Tod und Verzweiflung, But Also A Rampant (If Temporary) Triumph

You know how, some days, the only combination of words that accurately describes one's existence is Tod und Verzweiflung? Today, however, is a great day, for today we can say, with utter confidence: "Pah! We laugh in the face of danger. We drop ice cubes down the vest of fear!"

We have defeated the vicious attempts of the Privy Counsel archive to confuse us, ruin our equanimity and make us into gibbering wrecks (or "a gibbering wreck", depending on how many of us one decides there are, and whether we are using the royal we or just an ordinary plural). We have found the elusive "New Year's email"! As regular readers will remember, pictures from the famed New Year's email turned up during one of our archive raids back in August, and we wrote, on the occasion, with touching bewilderment:

As you may suspect, the Privy Counsel picture archive is a total fucking mess. (Read all about the pheasant situation here and here.) There is stuff that's been in there so long we can no longer identify it. Like pictures from German Friend labelled "New year's email", for instance. "What email?" we ask ourselves, squinting in the light of the guttering candle. "And, crucially," we further ponder, taking a quizzical swig from our hipflask, "from what year?"

 We won't go into details of the bravery displayed by the Head Privy Counsellor as we battled against skeletal hands, spiders, and mysterious murderous monks (fuck knows what they were doing in our archive) - suffice to say, we found the email! Behold - an amusing vignette from German Friend! (Look out for interspersed Scandiwegian vocabulary; German Friend is multi-lingual and multi-talented. Oh, and did we mention he just got a dog? We don't know a lot about it at present, only that it isn't called Doris. We'll keep you updated.)

[...] Meanwhile in [German Friend]-land the Christmas and New Year edition 2013 was pretty good. 

I can put some blame on Blighty for blighting a small portion of my stay back home, as on December 23, still in London, I had to pedal through puddles of monstrous extent, errands, presents, etc, you know, and the shoes, the brown shoes got soaked. Horror.
Never really recovered, not till the next day, departure day, anyway, and so, as a good man only owns two pairs of shoes at most at any one time, I had worn "them ole boots", looking strong and masculine, but under the surface, literally, having a blister party! A 5-hour walk with hyperactive 70-year-old min pappa in Berlin didn't help the matter. New shoes were bought on New Year's Eve (how come nobody ever mentions New Year's Adam? Not fair!). 

Anyway, back in Hamburg for nyår, some peeps from here (London) and there (Germany) joined me and we partied on down in the Washington Bar (you don't have to know this place, but if you are ever in Hamburg looking for a spot to party, I can recommend it. "Klein aber oho", as we say in tyska!). 

[...] A pink-tinted necessary with head rests for male customers! "Kopf hier." Don't fall asleep though, the room is fully armed, pistols dangling menacingly overhead! 

A DJ's wild phantasy at Hamburg's Washington Bar. Blue is so 2014. We love the look. And the decks. And the Boombox. Not so much the blur of the pictures. Sorry. Poop.

"Kopf hier." Jawohl!

One could, if one were so inclined, make any number of rude jokes 
incorporating the word "gun".

Close-up of the simple but poignant instructions.
We do love clear signage!

We have no idea what's going on here.

Or here.

Or, for that matter, here.

This isn't, frankly, much clearer.
It looks, however, like German Friend had an excellent Silvester!

We had an amusing and oh! so intellectual conversation with German Friend recently about the German word Trümmerfrauen, and are delighted to note that the word Trümmer is incorporated in the libretto of today's festive video! We're at risk of feeling so smug about this that we have to stop writing immediately, before our head explodes.

Festive video - Patricia Petibon, Der Hölle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herzen (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Related Reading
Last time we mentioned German Friend, and discovered the concept of the mysterious New year's Email: A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity
A very German post: A Germane Issue
One of the most exciting things to have happened during 2013: The Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Another post with a festive Mozart video: Up in the Air - Introducing Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
All posts about German Friend

In other news:
CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Have you considered turning your back on mindless consumerism and instead benefiting mankind by spending a penny on Oxfam Unwrapped, WaterAid, or ToiletTwinning? Or why not donate to Amnesty International, or your local women's shelter?