No spring - no spring fever...

Indeed, the current cold season in Germany (officially called spring, but still very wintery, including snow and ice in many places, especially in the eastern states) is a killer of passion, as well as a killer of animals... Margarete Stokowski wrote an article in her column in the German newspaper "taz" about this, entitled "Hier fickt niemand!" - translated: "No one's fucking here!".

Here's my translation of her German text:

No one likes staring into the abyss. No one likes saying that there is no escape. No, we even smile when everything and everyone and oneself feels totally dead in the water and we pretend that the sun is still shining out of our butts.

But there is no spring. For weeks now.

That the end of the world allegedly didn't happen last December is one of these urban legends of which I'd like to say that we're soon going to laugh about. If there were a "soon" to come...

In German, the end of the world is called "Weltuntergang", containing the root "-gang", meaning "walk" - and it is a walk through 15 centimeters of fresh snow.

You just have to add one and one: the absent spring is a consequence of climate change, experts say. Where there's no spring, there's no spring fever, either, common wisdom says. And where there's no spring fever, there's no sex, no reproduction, no offspring. The End.

"Fuck you, winter" people are writing on Facebook, not seeing that for a long while nothing and no one is fucking anyone (only a few animals, the fools! The German wild animals foundation wrote, that currently many baby hares are freezing to death. Wet fur, cold wind, dead baby hare).

Many migrating birds have turned around, seeing what's going on here. Only a few stupid cranes are standing on the snowy fields in the Prignitz region, not knowing what to do with themselves in the cold. In the forest next to our house, a deer carcass is lying, its throat ripped open, entrails missing and the clean-picked  ribs looking like bars in a prison cell. Several crows have picked the last soft and tasty parts off.

Who sees the end coming, tries to take people's minds off it by telling us something positive about the future... or even better: demanding something. The whole Easter weekend, people demanded things. The new pope demanded world peace and appeasement, the Easter peace march protesters demanded an end of arms exports and Matthias Sammer demanded more vigilance at corner kicks.

(Note: the last is a German soccer joke - a former German soccer player. and quite successful in the German national team, too, Matthias Sammer is now one of the managers of the highly successful club FC Bayern München)

Whoever can, flees into warmer areas. Half of my friends have travelled abroad, anywhere, where it's possible to catch a few rays of warm sun. The main thing is to travel by plane. Not only for getting there faster, but also to accelerate the climate change, thus shortening our suffering.

Even here, in our rural commune, the distraction programme is running on full throttle. On Saturday before Easter, we even watched "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" on TV (Note: the German version of "Pop Idol" or "American Idol"), having white wine and popcorn with it. We laughed about the lanky lads on the show and called in for Beatrice. OK, I called and then put 50 cents for the call's worth into the phone piggy-bank. There was a prize of 10,000 Euros to be won. At least, I could have repaid my debts before the world ended. If I had won... which I didn't.

On Sunday, while we were taking an Easter walk, I recited Goethe's "Easter Walk" poem, and when coming to the line "But the sun tolerates nothing white..." we all laughed hysterically. Only the dog was really happy in the snow, just like on the first day..."

The original German article can be read here:
http://www.taz.de/Kolumne-Luft-und-Liebe/!113899/

Margarete Stokowski is an author for the German newspaper "taz", there writing and publishing her column "Luft und Liebe" (love and air)