The Blog About Fog

Dedicated to George Carlin, wherever he might be. (It should be here though. If the world ever needed a “time for George” , this is it …)

A quick disclaimer: if you’ve landed here because you’re looking for a site with substance or real-world relevance (or even one about real fog), this is most definitely not it. It’s about my hair-raising adventures with (German) admin. Mostly. It might expand in the future to include non-admin things that are analogously absurd to some of those stories. We’ll see.

I know, I know …

Cheap shots at an easy target. But sometimes after you’re done pulling your (raised) hair out, it just helps to vent a little. Some might call it therapy. Or simply a good laugh for others.

Or maybe a little bit of both.

To be very fair about it, the vast majority of all admin types that I’ve ever had to deal with (German or otherwise) have generally been friendly and helpful despite doing a job that gives me nightmares. Extremely boring nightmares, but nightmares all the same. But even a Bell curve has its outliers and writing about all those positive experiences wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting. Or fun. Instead, these pages simply recount some of the isolated absurdities and, more often, blatant bureaucratic brain farts that I’ve encountered from (German) administration over the years. All with my usual dose of heavy sarcasm (which, for the lawyers out there, means satire), skewed perspective with cherry-picked facts, and repeated, if sometimes endless, digressions. I do tend to pick on German admin (and Germany) quite a bit, but then you do write about what you know. Germany is also a hyper-regulated nation. They have laws that soldiers in water deeper than 1.2 m can start swimming on their own and don’t have to salute their superiors anymore, that death constitutes the end of a business trip for civil servants, or, most recently, about how often you should walk your dog. All this explains why things work here so well, but, at the same time, also provides a lot of material for this blog. I’m pretty sure that much of this stuff is universal, if not a universal law of some kind, and am by no means intending to imply that German bureaucracy is the worst of the bunch. In fact, most Europeans that I talk to complain how bad the bureaucracy in their country is, in a kind of unofficial, paper-pushing version of Eurovision. But, all that being said, Germans still do like to excel at whatever they do …

Even though all this is meant playfully and I’m never naming any names, you might be wondering why I’m still writing all this anonymously. And then in English too. Two reasons actually.

First, I figure that a bit of mystery might increase my sales. (And WordPress does remind me unceasingly about how easy it is to make money off this blog. Um, right …) Second, and more truthfully, even though all the events I relate are true, Germans are not widely renowned for their sense of humour, the surprisingly long Wikipedia page on German humour and Germany being crowned the funniest nation in Europe back in 2001 notwithstanding. The same is true for admin types, minus the Wikipedia page. And chances are at least even that that’s also the case for the combination. And pissing off admin anywhere at any time is never a good idea: they make the rules that can make your working (or any other) life a living hell. To obviate more potential outrage (or to simply stoke more of it), I’ll add that German admin types also tend to be hideously unilingual. And that language ain’t English. (Or even German for that matter.)

For the purposes of partial disclosure, however, I will point out that I am a Canadian masquerading as a university professor somewhere in northern Germany (but definitely not Bielefeld, which, as everyone who lives there knows, doesn’t exist). If someone wants to write about the absurdities of that (the ex-pat Canadian in Germany, not Bielefeld not existing), feel free. I won’t sue. I’d probably laugh along. After living north of the United States for so long, Canadians have a great sense of self-depreciating humour.

Despite finishing dead last in the same 2001 survey. QED.

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