blind panic at the slightest provocation. Just because something is a threat doesn’t mean it’s an <i>immediate</i> threat.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I expressed my concern about missing my flight and she growled “This is not my problem.”</i></blockquote>
This is the correct answer to the question. She has turned the matter over to the police, and that’s where her involvement ends. Her job is not to ensure you don’t miss your flight, but to ensure that nothing dangerous gets on that flight. She has found something the thinks might be dangerous, so she is not allowing you to proceed until it can be determined whether or not the threat is real.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I also politely inquired about the process for resolving such matters. She simply repeated the phrase: “police will come.”</i></blockquote>
Again, that is the correct answer, and the only one she can give. From her perspective, the process for resolving such matters is to turn them over to the police. What the police will do, she cannot possibly predict.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>it would not have truly pained this uniformed harridan to explain what happens in these circumstances.</i></blockquote>
In addition to what I said above, this quote illustrates the basic problem here: she calls the agent a “harridan”, which is a sexist insult. It’s things like this that will make it very difficult for her to refute the charge made against her.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I asked the officer what the process is for resolving this, but he ignored me gruffly and contemptuously.</i></blockquote>
In the following paragraph, Professor Fair lists some of the other questions she asked the officer while he was busy trying to do his job. The irony is that she says she was worried about missing her flight, yet even by her account she was constantly interrupting the officer who was only trying to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible so that (assuming it’s a false positive) she might be in with a chance of catching her flight. It’s never a good idea to annoy a law enforcement officer: it always ends badly.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>my pleasant and concerned queries</i></blockquote>
In my experience, people who repeatedly refer to their virtues are doing so not because they actually have those virtues, but because they are desperate for us to think they do and can’t trust the facts to speak for themselves. That’s why, for example, we tend not to believe people who say things like, “I am the least racist person you’ll ever meet,” or, “I am a stable genius.” <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Without explaining a thing, they began taking all items out of my
suitcase in front of all customers. Again, had they any actual fear
about explosives, would they wish to do this in the full visibility of a
public which may be panicked or even injured by an exploding carry-on?</i></blockquote>
The assumption here is that either there are no explosives, or there is a live and booby-trapped bomb in the bag. If it had been the latter, that would have been obvious from the X-ray. That’s why all your luggage has to go through the X-ray machine.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>For a variety of reasons, I would have preferred that this happen in
private. (I was thinking to myself: thanks Dog I left my humongous
vibrator at home.)</i></blockquote>
On the one hand, Professor Fair doesn’t want the general public to know that she uses sex toys; on the other, she is perfectly happy to let the general public know that she uses sex toys. It’s not like they would have held it up triumphantly and invited everyone to have a good laugh. And they themselves see things like this all the time.<br />
<br />
She then goes on to detail some of the things she <i>did</i> have in her bag: underwear, tampons and maxi pads. For some reason, she was embarrassed to have them in there, but why? These are all perfectly normal things, and most women use them. We’re all adults here: we know what tampons are. Even those of us who never have to use them see them on supermarket shelves.<br />
<br />
Of course, despite being embarrassed at having feminine hygiene products in her bag, she has no problem telling us in some detail about the effects of the menopause on her menstrual flow.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I committed the crime of not removing my liquids. I politely explained
to her that this was not intentional that my bag was already on the
conveyor belt while I was removing my jacket and my electronics.</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair says she is a very frequent flier, yet claims here that she made the basic rookie error of putting her bag on the conveyer before she was ready to do so. A simple, “Oops, I’m so sorry, I totally forgot” would have been a perfectly adequate explanation.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I am not sure how my liquids in any way pertain to a positive explosive
test and the general unpleasant demeanor of all persons involved.</i></blockquote>
It doesn’t. Just because they were looking for one violation of regulations doesn’t mean they’ll give you a free pass on another violation. The “unpleasant demeanour” is, I suspect, a simple case of culture clash — although I have to be honest, one of the most unpleasant officials I ever encountered was a security guard at San Francisco’s internation terminal who yelled like a drill sergeant at the entire line just because one person asked why so few immigration desks were open to process us all.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>They had nothing on me. There were no explosives.</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair seems to have some difficulty grasping what has actually happened. Security personnel found something suspicious. Accordingly, they called the police to conduct a manual search. The police found no explosives, although they did find that the professor had failed to comply with a minor requirement. She writes as if they were determined to find explosives and lock her up and were disappointed when they didn’t.<br />
<br />
To put it in terms even a child would understand: “Hello, police? Can you see if this bag has some explosives in it?” — “We’ve had a look, and no, there are no explosives.”<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I observed an incredibly inconsistent policing of the Liquid Regime at
that airport. Some people had over-sized liquids in regular
grocery-store plastic bags, which were visible to all as they removed
them from their bags.</i></blockquote>
Apparently, in all her years (and 1.7 million miles) of flying experience, Professor Fair has never managed to grasp the concept of duty free. Those items are bought airside, so aren’t subject to the usual regulations. One stipulation is that they are carried through security and customs visibly, in the bags provided at the duty free shop. They look like “regular grocery-store plastic bags”, but if you look at them, you’ll see that they have “DUTY FREE” printed on them.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>They said I could not take my deodorant because, they repeated insolently, it was a liquid and I had too many liquids.</i></blockquote>
Now, here’s where Professor Fair <i>might</i> have a point. I’ve tried to look into this, and while the TSA specifically states that stick deodorants are not classed as liquids, the situation isn’t quite so clear in Germany. I can’t find any guidance: spray deodorants are specifically mentioned, but not stick deodorants.<br />
<br />
However, it’s always worth remembering that at any airport anywhere, although security <i>must</i> stop you if you are carrying something that’s specifically banned, they <i>can</i> also stop you if they think you’re carrying something dangerous <i>even if the guidelines say you’re allowed to take it</i>. That is to say, security personnel have the last word.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I explained it is most certainly not a liquid. It is a solid. In fact,
the deodorant said very clearly on the container “dry,” which is
typically an antonym of wet, which is a characteristic of most liquids.</i></blockquote>
What counts here is not what the product claims itself to be, but what the security guard judges it to be. Besides, the word “dry” on the label doesn’t describe the product itself, but the effect of the product when applied: it stops you sweating. Professor Fair includes a photo of the product, and as well as “dry”, the label says “invisible”, despite the fact that we can all see it. I’d be interested to know what she thinks a dry wine is.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The police officer explained, with all of the bluster with which Donald
Trump declared himself to be a “stable genius,” that the solid mixes
with the body and becomes a liquid and </i>thus<i> it is a liquid </i>after<i> arguing that the container has fluid in it. (I resolved that canard by opening the deodorant.)</i></blockquote>
It appears that this particular officer thought it was a roll-on deodorant.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>His English is obviously better than my German: but my chemistry is much better than his.</i></blockquote>
Carol Christine Fair’s area of expertise is international politics. She is an associate professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. [<b>EDIT:</b> I’m told that she does in fact have an undergraduate degree in biochemistry.]<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>His language, his body posture, his demeanor was thuggish, discourteous, demeaning and noxious.</i></blockquote>
Just to reiterate: this was written and published while an investigation was in progress relating to her allegedly insulting a police officer.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The police officer bellowed “I </i>am<i> the manager and that is a
liquid.” I said politely. No. It is clearly not a liquid and you are not
the manager. You are a police officer. And you are a rude police
officer.</i></blockquote>
The police don’t have “managers”. He was presumably the senior officer in charge, and assumed that that was what she meant. In any case, telling a police officer to his face that he is flat out wrong and that he is rude is not a polite thing to do.<br />
<br />
According to the police, she was given the option of putting her deodorant in her checked-in luggage. Even if that’s not true, the sensible option here is to simply ditch it, since it’s... well, a stick deodorant.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In the meantime, three American men were behind me. I had watched them
come through the same security checkpoint as I did. One of the three
seemed younger than the other two. He was wearing a flannel shirt with
the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tattoos. He was actually sporting a Hitler’s youth haircut.</i></blockquote>
I find it endlessly fascinating that Professor Fair chooses to mention this particular individual. In her opinion, he looked like a Nazi. She has nothing to back this up except for his haircut, which she thinks looks like the kind of haircut a member of the Hitler Youth might have had. She doesn’t say what actual tattoos he had.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>However, that do, in my view, was deliberately distinct from the hideous
Hipster hairdo that Millennial metro-sexual males have regrettably
popularized or the military’s high and tight cut, both of which are
sometimes mistaken for the coiffure of American white supremacists.</i></blockquote>
I don’t know when a “hipster hairdo” was ever mistaken for a Nazi hairstyle.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It is illegal in Germany to be a Nazi or act like a Nazi.</i></blockquote>
This is basically an urban legend. What’s illegal is the dissemination of politically extremist propaganda, and certain symbols are banned in that context (but may be allowed in other contexts); it’s also illegal to denigrate the memory of the dead, so you can expect to get into a spot of trouble if you perform the Hitler salute in front of the Holocaust Memorial (for example); and political parties that pursue aims contrary to the constitution can be banned (after a very long and complicated procedure).<br />
<br />
What is absolutely not illegal is to have a 1940s haircut. Sure, members of the Hitler Youth might have worn a similar hairstyle, but only really because it happened to be fashionable at a time when all young adults <i>had</i> to join the Hitler Youth. It’s not a symbol of a banned organisation, so can’t be banned.<br />
<br />
Neither can you be charged with “being a Nazi”. As long as you keep your opinions to yourself, you can believe what you like.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But Inspector Clouseau and his daft sidekick was too busy impounding my
solid deodorant and offering various preposterous explanations for why
it was a liquid when it was clearly a god-damned solid to notice the
fellow conspicuously sporting the preferred coiffure of the Hitler’s
Youth.</i></blockquote>
As the article continues, I increasingly get the impression of a bitter woman who judges by outward appearance. There’s no reason at all to detain anyone — <i>especially</i> somebody who is leaving the country — because of a haircut. This is the typical “why aren’t you arresting <i>real</i> criminals?” line of somebody with a sense of entitlement who thinks they should get a free pass. The fact is, Professor Fair was found (rightly or wrongly) to have exceeded her allowance of liquids, not the guy with the dodgy hairdo.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I again courteously explained to the officer that I would like to know
his name and I want to register my displeasure with this set of
interactions. At this point, the officer threatened me with arrest!</i></blockquote>
I don’t know what happened here, so I can’t comment except to say that this sounds very unlikely. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I explained that, in my country, our law enforcement personnel wear name
tags and that citizens have a right to register complaints when they
believe they have been maltreated.</i></blockquote>
This is the kind of thing that gives Americans a bad reputation: complaining that they’re not being treated the way they would be treated back home. The only possible answer to this is, “You’re not in your country, you’re in Germany.” What happens in the US is completely irrelevant.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I am totally aware that this is a privilege generally reserved for white people. This is truly a white privilege.</i></blockquote>
This is where the sense of entitlement really kicks in. Professor Fair is expecting to be treated as a member of the privileged elite, and appears to be upset when this doesn’t work.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>anyone who knows me knows that I can indeed by very “rude,” which is the adjective that men use for women who are assertive</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair appears to be trying to make the case that men are “rude” but women are “assertive”. Of course, everyday sexism is a thing (at least, I for one think it is), but writing an article peppered with personal insults is definitely rude: assertiveness doesn’t look like this.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>the camera would record my mouth moving and the mouth movements would confirm </i>my<i> version, not their defamatory version.</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair doesn’t seem to realize that this is something a judge would have to decide. I’m not sure what she was expecting here: if her claim is that she’s being framed, she would surely expect the police to simply contradict her and say, “No, this footage clearly shows you being rude.” If she’s expecting somebody to say “Enhance grid D5” so the computer zooms in to a perfectly sharp close-up for the automatic lip-reading software to kick in, she should probably stop believing Hollywood.<br />
<br />
Now, remember when I quoted Professor Fair as being unable to speak German? Here’s where that becomes relevant:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He also felt the need to belittle his uniformed colleague (who was
apparently confused about the deodorant nonsense) by citing his lower
rank.</i></blockquote>
It seems unlikely that this conversation was in English, so what are we to believe?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I muttered to myself while shaking my head “The crack German police have
seized my deodorant…but they don’t seem to care about that Nazi-looking
dude over there!”</i></blockquote>
According to the Professor, she was arrested because a security guard overheard this and thought she’d called the police officer a Nazi. Just how loudly was she muttering to herself?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I countered that the footage would show the three men behind me, my
repeated astonished glances at the fellow, and the chap with the hairdo
that was strikingly redolent of the Hitler’s Youth well-groomed
pompadour</i></blockquote>
Why does Professor Fair think this in any way proves that she didn’t call the officer a Nazi?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>This actually happened—not in Kabul, Lahore or Chicago—but at the
airport in Frankfurt, a major city in one of Europe’s most important
democracies known for its fastidious adherence to the rule of law.</i></blockquote>
Part of this “fastidious adherence to the rule of law” is that they don’t just take a suspect’s word for it: they launch an investigation. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I had expected this ostensible professional to resolve the matter allowing me to rebook yet another flight.</i></blockquote>
She had no right to expect that at all. She had been detained on suspicion of committing an actual crime: the law is very clear about what the next steps are. One of those steps is <i>not</i> “only listen to the suspect’s side of the story and then let them go”.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>What kind of democracy is Germany where an individual has a right to
perjure himself about a person but the victim of this perjury doesn’t
have a right to know the name of her slanderer?</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair uses the word “perjury” here, and again later, apparently unaware of what perjury actually is. Perjury is either making a false oath, or lying under oath. A lie not made under oath can be many things, but perjury is not one of them.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>according to Mr. Kapoor, I had called Mr. Austav a “Fucking Nazi German
police,” which is a crime in Germany. I may note that this is not even
standard American vernacular English, which is a fairly important point
since Kapoor was adamant that this was a direct quote.</i></blockquote>
I don’t know why she says this isn’t “standard American vernacular English”. It seems perfectly standard and venacular to me. Sure, for the whole sentence to make sense you’d have to add the word “officer”, but the part in quotes is fine on its own. The charge is that she allegedly said “fucking Nazi German police” and was referring to Mr Austav.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Amongst themselves, Kapoor and Austav described me as a “hippy.” This is a peculiar appellation for me</i></blockquote>
Professor Fair has no problem describing somebody with a stupid haircut as a “Nazi”, but is outraged to be described as a “hippy”. And once more we have to ask the question: How does she know that’s what they said if she doesn’t know German?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I was literally charged with the criminal offense of defamation because I
had the audacity to request politely for the names of the noxious and
impolite officials</i></blockquote>
She was charged with the criminal offence of defamation for referring to officers of the law as “Nazis”.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I also was adamant that I wanted to file a police report for defamation
against Mr. Kapoor who mendaciously asserted that I had called Austav a
Nazi but who also perjured himself in doing so. I was told that if the
prosecutor wanted to charge him, s/he could. I repeated my desire to
file a police report against Mr. Kapoor. These efforts were denied
repeatedly.</i></blockquote>
Again, Professor Fair doesn’t understand the rule of law. She can’t file for defamation if what was claimed is true. The veracity of that claim is currently under investigation, ergo it hasn’t been established. Therefore, a claim cannot be filed. However, if the investigation reveals that she was, as she claims, wrongfully detained, then that opens up the possibility of disciplinary proceedings or even criminal charges being made against the officer or officers concerned.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Before being allowed to leave they requested 300 Euros.</i></blockquote>
As the receipt she posted makes clear, this is a security deposit.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>They took $260 dollars and told me that they were kindly leaving me with $40.</i></blockquote>
The deposit would normally have been €300, but in the end, given that she only had $300 (worth about €245 at current prices), they settled for $260. The alternative would have been either for her to be remanded in custody during the investigation, or for the police to confiscate belongings to the value of the deposit. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I was given a piece of paper, shown above, in which they indicated that
they took this arbitrary amount of money from my wallet for “avoiding
provisional arrest” and “securing the implementation of the process.”</i></blockquote>
I agree that the English translation is quite rough, but it doesn’t mean that they fined her for the crimes of avoiding arrest and securing the implementation of the process. They took a deposit from her to cover the anticipated legal costs so that they would not have to take her into custody.<br />
<br />
The receipt says this was done pursuant to sections 127a and 132 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Section 127a states that if the suspect has no fixed address and would be remanded in custody only to prevent them from absconding (remember, in this case the suspect was trying to catch a plane to India), then at the officer’s discretion custody can be waived if the suspect leaves a deposit sufficient to pay any fine that might be imposed. Section 132 says that somebody “strongly suspected” of having committed a crime which is not punishable by a prison term (as is the case with a simple charge of verbal abuse), and they have no permanent residence within the jurisdiction of the court, then the suspect can leave a deposit and appoint somebody resident in the area as a proxy to receive any court orders.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>this was a considerate robbery in which the perpetrators left me with a receipt.</i></blockquote>
If the suspect is found to be innocent, then of course the deposit is returned to them.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>These two men were annoyed that a woman (whom they repeatedly called
“Miss” despite the fact that I am a 49-year old woman) dared to seek
accountability for their unprofessional behavior.</i></blockquote>
I suspect that “Miss” might be an attempt by a German-speaker to pronounce “Ms”. I also suspect that the charge of misogyny here is an attempt to evade responsibility for obstructive behaviour, although obviously I can’t be sure.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I say this to Mr. Austav: I did not call you a Nazi. But you are an insolent bully.</i></blockquote>
If Professor Fair wants the charge to be dropped, perhaps she should not then commit the exact same offence in public. The crime is defaming a police officer, not saying the word “Nazi”.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>To Mr. Kapoor, whether your English is not as good as you insist or
whether you are guileful and unctuous toadie, I have this to say:</i></blockquote>
What follows is a sentence in Punjabi which, I am told, expresses the wish that the officer in question be sodomized with a broom-handle. No wonder the police statement pointedly says that this article is now being used as evidence.<br />
<br />
Professor Fair later updated the article to include the text of an e-mail from the police, with her original e-mail attached. Essentially, she announced that she wished to complain, but rather than give a dispassionate and factual account (i.e., one leaving out the numerous insults, including the obscene Punjabi insult directed at a specific individual), she simply linked to the article. This was a serious error on her part, and will possibly harm her case irreparably: a curious decision by somebody who wants us all to know that she is a respectable professor at a prestigious university.<br />
<br />
She then added another update claiming that the police had rudely tweeted at her to silence her. In her wisdom, she included a screenshot which reveals that she began the conversation by tweeting at the police, accusing one named officer of being “thuggish” and another of being a “toadie”, and the Federal Police in general of a whitewash operation, and also linking to the article. Again, it’s important to remember that this is while the matter is still under investigation. The response from the police is simply that they cannot comment, and that they ask Professor Fair not to make public accusations of this nature.<br />
<br />
Obviously, I can’t say exactly what happened, whose account is more reliable or who is guilty of what. But not only does Professor Fair seem curiously ignorant of a lot of important things, if the tone of the article is in any way representative of her tone in general, I’m not inclined to believe that she was as polite or reasonable as she would have us believe. And as for the lack of judgement in publishing an article full of unsubstantiated allegations and personal insults even while she is being investigated on suspicion of defamation, words fail me.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-30488423885865598492017-09-02T12:07:00.000+02:002017-09-02T12:07:07.856+02:00Ratzeburg: Additional notesIt seems that these days my blog serves little more than to explain how to get to places featured in my “Destination” series, so apologies for that. Nevertheless, here are some additional notes to accompany <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbVYou0NHrY" target="_blank">my video about the town of Ratzeburg</a>, a pretty — and pretty unusual — little place in the far north of Germany.<br />
<br />
Thanks in part to the support I’m getting via <a href="https://www.patreon.com/rewboss" target="_blank">my Patreon page</a>, I have been able to travel much further afield. This gives me the opportunity to show you something rather different: different building materials were available in different parts of the country, and architectural styles differed as well. There are fewer timber-framed buildings and a lot more red brick.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pndvtllatI4/WaqCFhY677I/AAAAAAAAAvw/O99b3d80iTs0lf3JIiK3V6ZKHCH_otaFgCLcBGAs/s1600/rz-scene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1067" height="223" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pndvtllatI4/WaqCFhY677I/AAAAAAAAAvw/O99b3d80iTs0lf3JIiK3V6ZKHCH_otaFgCLcBGAs/s400/rz-scene.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rural idyll: the Island Town of Ratzeburg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Ratzeburg is a small place, but worth a day trip if you’re not looking for excitement and adventure — although you could, weather permitting, hire a canoe or simply go swimming. At least one restaurant I saw, on the lakeside right next to the Castle Green (Schlosswiese), offers freshly-caught fish straight from its own doorstep, so to speak.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGi1xAb9sCY/WaqCF2FckRI/AAAAAAAAAv0/k5OC6ZsjmjUL3SJ4MSPlKMQQmG24lEKngCEwYBhgL/s1600/rz-car.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGi1xAb9sCY/WaqCF2FckRI/AAAAAAAAAv0/k5OC6ZsjmjUL3SJ4MSPlKMQQmG24lEKngCEwYBhgL/s320/rz-car.png" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
The closest major city to Ratzeburg is Lübeck, from where it’s an easy day (or even half-day) trip. By car, it’s a quick drive down federal route 207 past the airport: Ratzeburg is signposted from central Lübeck.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_gBQh_0fTZs/WaqCGl3fI1I/AAAAAAAAAv4/qdkYtl_73zACeO9ZSyKWLWBamwU4xcfNQCEwYBhgL/s1600/rz-trains.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="800" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_gBQh_0fTZs/WaqCGl3fI1I/AAAAAAAAAv4/qdkYtl_73zACeO9ZSyKWLWBamwU4xcfNQCEwYBhgL/s320/rz-trains.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
As the seat of the local district administration, Ratzeburg is also served surprisingly well by public transport. It’s on the Lübeck-Lüneburg line, and there is an hourly service on, if my experience is typical, full trains.<br />
<br />
The service also calls at Lübeck Airport, which some budget airlines fly to claiming it to be a Hamburg airport. Note that this stop is a request stop: you need to make sure the driver can see you on the platform. If you’re on the train wanting to get off at the airport, you need to press a button to signal your intention.<br />
<br />
It’s also easily reachable from Hamburg, although it does involve a transfer at Büchen. You need to take a train bound for Schwerin and Rostock, and then transfer at Büchen for a train bound for Lübeck and Kiel. It is also possible to take a train to Lübeck and transfer there, but it takes longer and is more expensive.<br />
<br />
There is a better alternative from Hamburg: a regular bus service runs from Wandsbek Markt U-Bahn station to Ratzeburg, taking an hour, which is actually faster than the train, including the time needed for transfers. It will also take you direct to the historic centre of Ratzeburg.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ajFSmdRXVCs/WaqCFe13VeI/AAAAAAAAAvs/VDml1SU4VwMckzuusB3tuLkGwVjXbHbyQCEwYBhgL/s1600/rz-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ajFSmdRXVCs/WaqCFe13VeI/AAAAAAAAAvs/VDml1SU4VwMckzuusB3tuLkGwVjXbHbyQCEwYBhgL/s320/rz-centre.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Ratzeburg train station is about 3 km (just under two miles) from the historic centre. A hundred years ago, as briefly mentioned in the video, there was a narrow-gauge railway that would have taken you there, but it is no more. The young and fit can easily walk that distance, but there are also frequent buses into town (including the aforementioned bus from Hamburg). “Demolierung” is probably the best place to alight, as it’s right by the (new) town hall which also serves as the tourist information centre.<br />
<br />
Finally, don’t bother getting up at the crack of dawn and rushing to Ratzeburg as soon as you possibly can unless you’re a photographer. The place really doesn’t wake up properly until about 10 o’clock even on weekdays, and even the cathedral is closed until then.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-79846517322683294562017-07-09T17:38:00.000+02:002017-07-09T17:38:14.022+02:00Erfurt: Additional notesOf all the sights I enjoyed most on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZHGSUP6M8" target="_blank">my recent trip to Erfurt</a> — and there were many — the one that made me smile the most was not (as you might expect) the exquisitely subversive Bernd das Brot, the depressive loaf of bread forced to work for children’s TV, but these characters:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HWdQgWCfoxw/WWJBQBG43QI/AAAAAAAAAvM/EfOvgtSk0Is0_gGGhVuD3D_8wVu5QIHGQCLcBGAs/s1600/blaub%25C3%25A4r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HWdQgWCfoxw/WWJBQBG43QI/AAAAAAAAAvM/EfOvgtSk0Is0_gGGhVuD3D_8wVu5QIHGQCLcBGAs/s400/blaub%25C3%25A4r.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
This is Captain Blaubeer — his name means “blue bear” and is a pun on the German word for “blueberry” — and his sidekick, the rat Hein Blöd. Or rather, not so much the characters themselves, as the sculpture, which is probably the one that is the most dynamic and <i>fun</i> — I especially like the way Hein Blöd has somehow managed to get his leg stuck in the rowlock.<br />
<br />
I should also like to express my profound thanks to the staff of <a href="http://www.augustinerkloster.de/" target="_blank">the Augustinian Monastery</a>, who basically gave me free (and, I may say, unsupervised, which was brave of them) access to Luther’s cell. Normally, you have to book a guided tour, but it’s well worth doing that if you’re interested in the life and works of Martin Luther.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ET_PTlv2fFU/WWJBRKeKtSI/AAAAAAAAAvY/zL1B5UydCboBC52lOGomR8yFgqvlnbdjwCEwYBhgL/s1600/anfahrt-auto-erfurt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="910" height="351" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ET_PTlv2fFU/WWJBRKeKtSI/AAAAAAAAAvY/zL1B5UydCboBC52lOGomR8yFgqvlnbdjwCEwYBhgL/s400/anfahrt-auto-erfurt.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Erfurt is at the intersection of the A4 and A71 autobahns, so not too difficult to get to. For rail passengers, Erfurt is Thuringia’s most important hub. There is even a small airport, Erfurt-Weimar, from where the number 4 tram will take you directly into the historic centre. For people who prefer travelling by coach, several routes call at Erfurt: the coach stops are a short walk from the train station, next to the bus station.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1uz5R10ebiM/WWJBRaJfjeI/AAAAAAAAAvk/W2Wm8KUEhh0cu-3P1D49Hwl_KMPR8Rx5wCEwYBhgL/s1600/erfurt-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1422" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1uz5R10ebiM/WWJBRaJfjeI/AAAAAAAAAvk/W2Wm8KUEhh0cu-3P1D49Hwl_KMPR8Rx5wCEwYBhgL/s400/erfurt-centre.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I found Erfurt to be easy to get around: its historic centre manages to be on the large side, yet compact enough that I didn’t need public transport.<br />
<br />
I should point out that the tower of St Giles’s Church and the steps down to the cellar on the Merchants’ Bridge are not for anyone with physical difficulties (and if you’re in a wheelchair, don’t even think about it).<br />
<br />
And that was Erfurt: an absolute gem, if you want my opinion, and a great addition to anyone’s itinerary.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-18031958371770138862017-07-02T15:57:00.000+02:002017-07-02T15:57:58.756+02:00Eisenach: Additional notesAh, Eisenach — the subject of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_m_th5ukZY" target="_blank">my latest video</a>. And for the avoidance of doubt, I should stress that I am talking about Eisenach, the historic town in Thuringia, and not Eisenach (Eifel), the village in Rhineland-Palatinate with a population of 355.<br />
<br />
It rained the whole time I was there, which was unfortunate in the sense that I (and my camera) got soaked; but fortunate in the sense that I was able to get atmospheric shots like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YIdsTupQty4/WVj041bQGkI/AAAAAAAAAu4/et-CYril0MQ3d1Ocf73qMNgBsMT2PEmuACLcBGAs/s1600/wartburg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YIdsTupQty4/WVj041bQGkI/AAAAAAAAAu4/et-CYril0MQ3d1Ocf73qMNgBsMT2PEmuACLcBGAs/s400/wartburg.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Wartburg looking suitably forbidding</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This, of course, is the Wartburg, one of Eisenach’s top attractions, and it really does sit perched on top of a hill outside of the town. There is a bus that goes to the Wartburg, and a car park as well; but you can walk to it if you’re reasonably fit. Start at Luther’s school and walk up the steepest road you can see (called “Schlossberg”). Signs will tell you it’s 1.4 km to the Wartburg, and much further up is another sign telling you it’s 1.4 km, which will only confirm the feeling you’ve had that you have just walked one kilometer vertically upwards. (In fact, that second sign is wrong.)<br />
<br />
At the point where the path to the Elisabethplan branches off there is a “donkey station”, apparently a 100-year-old tradition. In return for a fee, they’ll take you (or, for the sake of the donkeys, your children) the rest of the way.<br />
<br />
Eisenach is on the Bebra-Halle line and is served regularly by ICE trains on the Frankfurt-Dresden run and IC trains running between Dortmund, Berlin and Stralsund.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv_XWIjR9zo/WVj05ERmkuI/AAAAAAAAAu8/mi9hO57kZ8wtauZ6l6Qp-C4P_GVU15teQCEwYBhgL/s1600/anfahrt-auto-eisenach.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="800" height="220" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv_XWIjR9zo/WVj05ERmkuI/AAAAAAAAAu8/mi9hO57kZ8wtauZ6l6Qp-C4P_GVU15teQCEwYBhgL/s400/anfahrt-auto-eisenach.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Erfurt lies on the A4 autobahn which links Dresden with the A5 to Frankfurt; a new autobahn is being planned which will link Eisenach with Kassel.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rIfU1FMiXYM/WVj04ca65tI/AAAAAAAAAu0/LDM8dIRfiEobOSZZ3K-n8SgwGALJpK8cACEwYBhgL/s1600/eisenach-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="800" height="193" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rIfU1FMiXYM/WVj04ca65tI/AAAAAAAAAu0/LDM8dIRfiEobOSZZ3K-n8SgwGALJpK8cACEwYBhgL/s400/eisenach-centre.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The historic centre of Eisenach is small, and I did all the filming (including the Wartburg) in a single day. Of course, you’ll most likely want to tour the Wartburg and visit at least a couple of the museums, so you could easily fill two days here.<br />
<br />
Definitely see the Wartburg. Maybe pick a less wet day than I did, but absolutely see it.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-8228020478002365092017-05-22T22:15:00.002+02:002017-05-22T22:15:27.634+02:00Mainz: Additional notesWell, I certainly had fun filming <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZDqYaft6I" target="_blank">my latest “Destination” video, this time about the fair city of Mainz</a> (or “Mayence”, as it’s occasionally known). It’s about the furthest a place can be for me to not need to get a hotel for a couple of nights, and I was there on two days. I still didn’t get everything, though: a problem Mainz has is that there’s a lot to see, but it’s quite spread out.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bMiui0wAvs8/WSM-ZMl-yBI/AAAAAAAAAt4/3EVVb5EXTEUx2MTiPTrJwsVaLPtSuDiGACLcB/s1600/20170518_113247.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bMiui0wAvs8/WSM-ZMl-yBI/AAAAAAAAAt4/3EVVb5EXTEUx2MTiPTrJwsVaLPtSuDiGACLcB/s400/20170518_113247.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No wonder this lion looks so smug: he’s caught a sheep.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As I mentioned in the video, Mainz has a lot of historic buildings embedded among the more modern stuff, and there are very few places where you feel you’re standing in the middle of an ancient city. This means that wandering off through the quiet back streets isn’t often as rewarding as it is in most places: in fact, it can be a bit dispiriting.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q4eAzmMvIEw/WSM-hqem1sI/AAAAAAAAAuE/W-C11f91NSwo5DyhryJPdmDZET6JQh3UwCEw/s1600/anfahrt-mainz.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q4eAzmMvIEw/WSM-hqem1sI/AAAAAAAAAuE/W-C11f91NSwo5DyhryJPdmDZET6JQh3UwCEw/s320/anfahrt-mainz.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The city is surrounded by a ring of autobahns, so in theory it’s not that hard to get to. You might want to approach it from the south and west, rather than the north and east, to avoid having to cross the river on the one (non-autobahn) bridge that exists, and which dumps you right into the middle of the city traffic.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SLsktwVvrgA/WSM-hZTWbAI/AAAAAAAAAuE/qg5g3lI5EuETLOTcojKTp-yRriZ9gGDWgCEw/s1600/mainz-central.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SLsktwVvrgA/WSM-hZTWbAI/AAAAAAAAAuE/qg5g3lI5EuETLOTcojKTp-yRriZ9gGDWgCEw/s320/mainz-central.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Mainz is just west of Frankfurt: S-Bahn line S8 goes from Frankfurt via Frankfurt Airport to Mainz (and then on to Wiesbaden), stopping at Römisches Theater and the central station. Lines S1 and S9 go via Mainz-Kastel (confusingly, now a suburb of Wiesbaden), the station being right next to the reduit, and from there it’s an easy walk across the bridge. Mainz’s central station is, of course, a major stop for long-distance trains.<br />
<br />
Local public transport is probably quite good in Mainz, but at the moment there are road construction projects going on that have resulted in several tram lines being truncated or rerouted. Unfortunately, information about diversions and replacement buses is very hard to find and confusing when you do: even the locals seem to be unsure about how to get from A to B.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p8bo85bNT-M/WSNETGBKbeI/AAAAAAAAAuU/nmXvW8VWeAcWOfoxh6hv5utA7kys4k5EACLcB/s1600/20170518_133240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p8bo85bNT-M/WSNETGBKbeI/AAAAAAAAAuU/nmXvW8VWeAcWOfoxh6hv5utA7kys4k5EACLcB/s400/20170518_133240.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Which way to the river?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Mainz has an interesting quirk which, in theory, is supposed to help with orientation. Street name signs come in two colours: red for streets that run toward the river, blue for streets that run parallel to it. House numbers go up either as you get closer to the river, or with the direction of flow of the river, always with odd numbers on the left.<br />
<br />
This would be a very helpful if Mainz was on a grid layout, but of course it’s not. You will still need Google Maps. But at least it was an attempt (in 1853) to make finding your way fractionally less daunting, as Mainz really is very easy to get lost in.<br />
<br />
And that, folks, is why I needed two visits and still didn’t get everything.<br />
Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-67354176650084270222017-04-13T20:27:00.000+02:002017-04-13T20:30:49.663+02:00Bayreuth: Additional notes<a href="https://youtu.be/ZoDQUh3V4RQ" target="_blank">My latest video is of the city of Bayreuth</a>, not too far from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEilFiNVcM" target="_blank">Kulmbach</a>. In fact, the two videos together represent a whole weekend of filming, which was really tiring.<br />
<br />
On reflection, I should have gone there a little later in the year, as many of the fountains were still switched off and crated to protect them from the winter frosts; but for various reasons it was convenient to do it that weekend.<br />
<br />
Getting there is fairly simple. By car, Bayreuth is directly on the A9 autobahn .<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FT8kzjatTFE/WO-psLE4zlI/AAAAAAAAAtg/fJSlWVHJu-UibyicTg0P_hYJb9rPp4CRwCEw/s1600/bayreuth-anfahrt-auto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FT8kzjatTFE/WO-psLE4zlI/AAAAAAAAAtg/fJSlWVHJu-UibyicTg0P_hYJb9rPp4CRwCEw/s320/bayreuth-anfahrt-auto.png" width="256" /></a></div>
<br />
By train, Bayreuth is about an hour away from Nuremberg.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iSAqlfup3QM/WO-ptOT-ypI/AAAAAAAAAts/U6g61WYBQW0V_cX60gFULwfVVY0PBcSDACEw/s1600/bayreuth-anfahrt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iSAqlfup3QM/WO-ptOT-ypI/AAAAAAAAAts/U6g61WYBQW0V_cX60gFULwfVVY0PBcSDACEw/s320/bayreuth-anfahrt.png" width="229" /></a></div>
<br />
It has a fairly compact historic centre, much of which is pedestrianized, although this is surrounded on about three sides by a busy ring-road which is a bit of a barrier: at some points footbridges and (rather unpleasant) foot tunnels provide pedestrian access.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BzayabFM6Ps/WO-puTWZ8gI/AAAAAAAAAts/jwapm96VVNYFHDwyA2Hvwtp7NIj0bNYlQCEw/s1600/bayreuth-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BzayabFM6Ps/WO-puTWZ8gI/AAAAAAAAAts/jwapm96VVNYFHDwyA2Hvwtp7NIj0bNYlQCEw/s320/bayreuth-centre.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The Festival Theatre (“Festspielhaus”) is located a little way north of the station; the Hermitage a few miles east of the city, just the other side of the autobahn. The main car park is at the southern end of the village of Sankt Johannis.<br />
<br />
There are a few confusing things about Bayreuth. First of all, there are two “Old Palaces”, one in the city and one at the Hermitage; similarly, there are two “New Palaces”. It doesn’t help matters that the New Palace in the city looks older than the Old Palace in the city.<br />
<br />
The buses are also nothing if not confusing. There are two systems: one operates in the evenings and on Sunday mornings, while the other operates at other times. If you’re looking at a timetable and it looks as if the bus you want isn’t running for the next few hours, you may need to look for a timetable for a bus with a different number. That said, the buses are pretty good.<br />
<br />
Another thing to watch out for is that Bayreuth is notoriously expensive. And it gets very expensive indeed during the annual Bayreuth Festival, which is usually from 25th July to 28th August: if you’re looking for vaguely affordable accommodation, avoid at all costs the end of July and all of August. If you are a Wagner fan and money’s no object, be aware that ten-year waiting lists for tickets to the festival are not unusual.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-91707303651263519112017-04-05T20:56:00.000+02:002017-04-05T20:56:49.711+02:00Kulmbach: Additional notesThe <a href="https://youtu.be/ojEilFiNVcM" target="_blank">first “Destination” video of 2017 is up on YouTube — and for this one, I was in Kulmbach</a>. It certainly made a change: usually, small towns are full of timber-framed houses, but Kulmbach was rebuilt in the 16th century and so is more Renaissance. “A bit severe” is how my wife describes it, but I liked it.<br />
<br />
A visit to the Plassenburg fortress is a must if you go to Kulmbach: I was there in the morning so that I wouldn’t have to shoot into the sun, but there is a fantastic view of the old town, and the fortress itself contains a few museums that I didn’t have time for but are probably very good.<br />
<br />
If you’re planning to do what I did and go up the Rehturm watchtower, it’s really tricky to find. There are no signs in town pointing the way, and striking out in the general direction while looking for roads that have “Reh” in their names, while ultimately effective, is not the best way to do it.<br />
<br />
Looking at a map, you might think you need to go due east, but in fact you need to go south and find a road called “Am Rehberg” which takes you to a nature trail, and this takes you right to the tower. The tower, by the way, is free to go in.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lyqPEDiOmqQ/WOUu1lC_JWI/AAAAAAAAAtQ/gPCwidv61TgminSbwatHm8rJflghg8tWACLcB/s1600/kulmbach-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lyqPEDiOmqQ/WOUu1lC_JWI/AAAAAAAAAtQ/gPCwidv61TgminSbwatHm8rJflghg8tWACLcB/s400/kulmbach-centre.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Central Kulmbach, showing the historic centre,<br />the Plassenburg fortress and the train and bus stations.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The historic centre of Kulmbach lies at the foot of the hill on which the Plassenburg is built, and is fairly compact. The train and bus stations are very close by, and there is also a bus that shuttles between the old town and the Plassenburg for those who can’t (or don’t want to) walk.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-plmKZOrpgU8/WOUu0ax8W9I/AAAAAAAAAtI/7_UXBt53TXQtIJtHxJFQ1flVvikD_rcTwCEw/s1600/kulmbach-anfahrt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-plmKZOrpgU8/WOUu0ax8W9I/AAAAAAAAAtI/7_UXBt53TXQtIJtHxJFQ1flVvikD_rcTwCEw/s320/kulmbach-anfahrt.png" width="229" /></a></div>
<br />
Although Kulmbach is quite a long way from major roads and railways, it’s not too difficult to get to. The nearest major railway hub is Nuremberg. It’s actually slightly quicker to take a train from there to Lichtenfels and change rather than a direct train via Bayreuth, although there’s not much in it. If you’re coming from Würzburg, it’s easier to take a train to Bamberg and get a train direct from there. There are also connections to Hof.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CZETBnEfG8/WOUu02QC-lI/AAAAAAAAAtU/TxjkVKfEO9w5v5BmyAzb03zfPR-vSTx5gCEw/s1600/kulmbach-anfahrt-auto.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6CZETBnEfG8/WOUu02QC-lI/AAAAAAAAAtU/TxjkVKfEO9w5v5BmyAzb03zfPR-vSTx5gCEw/s320/kulmbach-anfahrt-auto.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
By road, Kulmbach is a few miles off the A70 autobahn: take exit 24 and follow the signs to Kulmbach.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-59796099459011161102017-03-18T20:28:00.000+01:002017-03-19T12:09:24.447+01:00Why I’m on PatreonSo, it’s official: I have now launched <a href="https://www.patreon.com/rewboss" target="_blank">my Patreon page</a>, all the better for my most loyal fans to help keep me from starving. Or, depending your point of view, all the better for me to extract innocent people’s hard-earned cash to splash out on BMWs, private jets, diamond-encrusted bathtubs and so on.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BKT4ARel4h0/WM2JshvICOI/AAAAAAAAAs0/4GnBT8nEvrAcf_WSVGq0l7nR2aftYunHgCLcB/s1600/videditor.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BKT4ARel4h0/WM2JshvICOI/AAAAAAAAAs0/4GnBT8nEvrAcf_WSVGq0l7nR2aftYunHgCLcB/s400/videditor.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what editing a video looks like.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In truth, as much as I would like to be able to make videos in my spare time “for the pure enjoyment of it” (I’ve been told by a few people I should), that’s actually not feasible. It’s a straight choice between giving up making YouTube videos, or trying to earn a living making YouTube videos. Given that my channel is currently on something of a roll, I’m going for the second option.<br />
<br />
To better illustrate the amount of work that goes into a video, here are the steps I go through to make a simple vlog:<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Think of a subject</b>. This is harder than it sounds: it has to be something people will want to know more about, and it should ideally have fairly wide appeal. It also has to be something that I can actually say something about: the challenges facing working mothers, for example, isn’t a subject that should really be tackled by a childless man.</li>
<li><b>Research it</b>. Proper research takes time, and I don’t at the moment have enough time to research properly. I can’t just regurgitate whatever I read on a Wikipedia page: you might as well just read the Wikipedia page instead of watching my video.</li>
<li><b>Write a script</b>. Yes, I script my vlogs. That way, I can minimize the risk of saying something stupid; I also don’t senselessly repeat myself, accidentally leave stuff out, or get sidetracked by some irrelevancy. I can revise and improve the script <i>before</i> I start filming. I have discovered that one page of A4 (the standard paper size in Europe) is about four minutes’ worth of vlogging, which is why my vlogs these days tend to be around the 3-to-5-minute mark, which seems to be about the right length. It’s at this stage I find out whether my chosen subject is going to work: sometimes it doesn’t, so I have to start again.</li>
<li><b>Divide the script into paragraphs</b> and assign a zoom level to each of them: wide, mid or close-up. The idea is that instead of learning the entire script and having to do it one take (well-nigh impossible for a four-minute speech peppered with statistics), I record it in small chunks, then edit everything together. Doing this at different levels of zoom avoids having jump cuts, which can give the impression they’re covering up for mistakes or the result of sloppy editing. </li>
<li><b>Set up the camera and lighting</b>. Usually, this is pretty simple, because I have the lights and tripod right where I want them.</li>
<li><b>Start recording</b>. I don’t record the entire thing in chronological order: I first record all the parts marked as “wide”, then zoom in and reposition the camer to record all the “mid” parts, then zoom in and reposition for “close”. I make sure I have at least two (ideally three) usable versions of each paragraph so I can choose the best take.</li>
<li><b>Transfer the data from the camera to the PC</b>. That part’s as simple as it sounds.</li>
<li><b>Edit</b>. This is where I slice the footage up, discard the bits I don’t want, and reassemble what remains into the correct order. It doesn’t take long, but requires precision. Once I’m happy with the rough edit, I can move onto the next stage.</li>
<li><b>Post production</b>. On-screen captions, graphics and music are added at this point, as well as the closing credits. If I need to create some graphics myself (things like graphs, for example), I have to spend time doing that as well.</li>
<li><b>Render</b>. This is the process of actually creating the video file to upload to YouTube. For a four-minute vlog in 1080p resolution, that can take something in the region of half an hour, during which time it’s a good idea to let the video editor hog as much CPU power as it wants. Time, basically, for coffee.</li>
<li><b>Create a thumbnail</b>. I usually take a frame from the video featuring me with a suitable expression on my face (if I can make it an amusing one, that’s a bonus), create a background for it, and then just add the logo to it.</li>
<li><b>Start the upload</b>. This also means entering all the metadata: title, description, certain settings and so on. I upload as private so that I can get everything just right before publishing. The bandwidth in my tiny bit of rural Germany is really not made for this, so it can take about an hour. In the meantime, I can...</li>
<li>...<b>write the English-language closed captions</b>. Although YouTube does have a speech recognition system, the technology is still very primitive. It’s actually quicker for me to write my own closed captions from scratch, rather than download YouTube’s automated captions and then try to correct them. And why captions? My videos are watched by many non-native speakers of English who find captions help them understand what is being said, and I want my videos to be accessible to the hearing-impaired. Also — and this is something every YouTube creator should know — closed captions are indexed by YouTube’s search engine, making videos easier to find.</li>
<li><b>Upload and test the captions</b>. This is to make sure I have no errors in the captions file, and the timings are correct.</li>
<li><b>Add any cards I need</b>, and the end screen. These are the things that pop up during, or at the end of, the video, begging you to click on them to take you to another video or my website.</li>
<li><b>Translate the captions into German</b> and upload. Again, although machine translations are available, they generally do a terrible job. There may be a glorious future when machines can do this stuff as well as a professional human, but instantly; but that future is a long way off.</li>
<li><b>Publish the video</b>, and tweet about it.</li>
</ol>
So, there you are: my handy 17-point guide to making a quick vlog. This is why it takes me the best part of a day. In theory, I <i>could</i> make a vlog in just a couple of hours from start to finish, but it wouldn’t be anything like as good. And I think you’d notice the difference.<br />
<br />
I need to be able to support myself and make a meaningful contribution to our household budget; and this means that if I’m going to continue making videos to the standards I’m currently making them, I have to be making money with them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why <a href="https://www.patreon.com/rewboss" target="_blank">I’m now on Patreon</a>.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-89717693804864156252017-02-28T19:57:00.000+01:002017-02-28T19:57:16.496+01:00Carnival at Seligenstadt: additional notesSo, I attended the 2017 Rose Monday parade in Seligenstadt, which is quite a popular event even if it isn’t as famous as Cologne or Düsseldorf. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIAJACkPMx4" target="_blank">video is on YouTube to see</a>: I got virtually everything, but in a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it way. Look out for the Donald Trump Berlin Wall troupe and the Brexit whale.<br />
<br />
As far as additional notes on filming are concerned, I have a couple:<br />
<ol>
<li>I picked a spot on one of the furthest reaches of the route, out of the historic centre and quite close to the railway station. There were fewer people there, but it was a longer wait for the parade to get there. I also made sure I had the sun behind me, although for the most part it was cloudy.</li>
<li>A lot of the people in the parade were throwing sweets for the children — this is part of the tradition. Always hairy when you have a €1000 camera pointing at them, but it’s for moments like this that I have a UV filter. If the filter gets cracked, no big deal. I did get hit once on the head and once on the hand.</li>
</ol>
Seligenstadt is worth a visit and not hard to get to. The nearest major railway station is Hanau, from where local (RB and RE trains) operated by VIAS reach Seligenstadt in under ten minutes. Some of these trains start in Frankfurt, so there is a direct connection; at other times, Hanau is easily reached from Frankfurt by local train or S-Bahn. Seligenstadt station is about half a kilometre (500 yards) from the town centre. Be sure not to confuse this Seligenstadt with the tiny hamlet of Seligenstadt near Würzburg: on the <a href="https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml" target="_blank">Deutsche Bahn website</a> and the DB Navigator app, make certain you select “Seligenstadt (Hess)”<br />
<br />
If you’re driving, Seligenstadt is on the A3 autobahn: take exit 55 and follow the signs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-70ArsuztRXM/WLMWKAx178I/AAAAAAAAAr8/gL84qyUApQ07Wx6k0uizsjCySbSUp5XhACEw/s1600/seligenstadt-anfahrt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-70ArsuztRXM/WLMWKAx178I/AAAAAAAAAr8/gL84qyUApQ07Wx6k0uizsjCySbSUp5XhACEw/s400/seligenstadt-anfahrt.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
An alternative, and much prettier, option is to take the number 50 bus from either Aschaffenburg or Kahl am Main, and get off at Fähre Seligenstadt (on the DB website and the DB Navigator, make sure you select “Großwelzheim, Fähre Seligenstadt, Karlstein”). This is across the river Main from the town: from there you take the ferry across, which lands right in the heart of the historic centre. The current fare (as I write this post) for adult pedestrians is 80 cents. You can also drive there, but I would recommend you park your car there if there’s room and take the ferry as a pedestrian rather than try to squeeze your car down Seligenstadt’s narrow cobbled streets and have to pay for parking. Check <a href="http://www.seligenstadt.de/index.phtml?La=1&sNavID=1803.23&object=tx%7C1803.415.1&kat=&kuo=1&text=&sub=0" target="_blank">the ferry’s operating times</a>, though, if you don’t want to risk being stranded.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aCh3zZ7qaNs/WLMWKgieWkI/AAAAAAAAAsA/BzVSy62o3gwTlRoMZ5aNs7Wi99UnmTkhQCEw/s1600/seligenstadt-centre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aCh3zZ7qaNs/WLMWKgieWkI/AAAAAAAAAsA/BzVSy62o3gwTlRoMZ5aNs7Wi99UnmTkhQCEw/s320/seligenstadt-centre.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Note that when something as big as the Rose Monday carnival parade is on, buses may not stop there and the roads may be blocked with traffic.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O4AwYDffccE/WLVciAm9mCI/AAAAAAAAAso/rpsnvO2wz4wK0MsBkMbWTHNDstOX_ymAwCEw/s1600/S1190199.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O4AwYDffccE/WLVciAm9mCI/AAAAAAAAAso/rpsnvO2wz4wK0MsBkMbWTHNDstOX_ymAwCEw/s320/S1190199.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seligenstadt from across the river.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-43463414295579649182017-02-25T15:54:00.000+01:002017-02-25T15:54:16.693+01:00The home-made carTucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the back page of the national and world news section of our local paper this morning — the bit reserved for “quirky little stories to cheer you up after the doom and gloom you’ve just had to wade through over your coffee” — was the brilliant tale of two German schoolboys who were stopped by police after driving their home-made car on public roads.<br />
<br />
Apparently, the two youngsters, aged 13 and 14, cobbled together a working vehicle out of a lawnmower motor and bits cannibalized from old cars, even including a clutch and brake pedal. Magnificently, they engineered the steering wheel so it worked backwards: steering left made the car turn right, and vice-versa.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure whether the crazy steering was deliberate or not, but either way it worked and somehow they managed to drive the thing around without getting killed. Quite rightly, the police stopped them — it was an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing and quite illegal — but I have to say: hats off to the boys. Speaking as somebody who can barely put together a flat-pack wardrobe without incident, I’m impressed.<br />
<br />
These days, we hear so much about how modern communications technology is turning us all into zombiefied dullards (in my day it was television; now it’s smartphones), but the fact is that just as has always been the case, countless teenagers everywhere are quietly being geniuses: sending home-made rockets into space, inventing generators powered by urine (and no, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/8161674482/" target="_blank">I’m not making this up</a>), and now making cars out of lawnmowers.<br />
<br />
The article said nothing about whether anyone was punished in connection with this. But if I ran a car repair shop in their area, I know I’d be offering them an apprenticeship when they leave school.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-22967954344834887672017-02-09T12:16:00.000+01:002017-02-09T12:20:36.246+01:00There is no method in Trump’s madnessAs we slowly come to terms with the fact that this isn’t a horrible nightmare and Donald J. Trump really is the President of the USA (God help America), the internet is full of journalists, bloggers and just everyone explaining all the clever tricks that Trump is using to consolidate power, distract us from the real issues and imitate Adolf Hitler. I’ve seen articles claiming that Trump has read all of the Führer’s speeches and is cleverly following the “Nazi playbook” outlined in <i>Mein Kampf</i>.<br />
<br />
That would be an interesting trick: <i>Mein Kampf</i> was written more than ten years before Hitler seized power, right after the Munich Beer-Hall Putsch which ended when the putschists, led partly by Hitler himself, marched at random through the streets until they found themselves face-to-face with the army.<br />
<br />
That’s one theory. The other current theory is that somebody else behind the scenes, almost certainly the man people are now calling “President Bannon”, is pulling Trump’s strings and making him do all that stuff.<br />
<br />
If I were forced to choose one of those two positions, I’d go with the latter. Trump has never struck me as particularly intelligent, and I don’t think he is capable of strategic planning or political cunning. As if to prove this, a young commentator by the name of David Pakman has suggested that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg" target="_blank">Donald Trump has very poor reading skills</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGuJlTVXfw" target="_blank">the evidence for that just keeps coming</a>. This really does look like the Wizard of Oz model of government: we should be paying attention to the man behind the curtain.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2017/02/08/10/trump-getty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2017/02/08/10/trump-getty.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I’m not convinced that this is the case.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But I would go further than that. I see people marvelling at the “clever” ways that Trump is manipulating us and the press, undermining confidence in the judiciary, gaslighting us into believing all sorts of fantasies and focusing our attention in all the wrong places, like a magician. But I don’t believe that at all: I don’t think Trump is deliberately doing any of that.<br />
<br />
I used to think maybe he was. During the election campaign, when Melania Trump gave a speech that apparently plagiarized Michelle Obama, I was impressed. It was a tactic straight out of the pages of Donald’s book <i>The Art of the Deal</i>: it meant that for days afterwards, people were talking about Ms Trump in the same sentence as Ms Obama, getting people used to the idea of “First Lady Melania Trump”. A masterstroke!<br />
<br />
But of course, Trump didn’t write <i>The Art of the Deal</i>, and David Pakman isn’t sure Trump has even read it. Perhaps — and this is just speculation — his ghostwriter simply watched how Trump does business, and organized his observations into a sort of instruction manual. It’s not that Trump is following this instruction manual: Trump is simply being Trump. His business practices are being retconned.<br />
<br />
It’s a bit like asking a 100-year-old what the secret to a long life is. They’ll just tell you about some of their habits, whether it’s a bottle of gin a day or a strict vegetarian diet, but this is an example of “survivor bias”: they just got lucky, and happened to live to be 100 years old. It doesn’t mean their personal habits had anything to do with it: most likely, it was their genes, good fortune and decent healthcare.<br />
<br />
If the decision to plagiarize Obama was deliberately intended to get us talking, it probably wasn’t Trump’s idea. If it <i>was</i> Trump’s idea, it was simply because, with his evidently poor literacy skills, he thought that Michelle’s speech was impressive and suggested his wife make a similar speech. Nothing more sophisticated than that.<br />
<br />
It’s hopeless, I think, to look at Trump’s behaviour and try to discern a clever pattern: you will find one, but that’s thanks to our human ability to find clever patterns wherever we look. The reason Trump behaves like an ignorant, narcissistic bully given to temper tantrums is that he is an ignorant, narcissistic bully given to temper tantrums. It’s not an act.<br />
<br />
But for the people who are really in charge — the usual suspects being Bannon, Miller, Pence, and possibly also Priebus — Trump is the gift that keeps on giving:<br />
<ol>
<li>He has no political skills whatever, and so has no way of understanding what’s being done to him.</li>
<li>He isn’t even interested in politics, beyond the simplistic “build a wall and deport the illegals” philosophy he espouses, and so won’t be inclined to ask questions.</li>
<li>His childish behaviour and outbursts can be safely relied upon to grab the headlines and cause outrage, leaving Bannon et al to get on with their work.</li>
<li>As an extra bonus, he can be kept out of the way, happily occupied with milking the system for his own personal gain — which will be why he was allowed to pretend his family constitutes a “blind trust”.</li>
<li>Unable — or at least unwilling — to read anything complicated at all, he will obediently sign anything that’s shoved under his nose.</li>
</ol>
This isn’t Trump’s cleverness at all: as deplorable as he is as a human being, I actually think he’s as much a victim of all of this as anyone else. He’s a useful idiot — and, I think, part of a panel of useful idiots that includes Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and Betsy DeVos: all patently hopeless at their jobs, all the focus of media attention.<br />
<br />
The way they are being deployed is actually very simple: let the idiots do their idiotic stuff and grab the headlines. Forget about all the complicated psychological tricks they’re supposedly using, the clever use of a particular word or a sophisticated tactic: none of that is planned. They’re just idiots, and they pretty much run themselves.<br />
<br />
Take the current ruckus over the dozens of terrorist attacks the media allegedly didn’t cover. This started with an offhand comment Trump made during a speech; but I don’t think it was planned. I don’t think it was part of his speech: if we assume that he can barely read, it looks as if he reads out a sentence or two, then extemporizes a bit, before tackling the next sentence. It’s totally random.<br />
<br />
So Trump simply vaguely aired a personal grievance, probably picked up from the likes of Breitbart or Fox News, and the media collectively went, “Wha...?” Back in the White House, somebody saw an opportunity, and quickly (very quickly, judging by the spelling mistakes) drew up a list of terrorist (and some non-terrorist) incidents culled from the web. Conway and Spicer were then armed with that list and sent out to talk to the press about it.<br />
<br />
I am convinced there is no rhyme or reason behind Trump’s behaviour. It’s not, in itself, part of a plan. It’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump, and it just by chance happens to be exactly what Bannon and his cronies need at the moment, and they are taking advantage of every opportunity as and when it arises.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-68322836686328782712017-02-04T14:37:00.000+01:002017-02-04T14:37:12.157+01:00Illegal symbols<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaILlK2K52Y" target="_blank">My latest video</a> discusses the various proposals for the redesign of the German national flag following the Second World War, and contains some images which are outlawed in Germany.<br />
<br />
Well, that’s not strictly true; but almost. The images are that of the flag used by the Nazi regime as a national flag, and the Nazi-era War Ensign. Both incorporate the swastika. As symbols of the National Socialist regime, their use is so heavily restricted that they might as well be banned.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OXlL5SYGYVc/WJXX0aRbY7I/AAAAAAAAAro/Z-tE0xoN61c_or2yv72hpa2-l7s2IiE6wCLcB/s1600/nsflag.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OXlL5SYGYVc/WJXX0aRbY7I/AAAAAAAAAro/Z-tE0xoN61c_or2yv72hpa2-l7s2IiE6wCLcB/s320/nsflag.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image contains a banned symbol.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In fact, even that isn’t 100% accurate. What’s regulated is the use of symbols of organizations which have been identified as working in opposition to the German constitution, the Basic Law. That’s usually Nazi symbols, of course, but in fact other symbols are also affected: for example, the variant of the Jihadist banner used by ISIS falls under the same law.<br />
<br />
It’s <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__86a.html" target="_blank">§ 86a StGB</a>, which, translated into something you don’t need to be a German lawyer to understand, is <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p0872" target="_blank">section 86a of the German Criminal Code</a>. If you’re wondering about the “a”, the section had to be inserted after section 86, which criminalizes the propaganda of these organizations, including their symbols; but extremist groups were getting around this by using subtly altered versions, such as mirror images. The new section explicitly outlaws symbols which “could be mistaken” for outlawed symbols.<br />
<br />
Luckily, I have a get-out clause, in that I’m using these symbols as part of a factual lecture, not political propaganda. The symbols themselves aren’t outlawed, but their use in connection with unconstitutional activities is — which means that, for example, Buddhists reading this can relax. Incidentally, it’s not actually true that if a swastika rotates to the right it’s a religious symbol but if it rotates to the left it’s a Nazi symbol: that’s <i>often</i> the case, but not always. Legally, it’s the context it’s used in that’s the important factor.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Buddha_image_-_stone_-_with_disciple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Buddha_image_-_stone_-_with_disciple.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is perfectly fine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This does highlight a problem videomakers like me can face. Although I was fairly sure I wouldn’t fall foul of § 86a StGB, I did actually look it up to make absolutely certain. The maximum sentence is three years in prison: I doubt that any court would even bother about a case of a couple of swastikas appearing for a few seconds in a four-minute YouTube video about flags, but sometimes a little paranoia is a good thing to have.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-61266234982222196292017-01-25T13:52:00.000+01:002017-01-25T15:25:20.293+01:00Misquoting Hitler<a href="http://rewboss.blogspot.com/2017/01/why-im-not-going-to-start-punching-nazis.html" target="_blank">In my previous post</a>, I expressed my reservations about the idea that punching Nazis is ever actually going to achieve anything. That hasn’t stopped anyone from putting out tweets advocating Nazi-punching as a viable means of preventing the rise of a totalitarian dictatorship (one tweet I saw this morning even implied that <i>not</i> punching a Nazi would allow said Nazi to punch “five minorities”, which makes me want to ask in exactly which parallel universe this is even vaguely true), but I’m not vain enough ever to have thought it would. <br />
<br />
Why don’t I just stop following people who tweet that kind of stuff? Because I prefer not to construct an echo chamber for myself, if I can possibly help it. It’s always possible I’m wrong. After all, maybe punching a Nazi might stop him punching five minorities: I haven’t had a chance to put it to the test. I’m just highly skeptical.<br />
<br />
So one of the things I’ve seen is a quote, supposedly from Hitler himself. With a few minor variations, it takes on this form:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only one thing could have stopped our movement — if our adversaries had
understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost
brutality the nucleus of our new movement. </blockquote>
I didn’t know this, but apparently this is widely circulated among various antifascist groups: as one tweet put it, Hitler literally gave instructions on how to defeat Nazis. (I’m sure the author of that particular tweet didn’t <i>literally</i> mean that Hitler stood up one day and said, “Guys — just FYI, next time somebody like me comes along, this is what you have to do.”) If Hitler himself said that the only way to stop Nazis was to attack them as often as you could, then that justifies Nazi-punching, right?<br />
<br />
(This post is going to get very long, by the way, but it was well worth writing. It includes some historical context, and you might want read it and judge for yourselves whether, and if so to what extent, it offers any parallels to what’s happening at this very moment.) <br />
<br />
A couple of thoughts crossed my mind. First, whatever other justifications you may have — and I’m sure there are many — quoting <i>Hitler</i> is probably not the most convincing argument. We can’t rely on anything he says at all. Besides, it’s entirely possible that he could have been stopped if only a few more politicians at the time had shown a little more backbone and not given in to his bullying — we’ll never know for sure, of course, but reading up on the history of the years leading up to the imposition of the single-party state makes you wonder (the story of how he got his Enabling Act to pass is a real eye-opener). If he’s saying that only a sustained and brutal attack would have stopped him, that was an idle boast: “We were very nearly invincible!”<br />
<br />
Second: is this a genuine quote? It’s pretty much a fundamental rule of the internet that you don’t simply believe whatever quotes you see (as Arthur Conan Doyle once said), and it’s always good to get to the bottom of things.<br />
<br />
It proved frustrating, as I was constantly finding people asking exactly the same question and coming up against dead ends everywhere they looked. The quote appears on various predominantly antifascist sites vaguely attributed to “Adolf Hitler (1934)”. I did track down a German version, but it contains a relatively recent anglicism, suggesting it was translated from the English, not the other way around.<br />
<br />
So I asked one of the people tweeting this if they knew where it came from, and they didn’t answer; but somebody else did, and provided a link to a blog post which — yes! — had a link to the original source.<br />
<br />
The good news is that it is, essentially, a genuine Hitler quote. The bad news is that it has been very badly misquoted to the point that it very nearly says the exact opposite.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9oOgHXxIbh4/WIibD9-1TcI/AAAAAAAAArY/7FuAUilQ87IZrqtcPa7pAhdwLUXc1yJUgCLcB/s1600/Reichsparteitage-oben-Postkarte-Nbg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9oOgHXxIbh4/WIibD9-1TcI/AAAAAAAAArY/7FuAUilQ87IZrqtcPa7pAhdwLUXc1yJUgCLcB/s400/Reichsparteitage-oben-Postkarte-Nbg.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“Greetings from Nuremberg, the city of party conferences”</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
The source is about as close to the horse’s mouth as you can get: it’s <a href="http://archive.org/stream/Die-Reden-Hitlers-am-Reichsparteitag-1933/DieRedenHitlersAmReichsparteitag1933193427Doppels.ScanFraktur#page/n21/mode/1up" target="_blank">a book containing the speeches made by Hitler at the 1933 party conference in Nuremberg</a>. The vague attribution “(1934)” can be explained by the fact that the book was published in that year; the speeches, though, were written and delivered the previous year.<br />
<br />
The quote is taken from his closing speech, which takes up a monster twelve and a half pages of the book. How anyone was able to sit through that I don’t know, but I decided to concentrate on the immediate context of the quote itself: a few passages on pages 41 and 42 — this part:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d1mBlOSls-A/WIiGAIXTcjI/AAAAAAAAArI/XqHrYmceT0okkt0Ge1LC8QZfriva0g50wCLcB/s1600/hitlerquote.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d1mBlOSls-A/WIiGAIXTcjI/AAAAAAAAArI/XqHrYmceT0okkt0Ge1LC8QZfriva0g50wCLcB/s320/hitlerquote.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
If you’re not familiar with Fraktur typefaces, spacing the letters out is the equivalent of italics. This is relevant, because I’m going to translate this passage, and the emphases are Hitler’s, not mine.<br />
<br />
A little context: the 1933 party conference took place in the late summer of that year. The last (relatively) free election of the Weimar Republic had been held in March that year, with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the Nazis) confirmed as the biggest party in government. In November 1933 there would be another election with the Nazis as the only party on the ballot paper. But already by this time the March 1933 parliament had collapsed and dissolved, most of the other parties had “voluntarily” disbanded, and a new law was in place banning the formation of new parties: this was made possible by the Enabling Act, which had been forced through just days after the March election.<br />
<br />
In this section, Hitler is reflecting on the 14-year struggle that had got him to where he was now: the leader of a <i>de facto</i> totalitarian state. What this section doesn’t do is give us much in the way of verifiable facts or instructions on how to defeat Nazis. What it <i>does</i> do is to give us an insight into Hitler’s strategy — or, at the very least, what Hitler wanted people to think of as his strategy.<br />
<br />
This is my own translation of the original. It’s as accurate as I was able to make it, but any suggestions for improvements would be gratefully received.<br />
<br />
We join Hitler as he explains his method for attracting a following:<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Propagate
<i>avarice</i> as the substance of a movement
and all egoists will join it. Propagate <i>cowardly
subservience</i> and the subserviant will come. Elevate <i>theft, robbery and plundering</i> to [the status of] ideals, and the
criminal classes will organise themselves into gangs. Just think of
ownership and talk about business and then you can unite your supporters in
economic parties. But demand sacrifice and courage, bravery, loyalty, faith and
heroism, and that part of society that claims <i>these</i> virtues as their own will come forward.</span></span></span></blockquote>
There are a few rough edges to this translation (really, I have a living to make, and there are limits to how much time I can spend on this), but the basic message is clear: promote as ideals the values you want to see in your followers, and they will come. The weird reference to “economic parties” is, I think, a reference to a political party that existed in the 1920s and catered for the interests of the middle classes. “Gangs” here refers to a specific kind of organised criminal gang that used to exist in Germany.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure what to make of the next paragraph, which, as far as I can tell, translates as follows:<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></i></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">But this has, in all periods, been the factor that
makes history.</span></i><span style="line-height: 107%;"> But
the formation of nations and states, and their conservation, is the substance
of what we include in the word “history”.</span></span></span> </blockquote>
Well, Hitler certainly made history, that’s absolutely true. An actual historian will probably be able to say whether or not Hitler viewed history in terms of popular or populist movements, but let’s move on.<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">So in
the year [19]19 I started a program and laid down a tendency that <i>deliberately</i> slapped the
pacifist-democratic world in the face. If there were still people of that kind
in our society, then victory would be inevitable. For then this fanaticism of
resolve and deed would necessarily attract people who would feel affinity to
it. Wherever people with this characteristic were, they would one day have to
hear the voice of their blood and, whether they wanted to or not, follow the
movement which was the expression of their own innermost selves. That could
take five, ten, twenty years, but a state of authority gradually formed within the
state of democracy, a core of fanatical devotion and reckless resolve.</span></span></span> </blockquote>
This marks the first use of the word which, in the quote that started this blog post, is translated as “nucleus”. That’s a perfectly valid translation, but I think “core” is a better fit.<br />
<br />
So, Hitler says that what he did was to attack democracy itself, and thereby attract to his movement people who felt the need to <i>act</i>. In his view, the attraction would be irresistable: if you had the urge to destroy the democratic system, you would be drawn to a movement that was making a show of doing exactly that.<br />
<br />
In those days, democracy was a new concept in Germany, and at the same time, times were hard. People put two and two together to conclude that their problems were caused by “democracy”. The modern equivalent would seem to be “the establishment” or “the political elite”.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we have the image of an unstoppable movement that would, if Hitler is to be believed, almost grow by itself, while Hitler bided his time for as long as it would take. Now comes the paragraph the original “quote” comes from:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Only one thing could have endangered this development: Had
the enemy recognized the principle, gained clarity over these thoughts and avoided
all resistance. Or if they had destroyed the first germ of this new gathering
with utmost brutality on the first day.</div>
</blockquote>
Just to clarify: “germ” is in the sense of that part of a seed that grows. Hitler wasn’t comparing the Nazi movement to a bacterium.<br />
<br />
Here again is the quote as circulated among various antifascist movements:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only one thing could have stopped our movement — if our adversaries had
understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost
brutality the nucleus of our new movement.</blockquote>
Some of the discrepancies are perfectly valid (for example, it’s almost certainly the case that “new gathering” refers to the nascent Nazi movement), but there are two big problems.<br />
<br />
First, the quote has been contracted, and leaves out the crucial point that <i>doing nothing at all</i> would have stopped the movement — at least, that was Hitler’s claim: as pointed out above, we really can’t trust him on this, or anything at all. The phrase “avoided all resistance” is simply omitted, and the beginning of one sentence is fused to the end of another.<br />
<br />
The second problem seems very minor, and could have been a genuine mistake rather than a deliberate attempt to change the quote; however, it does have a significant impact and distorts the meaning quite badly. Where Hitler originally said “<i>on</i> the first day”, the new version has “<i>from</i> the first day”.<br />
<br />
My guess is that this error occured not in translation, but somewhere along the line <i>after</i> translation: misreading “from” as “on” is quite an understandable mistake. In German, the difference is between “am ersten Tag” (the original Hitler quote) and “vom ersten Tag an”: much less likely to have been misread or misheard.<br />
<br />
This is extremely important: the misquoted version suggests that Hitler recommended a consistent and sustained attack. In fact, he suggested nothing of the kind: his enemies should have either offered no resistance at all, or else struck decisively and early on, before the movement got too strong to resist.<br />
<br />
Hence his use of the word “germ”, in German “Keim”. The German version of the idiom “to nip in the bud” is “im Keim ersticken”: literally “to suffocate in the germ”. He’s just painted a picture of a popular movement irresistably attracting followers and getting stronger all time: if you’re going to strike it dead, you need to do it while it’s still young and weak.<br />
<br />
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has studied Hitler’s military tactics. It’s a description that can be applied to the strategy of <i>blitzkrieg</i>: a massive military strike early on, before the enemy even has time to work out what’s happening, to neutralize all resistance and avoid a long, drawn-out war of attrition.<br />
<br />
In the first half of the next paragraph, Hitler explains why, in his view, offering no resistance at all would have worked:<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Neither
happened. This time was no more capable of the resolve to or the execution of
an annihiliation, and neither did it have the nerve or possibly even the
comprehension for a completely fitting and adequate attitude. By beginning
instead to attack this young movement <i>on
a civic scale</i>, [people] supported the process of natural selection in the
most fortuitous manner. It was then only a question of time before the
government of the nation fell to this hardened stock of people! And so I could
wait 14 years, becoming progressively more imbued with the realization that our
time would have to come.</span></span></span></blockquote>
This was a particularly difficult passage to translate, and I may have made a bad job of it, but it’s clear that Hitler is claiming that the resistance that was offered to his movement unwittingly helped it.<br />
<br />
One word that was very difficult to translate for me was the word “bürgerlich”, which I translated as “civic”. If I had more time available, I could find somebody with a doctorate in a relevant discipline and ask for help, but the word has many possible translations. It can mean “middle-class” or “bourgeois”, but can also mean “pertaining to the citizenry”.<br />
<br />
The overall impression, though, is that Hitler is saying that what resistance came was too little (and, in the context of what he’d just said, too late). Instead of <i>damaging</i> the movement, it unwittingly <i>helped</i> it. Hitler didn’t need a <i>large</i> movement, he needed a <i>hardened core</i> who would not allow themselves to be intimidated by whatever resistance was thrown their way. The anti-Nazi movement, he seems to be saying, had the effect of removing the weak-willed, leaving a consolidated core of the truly fanatical.<br />
<br />
Of course, the caveat here is that this Adolf Hitler we’re listening to here, and if ever there was a movement adept at the art of the “alternative fact”, it was Hitler’s National Socialist movement. And really, this is more of a gloat than anything else.<br />
<br />
But still: just because accurately quoting Hitler is not a good way to justify your actions doesn’t mean that misquoting him is any better.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-5019728358552257282017-01-21T17:58:00.000+01:002017-01-21T17:58:08.957+01:00Why I’m not going to start punching NazisIn case you missed it, a short video is doing the rounds of the internet of Richard Spencer, the leader of the alt-right movement whose meetings tend to feature cries of “Heil Trump”, being punched. And all of a sudden, my Twitter feed is full of different versions of this video and a whole slew of likes and retweets featuring people seeking to justify the act.<br />
<br />
It will, of course, depend on who you actually choose to follow, but I appear to be getting one half of the argument. In essence, it boils down to this: Richard Spencer is a Nazi, and it is the duty of everyone who values democracy to punch any Nazi they see. From what I can gather, the other side of the argument is that violence is wrong, and those using violence to combat violence are guilty of double standards.<br />
<br />
Let me begin by saying that I think Richard Spencer’s policies, so far as I understand them, are repulsive and dangerous. At least, that’s my opinion. I also can’t bring myself to feel sorry for him, if I’m honest: if you are going to adopt the rhetoric of a hated and hateful tyrannical regime, you’re not going to be universally loved. Those who live by the sword die by the sword: you reap what you sow. Call it “karma” if you must.<br />
<br />
But I must confess I do start to feel uncomfortable when people start using excuses for violence and vigilantism, because I begin to wonder where it ends. One Tweet I saw took the position that violence is only justified when used in self-defence, and punching a Nazi is always self-defence.<br />
<br />
Is it, though? If I punch a Nazi who just happens to cross my path, what am I defending myself from? The theoretical possibility that one day he may come to power and enact policies which will be disadvantageous to me? I mean, he <i>might</i>; but there’s a theoretical possibility that anyone I meet might stab me in the back. It’s not a particularly good argument.<br />
<br />
And who decides who is a Nazi and who isn’t? In the case of Richard Spencer it seems clear, despite the fact that since the word “Nazi” means “member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party” we’re already using it inaccurately. Spencer clearly draws much inspiration from that movement, that’s good enough for me.<br />
<br />
But how about somebody who thinks there’s something in what Spencer says? How about somebody who voted Trump? Somebody who once shared a <i>Breitbart</i> article on Facebook?<br />
<br />
More importantly, though: exactly what does punching a Nazi achieve? It might give the puncher the satisfaction of a job well done, but beyond that? If we’re defending ourselves from a theoretical future Nazi dictatorship, how does raining blows on somebody prevent that? Do we think that the likes of Spencer would go home, holding a blooded hankerchief to the nose, and think: “Goodness, some people don’t like me. I should turn over a new leaf.”<br />
<br />
The issue here is actually quite a simple one, because it’s a basic human tendency. I am certain every single human does it. You do it, I do it, we all do it, even if we don’t want to admit it even to ourselves. I’m trying my hardest not to do it right now, but I have no way of knowing how successful I am.<br />
<br />
We discriminate.<br />
<br />
We can’t help it, because it’s pretty much hard-wired into our brains. We need to have some way of distinguishing between things that threaten us and things that don’t. But we modern humans, thanks to our innate ability to use language, have developed some very highly sophisticated and incredibly subtles ways of discrimination.<br />
<br />
Basically, we divide humanity into two parts: one good, and one bad. But we carefully do it so that we’re always in the “good” part. No matter how many different ways we divide humanity, we always draw the line so that we ourselves are on the “good” side.<br />
<br />
We can be phenomenally clever with this. We are even able to put ourselves on the “good” side while pretending to put ourselves on the “bad” side: if I say, for example, that I’m a racist, I’m not dividing humanity into “racist” and “non-racist”; I’m dividing it into “deluded” and “self-aware”, and putting myself on the “self-aware” side.<br />
<br />
Following this line of argument much further, of course, we have to conclude that my simply saying “We all discriminate” is making exactly that distinction in exactly that way, as is this paragraph I am typing now, and we disappear into a pretty nasty paradox. I’ll simply have to ask you to bear with me and consider whether or not my basic point here makes sense to you.<br />
<br />
This is the same phenomenon behind all those competing theories about how Donald Trump got elected, or how Brexit happened. Every time you see one of those essays, always imagine the author carefully constructing the argument in order to be innocent. The simpler the argument, the more likely it is to be self-serving. “People voted Trump because they’re all racist” means “I didn’t vote Trump, therefore I am not racist.” Conversely, “People voted Trump because they wanted to get rid of the political establishment” means “I voted Trump because I believe mainstream politicians are trying to destroy me.”<br />
<br />
And this is why I’m not going to start punching Nazis. The sequence of events thus far is:<br />
<ol>
<li>Spencer divides humanity into “good” white people of European stock — people who look like him — and everyone else, who are “bad”.</li>
<li>Somebody else divides humanity into “bad” Nazis, and the “good” people who actively resists them, and so justifies landing a punch.</li>
<li>Countless other people divide humanity into “bad” people who attack, and “good” people who merely defend themselves. Some put Spencer into the “bad” group, some put him into the “good” group. They all put themselves into the “good” group, of course. </li>
</ol>
But this is a lazy, and ultimately counter-productive, way to go about it. Quite simply, humanity doesn’t divide up so neatly, and all of these divisions are arbitrary. But the more we do this, and the more importance we attach to these divisions, the more polarized society becomes, and before you know it, we’re drawing up the battle lines.<br />
<br />
There are better ways of resisting and counteracting extremism. Forcing people to decide between one of two extremes is not at all helpful.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-51586438781262573852017-01-20T13:09:00.000+01:002017-01-20T13:09:01.328+01:00How not to be greenA few days ago, I spotted an advert for a device that promised something little short of a green revolution. I say “advert”: it was actually one of those social media posts that people reflexively share, not realizing that they’re basically doing the job of advertising the product for free, which is what the company intend them to do.<br />
<br />
This device is installed in the kitchen. You put left-over food in it, which it then apparently grinds up and magically transforms it into the perfect fertilizer for your garden. That way, your food waste doesn’t go to landfill, and it also means you don’t have to buy chemical fertilizers: the perfect green solution!<br />
<br />
I imagine that most of you have already spotted it. For those who haven’t, I should explain that gardeners have been “magically” transforming food waste into fertilizer since time immemorial: the process is known as “composting” and involves no technology more complex than a large wooden box.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://auntiedogmasgardenspot.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/compost002tw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://auntiedogmasgardenspot.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/compost002tw.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t actually smell.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The truly worrying thing about this amazing device is that it claims to do this within 24 hours, which means either that it’s a scam, or it uses vast amounts of power. The vast amounts of power must come from somewhere, and even “clean” wind energy comes at a cost: in this part of Germany, the cost of surprisingly large numbers of trees, since the only place you can build a wind farm in hilly country is on hilltops, which are very often forested. (I once got into conversation with a northerner — a flatlander, therefore — who actually told me I was lying about that last point, because what kind of idiot would build wind farms on hilltops? There are times when you’re left with no choice but to quietly drop the subject and tiptoe away.)<br />
<br />
It strikes me as one of the odd paradoxes of our time that so many people are paying lip-service to supposedly “green” initiatives, while at the same time we as a society are becoming increasingly less green. A controversial statement, I know, but stay with me here: the idea of a “green” solution that is actually, objectively, less green than the age-old solution the manufacturers are pretending doesn’t exist is a perfect illustration.<br />
<br />
So you have a five-year-old car which is not the most fuel-efficient. Do you (a) replace it with a new electric car, or (b) walk, cycle or take public transport as often as possible and the car only when completely unavoidable?<br />
<br />
If you answered (a), you would almost certainly be responsible for more environmental damage than you would cause if you changed nothing at all: your old car has to be scrapped and a new car built, and an electric car’s batteries contain some quite rare materials that have to be mined at great cost to the environment.<br />
<br />
“But,” you protest, “public transport is not an option for me: the bus only goes once an hour.” That never worried your great-grandparents, and in any case if you truly want to save the planet, you’re going to have to make some personal sacrifices.<br />
<br />
I do, of course, understand that in many parts of the world — large areas of the US, for example — public transport is virtually non-existent, which is why you need to persuade your President that Trump-branded streetcars are just the thing to Make America Great Again, or at least to Make America Move Again.<br />
<br />
Trump Trams, made in Detroit. Make it happen, America. Just don’t tell Donald Trump it’s to help save the environment.<br />
<br />
(Disclaimer: Building trams may require lots of power and natural resources. Dammit, this isn’t as easy as I thought.)Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-89131562284970990092017-01-14T17:38:00.000+01:002017-01-14T17:38:19.474+01:00Farewell, quirky Christmas treeIf you’re in Germany and like to do things the traditional way, you put your Christmas decorations up on Christmas Eve and don’t take them down until after Twelfth Night. If you’re in a rural area where local volunteers provide a service to pick up and dispose of spent Christmas trees and they announce they’re coming round on 14th January, you wait until then to strip your tree and dump it outside. Well, normally, you’d have done that on 13th, unless the tail end of Storm Egon threatens to blow it into the path of unsuspecting cars.<br />
<br />
Which explains why, if you’d been spying on me at breakfast this morning, you’d have seen me suddenly point excitedly out of the window, leap out of my seat and start wrestling with the tree.<br />
<br />
The tree, by the way, was a rescue tree. In the same way that if we’d got our cats from a shelter we’d have come home with a one-eyed tom and a kitten with a limp, my wife took pity on this hard-luck case:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BiDOt9m5cWY/WHpPD8bkDkI/AAAAAAAAAqw/pPoexCwdpXUrORUtqsxI4Z1_l9MOug1hgCLcB/s1600/xmastree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BiDOt9m5cWY/WHpPD8bkDkI/AAAAAAAAAqw/pPoexCwdpXUrORUtqsxI4Z1_l9MOug1hgCLcB/s320/xmastree.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please give this tree a home.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yes, we loved our special tree, and we don’t care what anyone says: it was a delight to have around and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. Of course, we would have loved it more if it hadn’t dripped resin all over the floor, but that’s one reason we don’t have carpets.<br />
<br />
Of course, even though we had already stripped the tree, it was still not the easiest thing in the world to get it outside. When you buy a tree, they have a special machine to bundle it up into some netting so it will fit through any door. We don’t have one of those machines lying around in our living room, so I had to try to squeeze it through the patio door, as my wife held it open and gave me useful pieces of advice like, “Take a run-up!” All of this before I had <i>quite</i> finished my first coffee.<br />
<br />
I made it in time and returned to find the floor green with the needles that had been shaved off the tree during its passage through the door.<br />
<br />
So, farewell, Christmas tree; you were a part of our lives for three weeks, and now you have gone to that great forest in the sky. We shall miss you, and will always remember the... the stickiness you brought to our tiles.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-74028470020161090372016-12-31T12:30:00.000+01:002016-12-31T12:30:35.904+01:00Well, that was some yearI appear to have survived the year 2016, which is more than a lot of other people can say. A huge number of celebrities chose this year to shuffle off their mortal coils: David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher to name but three. If you’re British, you’ll also be mourning the loss of the likes of Ronnie Corbett, Paul Daniels and Victoria Wood. For Germans, the list includes Tamme Hanken, Guido Westerwelle and Götz George.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mK8bOMnYCoE/WGeWob7EsHI/AAAAAAAAAqg/k_mDJYxbtXY4rOLj20dx_WsmouabAaTTACLcB/s1600/2016headstone.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mK8bOMnYCoE/WGeWob7EsHI/AAAAAAAAAqg/k_mDJYxbtXY4rOLj20dx_WsmouabAaTTACLcB/s1600/2016headstone.png" /></a></div>
It seems as if there isn’t a single person who hasn’t felt the loss of some childhood-defining figure or other: there was that anguished moment when three generations of Germans simultaneously cried, “No, not Peter Lustig!” My wife very kindly suggested that I should be grateful I’m not famous enough, which I suppose is one way of looking at my continued lack of stardom.<br />
<br />
I like to think of myself as a bit rational most of the time, so I can console myself with probability theory, which suggests that actually all is right with the universe and that it would in fact be very strange if we never experienced a year as unusual as this one from time to time. All the same, when you hear the rhetoric of the US President Elect on things like nuclear weapons and the manaical world-domination plans of heavily-armed Islamic terrorists, you can’t help but imagine a mass exodus before the impending apocalypse.<br />
<br />
It remains to be seen what the next year will bring. As my local paper helpfully explained this morning, as if this was some deep new insight currently sending shockwaves through the philosophical community, 2017 is the logical follow-on to 2016. Given that, I suppose we’ll just have to expect the unexpected. By this time next year, the new leader of the free world could be me.<br />
<br />
Now, there’s a scary thought.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-34048540347125058102016-11-23T12:43:00.001+01:002016-11-23T12:52:46.713+01:00Why I’m a bit worried right nowThis isn’t going to be a learned, academic piece. It’s my gut reaction to a news story, and so entirely subjective. Perhaps I’m being needlessly hysterical here — and if it’s any consolation, I really hope I’m badly mistaken. For once in my life, I would be really happy if, some time in the future, I have to stand up and say, “I was wrong, and I apologize to anyone who took my word for it.”<br />
<br />
A few days ago, a man called Richard Spencer stood up in front of a small crowd of white men (I suppose there were some women there as well, but I didn’t notice any), told them their nation was created for them and for them only, and led them in a chorus of “Hail Trump”. Cue Nazi salutes.<br />
<br />
A lot of people, on seeing that, will have felt shudders down the spine. I certainly did: there’s something very unsettling about witnessing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShRf1svMcuA" target="_blank">the sort of scene you might expect in satirical comedy</a> when it isn’t satire. The nearest thing you get to a laugh is watching an American trying to pronounce the “ü” in “Lügenpresse”.<br />
<br />
It’s not the mere existence of people like this that worries me — they’ve always existed, and usually there aren’t enough of them to be more than a slight irritant. It’s the fact that they are uncomfortably close to power.<br />
<br />
To be sure, I don’t think President Elect Trump is deliberately racist, or a Nazi. I think he’s a hopeless politician who lacks all the necessary skills to play the game, and he will lose. He certainly does have some very unpalatable views, and his despicable attitude towards women (to pick one example) doesn’t seem like an act. But I actually believe him when he says he condemns Spencer’s Alternative Right movement: it’s just that he doesn’t understand why it’s so important to nip that sort of thing in the bud, rather than wait for a journalist to ask him about it a few days later.<br />
<br />
But it seems that the “alt-right” view Trump as their route to the White House, and it looks as if they’ve secured their first victory by installing their PR man as one of Trump’s key advisors. I am referring to Steve Bannon.<br />
<br />
Until recently, Bannon ran <i>Breitbart News</i>, an online news platform that leans so far right it’s less of a platform and more of a slippery slope. This organisation appears very much to be the mouthpiece of the “alt-right”, in much the same way that <i>Der Stürmer</i> was the mouthpiece of the Nazi movement.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AMaD_2eVFJA/WDV6uOEM8SI/AAAAAAAAAqI/FuF8pJNOaPYKw3QR0UT_QnN0XulyvZZLACLcB/s1600/stuermer-breitbart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AMaD_2eVFJA/WDV6uOEM8SI/AAAAAAAAAqI/FuF8pJNOaPYKw3QR0UT_QnN0XulyvZZLACLcB/s400/stuermer-breitbart.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Would you rather your child had Nazism or Alt-Rightism?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Of course, I can’t find any official link between <i>Breitbart</i> and Spencer. But that doesn’t matter, because there was no official link between <i>Der Stürmer</i> and Hitler; indeed, for a brief period, the Nazis banned <i>Der Stürmer</i> (not for its content, but for its crude and borderline pornographic style). But <i>Breitbart</i> has no problems supporting Trump and echoing Spencer’s rhetoric, just as <i>Der Stürmer</i> had no problem introducing the wider public to Nazi propaganda.<br />
<br />
Both publications criticized their champions for being “too soft” (Hitler was not ruthless enough against the Jews, Trump has gone soft on illegal immigrants), both purport to tell the truth while the evil “mainstream media” pander to elitist interests. The differences are that <i>Breitbart</i> looks superficially more respectable, and its former chief now has the President Elect’s ear.<br />
<br />
Of course, Spencer’s movement is small, and most people — including most, I am sure, who voted Trump — would be horrified by it. But that’s basically the position the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — the NSDAP to give it its German abbreviation, also known as the Nazi Party by its detractors — was in less than 15 years before Hitler was appointed Chancellor: it was a small protest group based in Munich, whose members brawled in pubs. Its membership was so pitifully small that when it began issuing membership cards, it started the numbering at 500 just for the sake of saving its own embarrassment.<br />
<br />
But it grew. It grew for many reasons, but feeding off the resentment of the masses was a big one. It benefitted from national emergencies, some fabricated (the Communist plot to burn down the Reichstag building), most not (the Great Depression). In fact, these national emergencies were exactly what the party needed, as it made it easier to bypass all the usual democratic checks and balances that should have stopped Hitler eventually — and illegally — assuming the role of President to become absolute ruler.<br />
<br />
Looking at America today, there are plenty of national emergencies waiting in the wings. One of the first may well happen when it dawns on about 60 million Americans that Trump isn’t going to deliver half of what he promised. I have a very nasty suspicion that in later years, historians will point to how, in the decades leading up to whatever is about to be leashed upon us, large numbers of the citizenry weaponized themselves while the police became militarized to a degree that had even the military shaking its head in disbelief.<br />
<br />
Of course, all of this is entirely speculative. I have no idea what will happen. Perhaps it will all blow over and we’ll all come to our senses. I hope it does. This is one of those rare moments when I actually hope that I end up looking like an ignorant idiot.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-78637373756182673002016-09-30T18:07:00.001+02:002016-09-30T18:28:43.122+02:00John’s picsEvery once in a while, something lands in my PO box that pretty much deserves its own video. Such is the case with a letter I received with some photos taken in Aschaffenburg in the mid-1950s, which immediately prompted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-5cYGX7On4" target="_blank">a video in which I was able to compare the town as it was then with the modern town</a>. The best thing about this video is that the historic images are ones you won’t find anywhere else — not those exact photos, in any case.<br />
<br />
But while it was a great video (at least, I think so), it doesn’t really let you study the photos (either the old ones or the new ones) at your leisure. So here they are, in order they appear in the video (remember you can click to expand).<br />
<br />
First, looking up Herstallstraße:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K3QGnnQEuQw/V-6NeIq1T0I/AAAAAAAAApk/IiFTWefuGKo1M5D26ZZbLIFNw1umHxtSQCLcB/s1600/abjohn1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K3QGnnQEuQw/V-6NeIq1T0I/AAAAAAAAApk/IiFTWefuGKo1M5D26ZZbLIFNw1umHxtSQCLcB/s400/abjohn1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
A few people commented on the video to complain about the ugly new building on the left. Bear in mind, though, that German cities did have to rebuild very extensively, and very rapidly, after the war. In the decade after, the emphasis was on building homes to deal with a massive shortage of housing stock. That said, Germany did a much better job of preserving or recreating historical buildings than, say, the UK.<br />
<br />
Next, the Collegiate Church:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rqwLQHds1hc/V-6NeaUb12I/AAAAAAAAAp0/5EpSQaThYIIbq2yQl96FI31CZZ6boCE5gCEw/s1600/abjohn2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rqwLQHds1hc/V-6NeaUb12I/AAAAAAAAAp0/5EpSQaThYIIbq2yQl96FI31CZZ6boCE5gCEw/s400/abjohn2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
You can quite clearly see how I was unable to get the right angle. I found one photo taken from the air just after the completion of the new Town Hall, which was in 1958, and most of the buildings opposite the church simply weren’t there: it was basically a parking lot. I think that must be where John was standing when he took the photo, because try as I might I couldn’t get the whole spire in and also get the fountain where it appears on the old photo. Not without stepping backwards through a plate-glass window.<br />
<br />
The Hotel is up next:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TTFFAd0Tg5I/V-6NfS92PQI/AAAAAAAAAp0/DGrcemv2TiMBGwqQTLMdfGQ3FXM99LPxACEw/s1600/abjohn3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TTFFAd0Tg5I/V-6NfS92PQI/AAAAAAAAAp0/DGrcemv2TiMBGwqQTLMdfGQ3FXM99LPxACEw/s400/abjohn3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I like this one because at first sight it looks as if it’s hardly changed at all. And it hasn’t: it’s still run by the same family (well, at some point it passed to the in-laws, but I still count that as “in the family”), as it has been for over 100 years. It’s only when you look closely that you notice the little changes.<br />
<br />
Finally, the castle:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BLmnma8pCvQ/V-6NhCxGWyI/AAAAAAAAAp0/XQIoP1Mfo8k3LD9ElgWmR2fAW8QPfKd1QCEw/s1600/abjohn4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BLmnma8pCvQ/V-6NhCxGWyI/AAAAAAAAAp0/XQIoP1Mfo8k3LD9ElgWmR2fAW8QPfKd1QCEw/s400/abjohn4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
What a shame that tower is under scaffolding, but the reality is that historic buildings like this require an awful lot of maintenance. I am, though, surprised that nobody picked me up on mentioning the “symbol of the six-spoked wheel” while showing images of wheels with at least eight spokes each. I probably should have watched the rough cut more closely before recording the commentary, but in fact the Mainz Wheel is supposed to have six spokes. It’s often depicted as having more, and in previous centuries people didn’t always pay attention to such fine details: nevertheless, the symbol of Mainz is supposed to have exactly six spokes.<br />
<br />
Also notice that there are more trees (and vines, too) in the newer picture. John did take his photos in the winter (you can see a light dusting of snow in some), but still air raids and things like the lack of firewood during the war took their toll on the local tree population: this has, as you can see, since been corrected.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-25214183138919847882016-09-14T16:45:00.000+02:002016-09-14T16:45:13.203+02:00Public transport in Frankfurt: Additional notesI could have picked a better day to make <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1sERFKMMWQ" target="_blank">my video about the public transport system of Frankfurt</a>; it was, if not the hottest day of the year, certainly not the ideal weather to be stomping about in the city. But into every life a little rain must fall (metaphorically, in this case), so I braved the elements and tried not to choke on the smog.<br />
<br />
Of course, it’s tricky getting everything into a five-minute video (any more and people would have fallen asleep), so here are a few little extra bits — starting, though, with the map of the airport that did actually make the final cut:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOjOKiJb9yg/V9lYhG5WmMI/AAAAAAAAApM/EpKpyMfrY-4OFqECz9NPVpreu8bT0E4qwCEw/s1600/ffm-airport.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOjOKiJb9yg/V9lYhG5WmMI/AAAAAAAAApM/EpKpyMfrY-4OFqECz9NPVpreu8bT0E4qwCEw/s400/ffm-airport.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
There are, as I mentioned in the video, two stations. Or rather, the station is divided into two: tracks 1, 2 and 3 are in the older station, right below the entrance to Terminal 1, and are for local traffic; while tracks 4 to 7 are on the other side of the autobahn, and are for long-distance trains. You’d notice if you were going for the long-distance station by mistake: it’s quite a long walk. Printed timetables helpfully number the tracks “Regio 1” to “Regio 3” for local trains, and “Fern 4” to “Fern 7” for long-distance trains.<br />
<br />
To get there from Terminal 2, you can walk if you’re a glutton for punishment, or you can take a courtesy bus or the SkyLine monorail. Currently under construction is Terminal 3, which is at the other end of the airport to the south, and will require an even longer journey by SkyLine.<br />
<br />
I’m not completely sure of the logic of using an “S” to indicate the regional station and “T” to indicate the long-distance station, but that’s what’s on the signs at the airport.<br />
<br />
For S-Bahn trains into Frankfurt, you need track 1: during the day, there should be one train every 15 minutes. Any S-Bahn train will do. Other regional trains departing from that platform will be travelling in the right direction, but those headed for Hanau or Aschaffenburg will call at Frankfurt Süd (also known as “Südbahnhof”): that’s okay, because you can still get off there and take the U-Bahn into the centre.<br />
<br />
Some regional trains going towards Frankfurt depart, rather confusingly, from track 2, which also has trains travelling <i>away</i> from the city. It’s probably best simply to go to track 1 and take whichever S-Bahn train comes in next. <br />
<br />
Regarding the Hauptbahnhof (“Hauptbahnhof” or “Hbf” indicates a city’s most important — not necessarily the most central — station), don’t be worried by the fact that track numbers go up to 104. It’s common, when a station is in two separate sections, for tracks in one section to be numbered beginning at 1, and in another section beginning at 101. That way, you can tell at a glance which part of the station the track you need is going to be. In this case, ground-level platforms are numbered 1 to 24, and low-level platforms (for most S-Bahn trains) are numbered 101 to 104.<br />
<br />
The next map shows Frankfurt’s railways, with the S-Bahn in green and other lines in red:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MZS6k3iWSLc/V9lY1Q_7E0I/AAAAAAAAApg/xvzF-UxhWjE7Fq8vSlBtD-TPxbOziAHhwCEw/s1600/city-transport-ffm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MZS6k3iWSLc/V9lY1Q_7E0I/AAAAAAAAApg/xvzF-UxhWjE7Fq8vSlBtD-TPxbOziAHhwCEw/s400/city-transport-ffm.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Names of regional and long-distance stations are given, along with the types of train that stop there: anything in red is long-distance; “RB” indicates the “RegionalBahn”, with trains that call at every stop; and “RE” is “RegionalExpress”, with trains that, well, don’t call at every stop. The main point about this one is to give a brief overview of where the various long-distance stations are: probably a bit useless, but it might be useful for somebody.<br />
<br />
Potentially more useful is this map of central Frankfurt:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qCuQBMGapA/V9lYeB5BLHI/AAAAAAAAApg/ARa0QBBJAKYhTCS71UNy46tBe9UC1PNSwCEw/s1600/city-transport-ffm2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qCuQBMGapA/V9lYeB5BLHI/AAAAAAAAApg/ARa0QBBJAKYhTCS71UNy46tBe9UC1PNSwCEw/s400/city-transport-ffm2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Here, names of S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations are in white, while blue-green is for important areas of the city.<br />
<br />
The only other thing to say is that the area around the Hauptbahnhof is not particularly pleasant. Frankfurt has, by German standards, a very high crime rate, and this is concentrated around the Hauptbahnhof area. This mostly involves drugs, and with it associated problems like violence (due to turf wars) and the like. The authorities have been unable to get a proper handle on the issue, and attempts to clean it up only result in temporarily moving it elsewhere. At the time of writing, the dealers have left Münchener Straße and are instead on Niddastraße.<br />
<br />
It’s important to stress that while the crime rate is high, it is high by <i>German</i> standards — compared to many US cities, for example, it’s really not that bad. Still, walking out of the station to get a lungful of the aroma of urine is not a pleasant introduction to Germany, or to Frankfurt. You might, if this sort of thing worries you, want to avoid getting hotel or hostel accommodation in this area.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-57020972649119206642016-09-07T12:10:00.001+02:002016-09-07T14:11:53.576+02:00A clapperboard would look more professionalIn my latest video, about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFsu1oXc1ag" target="_blank">the history and possible future of the geographic centre of the EU</a>, I went “on location”, as we in the (cough!) film business say. After all, I live very close to it, so it would be stupid of me to stay at home to do it. Of course, since I don’t have a car (or a driving licence), that meant a sweaty trek cross country, over one ridge and up to the top of the next... with all my gear. To all those who still cling to the belief that making these videos means just sitting in front of a camera for five minutes, I hope you begin to appreciate just what is actually entailed.<br />
<br />
Up until now, filming on location has meant using a long extension cord to connect my lapel mic directly to the camera and vaguely wondering if I could justify the expense of getting a radio mic. This does mean I am severely restricted in how far away I can position the camera and what movements I can make.<br />
<br />
But then I had one of those forehead-slapping why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-before revelations: I have a digital sound recorder. I can plug the mic into that, and (as long as I am wearing relatively loose-fitting trousers) put it in my pocket.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ffNoisMbV7M/V8_mMYHRPJI/AAAAAAAAAo4/GbQE2PpEY1QIBV01SbYi6dvISo12lrBGgCLcB/s1600/004-clap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ffNoisMbV7M/V8_mMYHRPJI/AAAAAAAAAo4/GbQE2PpEY1QIBV01SbYi6dvISo12lrBGgCLcB/s400/004-clap.jpg" width="205" /></a>The only real downside to that is that you end up with separate sound files that you then have to synchronize with the video. But there’s a very simply remedy to that: before you start talking, clap your hands.<br />
<br />
In Hollywood, they use clapperboards for the same purpose. It’s not just a meaningless ritual: the clapperboard has, written on it, information about the scene and take, which is also verbally repeated, then the clapperboard is snapped shut. The camera records the visual part of that, the sound recorder the audio part. Later, it’s a simple question of getting the right audio file for the visual recording (that’s why you record the scene and take numbers), then lining up the <i>sound</i> of the clapperboard snapping to the <i>visual</i> cue of the clapperboard closing.<br />
<br />
For a quick video like this, where you only have a couple of scenes, just clapping your hands serves the same purpose. A clap is ideal, because it’s a very short sound and so easy to line up with the visual: it shows up on the waveform in the video editor as an obvious peak.<br />
<br />
It helps that my camera still has its own built-in microphones, which are recording the sound at the same time, so in the video editor I can also line up the peak in the audio file with the peak in the audio from the camera — although, depending on how far away the camera is and what other noise it’s picking up (wind, for example), it might not be so easy to find. But the image of me striking my hands together is very easy to find. Line everything up, delete the audio from the camera, and voilà!<br />
<br />
Incidentally, you may have noticed that on some shots, the sound is quite bad. I think I must have initially had the sound turned up too high on the recorder, and it was peaking too much: at some point I accidentally knocked the dial to a more sensible level. I should have done some trial runs first to determine the right level, but at least now I know.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-8442489042029986812016-08-10T20:36:00.000+02:002016-08-10T20:36:34.981+02:00Production notes: Filming a festivalIf you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you (for no other reason than that it’s mainly what this post is about) to watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYV502A2n8Q" target="_blank">my video on last weekend’s Straw Bale Festival</a> in my home village. It condenses a four-hour festival (well, the four-hour climax to a day-and-a-half-long festival) into about ten and a half minutes.<br />
<br />
I’m often told that making videos is really easy; and it’s true that many very excellent videos are pretty easy to make (simple vlogs, for example, if you happen to be naturally funny or engaging). But for an idea of how “easy” this video was, take a look at the arranger:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MYDzx7nqfq8/V6tmR1QhWvI/AAAAAAAAAok/bq0dpzgc7y0j53HgHW2ZwcE2vuTrYf0JwCLcB/s1600/003-strohballenfest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MYDzx7nqfq8/V6tmR1QhWvI/AAAAAAAAAok/bq0dpzgc7y0j53HgHW2ZwcE2vuTrYf0JwCLcB/s400/003-strohballenfest.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Just to make this clear: this is amateur level. People with more skills, resources, time and money than I have routinely make much more complex videos. But I found this one a fair challenge.<br />
<br />
The six tracks you can see there are:<br />
<ol>
<li>Video (from the camera).</li>
<li>Sound (also from the camera).</li>
<li>Titles (including the open captions where people are speaking German).</li>
<li>Visual images that will appear superimposed over the video in track 1.</li>
<li>Music (the green lines show where the music fades up and down).</li>
<li>Commentary.</li>
</ol>
In itself, that's quite simple. But there’s some complexity hidden there. For example, when the gentleman talks about his “straw bale garden” (he is, by the way, the local “straw professor” Alfred Leistenschläger), the scene cuts away from him to views of the straw bale garden... but his voice keeps going. Basically, I’ve taken the footage of him speaking, and at strategic points removed the video (but not the sound) and replaced it with different video.<br />
<br />
This is one way to save a little time, by the way, as well as make it a bit more interesting. Instead of seeing him drone on, and then later showing the garden, we instantly see what he’s talking about.<br />
<br />
But condensing a four-hour show into ten minutes is no mean feat. I came away with perhaps an hour and a half or more of material, in 355 takes. Most of that, of course, never made the cut; but you have to film more than you need (much more, if possible) and then decide what to do with it. And because some shots will later turn out to be unusable, you should never shy away from filming the same thing several times.<br />
<br />
I spent a lot of time essentially pointing my camera in the direction of people having fun: eating, drinking, chatting, that sort of thing. I also took as many shots as I could of people seemingly watching, applauding, pointing cameras: this can be useful later to disguise edits or bad camera work. For example, if I were to slip on something as the Straw Bale Queen was making a speech, I could at that point (in the edit) cut away to people watching with rapt attention — just as long as I pick a shot that doesn’t have the Straw Bale Queen in it. (This didn’t happen, but you’ll notice a couple of those shots in the video all the same.)<br />
<br />
There were many other things I filmed, and then didn’t use, mostly speeches. The outgoing Queen made a fairly long speech during which her voice cracked with emotion, but it was mostly a list of her engagements over the past year: not exactly riveting for my viewers. Some of the speakers attempted to tell jokes. A great deal of fuss was made over the fact that this was the first year Alfred Leistenschläger was not involved in organising the event. They forgot to give the runners-up their bottle of wine. There was also a long, and pretty awful, piece of doggerel read out by one of the guests of honour in a faultering voice and with great shuffling of pieces of paper.<br />
<br />
All that had to go for various reasons. Most of all, though, when you have to condense something of this magnitude to something YouTube-ready, you have to decide on what story you really want to tell — and then to tell that story, and ruthlessly cut out everything else. I set out to tell the story of the election of the new Straw Bale Queen, and apart from the sequences of “people having fun”, everything is there to tell that story. The only extra thing I kept in was the pro-celebrity threshing, but even that explains what the hell that contraption is that the Queen was wheeled in on (it’s a winnowing machine).<br />
<br />
You will, therefore, never find out how a knowledge of apple cultivars might win you a hot-air balloon ride, why a six-pack of beer suddenly appeared on the new Queen’s throne, or who that young lady in the pink ballgown is.Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3500306038515240820.post-89674452820878786932016-08-07T13:03:00.001+02:002016-08-07T13:03:43.945+02:00Miltenberg: Extra notesIt may seem obvious, but I’ve come to realize that one of the things this blog should be used for is to give extra information about the places I film for my <i>Destination</i> series. For those who like the video and perhaps feel that one day they should visit. So here are my extra notes to accompany <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OnfISgevlk" target="_blank">my video of Miltenberg</a>. And what a beautiful place it is, too.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mmkl0qptNaQ/V6cIjCMcg2I/AAAAAAAAAoQ/ee1OEf3GdqAE6bfKTaMjplFO6ZVgpNJ-gCLcB/s1600/miltenberg16blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mmkl0qptNaQ/V6cIjCMcg2I/AAAAAAAAAoQ/ee1OEf3GdqAE6bfKTaMjplFO6ZVgpNJ-gCLcB/s400/miltenberg16blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miltenberg: the classic view.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This, of course, despite the fact that it started raining while I was there — not much, but some of the rain is visible in the video. But at least the light was nice and even: no deep shadows, and no wishing I could afford a new camera with useful things like dynamic range stretch. (I’m still looking, by the way, for somebody foolish enough to pay me to make videos.)<br />
<br />
In the video, I mention that the historic centre is in the shape of a narrow wedge. Basically, the river Main flows head on towards the Odenwald, and when it reaches it, makes a sharp right turn; and that’s where Miltenberg is built. Here’s what it looks like if you take a map of the town and draw a line around the historic centre:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J8bpTnv0Ebo/V6cIjmbgzTI/AAAAAAAAAoY/SuMuNx3BDG8fP3DpG1szX7uQ3EaSa9UOwCEw/s1600/miltenberg-blog.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J8bpTnv0Ebo/V6cIjmbgzTI/AAAAAAAAAoY/SuMuNx3BDG8fP3DpG1szX7uQ3EaSa9UOwCEw/s400/miltenberg-blog.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What’s long, thin and about 700 years old?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It’s a long way from one end to the other (although you don’t have to go all the way to the Mainz Gate at the extreme western end unless you really want to). It is, though, for the most part, flat, except for the path up to the castle (which is seriously not wheelchair-accessible).<br />
<br />
For those reliant on public transportation, Miltenberg is best reached from Aschaffenburg (which is itself easy to get to from Frankfurt), with slow RB trains departing every hour and faster RE trains every two hours.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-__xFnMseb7I/V6cIitBJSPI/AAAAAAAAAoY/T2_99oYWEMM2j_Fupj-IU7po6z0ZzddVACEw/s1600/trains-to-mil.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-__xFnMseb7I/V6cIitBJSPI/AAAAAAAAAoY/T2_99oYWEMM2j_Fupj-IU7po6z0ZzddVACEw/s400/trains-to-mil.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It’s a fair distance from any autobahn, but there are good roads from the A3 near Aschaffenburg.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.lilli-chapeau.de/" target="_blank">Lilli Chapeau Theatre</a> really is the smallest in the world, at least according to the <i>Guinness Book of Records</i> (and they should know). The story behind it is quite sweet: Lilli Chapeau was a member of a company of street performers which once stopped at Miltenberg. She fell in love with, and later married, a local, but found it hard to settle down and lead a conventional life. So he basically converted a room into a tiny theatre and founded a theatre company with one actor (Chapeau), and one other person (himself) doing all the rest. The theatre is only open from October to April: during the summer months, Chapeau performs at their new project, an open-air theatre in nearby Kleinheubach (with twice the number of seats) where she shares the bill with a string of horses.<br />
<br />
Finally, afficionados of German post-war comedy films may recognize Miltenberg as one of the locations used for filming the 1958 classic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051200/" target="_blank"><i>The Spessart Inn</i></a> (original title <i>Das Wirtshaus im Spessart</i>).Andrew Bossomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12307250771213675359noreply@blogger.com0