New Berlin Order
So the other day, on the way home from work, I glance up from the shuffling feet in the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station to see two members of the (still) über-extensive Berlin bureaucracy walking a few feet ahead of me.
They are from the so-called "Ordnungsamt" (or, literally, Department of Order), and their task is, well, to make sure that order is, like, maintained and stuff. I've seen a few T.V. featurettes involving "officials" from the "Ordnungsamt" putting things into place in various cities throughout Germany: asking disruptive homeless people to move to another block, inspecting apartments which are suspected of being trashed beyond socially acceptable standards...various tasks along these lines.
At first I thought I was experiencing a piece of ingenious performance art when I noticed that, on the jacket of the "official" on the left, a few of the letters had fallen off, kind of like this:
I listened in on their conversation for a few minutes (just to be sure that I wasn't witnessing a performance) which made the jacket thing even more hilarious. They (two old-school Berliners in their mid-50s or so) were very seriously surveying the U-Bahn station, considering if the placement of the rack of newspapers at a nearby newspaper stand was at a sufficient distance so as not be be disruptive to the people moving through the station.
Which brings up an important question: Is there an Ordnungsamt for the Ordnungsamt? I mean, like seriously n stuff, who's going to keep track of those who keep track of whether life is proceeding in an orderly fashion or not? I would feel more comfortable with a few additional layers of order keepers - just to be sure - but maybe that's just me.
Until a few months ago there was a guy in my neighborhood who sat in a little pseudo-official "office" that he'd created in a former store front. The office was decorated as if it were an actual old-school DDR beamter's office (including a big, official-looking stamp on the desk), and apparently you could even make appointments with him (presumably to pretend as if you were conducting some kind of government business). He looked not entirely unlike this dude:
And finally, in an unrelated note: I've gone commercial. More and more people seem to be finding/enjoying this site - which is great - but the bill for keeping it alive has risen somewhat.
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