American reacts to 'Realer Irrsinn' German TV show

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to Realer Irrsinn: Falsche Pflastersteine in Kiel

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[TheSchuetzeP]

The joke you didn't understand was lost in translation: The old man said "All they do is put stones in ones way"

[Andre]

As a german I can tell you, that there aren't this much signs everywhere but it's still hilarious to see this happening. That's why I love this show XD

[Archphoenix]

our boy has reached the "german bureaucrycy" part of his travel. German bureuacracy is where sanity goes to die, and your time, and your money usually.

[smoo]

There is an idiom in German for hindering people doing something.
It's: Jemandem Steine in den Weg legen.
Putting stones on somebody's way.

Here it was done somewhat literally. Or telling somebody to take his stones away, can mean putting stones in his way.

[lulaa]

What makes the second clip even funnier is knowing that one of the reasons against a general speed limit that our government brought up was that ‘there aren’t enough street signs available’

Also i think you should try to keep the subtitles in the frame when watching videos in German

[dansattah]

We have a German word for that, "der Schilderwald", the Forest of Signs.
Sometimes, this refers to the signs which accumulated in an area over time.
Sometimes, it refers to many signs which are stacked on top of each other to work in tandem.

[SaraLuna]

As a German its easy to watch your videos, but I imagine as someone who can't understand German it would be difficult because you can't always read the subtitles. You should try to keep them in the video itself for everyone.

[NicolaiCzempin]

The "shield" is a mistranslation of "Schild". Later it is translated correctly as "sign".

Schild has two meanings; der Schild is a shield as in a knight's. das Schild is a sign as in traffic (Verkehrsschild) and more general ones.

[eastfrisian_]

Extra 3 is great, I love the show! There was also a gentleman from Oldenburg (my nearest big city) and if I remember correctly he has fallen leaves from his property grabbed in a metal basket, which was mounted by the city on the street for leaf disposal. He lived on an avenue with a lot of trees that caused a lot of leaves and the trees are the property of the city. He was warned by the city for putting leaves from his property into the metal basket. The trees belong to the city, so they might as well pay for leaf disposal....not in any case. But the metal basket was ONLY for the leaves on city land, e.g. for the ditch in front of his house. So what did the gentleman do when no one was looking? He raked the leaves from his property, back onto the city's property and then he was allowed to put them in the metal basket. Otherwise, he would have had to buy expensive special trash bags for the leaves on his property. Total insanity, unfortunately exists millions of times in Germany.

[petebeatminister]

Sadly enough, the things they show in this series are real, real stupidity by authorities.

[Steuerelch]

I am glad you liked the recommendation!

The funny and at the same time sad thing about the show is actually that it is about very real cases
There are now almost infinite episodes of the series so whenever you feel like seeing German bureaucracy at its best... go for it ;D

Greetings Thomas :)

[martinhuhn]

The sad thing is, that "Realer Irrsinn" is a regular element of the show, which never runs out of crazy burocratic nonsense to report. As in the second clip, sometimes the "rules" which are followed do not really exist and are pure fantasy of local authorities (zebra crossings in germany need to have A SIGN, not a zoo of signs). The regulation of the first clip propably exists (even though it can only be a local thing) and I feel bad for the city authorities which have to insist on it in public, once someone points it out to them. It is unlikely that the authorities investigated the pavement as their own initiative here and much more likely that sombody wanted to harm the person who made the new pavement and officially reported it, after which the authorities did not dare to refuse to care about it.

[Casanisl]

The joke from the first clip literally translates to "You want to build living room for two families, but all they do is put stones in your way" which is a typical phrase for putting obstacles in your way. So in the end the translation was correct, but the pun got lost.

[jeanne]

This is the most german thing he will ever see😂

[IsraBeezy]

This is such a fun video idea! Realer Irrsinn is always funny even for Germans but seeing someone from another country react to it is interesting!
There was one episode called "Zu hoher Bahnsteig in Bad Bentheim" which is absolutely crazy. It would be fun to see you react to that one. :)

Also, yes, all of this is true, it's not just a joke-show. Unfortunately.

[lgaming]

5:42 He said "Es werden im Grunde nur Steine in den Weg gelegt" which means "And all that's done is putting obstacles in the way" (or something like that) but literally translates to "There are basically only stones put in the way" so the joke was that he used the wrong stone and he said that there are only stones put in his way.

[austrogalant]

These clips are my favorite part of this german show. You should review more of them 😂
And yes, they are real

[hammerlord]

5:40 doesn't make sense in english so you couldn't have caught the joke. In German, there's a saying of "putting stones in your way" (Steine in den Weg legen), meaning "raising obstacles". So the old man is making a joke about stones.

[Eurograph]

"Extra 3" is one of the best german satire shows. Other good shows are "ZDF Heute Show" and "ZDF Magazin Royale". The shows are showing the silly things going on in Germany and this very humoristic. In this shows you can see where the failures of Germany lay. I love this kind of shows!

[Marifl]

4:10 You will most likely find this seemingly bizarre situation in rural areas. The plot of land is larger than the road that is actually been built to reserve a certain buffer zone. This is being done just in case the initially built street needs to be widened at some point in the future. Additionally, the city can use the buffer zone for paving a sidewalk if necessary. At this point in time it's still the originally built small street and there simply was no necessity for a proper sidewalk, so far.
I was pretty surprised when I encountered a similar situation in Tirol (Austria) where the city expected the landowner to hand them a 0, 5 to 1 meter wide stripe of land adjacent to the public street in turn for a building permissions. The reason being: the initial street was once only meant for 1 small farmstead but now, 70 years later, served a whole settlement. Therefore, the city needs to widen the streets if the settlement grows even further to prevent traffic issues as well as larger sewage system etc.