What is it with Germans and piss?
I went to the Wacken music festival in 2009 and it was packed with metalheads from all over Germany. They were good company and I certainly didn't leave with an unfavourable opinion of Germans, but I couldn't help but be appalled by their pissing habits. They will whip it out and turn around to piss in mid-conversation. They will piss in the middle of their own campsite or in a mosh pit. They will in fact happily piss anywhere, provided that place is highly public and has as many potential witnesses as possible.
I crossed from one field towards another stage, crossing over a small ditch, and stretched out into the distance were at least two dozen German girls squatting over it, pissing. On multiple occasions I saw a man walking in a straight line, only to stop, piss where he was standing, and then continue just as though he'd been tying his shoelaces. I know, it's a music festival - so what? People piss everywhere in open-air festivals, right? Yes they do, but usually they at least try to find a corner, or a fence, or - radically - one of the many, large, urinals that populate these places. Not Germans. That is too much effort, too many wasted seconds, the short walk might disturb their pristine hydrological equilibrium of consuming beer and producing piss.
On the last night I went to see Amon Amarth. On my way to the front, I passed by the back left corner to get a beer from one of the bars which ringed the whole field. There was a shallow depression in this corner, in which had formed an artificial lake of piss, at least ten metres wide. The Germans surrounding it merrily pissed into it, or walked through it blithely, ankle-deep in piss. Every so often a German would run up and belly-flop into the piss lake, to great cheer. Others were scooping up piss in their empty glasses and hurling the piss at each other in what I can only assume is some ancient Black Forest ritual.
Der PißenPreußen is how I think of Germans now.
