Welcome to the Rhineland!

[Vesnic]

Welcome to the Rhineland
We've got krauts and beer
Everything'll make you fart, honey
Or maybe just turn you queer
It's the only place in Germany to find a fresh veggie
If you got the money honey, go pay your cable fee

In the Rhineland, welcome to the Rhineland
Bureaucrats'll bring you to your knnn knne knees, knees
I wanna watch them bleed!

Welcome to the Rhineland
We take it day by day
If you don't register your house, they'll bleed you all the way
Even if you're a sexy girl who is trying hard to please
A thousand surf sticks in town, but the net's nowhere to be seen
In the Rhineland, welcome to the Rhineland
See my, my, my case of spleen
Ooh, I'm gonna fuckin' scream!

Welcome to the Rhineland
It gets worse here every day
Ya learn to live like an animal like the Turks in the alleyway
If you hunger for civilization, you should consider emigration
Just eat your fucking doner and go home before I get impatient

In the Rhineland, welcome to the Rhineland
Don't you shed no little tuh tuh tear tear
We're drowning in dirt cheap beer!

[End Master]

Or maybe just turn you queer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-IXx4tkTF0

Ya learn to live like an animal like the Turks in the alleyway

Lol.

[Vesnic]

Seriously, I'm thinking of calling National Geographic because some of the brats around here really do count as feral. My teddy bear is better dressed than them. Oh my gosh, was that insensitive? Oopsy. Part of the reason I agreed to come to this part of D-Land was because the Census claimed that it was a mostly very German area. But ach mein goodness! the place is positively crawling with brown types. Do they consider themselves Germans now? The Turks have only had about 50 years to integrate and still haven't managed it, so I'm not sure what that's all about. Anyway, the gay video was pretty funny. You know Berlin's emblem is the bear after all so it totally made sense that those big burly boys were hanging out there. Too bad they can't seem to keep the real bears in the zoo alive for very long.

[Vesnic]

I just got back from a grueling conference in Bonn. For those of you who weren't paying attention in history class, that's the pointless place chosen by West Germany to be its capital specifically because of its pointlessness. It had no strong political or historical associations. It was barely on the map. Nowadays, it's a very antiseptic, functioning sort of city with plenty of modern investment and a large bureaucratic hangover. Things like international conferences are held in places like Bonn. So off I trotted.

I'll spare you the gruesome details of the conference itself and just put a word in for the Rhine again. It's just as you imagined Europe in fairytales and medieval movies. Quaint little towns along the wide, rolling river, each with some incredible historical treasure buried in the local church or graveyard or pub. Arriving in Bingen, home of Hildegard the mystic (some say schizophrenic) and authoress of some pretty rockin' early polyphony, sent tingles down my spine and made me seriously consider, for an entire half second, the life religious.

River cruises were everywhere, varying in degrees of swank, though all tastefully appointed so as not to disturb the truly pristine and gorgeous scenery. In other words, it wasn't Disney Cruises with a Megalo-Mousehead on the mast. I don't think many of "that" type of tourist end up coming this way. Not enough Mickey D's around. On one side of the river, hills rise sharply to a vantage point overlooking the whole valley. On nearly every crest stands an ancient fortification or castle, a thing of pure majesty and awe undiminished by the turning of centuries, waging of wars or modern penchant for cultural harakiri. I have seen some of these places listed on Sotheby's real estate (a girl can dream, can't she?). Some I know to be museums. Others looks like ruins. A few give one a definite case of the creeps and you find yourself looking away before you've even seen the thing properly.

I really wish I could have stayed on that train all day, especially since I had somehow managed to snag a first-class cabin, which I shared with absolutely no one, and I'll even get my money reimbursed. Hooray! The conference was stupid and the trip back sucked because the Deutsche Bahn is notorious for fucking up long-distance trains (even if they can calculate arrivals at local subway stations down to the second).

"Well, my dear," I said to myself, "We'll always have Bingen".