Getting Brutal in Bayern

As anyone who witnessed the opening ceremony of the 2006 World Cup will attest, the Bayern people of Deutschland know less than a Bratwurst about TV presentation.

This is borne out by a program we watched this week on RTL entitled “Bauer sucht Frau” (Satellite TV in Slovakia – when it is working - consists of RTL, Deutsch Eurosport, Deutsch MTV and 3 Slovak channels.)

Basically the program is a serious Blind Date in lederhosen.
It introduces a dozen single farm-lads (I use the term loosely as most are approaching middle age and still living with their mutters) who are looking for a spouse.
They each get to select two “lucky” fraulein from a postbag of would be frauen to take as consorts to a contrived weekend barn dance.

During the course of the weekend the herren then choose which of the two blushing hopefuls gets to continue onto the next round – which is to spend a week down on the farm with Hans, Mutter and in one case four generations of country folk in Bavaria.

Now it is not the style of program which I find so amusing. Frankly it is manure. It is the sheer, brutally insensitive, Teutonic honesty with which the unsuccessful applicant is annihilated – sorry I mean eliminated. The poor girl, who had little, if any, self esteem to start with, is subjected to an unbridled character assassination by the heartless Herr in the presence of her gloating rival and the callous camera crew.

I can’t wait for next week’s episode to see what manner of indignities are heaped upon the unfortunate maedchen.

I love Germans – they are just so LITERAL.