Musings from an overworked translator

Germany in the news – and not in a good way August 12, 2008

Four people were killed in a German ice cream parlor in Russelheim today. That is just sad. It seems as if Germany is catching up with America in senseless killing and random shootings. If you ask me, German ice cream parlors stand for all that is good in the world. There is nothing quite like a German Eisbecher (ice cream sundae), a wonderful concoction of ice cream, fruit, chocolate, and (if you are lucky) alcohol. The German ice cream parlors have taken creative ice cream concoctions to a new level. This is exemplified by a simple Spaghettieis, which looks like a plate of spaghetti in which vanilla ice cream is pressed through a modified spaetzle maker to make it look like spaghetti, placed over whipped cream and topped with strawberry sauce (to simulate tomato sauce) and either coconut flakes, grated almonds, or white chocolate shavings to represent parmesan cheese. Or the After Eight Becher with vanilla and peppermint ice cream topped with whipped cream, mint liquor, and After Eight mints. Nothing beats the fancy ice cream sundaes that combine fruit, alcohol and ice cream. To see how wonderful these creations can be, click here. Yum. Anyway, the shootings southwest of Frankfurt have shocked the country. CNN intimates that it may be related to a shooting blamed on an organized crime syndicate based in the southern Italian region of Calabria. This may not be such a stretch since most ice cream parlors in Germany are seasonal and run by Italians.

And then there is the Rockefeller wannabe calling himself “Clark Rockefeller” who kidnapped his daughter, is a “person of interest” in the disappearance of a California couple, and may be a missing German man who left Germany as a teenager and broke off contact with his family 20 years ago. Authorities are fairly confident that “Rockefeller” may in fact be Christian Gerhartsreiter, who was an exchange student in Connecticut in 1980 under the name Christian Gerhart Reiter when he was 17. I have been following this case closely, because he reminds me of someone in Germany I used to know. Absolutely crazy.

I guess Americans don’t have a lock on weird and disturbing crimes…