I promised myself not to write anymore until the summer. So this explains the long hiatus. It’s September, and it’s summer, and I can get back to writing.

Of course it would have been better if I was sharing the idea here.

I am in the middle of opening a new business. A lot to write about it. will try to write a series about opening a business in Germany. Probably will call it: “why is it better for an auslander to stay unemployed (rather of bothering to open a business)”. But I will need some time.

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Just want to say one sentence about the recent election in Berlin: I think the NPD is doing a great service for Berlin and Germany. I think that its recent campaign helps to define how much you can stretch a democracy.

However: It was a clear case for me of passion killing… weiter lesen

I have left Israel almost 20 years ago. I now understand that I had to get away from the country, and I am in a state of mind and an age where I stopped apologizing for my decision.

I have left of personal reasons, and now I can see that my personal became a national scope. My departure from Israel has everything to do with the three horrible years I had spent in the Israeli army. I am not completely ready to write publicly about shooting incidents I endured during my service, but I can tell you (and it might sound sick) that this is one of these moments when a man can feel godly.

But apart from these incidents, the whole concept of an 18-year-old telling people when to work, love, fuck, breath can do to your soul what garlic can do for a lovers’ kiss. It’s been 20… weiter lesen

As I was piling tons of stress on my back, my better half had decided to book for me an appointment for a massage. We are together enough time for her to know that a good reflexology can do wonders to me, and consequently, to out relationships.

A man in his late 20′s called me name as I was sitting in the large waiting area of one of Prenzlaur Berg more posh massage parlor. I followed him as we were walking in a maze of rooms, from one building to the other, finally settling in a small room featuring Far Eastern whisper music and the special aroma of massage parlor.

On the way he was telling me about himself. He was a dancer who followed his love, both professionally and personally, to Berlin. I took off my clothes and lied on my back, and he asked me what did I want… weiter lesen

Please don’t destroy the pyramids.

We won’t rebuild.

The Jews

I had something else in mind for today, something about the new Antisemitism, but then I took a look at my body of work here, and heard myself saying to me: “so what the fuck are you doing here?’ And decided to write about something else.

When I moved to Berlin the first time, sometime in the winter of 2004, I was completely shocked by the level of customer service. It’s true that I had moved here after spending ten years in New York, a place where a business or a representative would do anything to convince you that you are right even when you are wrong, but I wasn’t ready for the opposite Pole.

I mean, how can you get ready to go to a store looking for a particular paper for your printing machine, and have the saleswoman telling you “why do you have to make me work… weiter lesen

There was a little dark joke going around last winter about a woman from Berlin who got so depressed, she decided to take her own life by jumping in front of a train. She stood on the ramp for two days and froze to death.

I was thinking about this fictional woman as I stood in front of the ticket machine and was astound to learn that the company that runs the Berlin public transportation had raised the ride fare.

There might be a lot of reasons for the price hike, and I am sure that some of them are more than justified, but it strike me as a bit of chutzpa when a company that didn’t deliver its service for such a long time, is daring to ask its customers to pay more.

And I was bit insulted to learn that in such a protest infested city as Berlin,… weiter lesen

I happened to read this unreal opinion by the editor of “The Local”, an English website detailing life in Germany. The article is named “The New anti-Semitism” and it deals with some parallels of what is happening now to the Muslim immigrants in Germany to what happened to the Jews in Europe in the 30′s and 40′s. Of course, the distinguished writer put a disclaimer that he doesn’t equate the two cases, but that’s exactly what he does.

Since I have been hearing this claim a few times already I would like to make it perfectly clear what I think about it. The political remarks toward Muslim in Germany are horrible, but anyone who draw a line between the history of the Jews to the situation of the Muslim these days, is not only not-well informed historically, but even worse: by using this guilt-filled flag… weiter lesen

I was in the middle of writing an article, when my wife called and told me about the new Jean Marie Sarkozy idea: deporting 88 Gypsies back to Romania. I guess it is really not that comfortable to digest your steak tartar listening to this annoying accordion. I was thinking: Those who didn’t learn from the past in Germany are really in the outskirts.In France they are running the country.

It is quite amazing when you think about it. Holland turned to the right and against its immigrants, so did Denmark, in Switzerland they don’t want visible Masques (but are not very selective about the money in the bank), Austria is Austria, Slovakia have mad leaders, and I am quite sure that some of the Hungarian leaders wouldn’t be accepted to the Nazi party on the grounds that they are too extreme.

So, basically Germany is an island of sanity… weiter lesen

I didn’t and still don’t have much to say about the terrible deaths at the Love Parade a few weeks ago. It is sad on its own and it is sad that an event that started the way the Love Parade started and stood for some hope, ended like that.

But I am just wondering: how come revelers who gather to dance, get high, and be loved were treated like this? How come NPD and Nazi parades are never diverted into tunnels that can’t hold the number of marchers? It is a little bit at the same wavelength of political policies: everyone is hunting down someone who grows some weed on his balcony, and still nicotine companies are allowed to be traded publicly.

I think that it could be a very good initiative by the police. Next Nazi Parade? count the heads and let them walk into a tunnel that… weiter lesen