It's
an
endless
deluge
of "news" stories about how close to the bone Germany's "Time To Make Friends" World Cup campaign is. Way, way, way, way too many. If we have to talk about the friendly ordinance (and we do, here at Anglofritz), German Joys does the deal on it, comparing the Du bist Deutschland campaign to the deep undercurrents in the Teutonic consciousness.

Personally, I think the whole thing's a big media job. Germans are friendly enough, if you can get past the first two sentences or so. I haven't met a German yet that wasn't polite and kind to me the longer we interacted -- me, a still-water-swilling, monolingual American pig. The Germans are nice enough, already: get over it. Great, now they've got me doing it!