The Germany of Today...Kackel Dackel

Topless tobogganing....my vote for the next Olympic sport!

Women were nipping out to compete for a topless tobogganing tournament in Germany.

While the stars of the Winter Olympics busy themselves competing in so-called 'proper sports' (and figure skating), 30 male and female competitors, clad only in underwear, bounced their way down a 100 metre track on sledges to the approval of huge crowds. More than 14,000 spectators turned out to watch the eye-popping event where 30 male and female competitors bounced along a 100 metre track on sledges.

It was very cold and because of that, some of those girls would definitely have had a bit of an advantage in a photo finish.

Why is this not an Olympic sport?....imagine the TV ratings?

The event came after officials in another German town tried to put a stop to Germany's first ever topless tobogganing championships, after the mayor said he was 'offended' by the spectacle.

Red Bull Cola could be banned in Germany...... after traces of cocaine are found in it

Germany is considering a nationwide ban on the high-energy drink Red Bull Cola after traces of cocaine were found in it.
Authorities in the states of Hesse and North-Rhine Westphalia have ordered retailers to stop selling the beverage - which is available in the UK.
The consumer ministries in the two states confirmed they had ordered retailers to pull the drink off their shelves after a food safety institute in North-Rhine Westphalia found the drug in samples.

THE DAILY MAIL

The coolest model railroad in the world!

This is simply unbelievable. The Miniatur Wunderland model railroad in Hamburg, Germany is the largest in the world, covering 16,146 square feet of space with more than 10,000 train cars running around its 6.8 miles of HO scale track.

Its construction started in 2000, and is still underway, with a tiny airport due for completion by the end of this year. This is just the beginning — there are plans to double to layout by 2014. We especially like the Las Vegas portion, complete with dazzling LEDs lighting up the night.

You have to watch the new video above to get the full impact of this remarkable achievement, which has taken in excess of 500,000 working hours to build. There's good reason why this is Germany's most popular attraction, already visited by more than 5 million flabbergasted tourists.

Merkel shows off that middle age figure

This billboard featuring German chancellor Angela Merkel in her underwear is causing a fuss in Berlin's premier shopping district. In and of itself, the image is pretty tame. (Those are other German political figures in the background.) Weirder things have happened in Germany, and it's not like Merkel is unaccustomed to showing off the goods.

It's the ad's message that's off-putting. It promotes an underwear exchange program. In an effort to replicate the success of "cash-for-clunkers" car ads, the campaign offers Germans who trade in their old underpants a €5 discount on a new pair. Which is just gross. "The country needs new undies," is the slogan.

Nazi lingerie sales are always an event!

Interesting little video for jungstil.de, a German women's shopping site. The "women beating the shit out of each other over sale items" You can never get enough of this..

VOTE FOR MAX WANK

Got it from Gene via Garmisch Germany.. Let me guess... he's got a daughter called Minnie.

Max Wank and the Wankers, brilliant name for political party.

Here is a picture of Party headquarters.......

The Germans are on a Tax Blitzkrieg

Looks like they just invaded Lichtenstein!

A German spy agency has paid a secret informant some $7.3 million for a CD containing incriminating data on rich Germans who transferred billions to nearby Lichtenstein to avoid taxes. It's the biggest blow against tax fraud in Germany, and the first that has the country's intelligence agency involved.

Lichtenstein, a landlocked alpine principality with just 35,000 citizens, has made a name for itself as a discreet tax haven. Bordered by Switzerland to its west and by Austria to its east, Lichtenstein is one of the few countries in the world with more registered companies than citizens and has, like Switzerland, laws that protect bank customers from outside governments.

STORY IN WALL STREET JOURNAL

Outlet Shopping in Belgium

Belgium has two outlet centers with another on the way. The discounts aren't huge, but it's a nice little daytrip through some great countryside.

All the participating brands offer their previous collections (often from last season) at prices around 30% less than normal retail price. Anne Fontaine, Barbour, Essentiel, Bellerose, Petit Bateau, Levis, Chine, Donaldson and many others can be found here.

As well as fashion stores you can shop at lingerie, accessories and interior decoration stores. For the end of year festivities, Maasmechelen Village Outlet Shopping will host several events such as a Christmas market given visitors an opportunity to taste Christmas specialties. Prices are even more insane during the sales (70-80% reductions) ?

The first in Flanders is known as Maasmechelen Village, and is the largest outlet shopping attraction in Belgium. Located at the crossroads of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. It is twenty minutes from Maastricht and just one hour from Antwerp, Brussels, Düsseldorf and Cologne.

For the French speaking part of the country, Factory Shopping at Messancy has recently increased in size and doubled the number of stores (Pepe Jeans, Kipling, Le phare de la Baleine, etc). The village of Messancy is situated in the heart of southern Luxembourg province, close to the town of Arlon, in the borer region between Belgium, France and Luxembourg

The Pedestrian Strikes Back

Europe’s pedestrians are revolting. Tired of having to fight their way past badly-parked cars, people all over the continent are coming up with all sorts of innovative protests.
And they range from the simple to the sort that could land you behind bars.
Park in the wrong place in Brussels, for example, and someone will lift your windscreen wipers. It has become a city-wide statement of protest.

Perhaps the most painful protest I saw came here in Brussels. Someone picked on a friend’s gaz-guzzling Hummer and put a note under the windscreen. “Why not just have a penis enlargement, rather than driving this thing around?”

And then, invented in Germany, there is “car vaulting”. Never heard of it? Here is a demonstration in the video above.
THE STORY

Porsche's Kinderbob sled

Porsche's tradition of helping reckless adults kill themselves now extends to children. The kids can never have it too good these days, right?

If you absolutely, positively must have the best possible sled for your angelic little Skippy, you can't do better than the Porsche "Kinderbob" (or as I like to say, pricey sled).

With metal runners, a working horn, and Porsche styling, your child will be the talk of the town, and the focus of the neighborhood bully's hatred all winter long.

You can't pick these up from the US Porsche stores, but if you motor to the German site, you can plunk down an affordable €65 (or about $95) and probably get it in time for the holiday.

Thalys 10 Euro sale to Germany

To celebrate its 10th anniversary in Germany, Thalys is having a special sale on its tickets from Belgium to Aachen and Cologne. Tickets are EUR 10 each way in second class and EUR 29 in first (roundtrip not mandatory). You can buy the tickets online now through next Thursday, November 29 for travel between December 15, 2007 and February 29, 2008.

'Human Flesh Tastes Like Pork'

In his first television interview, German cannibal Armin Meiwes describes the taste of human flesh, provides a decent recipe for steak, explains his fascination with the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel -- and insists that he's a normal person.
Spiegel Online has some excerpts from the interview.

Resistance Fighter De Jongh Is Dead

Countess Andree De Jongh, who set up an escape route that helped hundreds of British airmen flee the Nazi occupation of Belgium during World War II, has died. She was 90.

De Jongh, a female nurse in a men's world of war resistance, helped found the Comet Line escape route while still in her 20s. After her arrest in 1943, she survived German camps before being liberated at the end of the war. READ ON

Brussels busts Bavarian Barmaids

If I told you the bureaucrats that run the EU were going to make Bavarian barmaids who dress in traditional but revealing dirndls like this and this cover up their assets, you’d cry “What a bunch of boobs!”
“Yet surely,” you’d continue, “there must be a good reason why they’d do such a thing, right? To halt the objectification of women, maybe? Um, to make them wear non-gender-specific uniforms?”
No, no, and no. It’s to protect them from the sun! You see, thanks to Paul Belien at The Brussels Journal we’re now aware of the European Union’s Optical Radiation Directive, about to be voted on, in which employers face heavy fines if they fail to protect their employees against the risk of sunburn.
When it dawned on the Bavarians earlier this week that the directive would entail that their dirndl-dressed barmaids cover up their bosoms when serving drinks outside, there were fierce protests against the EU. “This is European law-making at its most pedantic,” said Munich’s lord mayor, Christian Ude. The organisers of the world’s biggest beer festival, the Munich Oktoberfest, called the proposed ban “an attack on the traditions of [their] region.”
Go read the article and see why if you want a picture of the future of life in the EU (the latest iteration of the socialist nanny-state), imagine a pillow smothering a human face – for ever. (Usual apologies to George Orwell.)

Octoberfest in Munich

With the traditional words "O'zapft is!" - "the barrel has been tapped" - the Munich major Christian Ude declared the Oktoberfest 2007 open.

From September 22 to Oktober 10 the world's largest beer festival will attract about six million people who are expected to consume innumerable litres ("Maßkrüge" in Bavarian) of the famous Oktoberfest beer.

In a related item, a German man who had been drinking heavily at Munich's Oktoberfest beer festival got stuck in a chimney for 12 hours while trying to climb into a friend's apartment, police said Friday.

7 year marriage contract?

More innovation from Bavaria. Conservative politician Gabriele Pauli is an authority on marriage: she has been divorced twice. Today she came up with a proposal that will resonate with anyone who has gone through a divorce:

Pauli had earlier raised some eyebrows by posing as a dominatrix for a magazine.
Her idea of the seven-year marriage contract surprised and angered several of her political rivals - including Horst Seehofer, who recently revealed he had a second family in Berlin.
I think she should export the idea to the United States and team up with Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani - a thrice-married Catholic.

No Sex Please...We're Swedish

The Swedes are famed for their sexual tolerance and laissez faire. But that tolerance hasn't been extended to a seemingly innocent competition to find the world's most beautiful bottoms.

A competition launched by German underwear maker Sloggi to uncover the world's most beautiful ass, has been slapped down in Sweden after media protests against the "pornographic" event. "Alas, our goal of finding the most beautiful backsides has been misunderstood by certain sections of the media" in Sweden, the German firm said in a statement Tuesday.

'Taste is a bit like buttocks - divided'.

In Keeping with Beer Week

German beer. Bought most cheaply in crates of 18 to 24 bottles. The only problem is that these crates can be heavy, especially when they're full of beer. (here, full of Kristallweizen):
If you dropped one on a small child, for instance, tragedy could strike -- you could lose several bottles, if not the entire case. Fortunately, you can always count on German ingenuity.
Behold the Paulaner 20-bottle crate When you lift up the golden handles on either side of the top, something charming happens:

NFL pulls the plug on Europe

National Football League officials bet in the early 1990s that the world — or at least North America and Europe — would embrace a brand of football that was of lesser quality than the one the league’s 32 teams play in the United States.

But N.F.L. Europa, born 16 years ago as the World League of American Football, lost money, ran through television partners, narrowed its trans-Atlantic focus largely to Germany and finally was shuttered yesterday. The N.F.L.’s strategy will shift to playing some of its own regular-season games overseas.

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