I pulled out a t-shirt this morning-and that is how this whole episode began. It was a Berlin t-shirt, and I think you will really like this story-which is absolutely true.
I've upset all the Obama lovers (wake up, you lot, the man is a do-nothing President; let's give someone else a chance to fix the country, instead of swanning around, filled with self-importance, taking credit where credit is most definitely not due-and I don't care if he is green with orange polka dots, he is still a useless prat; I've upset the royalty lovers (wake up, you lot!! I would rather have an NHS that works, than have a bunch of parasites living off the country. We are all far more "royal" than they are; at least, we work for a living, we don't live off the taxpayers. Ask someone who is last on the list for a heart or a kidney which they would rather have: the medical care they need, or a bunch of farts who have never had a real job in their lives!!).
I've upset the French-or have I? Perhaps not-but everyone takes pot shots at the French: remember those "Freedom Fries"? At least the French have their own television system, and their own telephone system-and they won't speak English to foreigners who want to settle in France. Go to France and learn the language!! We should all learn from their example. Well done, Frogs!!
And now it's time to set my cannons on our "traditional" friends; after two world wars, you'd think we would have learned!!! That's right: the Germans-well, one German, anyway. Her nickname of Schatzi the Nazi is so justified!! Read on: it sounds incredible, but is true, and the lesson I learned might benefit-well, everyone!
About four years ago, I attended a weekend conference in Wales. The organizers had to put two people in each room (there weren't enough individual rooms for the 60+ people who attended. I got someone called Maxi Coburg, who came from Berlin. This woman was the most negative and bitter person I'd met in a long while-and when the seminar was over, Maxi drove me to the train station, and we exchanged email addresses. A few months later, she emailed me to say that she was coming to London, and would like to meet for lunch. It actually was a pleasant lunch, and she invited me to come to Berlin for a long weekend.
Lesson 1: if your gut tells you not to do something, listen!! Your gut knows best!!! I didn't listen; I thought that she seemed much nicer than in Wales, and decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Eeeek!!!!
I flew to Berlin, and Maxi met me at the airport. And things went downhill from there. It was hot in Berlin, but Maxi was incredibly vicious, right from the start. She criticized my hair, my clothes, my personality-she was very vocal about hating everything about me. When she started to pry into my marriage, my finances, my jobs-everything about me-I told her to back off. She only got worse.
What was Maxi's job? She claimed to be a "life coach"!! But she couldn't deal with her own life, let alone sort out any one else's life; she was morbidly obese (to the point where she had difficulty walking-but that didn't stop her from eating everything that wasn't nailed down), she said that her daughter and her mother both hated her...all she did was moan and criticize. In fact, she refused to go anywhere, and when she met anyone she knew, she spoke only German and ignored me as if I didn't exist. I rang the airlines to try to get an early flight back to London-but there were no seats available. I was stuck in Berlin.
Perhaps I should call her Maxi the Maniac, because she seemed to be really deranged. Her friend Connie (a policewoman) came to the apartment to meet me-and she was charming, although Maxi spoke to her in German for the entire evening. At one point (I now was calling her Schatzi the Nazi-not to her face, of course), Maxi said that there are concentration camps all over Britain, Canada and America. She said -and poor Connie sat there, trying to follow all this, but didn't seem to be fluent in English (lucky for her), that Americans and Brits (and Canadians, she had to add) are very stupid people. And we all are in a conspiracy to decrease the world's population by perfecting toxic poisons which we test on all the people in the concentration camps. She then went on to say that her father's family had all been members of the Nazy party (Maxi was nearing 70 at the time, so I wasn't surprised), and that there are about 10,000 Jews living in Berlin, and she couldn't understand why they weren't all killed, since they were evil and useless.
I asked her what she thinks of black people (I couldn't resist cutting into her vicious diatribe to ask, of course-forgetting that she was waving a steak knife around), and she said that they were as bad as the Jews, and that the only good one (Jew or black) was a dead one.
That was it for me. I didn't speak to her for the rest of the weekend (five days of absolute Hell), and on Monday morning, I was so thrilled to get to the airport and get out of Berlin, I could have exploded. Plus, I was still in one piece, thanks very much. I thanked her for an "interesting" weekend, and when I reached Stansted Airport, I wept with relief. What the hell-the woman is nuts. Not just negative and vicious: nuts. She even said (and seriously, too) that everyone would have to move out of Berlin very soon, because the British and Americans were going to use their new biological weapons to kill everyone who lived there.
And that was my weekend from Hell in Berlin. I would like to return to see it properly, since I only was able to take a bus tour of the city. There are parks, and lakes, and loads of museums, and I'm sure that the people who live there aren't all like Maxi Coburg (at least, I hope not!!).
Lesson 2: no more sharing rooms with strangers (and Maxi was about as strange as one could get); if I go to any seminars in the future, I have my own room-or I don't go.
Lesson 3: I will be travelling as soon as I am able to do so-but unless I'm visiting a very good friend, I'm staying in a hotel. And I'm locking the door!!!
Lesson 4: if you ever find yourself in Berlin, avoid Maxi Coburg like a bad case of food poisoning. Watch out for a very fat, short, elderly woman with a face like she has been sucking lemons all her life. And if you happen to meet her: run!!
And all those memories from a simple t-shirt, too!!
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