Krankgeschrieben

Friday, 15 September

''Krankgeschrieben'' means ''Sick day'' in German. If you're not feeling well, calling in sick is easy. Half of our department decided to be sick this week. The people filling in for the sick people were sick.

That means that I've been here every day since 7:30, helping with the 'press mirror,' where the most important articles from about twenty papers are sought out, clipped, pictures removed, glued onto paper with their respective headlines, bylines, and whatnots, photocopied, and distributed to about 250 people. My job was everything between 'sought out' and 'distributed.'

Rules of article clipping:
- borders are not wanted.
- pictures are a no-no. Except for the ones he doesn't cross out; those we can keep. Except we don't do pictures. The rule: 'everything not crossed out is kept' actually means 'no pictures. Except if they’re not crossed out, but in that case, perhaps they stay and perhaps not.’
- article texts should fit on the page and should be cut out and rearranged, not reduced under any circumstances. This means, if the article has to be cut into paragraphs and realigned in columns to fit on the page, so be it.
- article headlines should fit on the page and should be reduced, not cut out and rearranged.
- commendary and opinion articles should indicate that they are such.
- articles from journalists are preferred to AP articles. If there are two articles on the same topic (not my job to sort through and pick them), the one we don’t want is invariably the one I have already glued down.

Current headlines (of a more local nature):
- spoiled meat: There is a huge scandal here about tons (our state has discovered one ton) of meat past its expiration date that is being delivered to supermarkets, restaurants, and served. Some of it is spoiled. Makes me happy I’m a vegetarian.
- shop hours: current legislation considers allowing stores (gasp!) to be open past 8 PM on weekdays, 6 PM on Saturday, and at all on Sunday.
- ‘kid money’: In Germany, parents recieve money from the government for raising kids, about €200 a month per kid. A father in RLP, my state, has registered for child money for some 1,000 children he claims to have fathered in 3rd world countries. The money is supposed to go to the parent with whom the child is living, but only if they are both Germans. Otherwise....there is a loophole.

Otherwise, it’s been a crazy week; aside from the press stuff I took part in a seminar on combatting international terrorism, whose speakers featured the Ambassador from Canada, several senators (Abgeordneten, as they are called), several state senators, president of the parliament, one of the mucketymucks in the antiterrorism department of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the secret service, and the head of antiterrorism at Germany’s permanent mission to Brussels. Anyways, an interesting day. I learned about our state’s police force, the different levels on which to combat terrorism, heard several overview speeches, etc. The next city up the Rhine, Koblenz, just squelched a plot to bomb the train station (where I was last week).

Other than that I had some meetings; with the foreigner’s office (turns out I don’t need to register), with the protocol department member advisor to the Interior Committee, the SPD, and the Legal Committee, and hopefully will get to go with him to the SPD meeting next week.

I’ll be in Nürmberg this weekend if anyone needs me.