I used to bake bread, mainly out of desperation of the quality of bread here. We Germans like our bread. It is something Icelandic people might not understand, but this is because their bread sucks. Usually it is just toast, even if it cosplays as bread in the supermarket. The fancy bread you can find is french style, which is ok, if you like eating air. German bread is a meal in itself. Dinner is called "evening bread" Abendbrot. Any other time one has a meal consisting of bread, meat, cheeses etc. it is called "bread time" Brotzeit. The heart of it all is the Butterbrot (butter bread, the concept of a slice of bread with butter and any other cold cuts or spreads.

#mood



To disinfect and to be drunk are the same word in Icelandic, apparently.

When Germans start being accurate, there’s no end to it!

- War and Peace (Tolstoy)

Tolstoy knows what's up. And yes, I'm actually reading War and Peace and am now using an excuse to talk about it. As this quote is from the battle of Austerlitz, he is actually talking about Austrian generals here. It is quite interesting, German is used in the book the way we use "Slavic" today, signifying a group of people with linguistic and cultural similarities. Obviously, in 1805 Germany did not exist yet and while Bavaria had been overrun by Napoleon both Prussia and Saxony had not joined the coalition yet. And I will stop now, before I start talking about similarities between the ideological developments of the characters in War and Peace (and their implied connection to the Decembrist revolt) and the March Revolution in 1848.

None of this has anything to do with the word kleinkariert (adj.). It translates literally as small checkered, but means being knit picky, detailed oriented and petty. It is not as adversarial as Korinthenkacker, but by no means a compliment.
This concludes my series on all the variations of Spießer. The only thing left to do is post a link to a scene of my favourite Asterix movie, a perfect play on the joys of bureaucracy.