Colder in Mongolia

BBC World have now informed me for three days running that it's cold in Outer Mongolia. I tried CNN for a change, but where BBC have programmes about Renaissance architecture, CNN have Living Golf.

In France Chirac made his TV appearance to announce more and more measures to try to win a ceasefire from the seething sink estate youth. It would appear that the French government maybe now realises that calling them scum wasn't the best idea they could have had.

I ventured to the Finanzamt this week to try to get myself a Freiberufler Steuernummer (freelancer's tax number) but I came away utterly defeated. It seems that there is no limit to the amount of separate words that the Germans will fit together to make one long one. A World Cup qualifying game thus becomes a Fussballweltmeisterschaftsqualifikationsspiel (talking of which, glad to see that Spain made it through, though disappointing that Australia will be there too) . To make things that little bit easier, the German government recently changed how certain words are spelled, so not even the locals know how to write anything anymore.

Reasons why I need to improve my German:

1. I need to learn how to argue. I had an altercation in a shop this week and had to resort to shouting in English, which without a doubt detracted from my moral authority in the situation (which was great, as the man seemed to think that you can save your place in a check-out queue by leaving a small bag of veg on the conveyor belt, then turn up with a full trolley some minutes later and expect you to let him go in front of you). Needless to say I still won.

2. I want to be able to put people in their place. A man got on the U-Bahn to beg; I couldn’t understand all he said but it was based around asking for money for food because he was hungry. He looked as though he probably was hungry. A middle aged woman (who looked as though she probably wasn’t) started haranguing him, saying something about getting a job. In London I would never have let her get away with this, but here I sadly had no choice.