Check This Out - Zany Opening Hours at National Library

“This totally sucks.”

Robert Niemyer was beside himself yesterday when he found the check-out counter at the National Library in Berlin closed.

“This totally sucks,” he repeated. “I even checked the opening hours of this place. But that’s not good enough. You got to check the subsection for Saturdays, then check the subsection for check-out.”

Even though Mr. Niemyer, 54, is a regular user of the Staatsbibliothek, or Staabi, as it is affectionately known, he never realized that the insanity of business hours in Berlin would go this far.

A long time resident of this nation’s capital, over the years the New York native has finally grasped the fact that the library is closed all day Sundays, alternate Thursdays for re-shelving, Monday mornings for conferences or "Rundtischgespräche," the third Wednesday of every month for cleaning and polishing, Tuesday afternoons for internal systems control, and the second Monday after the first Tuesday of every month to undo dog-eared pages.

But being unable to check out his books this Saturday afternoon clearly put Mr. Niemyer on edge.

“It’s like they want to test you to see how bad you want to read those books. Like how many times are you willing to make the haul to this place?”

Mr. Niemyer explained that the New York Times had recently come out with their “100 notable books of 2008.” He was pleasantly surprised to learn that a couple of these had already become part of the Staabi collection.

“It was awesome when I found that out. So I immediately ordered Netherland and Factory Girls. They’re sitting right over there, on the shelf under my user ID, right behind that locked turnstyle,” he added dismayed. “Now I’ll have to come back on Monday.

“Wait a sec. They’ll be dog-earing then.”

The General Director of the library, Barbara Schneider-Kempf, stated that “the check-out hours have been extended to make books more accessible.

“We used to be closed all day Saturdays because we thought that no Berliner would want to waste his time coming to the library on the weekend, when they could be home watching Spongebob Schwammkopf,” referring to the ever-popular television cartoon show.

“But now, out of dedication to our clientele, we have employed one person to sit at the check-out counter on Saturdays for three hours.”

Other European countries stipulate sensible business hours for public institutions in order to accommodate the general public, but Germany has long held itself apart from the norm.

Exactly why this should be the case is unknown. But recent speculation among sociologists and skinheads alike has it that German workers are more efficient than their European counterparts, and able to accomplish in a three hour window on a Saturday morning what a French worker, for example, would require a normal eight hour shift for.

Amazingly, city halls , community centers, post offices, schools, universities, swimming pools, and train station information centers have all been able to defy human understanding in their ability to conjure up oddball business hours.

Even soup kitchens are closed for lunch.

When pressed for a reason as to this irrationality, often times bureaucrats have responded by saying, “That’s the way it is here,” “I don’t think these hours are unusual,” or “We have to eat too, you know.”

But bureaucrats are now hopeful that with the current speculation riding on the “hard-working German,” criticism of their user-unfriendly business hours will be deflected.

Mr. Niemyer noted that while the general check-out counter was closed, the in-house reading room check-out counter had two workers sitting idly at their posts. He added that he overheard them complaining of missing that day’s Spongebob episode.

Ima Obama, Yura Obama

Karlsruhe - In a historic leap of jurisprudence that is already having wide-ranging ramifications, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled today that „Obama“ could be used as a given name.

Outside the courthouse, hundreds of youths, many carrying placards with the inscription, “Ima Obama,” cheered and celebrated in the near freezing weather. Some were seen wearing faux fros.

The case, which was fast-tracked due to an inordinate number of children changing their given names to the US president-elect’s surname, was filed on behalf of the newly formed advocacy group Mommies for Obamis.

“Finally, a name with a future,” said Obama Schmuck, a 16 year old pupil from Ulm. “With my original name of Gerhard I wasn’t going anywhere, man.”
The German high court, based in the southern city of Karlsruhe, found the plaintiffs’ arguments “overly compelling.” In writing the majority opinion, Justice Martin Obama Fusshoch declared, “time has come for change. Change we can believe in.”

The watershed ruling, however, left state lawyers dumbfounded. During a press conference, head state attorney Robert Schuster, in a short-lived outburst, threw his glasses to the floor.

“This campaign slogan may have some merit and may win you the US presidency, but here in Germany it is not a very strong legal argument.”

Until now German law has stipulated that first names be restricted. Civil Code No. 3628, Paragraph 46, Subheading: Nomenclature of Small Ones and Big Ones, Too says, “A person’s sex must be discernable by the first name, whether said person be a boy or a girl, or something else all together.”

Though Barak Obama has been in the spotlight for a relatively short time, school-age children, from Flensburg in the far north to the famous ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian border, have been changing their names to Obama, giving scores of anthropology students hope for a doctoral thesis.

The ruling apparently opens the floodgates for given names. While the name “Obama” is explicitly mentioned in court documents, experts seem to agree that variations on the moniker will be allowed to stand. Thus far, these have included Obambi, Mambo, Bongo, Bimbo and Oh-baby.

In the northern blue-collar, denim-clad metropolis of Cuxhaven, known for its risk-taking, spicy mustard slurping mavericks, a 16 year old girl, formerly known as Claudia Hagenschrumpel, has gone way original, changing her name to “Wazzup?”

While informal surveys support the notion that Claudia is the hippest chick north of the Grosse Meißner, a geographical landmark in central Germany, pundits are still divided on the legal merits of that change.

It is also still not clear if the Saxon-based “Pfzxicki” will pass muster.

Over the last few decades, the need for regulation seemed obvious. A raft of psychological studies have shown adults in this country to harbour latent feelings of revenge towards their progeny.

A 2002 report carried out by the European Union entitled the Psychological State of States stressed the need for caution in regard to liberalization of name-giving regulations, “especially in Northern Europe,” (emphasis in original).

Indeed, many people point to the law for having prevented parents from causing psychological harm to their offspring. They often refer to the infamous case of the Hogg sisters, Ima and Yura of South Carolina, in the United States, as a possible result of laissez-faire child-naming.

Fear is already growing that German versions of such names, such as Grab Stein (Grave Stone), Außer Kraft (Outta Power), Achsel Schweiß (Armpit Sweat) or Fickimicki (Fuckymucky), will flourish.

“Isn’t it enough that we have over 1,200 Ronald McDonald’s in Germany? We don’t want these crazy names from America,” added Schuster before he flipped off a journalist, who asked whether he, too, deep in his heart, would not like to become an Obama. In a second short-lived outburst, Schuster stormed out of the press conference, accidentally stepping on his glasses.

Although it lost the legal battle, the state has garnered wide-spread support for its cause, building a coalition from several powerful sectors of German society, including the workers union IG Metall and the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), or National Teachers Union.

Berlin Local 38 of the GEW had protested vehemently the last few weeks, taking to the streets and causing traffic to slow to a crawl, which many financial experts cite as a major contributor to the recent economic meltdown.

A spokesperson for the Berlin union said, “Our jobs are difficult enough. We are, yes, against this strangeness, yes, that will cause classroom instruction, yes, to come to a halt, or nearly so. And it is not funny.”

In a breakthrough in grassroots activism, Mommies for Obamis took a page from the president-elect’s strategy book and conducted a furious Internet campaign infused with what one might call a sense of humour.

Using Simpson-like cartoon characters on their website and sending thousands of text messages to supporters that read, “Ik Obama, Du Obama” (Ima Obama, Yura Obama), Mommies for Obamis was able to solidify its support nationwide.

But nowhere has the rush been so frenzied as in liberal-minded Berlin, where seemingly hundreds of pupils have applied for name changes. This has led to confusion, if not chaos, in the capital’s schools.

“I have 27 kids in my class and 12 Obamas,” complained Michael Weiskopf, who teaches history and German at the Albrecht Dürer high school in the municipal district of Schoneberg. Fighting back tears, he added, “I heard today that little Hansi is next! Help!”

Berlin youths could be seen standing outside district administration offices in queues that stretched for blocks, with high concentrations found in the districts of Hohenschönhausen and Marzahn, areas known for their extreme neo-conservatism.

While waiting in line, many teenagers with shaven pates performed a stationary two-step shuffle, like the president-elect demonstrated on the Ellen Degeneres Show in 2008, which helped secure him the Democratic party’s nomination and the coolest image since James Dean.

An unnamed source with close ties to the Obama transition team said talks were already underway with Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel that would allow the president-elect to give an “impromptu” dance lesson in Berlin, provided he could use the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin as a backdrop. In mid-2008 Merkel denied Obama the use of the historic site for his speech that drew hundreds of thousands.

The source added that the proposal has thus far found solid resonance within the higher echelons of the Merkel administration, with negotiations sticking on the chancellor’s desire to be his boogie baby.

Whether or not a dancing Barak will one day appear in Berlin, it is clear that the local government is concerned about what all this may mean for the country. The city’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Woworeit, was overheard saying that while he agrees with the court’s decision, he thinks he should be on stage, because he has already “gone black.”

In the period leading up to the high court challenge, Berlin teachers suffered malicious accusations of racism from several quarters. One group, the United Indoor and Outdoor Pet Owners of Greater Berlin and Brandenburg, was especially vocal in allegedly defaming the teachers.

The spokesperson for this association, Birgitte Havelstad, 47, said in the wake of the ruling that she knew such attacks would propel the high court to change the law.

“I’m proud of our actions. Everybody knows that we have a history of racism and we must put a stop to it. A cat has the right to be named Obama. That is clear,” she said as she stroked Obami, her 13 year old tabby.

“It is no different for our children,” she continued, carefully formulating a logic worthy of the German philosophical tradition. “They need to know that they have our support, that we love them just as much as we love our pets.”

But dissenting Justice Heidi von Schlepper was not swayed. “We need to protect our children from such lunacy, whether boys or girls, or something else all together.”

In a related incident, on Monday a teacher from Berlin Local 38 was arrested after he allegedly pummelled two bystanders to death while marching in front of the Bundestag. Witnesses said he suspected them of staring at him. The couple, a man and a woman, died immediately. Their names were being withheld pending family notification.