Five Things: Biden, Heat, Eating, Ukraine, Crazy Gods

Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Five Things, your one stop source for five interesting articles to read on a Sunday Morning.

So I’m on workation here on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia with my American family. It’s great to be around all these wonderful people who I don’t see that often. And every time I see them, it doesn’t seem like we haven’t seen each other for years, there’s always this deep connection. I went to Des Moines, Iowa, just 35 years ago as a senior in highschool and this place still feels like a second home for me, thanks to my American family. This is just amazing and I am so grateful that they welcomed me into their home and into their family.

Also, I discovered that this place here is really the Wild West of my childhood. Like everyone else in the 70s, I grew up reading the books of Karl May and watching the movies about Winnetou and his adventures. The movies were filmed here in Croatia somewhere, at least it all looks very familiar to me. The main protagonist Winnetou was played by the French actor Pierre Brice, who became a superstar in Germany, and his “blood brother” Old Shatterhand was played by the American actor Lex Barker. Also, this place is a bit different from the Southwest of the United States, where the Apache tribes were from. I found that out the hard way more than 30 years ago when I was invited to spend christmas with my American family in New Mexico, while I was studying in Berkeley. My brain immediately went into Karl May mode and I thought: “great, that’s where the Apaches are from, they all wore just a loincloth in the movies, so it must be warm there!” I was pretty surprised when just a few days before I went on the road trip to Santa Fe my American mom told me that we will go skiing or snowboarding. I then realized that they cheated me in these movies all these years ago. Also, I didn’t really have any suitable outfit for winter as I was living in Northern California…

Then again, everything here looks a bit like a large-scale version of the famous chalk mountain of Bad Segeberg, which also has a cool bat cave and a stalactite cave, which I always found very cool. If you haven’t heard of this place, then you are probably not that much into Karl May, because every summer the Karl May Plays are sold out and people just love to see how the good wins against the evil and how Winnetou and Old Shatterhand are just the best friends forever. Just like the Wild West, but in Northern Germany and with real horses and great special effects.

Growing up in the 70s was really something. All we basically did was playing Cowboys & Indians, as it was called back then, and even my pacifist parents let me have a toy revolver and a tomahawk, as we needed to flexible in changing roles.

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An elegy for Bidenism

I have the utmost respect for Joe Biden. He seems to be a very fine person and he ultimately did the right thing by handing the torch to Kamala Harris. I’m sure that in a few years we will see how Bidenomics propelled the USA forward, while other countries continue to lag behind, most notably my home country, which could not just follow and adapt the policies Biden instated.

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Heat is deadly. Why does our culture push us to ignore it?

It annoys me endlessly that whenever global warming and a current heat wave is the topic on TV or in the paper (which is digital, of course), it’s mostly illustrated by kids playing in a fountain or people hanging out on a beach, not by elderly people collapsing or construction workers dying. And that’s the reality out there for many millions of people already who don’t have access to shade or AC.

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I Spent Three Years Inhaling Tacos and Corn Dogs in Eating Contests. Here’s Why I Stopped.

For a while I always had a dude in my reels on Insta or Facebook who would win some obscene food eating contest and I always wondered why people would do this in the first place. I like to eat, sure, but not that much and not in an inhaling contest…

Btw, and this is really not that related to this article, but there’s a new place in Hamburg that offers Korean Corndogs and I find it a bit odd that there’s Iowan/Korean fusion food to be found in a place like Hamburg. And that such a cuisine actually exists…

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The Right Way to Quickly End the War in Ukraine

After 2 1/2 years of the war in Ukraine, I’m pretty certain that there’s only one solution to end this war. Ignore what Putin might do and give Ukraine all the tanks it needs to push the Russians back behind the border and all the missiles it needs to hit targets way inside of Russia to cut of the supply. Hopefully NATO will change their strategy and give Ukraine the weapons it needs. Finally.

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The Strange Saga of The Gods Must Be Crazy

I remember watching this movie in an Open Air movie theater at the Lake Balaton in Hungary and I distinctly remember the funniest part of the movie, which was the one guy in the audience who was really slow in reading the Hungarian subtitles and always laughed at least 30 seconds after everyone else in the audience laughed. And yes, it was full of racist stereotypes and it is good that this movie is not easily accessible anymore.

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