#also i thought abt looking up what people use in germany and/or finding the german packaging of products we have in the uk too

[von-karmas-a-bitch]

pov you're franziska and you're 11 years old and you just started your first period and papa has NOT been helpful but your brother has conducted extensive research and is handling it surprisingly well

[selfcareparker]

(lovely anon) i'm so happy to finally be answering this oh my goodness hi gorgeous human being i feel that it has been too long 🥲 SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST TIME I'VE WRITTEN ONE OF THESE HOW HAVE YOU BEEN

to answer the things you have said most recently- i'm so mad that spring break is over bc now i have to go back to life??? like dancing and school and shit that feels so unnessacry 😭 and like i can't just do nothing anymore? i was so used to it and now...... ugh. i STILL haven't played sims (i think it's because ✨depression✨ be hitting sometimes) lol but MWAHAH IM SO HAPPY FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR!AU AND THAT THEY HAD LITTLE BABY LEO!! i feel the name thing.. i just come up with something that sounds nice? i think leo is a nice name, it makes me think about lea michele and the fact that her son's name is Ever Leo but anyway. i don't name my sims after what i want to name my children irl either... idk why though. (i don't know why i'm telling you this but for boy names i love Liam🥰 and if i had twin boys i think i would do Liam and Peter though i am not married to the name Peter.... anywho)

LMAOOO the therpaist coming made me laugh thank you :)) i hope it's helpful? this may be tmi but i've only really had negative thoughts recently and not many healthy outlets so i'm hoping crossing one thing off this sad list will make me feel better :') i think during spring break my anxiety and my depression really spiked? idk, it comes in episodes but yeah THIS GOT REALLY SAD

i think a lot of things when i read your posts but i never say them hahaha so imma say it now: i googled what bon appetit meant ( i also just had to google how to spell it ) but ur right, i feel like bone apple tea makes more sense than bone apple teeth.. the "th" is throwing me off bc how i say it bone appa (like app-a) teet (like you're saying tit but teet lol) so bone apple tea makes more sense to me lol

i never know really know the time difference for anything lmao but est to germany (that's not gmt is it?) is like 6 hours wOAH so it's like 9pm while it’s 3pm here? wowee

i feel mega weird after watching this show called hollywood (darren criss is in it, so is laura harrier and a bunch of other people) but i don't like it💀 i feel really icky rn and idk why but reading your last response to my ask (?) always makes me feel better :')

i am doing what you said btw, i'm typing this on my computer first then gonna transfer it to my phone's tumblr lol but when you said a digital detox, it's interesting cuz i feel like i've been having one since tom's new project was announced? gOD i don't wanna get into it bc i get so triggered but i've been off of instagram since then bc instagram stans literally stand by tom through whatever even when something ain't right- i’m just gonna leave it there bc i’ll continue the rant, but yeah so i took a break lol

also heard abt your driving lesson thing (?) was it that bad? i can't find the old post but someone asked if you hooked up with your lesson person and i was sOOO CONFUSED LMAOO LIKE OK ARIA GET SOME BUT UHH HUH?

now to address the actual response HAHA the way you touch my heart :') by :') bringing :') up :') halle :') being ariel :') (i honest to God don't remember if i brought this up first, forgive me if i did, it's been a minute lmao) i'm always talking about it and i'm pretty sure my family is so tired of me talking about it lmao, but YEAH when i found out they weren't twins i was so surprised but idk why i always thought they were twins? but YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE WITH THE DISNEY TALK- everyone is always like "tiana is my favorite princess" and yea she's strong and stuff but...... she was a frog. for almost the whole time. it's about time we got another one!! i do agree with some people on the fact that disney should just make another black princess but halle is adorable and i was ariel on stage so it's already really special to me :')

yeah lol there are good times with my brothers but they make me mad for a good portion of the time (there's the 12yo vincent and the 7yo daniel but vincent??? psshhh he is a piece of work and i'm not sure how much longer i can put up with him HAJAH AND YES VINCENT IS THE ONE WHO WAS 👁👄👁WHEN I CRIED AND THE ONE WHO DOESN'T LISTEN TO MUSIC- writing this now makes it sound like vincent is awful. which he isn't... we're working on him ig. not to add to the awfulness but no, he listens to obnoxious loud VIDEO GAME MUSIC and won't stop when we ask him to stop... he gets beat up a lot) anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌

yeah let me know if you end up watching it (wandavision)! i think it's great but if you like it lmk!! tfatws is sooo good like PHEW i am honestly loving it. sidenote: j*hn w*lker makes me wanna jump through the screen and choke him to the ground. i was thinking right, and the falcon and the winter soldier (THATS SO MUCH EASIER FAJHKDAH) would techinally be like a 10 hour movie right? because every episode is an hour long and there'll be 10 episodes? like wow. i get what you mean though, abt the racism in the show etc, like looking forward to it but not like..... no i get what you mean i will not try and give another example lol but you make me wanna learn more languages like really badly (bc of what you said about the german to american translation) & if you end up watching hamilton PLEASE LMK ABT THAT TOO HAHAHA i love it so much, same thing with lion king lmaoo

speaking of germany, i was at lunch on saturday with my mom and her friend and we were talking about my schooling and like-- she planted this idea in my head lol like what if i just got my GED and went around the world (to england probably) to get a theatre experience??? and i think it sounds so cool but no where near practical lol, it's just..... the dream haha and i would then try and learn a language 😉

uh yes we absolutely should order basically a resturant meal at a cinema, how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?

also about cherry (which i still haven't watched yet lol) i got the timestamps from tumblr😌 i couldn't find them anywhere else, but i agree, i probably wouldn't even look twice at cherry if tom wasn't in it? like i liked tdatt a lot, but it's not a movie i would be itching to see ya know?

HAHAHAHA THE 24 HOUR NOTIFICATION- i think i have around 1030 hours on sims? but i've had it since 2019 lmao (reading the screenshots, yes u are 100% a genuis, i take screenshots too but on anon you can't upload them so i just read them and retype what i wrote lmao) i think the university experience in the game is fun, but time consuming and it's all work imo. idk why i do it so often tho 😭😭😭

and agreed!! when you're making good money in the game you have to find other ways to make it interesting. my cousins who play it just continously do "motherlode" and i'm like.... then what do you do in your game?? it just sounds boring to me... my current sims household, i had a famous comedian sim, her name was dylan, aND SORRY IM LAUGHING SO HARD WHILE WRITING THIS BC ITS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF THE UNI THING UNLESS IM JUST DUMB, she went to college for communications when i wanted her to be a comedian and when she graduated i realized that degree did nothing for the career 🥲 so yeah, i think i'm just dumb. but she had a kid in college, guy didn't stick around and she was pretty broke HA but then she got married to this (great) guy named steve, made good bank, had 5 more kids (two sets of twins and one more lol) but then she passed. uhm... yeah that's still an open wound . lol i'm kidding, but when you get rich like that, you have to find a way to make the game interesting and i chose a million kids.

(this was one giant paragraph until i broke it up uhh yeah) i seriously don't pay attention to the sims prices and just end up spending way too much money and not being able to finish the rest of the house😭 but then again, i'm so used to having sims live in apartments... if i end up building a house FIRST OF ALL it'll look like what you explained before lmao but i'll tell you if i actually end up building a house HAHA & planning out your sims game is so fun to me lol, did enisa and michael take in his daughter yet? i may be thinking too far ahead lol and i love that they fucked woohooed (i say woo woo lol) in celebration HAHA but when i was playing with this one couple i had them woo woo every night hoping the dude would have horrible pull out game and they would concieve, but one night they were too tired and i was like why? get back in there man. if i was in college and lived with my partner we would be fucking every night homie. be grateful. i have been talking a lot about sims, and like you said: enough 💀 i just love this game a lot 😭😭

SORRY LAST THING i think the sims romantic and sexual stuff is so nice bc its what i want?? LMAO IDK like the whole hot tub thing you're talking about- puh lease ITS JUST NICE TO SEE OKAY

i'm reading the german section over again and i said aloud "my german friend is so cool" lol (i was saying that to my brothers & i know they don't care LMAO) (& i'm glad the uni zoom call went well!!) so on a form, in german, it could possibily say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer because you would be a participant to an introductory event? i swear german sounds so cool 😌 but i love reading your german lessons!! it's really interesting, most of the time my brain can't comprehend it tho?? like that word makes sense to you, but i need a translation. like to be able to look at that and know what it says.... its just appealing and seems so cool lol i kinda wanna write something out in german but i feel that google translate will fail me. während googeln "google übersetzen" mein Computer war so verdammt langsam und es fühlte sich einfach wie etwas Gutes auf Deutsch zu sagen. ich bin nicht sicher, welches Wort ist "fucking", aber ich mag es lmao (did it fail me like i thought it would??)

LMAOOO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING UP JUSTIN BC WHILE AT THE RESTURANT THEY PLAYED A JUSTIN SONG AND I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT OF YOU AND THIS STORY😭 lol i was thinking it's depending on your age but not even that either... i really don't know.... but tom's fans are hollanders💀 i would consider myself one? he's the only person i'm really into like that (like a lot lol) so idk lmao (directioners 💔💔the pain is real)

LMAOOO (both of these paragraphs started off with “lmaooo” smh) "i like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death" PLEASE, i don't like pete's blonde hair... i just don't. i'm not sure if i wasn't watching the most recent snls but yea. my mom thinks he looks like trash, but i think he's okay? like he said staten island people just look like trash LMAO and I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN KING OF STATEN ISLAND GIRL I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT!! now i'm gonna make plans to watch it lmao, & yes agreed i find pete hot, don't ask why i really couldn't explain it to someone he's just .

my favorite songs from rex are from pony oh my goodness 🥺 anywho i'm gonna go eat cereal (i ended up eating bun and cheese instead) and listen to the Stormzy songs you recommended... aria. aria aria aria. i would like to thank you for introducing me to stormzy i- i don't have any words or any emojis to express HOW GOOD STORMZY IS. i hope he's popular in germany/the uk because i haven't heard of him but GURLLLL

one second - delicious i love it. it's really good. it’s not my favorite from the album, but its great.

superheroes - at first i played the non-explicit one (on accident) and wondered why the words weren't playing but i was reading them in the lyrics??? THIS ONE THOUGH??? IS THE BEST SONG I THINK I'VE EVER HEARD. i am so SO SO into black people empowering songs (like brown skin girl by beyonce) and this song???? PHEW I CRYYYYY ITS SO GOOD.... i was gonna quote some lyrics BUT THERS TOO MANY I LOVE, "i am young, black, beautiful, and brave" "black queen, you're immaculate, it's coming at the world, they ain't ready for your magic yet, and that was never your fault" THAT WAS NEVER YOUR FAULT- I ALMOST CRIED THIS SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL (i played it twice lol)

lessons is another beautiful one, like its slow and it feels intimate and nurturing and just OO chefs kiss, beautiful . like you can feel the apology and the regret... it’s so good

own it - OWN IT OWN IT OWN IT IS AMAZING!! swear you would catch me dancing to this song, this song is so fucking good i cannot comprehend like this one might be my favorite for real... "it's the way you wind up your waist, i'm so in awe, you never have to worry abt nothing, you know its yours, you know you own it" 🥲 i played it two or three times honestly

rachael's little brother - YES I DID LISTEN TO IT LMAO AND YES I LIKE IT, its a very complex song and it's very layered in terms of emotions i think and i really like that about it. i probably won't listen to it that often, but its really good. i would recommend this song to my "older brother" bc he would just absolutely love this

shut up - i was taking this song seriously (also very good) until i heard him say shu-T up LMAO, this one is good, i probably wouldn't listen to it 24/7 like rachael's little brother but honestly its still fire

before listening to blinded by your grace and vossi bop, i know you brought up the religion bit, i definitely don't mind that, especially because i'm Christian lol and i actually liked that he brought up God in some of his songs like idk i just like it🥰🥰

(i then went to bed after that lol but first thing in the morning i listened to superheroes and... that song is probably my favorite tbh, i was gonna write MORE quotes that i loved from it but, yeah no there's too many. if you want i'll tell you lmao but this is already so long i would just be quoting the whole friggin song)

VOSSI BOP IS A BOP (lol) I CANT EVEN LIE, i love a song that hypes up a dude's girl so the line- i love that my phone decided to fail to load the lyrics, lemme google it, okay the lyric "looking at my girl like what a goddess" i was like AYEEE its honestly just really good. and no one in america says "sauce" like "i've got the sauce" but now i do (thanks to love island and Nas from last season) and now stormzy so (also im gonna watch the music video for superheroes bc it looks great so 😛)

(because this is already so long i feel like i shouldn't finish the rest but . no i'm gonna do it)

now for blinded by your grace pt2 idk why i’m nervous lmaoo PAUSE I'M NOT EVEN DONE WITH THE SONG GIRL THIS SONG IS *chefs kiss* no words, speechless PHEW y'all gon make me start jumping around. why did i not know about stormzy before, he is amazing i- ok yeah i finished the song, all i have to say is that Stormzy is immaclucate. period. i am literally sending his music to all my friends he is..... amazing

you want my song recommendations 🥺🥺 hmm uh okay lol i listen to a lot of old music, whitney houston, marvin gaye, queen, celine dion, i love "more than words" by extreme uhmm okay, but for actual music i listen to on the daily? (this is a lot of different music like.... they do not go together lmao so be prepared) a song about being sad by rex orange county, betty by taylor swift and lover by taylor swift and... most of that album lol, treasure by bruno mars lmao, OOOO and versace on the floor by bruno as well, lazybaby by dove cameron, creep by tlc has been on repeat lol, deja vu by olivia rodrigo (i saw what you said about drivers license and AGREED LMAO but i like deja vu a lot more haha) and two albums that i listen to in general, rare by selena gomez and ungodly hour by chloe x halle 🥰 you don't have to listen to all of them or any of them lol but that's a sense of what i'm into :) so basically everything haha, i'm into literally every single kind of music really so i wasn't too surprised that i enjoyed stormzy :’)

HAHASBSJHAHA your h20 story cracked me up,, like "wow these actors are so dedicated, learning german just for us" 😭 the beauty of overdubbing

once again, math and maths, in my mind maths makes sense because its mathmatics, but saying maths doesn't feel right to me lol, like if i said maths i feel like everyone would look at me like ??? and yea i was taught it as math so its just more natural for me. but yes math/maths is disgusting, easily one of my least favorite subjects so .

mkay. i- the first time i read this i could not contain my laughter when you said the only pollen you know is sex pollen LMAOKOOSHBABJFAJF STOPPP I'M EVEN LAUGHING WRITING THIS,, anyway. wow! that's interesting, my dad (<<< mostly anything else) gets migraines from the sun and the heat and stuff, yesterday (sunday, i was outside for like hours watching my brothers play football, the american kind lol) i was in the sun for like ever and i got a headache😔

summer clothes🥲 i need to go shopping fr fr. for my birthday my mom and dad got me a giftcard like dedicated to a shopping spree and we've yet to go so..... i should bring it up to my mom lol, but!! i went bra shopping (ended up returning literally all of them cuz they honestly didn't work for day to day work? its a long story) and if i could i would walk around in this new "summer bra" i got, i would. it's so fricking cute and its really light fabric (which isn't perfect for my nipples but still) so i don't get hot in it, but that bra and some shorts would be perfect. its the closest thing to being naked so

IS THE BIRD STILL BOTHERING U ARIA, TELL ME NOW ISTG, i laughed really hard that the bird isn't stupid and is really trying to torture you LMAOO like i was rolling, it wants you to suffer, badly

when you said "mensus" it was still close to mens!!! latin speaking queen 😌😌

okay STORYTIME i was reading back your response and started (fake) crying bc i love you lol and my youngest brother (daniel) gon say "oh man, catherine's crying about something we don't care about, again" I--- i swear when i tell you about them they sound awful, but they aren't that bad, just the stuff i say about them is sounds really mean LMAO

but the thing you said about being kind, same, what i always say is: don't be the person that makes people say "i hate people" ya know? like there's no reason to be a jerk or anything.... but its true 🥺🥺🥺🥺 you are really kind and every time i talk to you i would like to personally fly to germany and give you a hug 💖💕💞💗💓💝💖💘

& i'm gonna show my stretch marks some love bc of you 🥺😭 i really hate how men have basically everyone conditioned that you can't love your own body </3 fuck them, y'all beautiful :')

also thanks for what you said :')) you literally are the kindest, sweetest person i think i've ever spoken to and i love you 🥰🥺🥲💓💗

READING YOUR TAGS HAHAHHAHA the spelling errors makes everything so much funnier. once again, i like your german lessons & yea!! i'm gonna play sims after writing this hahah

#catherine's tags are back #i don't think i've told you my name before?? #anyway it's catherine🥰🥰🥰 #i'm typing this on my computer (without emojis) and if i didn't edit this you would be reading shit shite like #heartface and pout and cry LMAO #yeah abt the tattoos #some stuff with my parents i'm like deal with it??? lol #my mom tells me "if there's something you enjoy or you like but i don't have the same opinion on it... why would my (my mom's) opinion matter? #and i love that #like i'm not gonna go and do whatever i want #but if my mom doesn't like that i swear (which isn't true just an example) #its like okay.... #but whatever #and your tattoo ideas sound really cute!! #and yeah @ your parents, i mean you aren't getting something wild #and the tattoo album>>> #i'm gonna look up ariana's butterfly tattoos just so i know what you mean lol #but i'm guessing you don't want something so incredibily simple, but not super like over the top? #correct me if i'm wrong lol #LMAO the tags were in order don't worry ! #and yeah lol ily2 <33 #and once again, again, sorry for this post JSHJS ITS A MESS AND LONG AS HELL #and you don't need to go in order of my post its literally longer than your german compound words #u're fine #also !!! while writing this the birds were chirping outside and i was like 😳 #and one of your fics (i’ve read all of them, i don’t remember lol) that valentine’s day one where y/n had lingerie on (the pancake one lol) #inspired me to buy lingerie #like when i look back on me “growing up” #that fic & basically you lol really helped with that #that made no sense and i don’t know how to make it make sense... but... yeah. like ily

hiiiiiiiiiii <3333

Dear catherine, 😌

(you have said your name before, but it wasn‘t like an introduction or anything i think you were talking about .... was it possibly the incident at the cinema??? And you said something like ‘calm down catherine‘ like you were telling yourself to calm down idkd dkdkkdkd anyway i didn‘t mention it cause i wasn‘t sure if it was an accident or not dkdjd but now i know 😌❤️ Catherine is such a cute and lovely name btw omg and so are your brothers‘s names 🥰

Sorry that I‘m answering this so late, it‘s been an emotional rollercoaster for me since last week but i‘ll get to that in a second lol

Sksklssk girl i haven‘t played sims in like 2 weeks now ekejdkdlldld ok that‘s not that long at all actually but i keep wanting to play but then i end up not playing for whatever reason, so no news about my sims game 😔 but i love the names Liam and Peter and for twins!!! That sounds really nice actually

okay i‘m trying to answer your ask in chronological answer even though i wanted to wait for the depressing stuff and write it at the end or something OKAY so. i thought that i‘d feel so good when i start uni and that i‘ll like... have a purpose in life again and just be happy (cause in the last year i didn‘t do much and i was depressed like half of the time lol).... anyway i kind of feel even worse now? 😭 i think it‘s because in my brain it‘s like: university!!! that means your life will change and it‘ll all be so exciting. and don‘t get me wrong it is exciting butttt..... idk the online thing is so weird cause you‘re not meeting any new people (i‘m introverted anyway but still lol) and it doesn‘t feel like you‘re listening to/talking to actual people cause it feels the same as just watching a video?

also i thought i‘d be busy again but i only have one lecture (90mins) a day and theres one day where i dont have any lectures at all and just one day where i have 3 hours but.... idk i mean i shouldn‘t complain about having so much free time but i just don‘t know what to do all day and in a pandemic there really is nothing to do but i also can‘t relax bc it‘s like during the week and i know i have uni the next day and .... yeah.

There‘s also this one assignment i had to do that took me AT LEAST SIX HOURS AND IM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING????? so that was the only thing i‘ve been doing besides “going to“ lectures. for this one course we have to read two (really really long) texts (like it literally took me 3 hours to read them) and we‘re supposed to post it on this website that all the professors in our uni use. So after 5 days of anxiety (✌🏼) i posted mine this morning bc last night i realised that i didn‘t even know why i was having anxiety so i just posted mine today. The deadline is tomorrow at 12 and no one except me has posted theirs yet........ so i have anxiety again 🥰 cause idk if i‘m the only one who did it or if i even did it correctly

Edit while i‘m rereading this: my anxiety about uni is a lot better and i‘m not as d*pressed anymore maybe it was just hormones? idk but i‘m better so that‘s good

(I started writing this like 5 hours ago and then i randomly completely forgot lol)

I‘m in a better mood now though so let‘s move on from that (oh wait also, i think i‘m gonna see if i can find a psychiatrist bc with my anxiety symptoms (long story) i need to go to a psychiatrist, and so far i‘ve only gone to like psycholgists and it didn‘t help but i think that‘s just bc i was meant to go to a psychiatrist and not a psychologist so dldjdjsj

n e ways but yes you‘re not alone, ily, things will get better and yes i love you (i‘m not good at this type of thing🥲 but i‘d hug you right now if i could <3)

Yess i think the time difference between est and me is 6hours but gmt is uk time i believe? i think mine is called.... cet? For central european time? I could be completely wrong though lmao

Oof i completely forgot about hollywood, i remember when laura kept posting about it on instagram but i never actually watched it and i definitely won‘t now lmaodkdksjsn

Okay my driving lesson LEBDJDKDK I DID NOT HOOK UP WITH ANYONE AKSJSKSMMLM especially not my 40 or 50 year old driving instructor lol i like her but NOT LIKE THAT, the lesson was really really really good actually and i think i‘ll have my driving test soon, but i don‘t even remember why the anon would have thought that??? Oh wait now i remember okay KEKSKDLDL so during the lesson my instructor was like do you mind if i turn on some music? AND THIS WOMAN TURNED ON ONE DIRECTION I LOVE HER so i made a post about it and i said something about the song up all night and i guess i phrased it in a .... idk in a dumb way 💀 so the anon made a joke that i stayed up with my driving instructor all night and NO. No.

Wait did i read that right? YOU WERE ARIEL ON STAGE? SIALDBDJDKSLMSBDKDMDMDKDJSLSMDJFJJEDMBFEKLEFBJDLDVSIDLESKSKWKDKDJDOWNYUEKWNDUWLNSUFLWVSUDLEHDOENSIDBEISBEHENJELBSIEMWUDNRIW KB WOBE JO ON SBEUU HIII S HWS LV W ICH US KB okay this keyboard smash is getting out of hand but uh please do elaborate on that 💘😌???? Like you can‘t just drop that information and not say more??? I forgot if you‘re in like your school‘s drama group (is that a thing? lol idk anything about acting) or in an independent group? Either way - ARIEL that is so fucking cool

Your brothers loooooool, no i get it though obviously you love them and stuff but esp at their age children are so annoying so good luck with them 😭😭😭lmao

Yeah “anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌“ yeah just me and my parents who constantly fight 🥰 lmao no i like being an only child, like i cannot imagine having siblings but i feel like if i had siblings i would be saying that i can‘t imagine being an only child so? but i do think it‘s quite different like i‘m trying to imagine having siblings and WHAT that‘s just so different omg i‘ve never really thought about it like properly ???

I saw a tik tok the other day that was like “sometimes i forget that my siblings have a life of their own. like i see them as side characters in my life“ and even though i can‘t relate obviously i felt that. lol, like i can really imagine how it feels idk what i‘m talking about like shut the fuck up, daria

(also my actual name is daria not aria but i dont like it, and also i wanted to be more anonymous on tumblr so now i‘m aria lmao. pls don‘t mention it though cause no one knows except for you and mel (peterbenjiparker) dkdkdkdnkdnd. but i‘m starting to identify with the name cause everyone keeps calling me that looool😭😭😭 (but i like the name, more than daria anyway? well it also depends on the accent, cause the way germans say daria is okay. the was Americans say it is also okay, but some of my family in England are from the north of england and i don‘t like how they say my name 💀 no offence to them(?) but yeah pls don‘t mention the name in your ask cause the chance of people seeing it is higher then (or if you want to say something about it just send a separate ask and i just won‘t post it (IDK what you‘d want to say about my name but yeah just in case slsldlldmsndnsns)

I‘m loving falcon and winter soldier so much but when i was watching an episode the week before last week (?) my laptop broke😭😭😭😭 during the scene where the dora milaje came at the end my laptop just shut down? And it had these lines all over the screen and i had to bring it to the shop where i bought it and they said it‘ll take 6-8 weeks to repair 💔💔💔 but at least it‘ll be for free, cause if i brought it back to apple it would cost like 400€ (i think that‘s nearly 500$) so yeah. but it sucks cause now i‘m “going to uni“ on a really old rusty laptop and on my phone which kinda sucks. oh yeah and also i can‘t watch anything on there 😭 i definitely want to watch wandavision but it‘ll have to wait🤧

Yessss you should def get your GED! I googled and I‘m still not entirely sure what it is dldks but from how you described it- YES!!!!!!

Idk if you know this? Like no idea if I‘ve told you this already (hmmm wait i feel like we talked about it actually?) anyway i was originally gonna go study in England, but for loads of reasons I ended up staying in Germany and I‘m def happy with my decision, but I definitely want to go to England sometime even if it‘s just for six months or maybe for my masters or something? And (obviously everyone is different) but i think everyone should go abroad and live in a different country once in their life, no matter if it‘s for school or what, and even if it‘s just for a few weeks. But i think that‘s something that you‘d never ever forget! And combining that with your acting/theatre??? You really would be living the dream 💘💘😌

how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?— sounds good see you soon 🥰🥰🥰

i used to be one of the people who‘d just do motherlode motherlode motherlode and just... what did i do? Why did i do that??? But not anymore lol. Like I said i haven‘t played sims in a few weeks but i‘ve been watching a few legacy challenge let‘s plays and usually i play with the aging off. So my sims just don‘t age 💀 but i could (should) turn aging on so that it stays exciting and i have limited time and everything. and once i get bored with my current sims i can just make them have kids and continue playing as their children when they get older- like recently i remembered that i haven‘t played the acting career in ages? and i haven‘t had a shop in ages? and i think you can even become a vet right??? like those are definitely some things i want to do in the next weeks!!! Also yes sksksjs i have a few hundred hours on sims as well (if not thousands 😭) it was just that one household that i‘d been playing with for 24hrs

AND GIRL SSKSKJD THE UNIVERSITY THING HAPPENED TO ME TOO, it was a while ago so i don‘t remember what degree and what job it was about but i made my sim study something for aaaaaages so she‘d get a better job from the beginning (you know what i mean like get in at a higher level)...... and i apparently studied the wrong thing cause i didn‘t get any benefits from studying and still had to start at level 1 and shit 🥴🥲

Oh also (this was like 2 weeks ago) Enisa and Michael did take in Michael‘s daughter and i think Enisa currently even has a higher/better relationship with the daughter than Michael but um💀💀💀 also i was hoping (since michael and enisa married (in their back yard i think lol) that the daughter (i forget what her name is😭) would have enisa as her step mom? Like you know how you can see the relationship and it says daughter or son or sister.. and i was hoping that it would say step mom but it doesn‘t say anything 🥲 but in my mind (and if the sims had proper family relations) she is her step mom😌 also Leo is a teenager now???? I mean I aged him up lol dkdk he was being too annoying as a toddler but i don‘t like children so i aged him up twice in one day and now he‘s a teen, but that means he can look after his half sister when she becomes a toddler which is good (the game recognises them as siblings tho even if they‘re just half siblings? why can‘t they have step family members in the sims🥲) okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

I‘ve been a bit sick these past few days and now i‘m getting a headache so i have to finish this response tomorrow 😭😭😭 </3

.

It‘s not tomorrow, it‘s 3 hours later but i‘m better lol

oooff when sims are ungrateful and won‘t woo woo (lol i like that) cause they‘re too tired like?? Be grateful that you‘re not living with your parents anymore 🙄 no okay dkdkdkdl idk if you play with mods (i don‘t) but i know there is a mod (or it‘s part of a mod idk maybe wicked whims?) where you can adjust the percentage of how risky a normal woo woo is, like you still click woo woo (3dksksks okay i‘ll say woohoo again— wait is that what’s it called? 😭) but there‘s like a 25% chance that your sim can still get pregnant just like in real life there‘s always a chance of getting pregnant even if you‘re using protection (just not 25% lmao) but yeah i personally don‘t play with mods sksk and you can always just click try for baby but it would be cool if you could add stuff like risky woohoo to the game without mods (i have no idea how to download mods and i play sims on a really really old laptop and sims is literally tje only thing that works on it anyway so—) i repeat my words from earlier: okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

okay i‘m so sorry i‘m gonna watch fast & furious 1 now cause i need to watch f&f 1-5 until the 30th of april cause they‘re only on netflix til then (i mean i could watch them somewhere else but the quality is never as good) so i will finish this tomorrow after all😭

it is now 1 am, i finished the film, can feel a new obsession coming up again (i always have these f&f obsessions for six months before and after a new film comes out)

THE GOOGLE TRANSLATE wkekdjdj tbh it sounds like someone is speaking with some kind of foreign accent i guess that‘s probably because it just is a direct translation and so anyway slsjsj i don‘t know if you asked me what the word fucking is in german? like idk cause the translation is a bit weird but in case you asked lol sidjsjs theres not really a good translation like we just say fuck for fuck lmao, i don‘t know if you typed in fucking in google translate and it came out as verdammt? cause that means damn (or damned sksjjs) ummm yeah idek if/what you asked so imma move on🤧

I‘m not gonna comment on what you said about every stormzy song cause you already said all the important things but SKSKSJSJSKNSNDBDUDOENWBSLSKKHSULSLSKSBSJSKSK I WAS SMILING SO HARD WHEN I READ YOUR RESPONSE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH finally i know someone who loves him as much as i do 💘💘💘 also since you brought it up, i‘m pretty sure he‘s considered the most successful UK rapper or if not then at least top 3 so he‘s defffffffffinitely big in the uk, in germany more and more people are listening to uk rap too but not as much stormzy cause theyre dumb apparently 🙄 but anywY i‘m sooooo sooo happy that you like him. i think hith came out end of 2019 (i could be wrong but i think it came out on the 13th of december so (in a european way) you‘d write the date: 13.12 and obviously i don‘t KNOW this but i can definitely imagine that he chose that date because ACAB and yes, Michael. Yes. But he hasn‘t made too much music since then so i hope he‘s working on some new stuff 🤞🏼

Also i ordered the stormzy poster😌 also a nicki minaj one bc i decided i‘m gonna have one wall with red-ish posters (i already have two kinda red ones) and one with blue/green-ish posters (already have two) and i can add stormzy to the blue one and nicki to the red one, but i think that‘s it cause if my walls are tooo full it could look cluttered? I‘m not sure how that type of thing works lmao but my room is generally untidy so i don‘t want the walls to look unorganised too so i think that‘s it for now

I really want to finish this now but my brain is getting kinda slow and i need to sleep soon so this will have to wait till later after all 🥺🥴 (not that it makes and difference to you bc you‘ll see this whenever i post it buttttt i wanted you to know that i want to talk to you again but with my slow brain i‘m just taking too long to do it in one day😭😭😭 and i‘m so busy tomorrow hmm but i‘m sure i‘ll have 30 minutes to finish this then <3)

Okay wait I‘m so dumb I didn‘t realise I‘d nearly answered everything i could have posted this yesterday 😭😭

Oooohh that summer bra sounds so nice like if i was confident enough i literally would just wear a top that resembles a bra (or really is a bra lol) cause my tiddies always be looking amazing i‘m just insecure about my stomach sometimes 🙄🙄🙄 but recently i‘ve been loving myself more and more tbh 😌

also i hope you can go shopping for some nice clothes soon ✨😌

I‘ll be honest I haven‘t listened to your song recs YET but only because i wanna take my time with them and i‘ve been so busy and slso AJ tracey‘s album came out last week and I haven‘t listened to that one yet either so ekdkdj (he‘s also a uk rapper like quite popular and successful as well, but i feel like i‘m not gonna like his album cause whenever i‘m looking forward to an album it ends up being really bad and the albums where you weren‘t expecting it turn out to be bangers.... so yeah but i‘ll let you know when i listen to your songs!!!! :)

Omg i keep having to scroll up all the way to see the next thing you said so sorry if I completely miss some of the things you said😭😭

So when you sent this the bird was still bothering me oh my FUCK DKDLDMMDMDMD but now i‘ve been going to bed at like 1-2am so the bird is probably still asleep lool

Okay and for the rest of your ask my response is: 💘💖❣️💚❣️💛❣️💛💕💞❤️💓💟💞💕💕💖💘💝💟💟🧡❤️🧡💞💛💚💓💚💚💚❣️🧡💖💘🧡💝🧡💕💘🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥺🥺🥺🥰🥺🥺💘💘💘💘💘 (okay that looked cuter in my head i don‘t really like the green hearts dldkkdksndnd)

[ca1e70-deactivated]

a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years. 

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism 

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid. 

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis 

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later 

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best. 

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever. 

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment) 

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH 

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair. 

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going. 

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY

[samanthasroberts]

Medieval beer purity law has Germany’s craft brewers over a barrel

When is a beer not a beer? When German authorities say it violates a 500-year-old decree, but some brewers are fighting back

Opening the lid of a huge brown boiling vessel, Stefan Fritsche flings a handful of hop pellets into the frothy whirl of liquid. Elsewhere in his brewery, a malt grinder rumbles away, a lab technician is busy testing new flavours and crates of Schwarzer Abt (Black Abbot) beer bound for far-flung places are being lifted on to a lorry by a forklift truck.

But the air of industry at Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle, a monastery brewery north of Berlin, feels like a daily act of defiance, says Fritsche. For years, authorities in the region tried to claim that Schwarzer Abt a thick, malty, smokey-tasting black beer containing sugar was not beer at all.

Neuzelles signature tipple, which has been brewed to the same monks recipe since 1410, fell foul of Germanys purity law, known in German as the Reinheitsgebot, a medieval food safety rule which deemed that beer could contain nothing other than water, barley, hops and, later, also yeast.

The law was decreed in 1516 by Munichs Duke Wilhelm IV over concerns that contaminants such as soot, poisonous roots and sawdust were being added to the beer-making process.

The bitter legal battle that ensued over Schwarzer Abt was won by the Brandenburg brewery more than a decade ago.

But as German beer enthusiasts prepare to mark the purity laws 500th anniversary later this month on what is known as German Beer Day, it is still upheld as a vanguard in the fight against the strictest beer-making rules in the world.

A brewery worker checks bottles of Klosterbrauerei Neuzelles Schwarzer Abt (Black Abbot) beer. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

Up to the point we add the sugar, we brew according to the purity law, says Fritsche, but the agriculture ministry told me it could not be called beer. If I made it here and sold it abroad I could call it that, or if I made it abroad and exported back to Germany that would also be OK, but because we were brewing on German soil, it could not carry the name beer even though wed been doing it for far longer than the purity law.

He recalls the legal battle as being very emotional, not least because he and his father, Helmut, had bought the brewery in the former communist East Germany, close to the Polish border, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hoped to bring new jobs and enterprise to the region as they built up the business. But the battle we ended up fighting nearly sank us, just because we refused to fit in with the norm, Fritsche says.

Small brewers like Fritsche, who produces 35,000 hectolitres (6m pints) a year, and a growing number of craft beer producers who are keen for more freedom to be able to experiment with different ingredients such as fruits and spices, say the purity law stifles creativity and innovation. Fritsche cites a recent scandal over traces of the herbicide glyphosate that were found in many different German beers, as well as the lack of restrictions on using genetically modified ingredients, to suggest it is far from pure.

But the majority of German breweries who brew according to the regulations argue that they are central to the reason German beer has such a towering reputation around the world.

Anyone who believes that the Reinheitsgebot serves to limit creativity and gives rise to monotonous beers merely has to look to the immense diversity of the countrys beer, which is the envy of the world, says Marc-Oliver Huhnholz, of the German Brewers Federation. Germanys brewers never stop trying to develop new beer styles from the ingredients stipulated in the purity law, proving that the potential involving those four ingredients has still not been fully realised.

He points out that the Reinheitsgebot continues to enjoy an extremely high degree of acceptance, with a recent survey finding that 85 per cent of German consumers saying that it should continue to be upheld.

So theres absolutely no incentive for German brewers to let a 500-year-old decree fade into the past, Huhnholz adds. It has perpetually provided brewers with the impetus to breathe new life into Germanys beer culture.

Traditionalists who argue that experimentation with the permitted ingredients offers scope enough for innovation point to the current trend to search for new hop and yeast varieties there are about 200 of each which all help to add new twists to established beers.

Craft beers broadly speaking, those not brewed by large corporations but by small, independent brewers constitute, at 100,000 hectolitres or 0.1 percent, a tiny proportion of the German beer market, though they are increasingly making their presence felt.

When the independent Scottish craft beer maker BrewDog opens a 200-seater bar and beer garden in central Berlin later this year, under the German rules they will not be allowed to brew in Germany. They will have to import, and even then will not be allowed to call their beer beer.

The Neuzelle brewery produces 6m pints of beer a year. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

We have to call it beer-style or refer to it specifically as an IPA, pale ale or stout, says Kerry Allison, the companys Germany representative and brand ambassador. Nevertheless, she senses the beginnings of a beer revolution and says BrewDog hopes to contribute to it, not least by showcasing a wide variety of German craft beers.

We dont see the Reinheitsgebot as our issue to debate, being lucky enough to come from a country which doesnt restrict us, she says. But we do think its an issue that needs to be spoken about loudly, and were looking forward to supporting other breweries in their fight for a relaxation of the rules. Theres a lot of tension over this issue as it really removes the creative licence and perpetuates a market of very similar beers. At the end of the day, its in everyones interest just to be producing excellent beers.

Huhnholz argues that German brewing methods have changed immeasurably over the centuries, as have food safety standards. The likelihood of falling victim to an irresponsible brewer who might once have spiked your beer with deadly nightshade has faded, but that doesnt mean that the Reinheitsgebot should be considered a relic of the past, he says. The indisputable fact is that over the years it has endured as a natural product, free of artificial flavours, enzymes or preservatives.

Meik Forell, a beer market specialist with the Hamburg consulting firm Forell & Tebroke, says the law is often wrongly perceived as the gospel truth. It is frequently referred to as the worlds oldest food safety standard when in fact it is first and foremost a protectionist measure reaching back to the middle ages. He points out that it was not until the 1990s that imported beer was allowed to be sold in Germany. The fact is as long as the Reinheitsgebot is retained, it makes life difficult for foreign brewers in Germany, he says, but much of the innovation is coming from outside, so its high time German brewers woke from their fairytale slumber or else theyre going to find their market share shrinking even more. He insists tha while the majority of Germans might be in favour of keeping the purity law, few people really understand what it means.

Meanwhile, the Fritsche family of Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle continues to test the boundaries with a range of beers that seem purposely intended to stir the wrath of purists, from bathing, apple, cherry and anti-ageing beers, to one made out of distilled Bavarian hay.

Stefan Fritsche checks the temperature of a vat of fermenting hops. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

They ended up taking their battle to the highest constitutional court where a judge ruled an exception should be made to their Black Abbot, a decision that was widely interpreted as a softening of the purity law.

Still their battles with the authorities continue to this day over everything from what constitutes a beer to the size and style of type faces on its labels.

Standing over an open fermenting vat full of a golden brown froth and checking its temperature gauge, Stefan Fritsche recalls how, in the midst of the row, just when he thought it could not get any more absurd, he was contacted by the finance ministry.

They ordered a crate of Black Abbot, and then got in touch to say despite what the agriculture ministry said, as it tasted like beer to them it was beer, and we had to make sure we continued to pay our beer taxes, he says. Of course, we were delighted to do so.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/16/medieval-beer-purity-law-has-germanys-craft-brewers-over-a-barrel/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/medieval-beer-purity-law-has-germanys-craft-brewers-over-a-barrel/

[touristguidebuzz]

Violent Attacks Push European Tourism to Extremes

French riot police patrol on the Champs Elysees boulevard, with the Arc de Triomphe in background, in Paris. Christophe Ena / Associated Press

Skift Take: Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia have all been devastated by terror attacks in recent years and they are all well down on their previous highs. The reluctance of tourists to visit is having unintended consequences while other destinations such as Barcelona are experiencing a boom.

— Patrick Whyte

One week before the UK Prime Minister triggered her country’s departure from the European Union, and less than two weeks before our inaugural Skift Forum Europe, we launched a series of four stories devoted to Resetting Transatlantic Travel.

One of our 2017 Megatrends called this year one of reckoning for European tourism. With the pending departure of the UK from the EU, the growth of low-cost carriers like Norwegian Air, multiple violent acts in major European cities, and the rise of neo-isolationism in the United States and some European countries, it’s indeed a year of large-scale shifts for the most popular region in the world for tourism.

Our third story looks at how violence in and around Europe is changing the market and the impact it is having on certain countries.

When Nick Wrightman, a tour operator with almost 30 years’ experience in Turkey was travelling through the southern city of Marmaris last year, he was struck by how few people there were.

The area enjoys a hot Mediterranean climate, has plenty of hotels, and is a relatively good value: It should have been heaving with tourists from all over Europe. The same pattern could be seen all over the country – 2016 was a very, very bad year for tourism in Turkey.

“We’ve got properties in the Bozburun Peninsular [and] you sometimes have to go through Marmaris to get to it. That’s why I noticed that it was much quieter last year,” he said.

Turkey is in the middle of a tourism slump. According to official figures from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the number of foreign visitors fell by 30 percent to 25.4 million. The decline can largely be explained by violence and other geopolitical factors. A series of attacks — some of which have killed tourists — over the past couple of years have put off many people about going to the country.

Turkey is not alone in this respect. Countries popular with tourists such as Egypt and Tunisia have been targeted as have European cities such as Paris, London, and Berlin. Fear and uncertainty are reshaping the landscape, at least on a temporary basis, which is turning some places into ghost towns, while others are dealing with altogether different consequences.

Overtourism in action

People cool off at Sant Sebastia and Sant Miquel beaches in Barceloneta neighborhood in Barcelona, Spain, August 16, 2015. REUTERS/Albert Gea

The Spanish city of Barcelona is suffering a very different problem than Marmaris, Turkey. Cheap flights and the total package of beaches, mountains and culture have helped it become one of Europe’s tourism hotspots. This winning combination resulted in 9.1 million tourists staying in the city’s hotels in 2016 – a 9.2 percent increase on the previous year.

In the peak summer months La Rambla, the 1.2 kilometer thoroughfare that runs all the way to the sea, is packed from morning well into the evening with bars and restaurants selling overpriced sangria to tourists happy to be part of the crowd.

“In terms of tourists, I think in Barcelona, for the last three years we have had a new record every year,” said Guillermo Gaspart, the founder of micro hotel stay company ByHours, which is based in the city.

The statistical increase is also born out in Gaspart’s own experience.

“It’s more busy than usual but at the same time if you are walking around La Rambla today you can see for example that there are a lot of police. Even the though we haven’t received any kind of terrorist attack, we are at the maximum alert here in Barcelona.”

Gaspart calls some of tourists “borrowed,” in the sense that they might not have come to Barcelona had it not been for problems elsewhere.

Most other cities can only look on enviously at Barcelona’s ability to keep on drawing the crowds and, although we can’t know the motivations of each individual tourist, it seems likely to have benefited from the reluctance of some to travel to areas that have experienced violent attacks in the recent past.

But this continuing popularity is causing overtourism problems in Barcelona.

“Every day this discussion is bigger in Barcelona between locals and people doing business with tourists… because it’s not only the hotels… it’s taxis, shops, it’s everything that’s taking advantage of tourists,” Gaspart said.

Although the city obviously benefits from the spending that comes from millions of foreign tourists, the question of how it is managed has become a huge issue.

Around 18 months ago a group of neighbourhood associations came together to form the Assemblea de Barris per un Turisme Sostenible (ABTS) to facilitate the change they thought was necessary.

“What we do is mainly we criitcize and denounce and try to find and put on the table alternatives to the touristic model we have in the city right now and [that we’ve had] for a long time,” said Daniel Pardo a member of the organization..

For the ABTS it’s not simply the number of tourists, it’s the “conflicts created by mass tourism” in neighbourhoods across the city. Residents are being displaced by hotels and alternative accommodation providers. The shops that may be more use to locals are being swapped for ones aimed at tourists, and these new stores “are obviously useless for everyday life,” Pardo said.

There’s also the problem of what to do with waste from this mass consumption.

The protests earlier this year and the general movement is not a vendetta against tourists but part of a bigger issue.

“This is something that is not usually well understood by some media, which is the conflict is not neighbours/tourists it is city/tourism industry and it is a conflict between public interest and private interests,” he said.

At the moment the associations have the support of the city’s mayor, Ada Colau, who doesn’t want the city to become a cheap souvenir shop aimed just at tourists. She is driving a campaign to ensure that the money raised from tourism actually benefits locals.

The €1.2 million ($1.3 million) dividend from Barcelona’s tourism tax is being used to lay on extra buses during the busy summer months and improvements will also be made to squares in Gràcia and the Collserola Natural Park.

Not everyone in Spain is keen to talk up the problems associated with overtourism.

The country’s tourism minister Álvaro Nadal referred it it as “tourismphobia” and said it was only found in two places: the Balearic Islands and Barcelona.

“I think that Spain has always been a very open country, let me say this to you. We always pride ourselves on being good hoists. That’s why tourism is so important in Spain, not only because our supply has quality and our prices are very good… but also because in the mood of the people is this openness to all foreigners,” he said.

“So I would say that I don’t feel right thinking about this phenomenon of tourismphobia I think its something that should go down. I hope this is more or less something that will pass over with time. But in the meantime we have to work in order to make more attractive the idea of tourism. “

Spain’s popularity is nothing new. Northern Europeans have been flocking to the Mediterranean coast since the 1950s – it is just that it in recent years it had more competition. But violent attacks elsewhere have driven up the demand.

Empty hotels

Tunisian police officers guarding Imperial Marhaba hotel during visit of top security officials of Britain, France, Germany and Belgium in Sousse, Tunisia, in 2015. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

Violent attacks and the wall-to-all news coverage that invariably follows — typically labeling them as terrorism when they hit Europeans or Americans — have dealt a brutal blow to the tourism industries of many countries in and around North Africa and the Middle East.

Despite the worries associated with the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia in late 2010, the country was steadily growing its tourism industry by offering a cheaper alternative to Southern European destinatinations.

French, Germans, Italians and British travelers were flocking to its beaches in increasing numbers. Two attacks – one at a museum and one at a beach — in the space of just over three months in 2015 killed 60 people, most of whom were tourists. Following the second in Sousse, tour operators decided they couldn’t take the risk anymore and largely pulled the plug.

The latest government figures show that between January and September last year Tunisia booked $750 million in tourism receipts, down 8.4 percent on the previous year and 34.1 percent on 2014.

Although arrival numbers have risen slightly, the total is still down on previous years. Things are even worse for Turkey and Egypt, both of which were reliant on European tourists.

According to Euromonitor International, arrivals (not just Europeans) are down year-on-year in both Turkey and Egypt and although Tunisia has bounced back slightly, its 2016 total is way down on 2013.

“It’s well-documented that there is just obviously for mostly geopolitical [and] terrorism reasons there are countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey which have been hard hit. And obviously good alternatives especially for Europeans who go to these countries is to go to other countries, which offer a similar product especially Spain, that’s perfromed very well because it offers [a] similar relatively cheap beach destination experience. Spain, Italy, Greece have been performing relatively well,” said Wouter Geerts, senior travel analyst at Euromonitor.

Not only has Egypt suffered from tourists shunning its Red Sea beach resorts but cultural tourism to Cairo and Nile cruising have also declined.

The suspected bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 in October 2015 led many European governments to ban flights from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Gradually these were lifted with only two countries retaining the ban to this day. One of these is Russia, where the majority of the 224 passengers killed were from, the other is the UK. There is no ban on travel to Cairo and Luxor in the UK but the perception because of the headlines generated by the Sharm el Sheikh ban is that the country is unsafe.

Across Europe there is no coordinated approach to deciding if a country is safe for tourists to visit. That’s why occasionally you get the seemingly contradictory approach taken by a pan-European company like TUI Group, which may offer holidays from certain countries but not others. This is normally because insurance policies are voided if a country’s government says it is unsafe to travel.

Philip Breckner, is the commercial director at small specialist tour operator Discover Egypt, and he believes the country’s reputation at least in the UK is being tarnished by the flight plan to Sharm el Sheikh.

“We get people that call up and say ‘are the Nile cruises operating or have they started operating again’ and we say ‘well they’ve never stopped operating’,” he said.

Brits and Russians might be absent but it is not all bad news, according to Breckner.

“Egypt has been booming in the last few months with tourism from other counties primarily from the east: China, India [as well as] some other European countries, all of which have reintroduced tourism to Sharm el Sheikh.

“On the Nile cruise that we operate there are weekly and regular American groups on board. Usually the Americans are deterred by these things but they’re still traveling.”

City targets

It isn’t just counties in the Middle East and North Africa that have had their tourism industries devastated by violence targeted for maximum media impact. Several European cities have suffered their own attacks in recent years.

France has been hit multiple times, most notably with the coordinated strikes in November 2015, which left 130 people dead, including 89 at the Bataclan theatre, while more than 80 people were killed in an attack in Nice in July 2016. Brussels and most recently London have suffered too.

According to hotel research company STR, each market has been affected differently and the level of subsequent disruption largely comes from the severity of the attack.

“We’re seeing now that the way a hotel market reacts to an attack really does depend on the severity,” said Thomas Emanuel, STR’s director of business development. “Of course, any time innocent lives are lost or people are injured, it’s tragic. But this most recent attack in London and even the December attack in Berlin have not had much of an impact on hotel performance.

“When there is a larger number of casualties, as was the case in Nice, Brussels and Paris over the past two years, it takes a longer duration without additional incidents for tourism confidence to grow. This is also what we’ve noticed in Istanbul, as it remains to be seen when the market will be deemed a safe destination again.”

Violence is an issue across Europe but historically it is at a lower level than through much of the 20th century. The difference is perhaps that the targets have changed and that 24-hour rolling news coverage as well as social media manage to magnify everything.

“It’s not specifically going after tourists but just places where tourists are likely to be. So places like transport hubs, airports [like in the] Brussels attack. Again where tourists are moving through, although they aren’t a specific target…” said Jesper Cullen, a senior analyst covering Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa at Risk Advisory Group.

What happens next?

Europeans, especially those in the north of the continent, are loath to give up their annual two weeks in the sun. What violence and other geopolitical problems do, is cause a recalibration with tour operators — and subsequently tourists — moving elsewhere.

Thomas Cook has added capacity in smaller destinations such as Bulgaria and Croatia to replace others that have fallen out of favour and rival TUI Group has made a similar move.

The problem for Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt is exacerbated by the fact that the issues, however old, are still getting an airing.

The beach attack in Tunisia, which took place in 2015, was in the news again during a long-running inquest into the deaths of the thirty Britons killed. The country is effectively still a no-go zone because of advice from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Egypt too still has its problems. Israeli authorities warned of a possible attack on tourists over the Passover holiday just last month. Turkey’s problem is slightly different, stemming instead from the growing power of President Erdogan, in what seems to be an increasingly divided country.

“The attacks that are happening in Turkey have definitely had an impact and you also had the coup and we’ll have to see how the referendum, that Erdogan just won, if that’s going to have any impact on how the country’s being governed and ruled and if that has on impact on how open it is to tourism,” said Euromonitor’s Geerts.

“But its likely that Turkey remains open for tourism because it is a very important part of their economy and the question is just how well they are responding to the attacks that have been happening and also the question especially with Turkey is how do people perceive the attacks.

“And is there a case especially with Turkey where people are getting used to them a bit more and it is becoming part of the decision making process when you decide to go to Turkey that you know that there are attacks but that those attacks tend to be in the major cities and the beach resorts might be relatively safer and therefore you might still be able to go to say Antalya, Alanya places like that.”

In Europe the vacation season is still young with most people, not heading off until June, July and Augusts and Wrightman remains hopeful that there could be a recovery.

His own business, The Discerning Collection, which focuses on the upmarket end of travel, is on a par with last year but that is still down on previous highs.

“I think it’s going to be slightly better this year than last year. I can see what Thomas Cook and Jet2 are doing purely by the number of aircraft they’ve got going into Dalaman so thats a good indication, the same with Monarch. I can only judge that by the number of aircraft going and because they’re quite busy.

“So if you look now actually at trying to get a high season flight to Dalaman for example, [it’s] quite expensive. So it seems to have sold. I suspect and I’m pretty sure from my bookings alone that it’s going to be busier than last year.”

This is the third in a series of stories called Resetting Transatlantic Travel. Articles include:

Part one: The European Union’s impact on travel Part two: The business of transatlantic flying Part three: Violence and European travel habits Part four: Neo-Isolationism and transatlantic tourism