The Bavarian Prime Minister cannot and will not find a replacement for his Afghan doppelganger. Since then, Söder has been under roadshow stress.
Illustration: rattle snail
He shouldn’t behave like that! Maybe others are experiencing burnout. Not us!” Since casting a successor turned out to be more difficult than expected, Markus Söder had to do without his doppelganger in the following weeks. The Prime Minister was beside himself. “Burn-out – Babberlababb!” But it didn’t help. The times when he shared the numerous tasks of a Bavarian head of government with his doppelganger were over.
And why was it so difficult to find a successor? Traveling around the country as prime minister wasn’t actually that difficult. Open a folk festival here, there too and there too. Should he do everything himself now? An imposition! Since birth, he suffered from a severe beer allergy, which he successfully combated for years with Diet Coke. But you couldn’t get that everywhere anymore. The ICE on-board restaurant has also switched to Cola Zero. No, it really wasn’t easy for a prime minister like that. Markus Söder was annoyed. And he wondered whether it had really been a good idea to hand over the Ministry of Transport to the FDB.
It’s good that his staff knew how to appease the MPR, as they affectionately called the Prime Minister. “Because there aren’t that many men who look as good as you,” said one when Söder asked again why the search for a doppelganger had taken so long. “Where he’s right, he’s right,” thought Söder and it almost seemed as if there was a slight smile on his face. But there wasn’t much time for genuine joy at what was certainly an accurate compliment. In Mering, a beer keg had to be struck within a few hours at the folk festival.
I think of Putin with envy
Mering! “Putin doesn’t have to deal with something like that.” He thought of the Russian president with envy. He has “done a lot of crap” in recent years, as he once put it in a CSU board meeting, but not everything that came out of the Kremlin was bad. The idea of having a doppelganger as head of state, for example. He recalled how, during his visit to Moscow in January 2020, he was amazed that Vladimir Putin looked completely different than he does on TV when you meet him. When he later heard the rumors about Putin’s doppelganger, he was shocked.
His team quickly set out to search and soon found someone who not only looked almost like the prime minister, but also had a number of habits that Söder himself had grown fond of over the years. One of them was wearing pants at belly button level. You didn’t have to teach the double to stand with his legs apart when taking photos, as Söder always did. The man was a natural. It’s a good thing that the responsible authorities noticed the man’s resemblance to Söder in good time. The Federal Border Guard managed to get the Afghan native off the plane that was already waiting at Munich Airport to take rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin.
The man could already speak German very well, and because he so quickly picked up the Prime Minister’s Franconian accent, he could confidently be described as having a gift for languages. There wasn’t much to say. Basically it was always the same text modules that had to be separated. Something against gender, against stoners, for nuclear power, against the Greens, for farmers, for combustion engines, against bans. Only rarely did Söder’s employees develop new text modules, which the Prime Minister then had to memorize like his doppelganger.
And Söder’s private life was anything but complex. “I’ve always been a big film fan.” You learn a sentence like that quickly. “’Startrek’ and ‘Star Wars’ have different approaches, but I’m a fan of both,” isn’t particularly difficult either. “Bavaria is a sunny country. Bavaria is a car country. Bavaria is a high-tech country. Bavaria is a cultural country.” No, the job as a Söder doppelganger wasn’t really difficult.
Well, there’s been a lot to do in the last few weeks. Söder had sent his double to China, to Maybrit Illner, to some horse festival for a saint (“Bavaria is horse country”), to walk his dog (“Bavaria is dog country”), to shake the hand of association representatives who have something to do the middle class (“Bavaria is a club country”) and a game of 1. FC Nürnberg (“I have always been a big fan”).
No, it really wasn’t easy for a prime minister like that. Markus Söder was annoyed. He finally understood what the word “skills shortage” meant
Perhaps it was Glubb’s performance that completed his double? He almost had something like understanding for that. After all, it was no coincidence that he didn’t go to the stadium himself. He is still sure that a second division game like this is still better than being lectured by Robert Habeck in front of the assembled Bavarian craftsmen. Of all things, this appointment stuck with Söder himself.
The Prime Minister was thoughtful. He had used the term “skills shortage” often, but it was only now that he couldn’t find a double that he realized what it can mean when you can’t find anyone to do a particular job. Sometimes it failed because of little things. One applicant did not eat Nuremberg sausages for religious reasons, another flatly refused to wear poorly ironed trousers. What was going on in this country? Did no one see it as an honor to take over the office of Bavarian Prime Minister? He could do poorly like Vladimir Putin and simply invade a neighboring country to have a larger pool of people who could be considered for the doppelganger role.
He had to leave for Mering immediately. When was the last time he was in Swabia? His double had always worked in the district. He wondered which would be better received there: smoking weed or gendering. Söder flipped a coin. Number. So he would rail against gender again. “Bavaria is a man’s country.” No, it really wasn’t difficult.
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