Graz: Nov. 17, 2025–Nov. 23, 2025

2025-11-18

I finally got a chance to see a movie in German: „Das Kanu des Manitu“ 🇦🇹 (The Canoe of the Manitou). This is a comedy film by Michael Herbig, who did a similar movie „Der Schuh des Manitu“ (The Shoe of the Manitou) in 2001. The original film was one of the most successful films in German history.

A little background: There is a series of novels named Winnetou by a German author who never had visited America, so it was wildly inaccurate in terms of its depiction of Native Americans.

Herbig plays the part of Abahachi (a Native American) as well as Abahachi’s flamboyantly gay twin brother Winnetouch. Abahachi is a “blood brother” to the stereotypical white cowboy “Ranger” (Christian Tramnitz). There’s also a subplot with Abahachi and Ranger’s friend Dmitri (Rick Kavanian). Dmitri owns a Greek restaurant out in the American west and falls in love with Mary (Jasmin Schwiers), who is Ranger’s daughter. The plot is as thin as onion-skin paper and is nonetheless terribly convoluted, but it all works out wonderfully well. You can see the trailer for the movie here. If you understand German, I think you’ll get a good laugh out of it.

By the way, you might be wondering how they can possibly get away with a white guy playing a Native American. They found a great solution Spoiler alert: here’s what they did.

The amazing part was that I understood about 80% of the movie. There is a lot of physical comedy and sight gags; that helped a lot. The “peace pipe” scene was very funny, if you ever get to see the movie.

2025-11-20

They’re putting up the Christmas decorations at the main train station. In the second photo, you see that there are no hands on the clock. At least they have taken them off; it’s better than having the time always read 13:52.