“You are not worth a cucumber” or “that sounds Spanish to me”

No question the cucumber has made its breaktrough to an international celebrity. Even if it had been backfiring on it, one has to state, that there could not have been a better marketing strategy to make it into everybodies consciousness. And the poor cucumber has not contributed anything for that.

Being Catalan of German origin —as I consider myself— I would have to laugh, if it would not be that incredibly sad. Misunderstandings between Germans and Spanish have now an additional anecdote and —what is a far more serious matter— a few deaths more. This rememebrs me in a fatal way the self confident, if not to say arrogant comment of the German minister of health during a presentation to Spanish and German businessman in Barcelona, staing that German health service is first class. It needed only a simple question by a Spanish medicine as  a counterpoint: Why do the Spanish live on average 6 years longer whereas the German health service spends several times more on health care than the Spanish one?  Malicious joy on one and embarrased silence on the other side has been the consequence.

The alarm triggered by the cucumber shows most explicitly the still existing differences in Europe, the difficuties to be overcome in order to let the European Community (or should I say family) acrete and the time needed for that process. One only can hope that it doesn’t take too long for all parties concerned to understand , that we are all sitting in teh same boat. Must this epedemic first cross borders to let us come to that insight?

Otherwise the local German politician will continue to believe that all that sounds Spanish to him ( German expression for : That’s Greek to me) and provoke the answer of his counterpart in Spain: Come on, you are not worth a cucumber. (Spanish expessions: that’s all the same to me)

One Response to “You are not worth a cucumber” or “that sounds Spanish to me”

  1. I agree but of course this isnt true… another question: what would people do if I won 5 million dollar?

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