Germany

With an ambition to dispel and/or exploit stereotypes the world over, today’s instalment of DDW’s Complete Generalisations About Other Cultures fattens its sarcastic sausage in honour of the forest nation of Deutschland. After half a century of providing the world with an endless supply of Hollywood cannon-fodder, the 2006 World Cup in Germany saw the Jerries waving their flag with pride once again, showing the world they are still the prudish know-it-alls we all love.

Contemporary Germans are generally modest and polite, albeit straight-forward compared to the English manners Australians have (somewhat) inherited. Efficiency is one quality all Krauts like to boast and after looking at the cars, the trains, the autobahn, the recycling, the education and the economy it seems to add up. However, after witnessing twelve Germans look at a map for 40min only to open it up again at the next intersection, the validity of this efficiency comes into question.

Up until Napoleon force fed escargot to Europe, the Holy Roman Empire was a chessboard of independent principalities for the better part of a thousand years. In practical terms, it would be easier to name the thirteen hundred German breweries than to discuss German history. Simply speaking, German kings and princes fought each other over religion, land and sauerkraut until the Prussian Movember Champion, Otto von Bismarck, united the Germany in 1871. Now, the closest thing you’ll find to a German monarch is Queen Elizabeth II*.

Movember 19th Century Style: 'The Teutonic'

If factories and well maintained roads are not your thing, German food should be enough to get your knees slapping. Start the day with a leisurely two-hour breakfast including processed meats, four kinds of butter and bread heavy enough to build a house with. Mix things up a bit for lunch with bratwurst, mustard and bread heavy enough to build a house with. Come dinner time, remember that nothing washes down a light and healthy 850g slab of pork like a litre of Bavarian wheat beer.

Beer is one of the most important facets of German nationhood. The Reinheitsgebot, or beer purity law, was enforced until its repeal in 1988 which prescribed barley, hops and water as the only three ingredients allowed in German brew. Such simplicity pales in comparison to the other German cultural icon – extremely long compound words. While ‘Preliminary World Cup Qualifying Match’ is a single word, the hands-down winner is the 1999 Wörter des Jahres which is (deep breath):

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz**

Considering that most Germans speak better English than the average Australian, it is worth seeing more than just Oktoberfest. Whether you’re being chased out of town for asking for the Dusseldorf variety of beer in Cologne or trying to pretend a bunch of frigid Berliners getting naked in the lake doesn’t make you uncomfortable, Germany is the place for you. Although if you think trying a Basil Fawlty impression through the streets of Berlin is really original – chances are you will be severely reprimanded by the Techno Viking.

* Her grandfather, George V, changed the family name to Windsor in 1917 after he and his German cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had an argument on a ski holiday.

** Although only a legal term, this word does exist and can be translated as the “beef labelling regulation and delegation of supervision law”.

Bicycles

As the ever-waging war on our roads rolls on, your humble cycling author thought it appropriate to untangle the chain of ignorance about bikes. Before unleashing a predictable rant upon the velocipedally challenged, let me state for the record that I enjoy riding on busy footpaths, running red lights, cutting across three-lane roads and riding down stairs. That said, I do wear a helmet, equip my bike with lights and need not don a pink fluorescent vest due to the protective chip on my shoulder.

Being Australian, it is difficult to imagine a city in which walkers, riders and drivers all get along. We are a nation of people married to our cars, with long distances to travel and few public transport options to take on as a mistress. While cycling itself is an uphill battle in Sydney, bike-riders have more than topological difficulties grinding their gears. Although Sydney will never be Amsterdam, drivers would benefit from a Dutch bike education – or could at least roll a doob and calm the fuck down behind the wheel.

One can appreciate the irony that the petrol-heads of today would have been the pedal-heads of the late nineteenth century. With early models earning names like the ‘bone-shaker’ due to their iron-banded wheels and cast iron frames, cycling was an activity for blokes with a death wish*. Come the penny-farthing in the 1870s, bike-riding was hardcore. The uneven roads and great speeds resulted in most young men “taking a header” and breaking both wrists in the process.

Thanks a lot Clover Moore.

The varieties of velocipede are as varied and perplexing as the types of idiots that ride them. There is the Arts student BMX rider clinging to his skate-bowl youth while pretending he owns a legitimate mode of transport. There is the middle aged man with freshly shaven legs as repugnant as his lycra bodysuit trying to peddle his way through mid-life crisis on a brand new $12,000 racer. Then of course, you have the wannabe Parkour mountain bike riders who treat the city as their private playground, making enemies of motorists and pedestrians alike. *AHEM*

On the positive side, things are slowly improving for cyclists, much to the distaste of respected and even-handed radio hosts. If Sydney were to have extended cycleways it is doubtful they would be much better than our roads, but after riding to work over the past six months it is noticeable that cycling is growing. Apart from the sporadic Mercedes badging resulting from bike-rage and a general fear for your life during peak hour, cycling gives you a decent dose of liberty in the gridlocked city.

At the risk of alienating readers and being a target on the road, please give bikes a chance. If we take up your lane, consider if that seven seconds of your day is worth running us off the road. If we ring our bell on the footpath, it does not mean “Get out of the way!” it means “I’m a happy Dutchman that will not hit you even though you have your headphones in and have no idea about your surroundings.” Can we try to get along? Bike riders will not hurt you – they might even give you a tulip.

* Although the bicycle was also nicknamed the ‘dandy horse’ as only reckless, foppish twits could afford them.

Apple

Fuck Apple.

Rather than leave it there and create the first two word article in history, prudence and clarification demand that such a material-rich topic be described with more than a lazy, multi-purpose obscenity*. Not even war, religion, politics or abortion create a bigger divide amongst the technological populace than which side of this proverbial orchard that you chose to dedicate your every waking keystroke to.

As an almost experienced and somewhat literate PC user/computer gamer, I grew up with a cassette-powered Commodore 64, through the dir/w days of MS-DOS to the happy day I installed Windows 3.1 in 1992. Combined with a CD-Rom and a Wingman Extreme joystick, that was a hard combination to top. Sadly, each new version of Windows brings a “simplified” approach, hampering the usability of a flawed but effective product. The reason? The rotten fruit from the tree of excrement we now call Apple.


“Why fight the strudel of our society Dan?” I hear you say, “I love Apple products because they are so easy to use and do everything I need them to do!” Absolute balls. The attitude of the average Apple user says it all – that understanding a machine is secondary to ease of use and the ego hand job of owning the latest device**. A PC is a tool of freedom – you can open it up, tinker with it and change the components to suite your lifestyle. Apple, on the other hand, is a philosophy – it opens you up, tinkers with you and changes your lifestyle to suit its usage.

Error 404: Common Sense not Found

Not convinced? Try taking a broken iPod to your local Apple store. My iPod was clever enough to display a sad face when switched on, so I knew it needed fixing. Some research indicated that either the battery was dead or the hard disk corrupted. The friendly girl at the counter agreed with this diagnosis and I asked if it could be fixed. No, because I need to make an appointment with the ‘Genius Bar’ who will sit with me one on one so we can “identify out the problem and find a solution”. 

Naturally, there were no such appointments available for several days and I was not permitted to leave my broken device to be repaired without a diagnosis session for a problem that has been already diagnosed. This secrecy and smothering personal service is the backbone of the whole Apple experience – like an illiterate peasant relying on bible interpretation of the medieval church. Control the device – control the customer. Although it seems ill-fitting to compare Apple to religion, they seem very concerned with dictating our lives – their attitude to smoking is a good example.

A brand gone mad, Apple has taken on Woolworths for having a "similar" looking logo, forced Ellen DeGeneres to apologise for even criticising the iPhone and burnt any heretic who shows an understanding of their technology (or should that be gospel?). Combine that with voiding warranties for even taking apart an Apple device, you have a captive market that would rather smile and synchronise than think for themselves. Keep your usability – give me the blue screen of death any day.

* A subject that will be tackled at a later effing date.

** Although, I pretty sure they’re good for designing and stuff.

Disclaimer: To the Thought Police at Apple - this is not an attempt to undermine your products, merely your intention to dominate the world.

Queensland

To all loyal followers of DDW, please accept my apologies for the break in transmission over the past week. During that time, I delved into the chasm of skin cancer that is our sunny northern neighbour of Queensland. A wondrous combination of natural splendour and unnatural breeding, this Australian state is home to the Big Pineapple, the Brisbane Broncos and almost as many bad tattoos as there are creatures that want to sting, bite or eat you.

For the Sydney urbanite, it is easy to understand why those in the Sunshine State live where they do. The fine sands and warm water are most addictive, while the birds, marine life and mammals of Fraser Island are almost as impressive as HD David Attenborough on a 42” plasma. After encountering the locals of small seaside towns, the stress of the city seems far behind, along with the need for computers, fuel-efficient vehicles, correct spelling or tasteful hats.

Once a rotten-egg basket for escaping convicts, the penal colony at Moreton Bay has developed into Australia’s third biggest metropolis. Brisbane is unique amongst Australian capital cities, managing to ignore the 7000km of sandy coastline in its home state, preferring to colonise a sweltering swamp 23km from the beach. By 1859, Queensland separated from New South Wales, formed its own colony and thankfully took their beer with them back to Brisbane.

If it don't fit on me ute, it ain't worth floggin'

If there is one thing Queensland has, it is space. So much, in fact, that once you reach the suburbs of the Gold Coast you will scarcely see huge multi-storey shopping centres or car-parks blemishing the rich environment. Instead, countless identical single-level shopping centres, each with their own 12 hectare car-park protect as much of the environment as possible with pure asphalt. Three generations of women walk hand-in-hand from the hairdresser, with as few stylistic differences as there are years between them.

The Gold Coast is unique among stereotyping – nowhere else on earth is typecasting so accurate. The processed tourism of Surfers Paradise is the finest example, with enough plastic boobs to raise the Titanic, enough bronzed retirees to support Australia’s leather industry and enough frustrated families arguing to turn anyone off holidays ever again. Although Queensland Police are short of manpower when faced with drunken violence after dark, one can always crawl across the New South Wales border to Tweed Heads to find a station open past afternoon tea.

Despite the minor rift, cultural difference in Australia really is little more than imagination based on a few varying factors. All states have their merits,* but when it comes to theme parks, sunshine and Steve Irwin, Queensland pips us at the post. The beer might be weak, the drivers insanely impatient and the insects plentiful enough to inflict thirty-seven sand fly bites in less than ten minutes, yet Queensland opens her heart to tolerance, compassion, multiculturalism and sexual freedom.

* Except that Melbourne is full of self-righteous toffs, Adelaide is full of stoners and I have not been to Perth yet.

Porn

If there ever was a cost-effective, mass-market literary and film genre with a limitless talent pool, it is pornography. An industry that breaks down the chauvinistic employment inequality, porn does for women what the industrial revolution did for child labour. With the potential to express oneself in creative and experimental ways, thousands of would-be smut artists are bending over backwards to lend a hand to an ever exploding market, often in the face of stiff competition.

Depicting nudity or sexual acts is nothing new. One look at a Greek and Roman art is enough to confirm they were a wang-out bunch who could handle some marble skin and layers of sultry drapery. The Greeks celebrated gods and goddesses involved directly with sex who were both raunchy and promiscuous. As for the Romans, who could be bothered engaging in demeaning acts with naked statues after a long day at the gladiators with a belly full of olives and wine?

Actually, that may not be completely accurate. Although most Romans did not participate in rampant grape-feeding orgies, they were definitely not prudes. The reality is that sex was not shameful or secretly consumed in front of the computer until Victorian England became utterly petrified about boobs. The word pornography was not even invented until a treasure trove of statues depicting multiple naughty position positions was discovered in – you guessed it – Pompeii.

The Victorian establishment decided to house-up these saucy artworks in an Italian museum, allowing only senior (male) academics access to them. Prudish restrictions of social interaction in order to rub out the unwholesome elements of the working classes, combined with the anonymity of city living lead to, ironically, an epidemic of prostitution in London. The argument that “neo-classical” art in the 1850s was indeed soft porn starts to sound less like feminist tripe when viewed in that perspective*.

Show me those earlobes you nasty slut.

Let us be plain. Porn is objectification to the extreme, rarely portraying pleasure or reality. That bulging forearm muscles indicate the onset of male pubescence is no surprise, yet pornographic images are not a good educational tool to combat youthful inexperience. When, by some act of Venus, a young man finds himself lucky enough to be in such a position, his first attempts at seduction will most likely be met with laughter after fidgeting with the feminine regions as if they were a Playstation controller.

Is there a horrid twist to this superficial obsession? Sex seems so bottled up that we have processed it into ultra-hardcore, three minute chunks like a bad chicken nugget. Has the male sexual association with photo-shopped Barbie dolls lead to labiaplasty and boob jobs? Or does the superficial image of women in the media reflect a horrid failure of female rebirth from the stereotypes of old? One thing is clear, the less sex is openly discussed and celebrated, the more it becomes deviance and smut in the infantile imaginations of the repressed.

* She was indeed the antithesis of all things graceful about women.

Camping

Getting in tune with nature and embracing the bush is a rite of passage for any Australian and the only conceivable explanation for the success of Stagg Chilli. Pitching a tent, pumping up the air mattress and claiming the last folding chair are the only three chores between urban slavery and ultimate freedom. Just like KFC, camping is long craved for beforehand, is both appetising and enjoyable throughout, and leaves you feeling dirty and bloated in the end.

For heathens who deny the Book of Scrub and choose not to sip goon from the Divine Dinky-Drinky, a lifetime of spiritual barrenness awaits you. One cannot appreciate all the layers of life without experiencing the mystical whistle of a leaking gas cylinder, the delicate crunch of dirty toast, the olfactory offerings of morning mildew, the sensual touch of an exposed tent-peg or the sudden darkness of the impending storm clouds that you complained about adamantly earlier.

The real reason people camp is to leave the technology-driven maelstrom of life behind by acquiring as many outdoor/foldable/disposable/storable/wearable versions of everyday comforts as possible. From the Mongols cooking on the backs of their shields in-between killing sprees across Europe to Bear Grylls inventing the Camel Gut Four Man, mankind has sought ways to improve camping to the point where even the fussiest people can enjoy a mobile shower or biodegradable tampon.

The rewards of camping come from the bare essentials.

Everything has such an exciting edge when it comes to camping. Instead of putting the kettle on, you get to risk scalding trying to balance a boiling billy with a wet stick. Instead of washing up, you can create wonderful new dishes with the remnants of previous meals. Instead of using the loo, you explore nature from an angle never seen before. Instead of toilet paper, you embrace pleasure unimaginable from a slice of multigrain or a kamikaze hiking sock.

Field biologists have recently identified a phenomenon known as ‘Absolute Wasted’ – the point in which a camper has reached the maximum concentration of dirtiness, drunkenness and urine-saturation. Symptoms include half-full beers starting to taste like old cigarettes and chairs, which were once upright, lying flat without the occupant changing position. The moment at which Absolute Wasted is reached is often reflected in the UDI count come sunrise*.

All things considered, camping is an activity that goes beyond responsible consumption and reckless self-restraint. It echoes the way in which all Australians have a connection to the land equipped with water and pit-dunnies and wildlife that does not result in helicopter evacuation. So let eucalyptus run through our veins like a goanna through an esky and forever let our identity be propped up with the rusty tent poles of our sunburnt natural splendour.

*More commonly known as Unidentified Drinking Injuries

Buses

With Sydney’s transport infrastructure clogged like the arteries of a Texan hotdog eating champion, few options remain to relieve the high cholesterol of our roads other than taking the bus. Having never lived near a train station and now without a car, bus travel is my preferred method of getting to work after cycling (a story for another day). In fact, I have travelled to work on buses for the better part of eight years.

The first buses were around in mid-17th Century France when, strangely enough, they were reserved for the well-to-do. While not a new thing, buses certainly have a large place in modern history. Take, for example, Rosa Parks politely telling an Alabama bus driver to get stuffed in 1955 after being told to vacate her seat for a white passenger, all the way to Harry Potter hailing the Knight Bus after telling the Dursleys to shove it during his pre-apparative days.

Buses are natural selection at work, with various species all vying for methods to secure the next generation or, more specifically, a vomit free seat*. The crafty, the determined and the strong find their seat in history while the weak, the feeble and the stagnant all remain standing. Longer bus trips require higher levels of commitment – when fifty people queue up for a 45min bus route from Sydney’s trainless north-west into the city, you need to be at the top of your game.

Future plans for rail-bus integration.

Anyone reliant on public transport conforms, consciously or not, to an unspoken code of behaviour which, during my time on buses, I have observed closely in the hope of educating the travelling masses. The general rule is to avoid human contact whatsoever and make sure nobody can sit next to you, a remarkable challenge considering the close proximity of passengers on busy mornings. The proliferation and use of audio devices in recent years has aided passengers in sending a clear message that social interaction will not be tolerated.

Occasionally events transpire that manage to penetrate the audio force field such as someone asking for directions who then force their way into weather-related conversation before headphones can be reinserted. Conversely, for those who escape into books, there is often a nearby Emo with his bottom lip pinned to his left nostril compelling you to imbed an emergency glass-smashing hammer through the fringeless section of his skull with every plagiarising pulse of his Wolfmother-blaring, Twilight-stickered headphones.

Everybody gets on really well on the bus when they can ignore each other in peace. Even if accidental conversation is initiated with a person regularly at the same bus stop each morning, rest assured that neither party wants to continue this charade and will sit as far apart from one another as possible upon arrival of the bus. Like men at a urinal, passengers are drawn towards empty space the moment seats are vacated and they expect you to do the same. Here are a few final tips to secure a comfortable ride on any bus system:

1. Feign an injury – Do not underestimate the power of a slight limp on a busy bus. Hobble past the driver and see how quickly seats are offered to you.

2. Reverse psychology – If an elderly person or pregnant woman complains about not being offered a seat, simply say: “Make the assumption that you cannot support your own weight? I would never be so rude.”

3. Try not to shower – Body odour is a sure fire way to secure a seat on a crowded bus and is has excellent anti-conversational effects.

4. Role-reversal – As many seasoned bus-travellers are well aware of these techniques, continually forcing people to remove their headphones out with idiotic questions boils their blood in minutes.

5. Leg spreads and sleeping – Encroaching on someone’s personal space with a leg spread is useful for the longshanked. Sleeping on someone’s shoulder is an exceptional method to get rid of a seat-sharer.

Happy travels!


* If you can handle your own vomit – a tactical spew should not be ruled out as a seat-securing measure.