All Those Sausages

Uli Hoeneß owes Germany 27 million euros, a number so abstract that someone built a website to translate it into actual things: 9 million stadium sausages, 39,000 season tickets on the Dortmund south stand, 11,000 daycare slots. The further down the list you go the more surreal it becomes.

Hoeneß basically was Bayern Munich for thirty years and apparently didn’t pay his taxes, which is what happens when you have that much money. The debt keeps growing. I don’t know if he ever actually pays it back. Probably doesn’t.

The website works because 27 million is noise. Nine million sausages at least makes sense. You can almost hold that in your head. Turn an incomprehensible number into concrete things and suddenly it matters more, even though nothing actually changes. The money’s still wherever it is. Hoeneß is still rich.

We get to imagine all those sausages. It’s the whole point—make the incomprehensible into something you can picture, even if nothing actually changes. Funny and dark at the same time.