Juvenile in Germany

Ok, so my trip to Germany last week marks my fourth visit to a European Germanic-speaking country in eleven months: Ireland in July, Holland in October, Holland in March, and now Deutschland. Now I have always found the Dutch language peculiarly entertaining, as if it were the slightly developmentally challenged bastard child of English and German ( I once bought Stovie a packet of powdered soup mix from the Netherlands just because I found the instructions so very entertaining). So every trip to Holland is a linguisticky delight -- in fact, in March I even tried to write a haiku about my favorite Dutch verbs, with "besprenkeld" as its centerpiece. (It was a failure.) But for some reason it's even worse in Germany. I mean, in terms of purely linguistic things making me laugh. For example, every time I am in Frankfurt and its environs (and I've been in that airport like 10 times since the year 2000) I laugh when I see things like this:
It shouldn't be funny. But it is! Every time! So I was pretty sure that it would be just as bad, if not worse, when I got to Hamburg. And I was not wrong.
And so on. So many opportunities all over town to chuckle, and then shake your head ruefully at the fact that you're like a five year old. Speaking of which, this little patisserie, shown here in Wiesbaden but found in many a Hauptbahnhof and actually selling pretty tasty stuff (I am a fan of their savory spinach and cheese pastry, for one), also always makes me laugh:
Now I imagine this is meant to be some kind of pseudo-French combination of CROissant and BAGuette, but what with -bag being a pretty productive insulting suffix in English (e.g., as found after scum, douche, and ho), I always feel like it's an insult meaning someone is ickily Cro-Magnon. As in, "Stop dragging your knuckles on the ground all the time - you're such a Crobag!" It made me quite pensive on the train, once I was done munching on my (le) croissant.
Also problematic are certain words that mean one thing auf Deutsch and an entirely different, more obscene, thing, auf Jüdische. Not pictured here (battery issues with the camera) are the many putzraums or ads for putzfraus (easy online translation service here). Which leads me, of course, to one of the biggest problems I have with not laughing when walking around Germany, which is jewelry stores. In that jewelry is called Schmuck, and although Germans don't seem to be wearing a lot of jewelry they sure are selling a lot. In stores like this one (in my eponymous hometown, taken two summers ago) (and yes, it's everyone's favorite kind of studio).
And even tattoo parlors.
Back in present-day Hamburg, I found myself standing entranced in front of a clothing store -- I have no idea what they're thinking in terms of this poster here.
If you click on the photo for a closeup you will se that right above her pert bosom, her t-shirt says "schmuck-art" in metallic rivets, which we then learn from the text below is powering her in some way. Precisely what way? I somehow couldn't bring myself to stop in the store and ask -- maybe I should have.

Of course, there were plenty of other, non-genital-related entertaining sights to be seen in Hamburg. Like this inexplicable establishment around the corner from my hotel.
I guess I could have actually crossed the street to learn why it was called that (you're maybe getting the sense here that my conference was wearing me out in terms of mental exploration), but my feeling about sultans is that their hairlines were generally not visible when they appeared in public, I mean, here's Selim II and who can tell what's going on under that turban there?
I was also happy to note that this woman's super-expensive clothes precisely matched her two dogs.
Kitschy gnomes looked merrily across the street at imposing stone heads,
and Vegas World, also just around the corner from my hotel, had me confused for a minute as to which continent I was on -- luckily that flag was right next to Lady Liberty to remind me.