Andrew Mossar

Armut Interessantes Projekt, falscher Autor. It is outrageous by the attitude with which he does this. Altmann portrays himself as a tramp freed from all civil constraints, to whom the fat philistines have to give something. When Altmann equates himself with a "real" homeless person, it becomes blatantly: One begs because he desperately needs it. And one begs because he is paid for it. From his publisher. We are both starving. The hunger of one as well as the hunger of the other, it does not matter how it came to the biting feeling...

Deutsche Bahn An amusing history lesson. I travel a lot to train stations, but never have I heard someone ask, "On which track does the Joseph Haydn train leave?" Trains are sufficiently identifiable by (estimated) departures and (hoped) arrival times and end or intermediate stops and therefore, unlike cats or dogs, they do not need names. Nevertheless, the Deutsche Bahn decided to "baptize" the ICEs, whereby of course - very creative in this lutherübersättigten year - the anti-Semitic fundamentalist came first and on the train...

Literature Haruki Murakami and Andrzej Stasiuk in direct comparison Reading books by writers on how to become a writer instead of writing yourself is a metastatic procrastination. To make the distraction of your own creative work even more distracting, I have two authors in the ring rise and compete against each other: the bestselling author Haruki Murakami with his By profession writer and the "attempt of an intellectual autobiography" by the Polish author Andrzej Stasiuk, How I became a writer...

GDR British visitors saw the two German states Earlier, before Erasmus, that was complicated with the academic stay abroad: visa, health insurance, change money. In addition, there was no internet, so you could not find a flat from afar. So the first week you slept in the hotel and daily phoned the classifieds of the local newspaper. If one wanted to go to Germany as a foreign student, an additional difficulty was added: One had to decide in which of the two Germanys one wanted to study. If the...

Churchill A boring, cheesy movie. Juhu, a film about Churchill, about the Second World War! A film in which even the history student can leave his desk without a guilty conscience and make his way to the cinema. But there immediately the first disappointment: Even in a movie about Churchill you are not allowed to smoke cigars in the cinema. To mitigate the second disappointment from the outset: The darkest hour is not a comprehensive Churchill movie, not even a comprehensive Churchill-in-World War II movie...

Language An eulogy to the day of the pack The one held only four days ago or, as far as I can tell, at least scheduled, but largely inactive and energetically celebrated, or if, then by the majority of the population only ignorant, out of habit and lack of alternatives or, equal to the ace in the sleeve of a player who is never or no longer invited to play cards, due to the lack of opportunity to use the existing Alternative Mother's Day, I can not remember having celebrated particularly, perhaps...

Literature The eulogies on this novel are incomprehensible. "Justice Palace" by Petra Morsbach is sold as a legal novel, which was the only one that aroused my interest. For this he was highly praised and given prizes, which again and again emphasized the tedious, over nine years of research work by the author, with which she allegedly draws a fitting picture of justice. But over long stretches, "Justizpalast" seemed more like a women's novel: So he came out of the canteen while she was on her way there...

Books To prepare for or as an alternative to hiking. There are books about hiking through Germany like hiking trails in this hiking-friendly country: one at each corner, and yet new ones are opened every month. But I have looked at three of these recently published books for you. The ZEIT journalist Henning Sußebach has made it in Germany from the way to the task of hiking away from the cities and even off the roads from north to south. What begins as an ecologically motivated trip in search of...

Philosophy Suicide does not have to be bad. September 10 was the "World Suicide Prevention Day". Well, at least once a day, from which you can be sure that he was not invented by the greeting card industry. Still, the question I asked myself the first time I heard about that day was: suicide prevention day? Why? Or, perhaps more appropriate to the topic, why the hangman? Why should one prevent suicides? I will not demand that there be a "World Day of Suicide" or that suicide should be actively encouraged and encouraged...

East Germany Even 28 years after reunification I do not know one half of my country Of course, the headline is not a universal statement, but refers to my limited horizon. But let me tell you how I feel. Last winter, when I was living in Montenegro, I met a woman who was either old enough or educated enough to know that until recently there were two Germany. While we strolled through the port of Budva, she asked me how it was now with the reunification and if there were still differences between East and West...

Poverty An unforgettable encounter with a homeless man in Romania Shortly after midnight at the Cluj railway station in Romania. The night train to Targu Mures fails. There is no information about the reason or a replacement train. With my fragile Romanian I can find no further information, because the switch for "international information" means only because here tickets are sold to Budapest or Vienna, not because of the language skills of the staff. The next train leaves at 5:30, so the search for a place to stay is not worthwhile...

On the occasion of the World Day Against Violence against Women, besides the usual blows there are also proposals for the construction of more women's shelters. Women's shelters are these mostly shamelessly located in backyards and overcrowded apartments, where women and children hiding from their beating men (and, if it goes to Friedrich Merz, Horst Seehofer and others, even today rape without rape) men, friends and ex-friends, before they can no longer endure the drama and howling in the women's...