Stopped clocks

There are a lot of stopped clocks in (former East) Berlin. It’s really noticeable - especially if, like me, your watch is either hardly on your wrist in winter (on account of the metal strap getting cold in the cold) or in summer (on account of your wrist getting sweaty under the metal strap in the heat) and when it is there, you can’t remember how many minutes fast it may or may not be, so you don’t know if you are running really late or just a bit late.
So, in general, I cannot rely on what is or is not strapped to my wrist, and thus I make use of public clocks and am forever grateful to city councils for putting them up. I have often wondered why they bother, but am glad that they do.

However, when the clock near Schönhauser Allee U-Bahn station is forever set to 13h40, it sends me into momentary confusion and an odd time warp. There is another clock near Alexander Platz that got stuck at 9h45 (or 21h45?) one fine day and on the tram ride from Rosenthaler Platz to Pankow, one passes three stopped clocks. What does it all mean? Why do the hands of time stand still on intersections in (former East) Berlin, when just a short time and great effort have successfully erased most obvious traces of the 40-year separation between East and West Berlin?

There is a public clock at the intersection of the street I live on in Paris. It runs almost five minutes fast....what do you think THAT means?

Doppelgaenger

Today I saw Princess Diana on the bus.

She was riding backwards, wearing that People's Princess nose, blonde haircut and that unmistakable profile. She also had the customary Princess Di dark sunglasses, Princess Di beige capri pants, Princess Di black blazer, Princess Di black moccassins (didn't Di always wear beige and black and moccassins??) and... she was casually looking out the window and chewing gum - insolently (as far as I could tell). She noticed me looking and looked back at me from behind her designer glasses. Then out the window again, chewing insolently. Back at me, back out the window..chew, chew... I was spellbound.

We got off the bus at the same stop and headed for the U-Bahn station... me following at a discreet distance... and then she Broke The Spell. She stopped at a hot-dog stand to get a Wiener!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S SO OVER!!!!!! The gum I was willing to go along with - I mean, Diana was a funky royal who could shoot the breeze and chew the sugar-free... but a Wiener Wurstl? Even the Louis Vitton bag and the chunky, expensive watch couldn't make up for it. Sorry lady - nice try, but no cigar.

Diana DOESN'T do hot-dogs!

thanx god...you what?

Ahhhh...the joys of bearing witness to germanic youth and their obsession with a language they master with great difficulty. Why is it that English is rated as being so cool in German-speaking culture? People who do not speak English, randomly lob English words into their speech like handgrenades. Lethally unintelligible for native English speakers, due to being both unexpected and mangled by an attractive(NOT!)accent.

Didn't I look like an eedjit the time the sound 'patch' made it's way into a perfectly normal German sentence and I had to ask 3 times what that was, while my language-lobe did backflips, trying to find the meaning of 'patch' as a German word. Fortunately, a fellow English-speaker was on hand to ungarble that sound as the English word 'BADGE'. Well, who knew?

Or that time a friend offered to make me some 'hammen tex' . She does not speak a word of English so again I was at a loss to link this sound to a German word I recognised. Eventually, completely exasperated by my lack of comprehension she yelled out: 'I thought English was your mother tongue?!' Oh, you were speaking ENGLISH?? In that case, I would love some Ham And Eggs, thank you.

My favorite, for now, was a black tank top I saw on a punky-looking nose-, eyebrow- and earring infested bloke on the Vienna U-bahn . Proudly displayed across his chest in bold, silver lettering were the words: THANX GOD I'M A VIP!

[PS German speakers pronounce it vvhipp, one word. Kuhl, huh?]