Skip to main content

Skiing with the Nazis

Flicking through a tourist brochure for Bavaria that ran as an insert in last weekend's newspapers, I was a little surprised to see that the Nazis have made a bit of a comeback. The Zugspitze, we are told, sits above the twin towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen. "It was Hitler," continues writer Arnie Wilson, "who linked them in preparation for the 1936 Winter Olympics - the first to include alpine skiing as well as the traditional Nordic events favoured by the Norwegians."

Now that we're in 2008, it's clearly acceptable to drop Hitler into the conversation as if he were just a regular celebrity. No need to qualify the reference with any mention of genocide or the destruction of large swathes of western Europe and the former Soviet Union.

To the right of the column, we're shown a Nazi poster for the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympics in which an Aryan athlete gazes skywards as he breathes in the rich Alpine air. The caption tells us that the resort is a contender to host the games once again in 2018.

My tip to Bayern Tourismus Marketing GmBH of Munich - and their publishing house, Publicom International - would be that Hitler and his 1930s Olympic propaganda exercises are not the best way of selling Bavaria as a modern tourist destination. Just a hunch on my part, guys. Particularly if you're looking to secure future Olympic deals.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.
1 comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...
Post a Comment
Read more