Perfumes, lotions, colognes, etc. give me allergies.

When I first heard of this maybe over a year ago on another Sifted video, I thought. Perfume and cologne, deodorant and showering don't exactly help people smell their mate in a true way. Of course, you're going to eventually smell a persons smell if you are around them often enough. It still makes the prospect of fake smells rather strange when concerning that nature probably "intended" us to be a little Stinky.

Forget showering, time to go find me a genetic babe!

About 6 years ago, my parents took me to Germany and The Netherlands. It was amazing. It was in late May - I had just celebrated my 21st birthday.

We spent two nights in Haarlam (it's about a 15-minute train ride west of Amsterdam), drove east to Germany, stayed at a different German town every night for 6 nights (Koln (Cologne), Aachen, Bernkastle, Mainz, Cocham, and Koblenz - the Youth Hostels in Germany are AWESOME, especially Koblenz, we stayed in this re-purposed fortress overlooking Deutsches Eck - The walls were like 6-foot-thick stone... I digress...) and then spent our last two days back in Haarlam. We did some day trips to Amsterdam and Zandfoort as well.

When you get out of the main train station in Amsterdam, you're at the north end of the city, looking south. As soon as you walk out of the building, you'll notice a big multi-story parking structure just off to the right. But its not a parking structure for cars - it's for bikes only. Just outside the train station in Haarlam, there's a space about 1/4th the size of a soccer pitch, just for bicycle parking.

And the Dutch reap ALL the benefits of biking everywhere. Nearly all the women had AWESOME legs, toned, cut... mmmmmm.... MAN I miss it...

You don't see gas guzzlers anywhere on the streets of Amsterdam. The roads aren't NEARLY wide enough for a Ford Exploiter. No one would be able to afford the gas either - what we pay for a gallon, they pay for a liter (over 4x the price - which is weird when you think about it, since the Middle East is closer to them than the US...)

As a side note, the canals WREAK to high hell in the late spring/summer time. When I walked out of the train station, my nose was assaulted with a very foul odor. It was like walking into a barn, but I certainly didn't see any livestock...

I guess you'd get used to it if you were living there...

Ministry of Sound is becoming it's own entity in a multitude of markets. They've got cologne, work out gear, backpacks, fitness videos...I've never seen anything like it.

aww, shucks.
/blush
i owe it all to my cologne.

In reply to this comment by evil_disco_man:
Thanks 15, you're my hero!

In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
*promote

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3797892/Burger-King-releases-meat-scented-cologne.html

Yeah Madsen is part of the same sound from northern Germany, though they are not from Hamburg.

You might also want to check out Selig, another a bit rockier act from Hamburg (and sometimes also a bit psychedelic)

There are a few more popular german acts with female leads, though they are usually more pop than rock. Check em out anyway, some good tracks from some of them.

Klee (from Cologne)
http://www.myspace.com/kleeband

2Raumwohnung (from Berlin)
http://www.myspace.com/2raumwohnung

Juli (from Gießen)
http://www.myspace.com/esistjuli

Mia (from Berlin)
http://www.myspace.com/miarocktbln

Enjoy,
maatc



In reply to this comment by JAPR:
Wow, thanks a lot! I can really see what you mean with them having the same style of music, they've all got that sort of clean electric guitar thing going on for the most part. These bands sound decent, but I think I really like Tomte's music better from what I've heard so far (listened to two songs by each of the bands you linked me to). I really liked the vocals on Blumfeld's "Tics" and Pohlmann's "Fluechten." Most of those bands were a little more pop than my tastes, but Virginia Jetzt! had a pretty cool rock feel to them. I noticed they have Madsen as one of their friends, a band that I plan to check out.

Another German band I recently got into is Slut, I think Schmawy or somebody sifted one of their songs on here a while back.

In reply to this comment by maatc:
Yeah,
they are from my hometown Hamburg and have become quite big lately.
In the recent years a few bands emerged from Hamburg with the same style of music.
It even lead to the coining of the term "Hamburger Schule" (Hamburg School) to describe it.

I made a list for you. Check em out:

Tocotronic
http://www.myspace.com/tocotronic
Listening Tip: "Imitationen"

Blumfeld
http://www.myspace.com/blumfeld
Listening Tip: #1 "Tics"

Die Sterne
http://www.myspace.com/mysterne
Listening Tip: #1 "Aber Anderseits"

Pohlmann
http://www.myspace.com/ingopohlmann
Listening Tip: #4 "Wenn jetzt Sommer wär"

Virginia Jetzt!
http://www.myspace.com/vjetzt
Listening Tip: #6 "Wir sind von guten Eltern"

Kettcar
http://myspace.de/kettcar
Listening Tip: #2 "Nullsummenspiel"




In reply to this comment by JAPR:
Dude, have you heard of Tomte? I just had them recommended to me, and I LOVE their music!

http://www.videosift.com/video/Tomte-Norden-Der-Welt

Tags for this video have been changed from 'real time, religulous, soulmate, cologne, amy winehouse, palin, fundamentalist' to 'real time, organized superstition, cologne, amy winehouse, palin, fundamentalist' - edited by MrFisk

Restricted smoking in public areas is good, but I'm still waiting for the perfume/cologne ban, as well as the 'body odour' police. I'd rather have smoke blown in my face than either of those. THAT's offensive.

"His blood smells like cologne." ROFL

from 2004. filmed from justus' kitchen window, in cologne.

kompakt is the favorite record label at plastique monkey headquarters...

Seeed is a German reggae/dancehall band from Berlin. Founded in 1998 they have recently become quite famous in Germany and surrounding countries. They are the most popular German reggae act besides Cologne's sing-jay Gentleman. Seeed consists of eleven band members, including three singers, a horn section and a DJ. Seeed is famous for their unusual use of horn. They have worked with Cee-Lo Green, Anthony B, Tanya Stephens, General Degree as well as other Jamaican artists and producers. Seeed's lyrics are German, English and Patois. Their biggest hits in the German Sprachraum were Dickes B, Aufsteh'n, Ding and Music Monks.

This video is just all kinds of awesome.

- More @ Wikipedia

Just looked it up in the German Wikipedia: Obviously we have about 40,000 Menonites in Germany, most of them in the city of Cologne. But it seems we don´t have any Amish. As far as I know the amish lifestyle would be difficult to combine with german laws anyway...