Friday, October 03, 2014

Your UPDATED! Guide to German Unity Day

Today, October 3rd, is German Unity Day. How do you celebrate? SHOULD you even celebrate? Here's your OFFICIAL JTinGermany guide to the holiday -- eight years in the making. If you want a throwback view of the day, check out my 2011 or 2009 guides*.

Do you live in Germany? If so, enjoy the best kind of holiday -- commemorating a (mostly) happy event, but without any annoying requirements. Enjoy coffee on your balcony**, write a snarky blog post***, go for a bike ride****, hit on an Ossi or just wear socks with your sandals. Go wild! But if you live near Munich, you damn well better hurry if you want to get a spot in a tent today!


Do you live in Texas? Continue your Ebola panic! 
Do you live in the rest of the USA? Either ignore/be ignorant of the day (the popular option), bitch about how Germans already get too many holidays & vacation days (if you know me or other Americans living in Germany), or make a joke about how 24 years of unified peace means it's almost time for Germany to start a war the USA will win***** (everyone else).

Do you live in the UK? If anyone mentions Germany Unity Day, reply with "Do they also get VE Day as a holiday? Oh, right, they don't." This should get at least a smile from even your most uptight of colleagues (i.e., your most English of colleagues).

Do you live in Russia? Mark your calendar for the looming new German holiday, "Russian Unity Day" coming in just a few years!******

Do you live in Austria? Have a schnitzel!

Do you live in France? You're probably unemployed or joining ISIS (too soon?), so enjoy your day off. If you're one of the "working" French, sit back with a Ricard and some Gauloises and reflect on how the rest of the world doesn't understand the laughable tragic opera that is life.

Do you live in Poland? Go sign up for a baking class and ignore the sound of tanks coming from the west.


Do you live anywhere else? I got nothin'*******.

Yes, I do make a bunch of the same jokes. Let's see you blog intermittently for 8 years with only new material.
** Done. 
*** Doing now.
**** Will be done after this. 
***** While ignoring the fact that the USA starts armed conflicts with alarming regularity. Unless you're talking to a German, and then you should preempt their pretentious statement of same by making a joke about it. That really chaps their hides.
****** And if you support the illegal invasions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, fuck right off. And when you get finished? Fuck off again, you jackass.
******* Which could probably have been the answer for the other questions, too. 

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