Pölen with the VfL.

WARNING: this blog usually carries no advertising, in order to save your souls and because the income would be laughably small. If you go on to read this post, you could end up fat as fuck, addicted to green food colouring, overdosed on caffeine and supporting a football club for whom UEFA cup qualification is a sure-fire sign of approaching relegation. I'd leave now if I were you.








Ah, I see you're still here. Let us begin.

German TV advertisements are notoriously bad. They usually involve some Bavarians prancing around a meadow consuming beer or milk or sausages. I was thus surprised whilst watching the ZDF Sportstudio last night to see them feature the new advertisement for the VFL Bochum.



It contains no Bavarians at all, and carries on my good work of bringing the concept of Pölen (or Pöln, nobody seems to know the official spelling) to a larger audience. At 0:39 the guy in the white vest exclaims "Hömma... pölen is wieso aufm Hof verboten, weiße, ne?". This translates to

Please listen carefully. You are, I'm sure, aware that playing football in the yard is, irrespective of the present circumstances, not allowed.

This advertisement has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but is great: Fresh from the sewers to you. If you're convinced, why not sign this petition? Top reason for signing so far: "I am diabetic and need the turtle pies to survive."

Having first poisoned the youth of america with their pies and cereal (with Ninja Marshmallow!), at least the Turtles tried to save them from Marijuana and preemptively deal with the munchies.

(Sorry for the third link in. It's below the level of this blog, and I don't wish to promote some shitty coffee stuff by viral advertising, but I found it whilst looking for traditional Bavarian-style adverts and I'd just watched the two Milka ads. It got me completely.)

Pölen

I have a text message invitation for tomorrow evening, encouraging pölen. This is a word unknown to Germany's finest dictionaries, and is apparently only used in the area around Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. In case you haven't guessed, pölen means to play football, and Torpedo Entenhausen have begun their summer training regime.

The geographical limit of this phrase has been somewhat found here (you may wish to put on your sunglasses before opening the link), and a quick discussion in the U-bahn revealed that the term was unknown to test subjects from Stuttgart and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Pölen has, oddly enough, a second slang meaning. The german word for oil is Öl, and oil from plants can be called P-Öl, or Pöl for short. Sticking -en on the end creates the verb pölen, meaning to run a vehicle with vegetable oil, which is apparently all the rage in Germany due to a generous tax break.