Advice needed: Anybody ever spent time in a German prison?

[wiegie]

Apparently, I could face as much as a year in jail. Edited May 5, 2008 by wiegie

[Puddy]

Just tell them you are also a porn actor in the states known as Dr. Dickenstein. They should go for that (especially since it sounds German).

 

By the way, I'm in Amsterdam and for the first time in my 6 visits the weather is beautiful.

[Grits and Shins]

Just tell them you are also a porn actor in the states known as Dr. Dickenstein. They should go for that (especially since it sounds German).

 

By the way, I'm in Amsterdam and for the first time in my 6 visits the weather is beautiful.

 

Tell them your name is Hasslehof ... the camera adds 12 inches of heighth.

[wiegie]

Just tell them you are also a porn actor in the states known as Dr. Dickenstein. They should go for that (especially since it sounds German).

 

By the way, I'm in Amsterdam and for the first time in my 6 visits the weather is beautiful.

Dr. Dickenstein... not bad.

 

The weather here in south Germany is the best that it has been since I arrived 8 months ago. Low 70s, not a cloud in the sky, and the Alps visible in the background from my office window. (A far far cry from the completely crappy weather we have had most of the time that I have been here.)

 

 

Tell them your name is Hasselhoff

Believe it or not, David Hasselhoff did actually come up in a conversation I had with some of my comments last week--the Germans were making fun of him for this:

 

Did David Hasselhoff really help end the Cold War?

BBC News Magazine

Friday, 6 February, 2004, 11:38 GMT

 

Baywatch star David Hasselhoff is griping that his role in reuniting East and West Germany has been overlooked. So what part, if any, did the hunk in trunks play in ending the Cold War?

 

Barely a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the city that had been divided by politics for more than 40 years was united in song.

 

And leading the chorus of several hundred thousand voices was a man hitherto known to the rest of the world for driving a talking car.

 

David Hasselhoff, star of the hit 80s TV series Knight Rider, is renowned in celebrity-obsessed circles for being Big In Germany; not only as an actor, but as a purveyor of soft rock anthems.

 

For that seminal concert, on New Year's Eve 1989, Hasselhoff stood atop of the partly-demolished wall and belted out a tune called Looking for Freedom.

 

It was during Hasselhoff's current promotional tour of Germany that the Hollywood star made headlines for a remark about this event.

 

Speaking to Germany's TV Spielfilm magazine, the 51-year-old carped about how his pivotal role in harmonising relations between the two sides of the divide had been overlooked.

 

"I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie," he told the magazine.

 

So what, if anything, was David Hasselhoff's influence in helping settle the Cold War?

 

For those in the UK and US who know him mainly for his TV roles, most notably as leading lifeguard Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon in Baywatch, it's hard to appreciate Hasselhoff's influence on the German cultural scene.

 

Hasselhoff was already a singing star in Austria and Switzerland when, in 1989, he had the wisdom to cover a 1970s German hit, Auf Der Strasse Nach Suden.

 

Renaming it Looking for Freedom, with Hasselhoff singing in English, the song raced up the charts in the late summer, just as a wave of revolt began sweeping through Eastern Europe.

 

By the time Berliners started hacking away at the concrete wall that had divided their city for a generation, the torch-bearing anthem had been number one for several weeks in West Germany.

 

The actor/singer played to hundreds of thousands in Berlin

 

With its lament, "I've been lookin' for freedom; I've been lookin' so long; I've been lookin' for freedom; still the search goes on," the song embodied the frustrations of Germany's years of division.

 

The album of the same name topped the charts for three months and, that December, Hasselhoff was invited to headline a New Year's Eve concert in the recently reunited city. The gig was apparently rubber-stamped by the then German chancellor, Helmut Kohl.

 

The singer himself has powerful memories of the performance. "It was the first time Germany had been unified, and close to a million East and West German fans stood together in the freezing cold at midnight watching me perform. I was overcome with emotion," he recalls.

 

Hasselhoff, who by now was appearing in Baywatch, scooped a clutch of top German music awards and went on to become one of the country's biggest selling artists of the 90s.

 

His popularity even prompted a headline in one German newspaper, "Hasselhoff: not since the Beatles".

 

Forgotten role?

 

So, do German fans think their idol has been overlooked as a history man?

 

John Stuellenberg, who was won over by the Hoffmeister as a 14-year-old schoolboy watching that New Year's Eve concert, believes he deserves recognition at the Checkpoint Charlie museum.

 

"It's a big museum from what I hear, so I can't see why they wouldn't have room for a photo."

 

But according to Sascha Tauber, who runs The Hasselhoff Foundation - David's Munich-based official fanclub - this could be an example of the notoriously humourless Germans getting one over on the rest of us.

 

"Did David Hasselhoff help bring an end to the Cold War? No, I think this is just a joke."

[whomper]

verbiegen Sie unten nicht für die Seife

[Kid Cid]

You just have to cause trouble where ever you go, don't you wiegie?

[Big John]

The weather here in south Germany is the best that it has been since I arrived 8 months ago. Low 70s, not a cloud in the sky, and the Alps visible in the background from my office window. (A far far cry from the completely crappy weather we have had most of the time that I have been here.)

Low 70s Celsius is rather hot.

[cre8tiff]

Low 70s Celsius is rather hot.

:bigjohn: 158 degrees Fahrenheit :bigjohn:

Edited May 5, 2008 by cre8tiff

[wiegie]

Low 70s Celsius is rather hot.

I used fahrenheit since the US is one of the three countries in the world (along with Liberia and Myanmar ) that doesn't use the metric system.

Edited May 5, 2008 by wiegie

[Puddy]

I used fahrenheit since the US is one of the three countries in the world (along with Liberia and Myanmar ) that doesn't use the metric system.

 

Mother nature is obviously a fan of the metric system. I say we switch pronto.

 

Cyclone death toll nears 4,000 in Myanmar, state radio says 16 minutes ago

 

 

 

YANGON, Myanmar - Almost 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for after a devastating cyclone in Myanmar, a state radio station said Monday.

 

 

 

Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, early Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph. The cyclone blew roofs off hospitals and schools and cut electricity in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

 

The government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it Monday to 3,939.

 

The radio station broadcasting from the country's capital, Naypyitaw, said that 2,879 more people are unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area where the storm wreaked the most havoc.

 

The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

 

"It's clear that we're dealing with a very serious situation. The full extent of the impact and needs will require an extensive on-the-ground assessment," said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in Bangkok, Thailand for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

 

"What is clear at this point is that there are several hundred thousands of people in dire need of shelter and clean drinking water," Horsey said.

 

At a meeting with foreign diplomats and representatives of U.N. and international aid agencies, Myanmar's foreign ministry officials said they welcomed international humanitarian assistance and urgently need roofing materials, plastic sheets and temporary tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.

 

Neighboring Thailand announced that it would fly some aid in Tuesday.

 

Older citizens said they had never seen Yangon, a city of some 6.5 million, so devastated in their lifetimes.

 

With the city's already unstable electricity supply virtually nonfunctional, citizens lined up to buy candles, which doubled in price, and water since lack of electricity-driven pumps left most households dry. Some walked to the city's lakes to wash.

 

Hotels and richer families were using private generators but only sparingly, given the soaring price of fuel.

 

Many stayed away from their jobs, either because they could not find transportation or because they had to seek food and shelter for their families.

 

"Without my daily earning, just survival has become a big problem for us," said Tin Hla, who normally repairs umbrellas at a roadside stand.

 

With his home destroyed by the storm, Tin Hla said he has had to place his family of five into one of the monasteries that have offered temporary shelter to those left homeless.

[AtomicCEO]

I used fahrenheit since the US is one of the three countries in the world (along with Liberia and Myanmar ) that doesn't use the metric system.

 

You would seem taller if you started measuring your height in decimeters.

[wiegie]

You would seem taller if you started measuring your height in decimeters.

I will say this, my penis is hugh when measured in centimeters.

[westvirginia]

I will say this, my penis is hugh when measured in centimeters.

 

I think you mean millimetres...

[isleseeya]

Captain weiner schnitzel is a good name for german superhero ....do you have a cape , Wiegie ?

[Big John]

Captain weiner schnitzel is a good name for german superhero ....do you have a cape , Wiegie ?

Do Minnie Mouse ears count?

[Caveman_Nick]

Anybody like movies about gladiators?

[rocknrobn26]

I hope you like sauerkraut and contaminated sausage. Invest in Imodium!

[jaxfactor]

Just make sure when you face the judge that you snap your heels together loudly while proclaiming your love for Dr. Furor.

[SheikYerbuti]

I used fahrenheit since the US is one of the three countries in the world (along with Liberia and Myanmar ) that doesn't use the metric system.

 

My life is better knowing I can go to Myanmar and order a Quarter Pounder with Cheese with confidence.