My all-time favorite German expression is Schrottwichtel.
It literally means “scrap gnome”, and describes the kinds of awful things we stuff into closets or keep in garages for decades, because they were perhaps given to us with good intentions by someone at some stage, yet we can’t bear to look at them. Or we won them, or bought them while drunk.
Either way, this misery has sparked a whole new event in Germany’s more humorous corners, mostly North Rhine Westphalia, where I feel somewhat more at home than in the rest of the country, due to their whacky humour and creative use of the language. It’s called Schrottwichteln, simply turning the noun of Schrottwichtel into a verb by adding an “n”.
Typically, you’d do this at company dinners.
Everyone is expected to bring the most godawful thing they can find in their attic, something they are gagging to get rid of, and then they are being given to each other - the fun of it being that you are exchanging one monstrosity for a new one, lovingly prepared for you by a colleague.
I actually have two of them myself. They are hanging in my garage, and they are the kind of terribly tacky clocks made of injection moulded plastic designers less mentally robust than me may commit suicide over being seen with, or worse, being responsible for as designers.
Here they are. One was found in the garage attic when I had bought the house, the other somehow turned up together with various used items from a Loppis, a Swedish second hand market, probably as a sort of freebie.
Note that fir trees and roaring elks are a huge bonus for any Schrottwichtel. Whatever increases the corniness makes the Wichtel more Schrott.
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