On a roll

Several months (years?) ago I wrote something about how if you're new to a place then it seems there's a lot to say because you really notice the differences. When you first arrive in Bavaria you notice that nothing is open on Sundays, that people drink beer pretty much everywhere, and that every second car is a BMW (probably other stuff but since I've been here so long I don't notice it and I also forget it). But as you stay in a place for a long time, you lose your original bearings and the "weird" stuff becomes normal and all of a sudden you're all out of those catchy "how the French properly strike" or whatever it is. But, in the thick of the ten year celebration in which we find ourselves, something actually stood out to me today that had momentarily been pushed to the sidelines (side note: there's actually an evolutionary explanation for this and it's an important part of how the brain works related to purposely ignoring anything that has become normal as part of an initial filtering process that without the brain would become overwhelmed and not be able to focus on anything) but it really is rather strange. And that is the issue of Germans just loving to swear and to do so in English all the while assuming (or probably not even thinking about it at all) that it's the equivalent of saying "Scheiße" (which of course translates directly as "shit" but I would translate taking severity or shockingness into account as more like "oh darn"). Everywhere you go, in informal as well as formal (or, like, business) contexts, people are swearing up and down in English. Now, there are quite "bad" or offensive words in German that you would definitely not hear in the workplace (if "workplace" were a common thing now, that is) and you would most definitely not see or hear them in advertising. But somehow, English curse words are just all the rage and totally somehow acceptable everywhere in German society. It's especially weird in light of the fact that of all the big EU countries like Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, Germany by far has the most fluent English speakers and it's very common for Germans to speak quite good English. It's not like in China where they just write random English words on clothes because it looks cool; for the most part it seems people know that these are bad words. But who knows.

So there are some classic examples such as Unilever Germany (heard of them?)'s 2012 ad campaign: "Fuck the Diet". It was huge and it was everywhere. The ad campaign on regular television and on billboards was really Fuck the Diet.

Another humorous example comes from the BVG, the public utility which runs the transportation system in Berlin. This is a "normal", well-respected company or commission or whatever it is and is basically synonymous with the TTC in Toronto. And I have to give it to the BVG because this is pretty hilarious. Now some of you older folks may not have the requisite background so I will fill you in. Back in the good old days of the 90's, there was a very influential rap group called the Wu-Tang Clan. And their best known song went: "Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin' to fuck with" basically over and over again. It was pretty rad for a teenager. Anyways, the other context that you will require to really get the full humour of the whole thing is that in German the subway is called the U-Bahn. And here is their rad ad from 2016:

Good old U-Bahn-Clan ain't nothing to fuck with. That is some golden advertising right there. But now we come to the latest event that reminded me of this rather hilarious cultural idiosyncrasy of the German people. I've noticed some new billboard ads popping up all around town lately advertising what is, I presume, a new gym. Ok, I looked it up: it's a fitness studio with a few locations around Munich (and several more throughout Germany) and it's called "FitX Fitness Studios". Fair enough. The ad campaign has a tagline "Do you feel X?" and it's got your standard hardcore fitness stuff like "What limits?", etc. And then there's this golden example, of which there are at least a handful of ~10 ft. tall exemplars around our neighbourhood:

 Funny stuff!