The German elite may be busy talking about damaged relations with the Bush administration after the narrow election in September, but the tabloids have moved on to the case of the Gurkenhobel ? the cucumber slicer that has caused a new set of sharp insults to fly between eastern and western Germans.

Thirteen years after the fall of the wall and the investment of nearly $1 trillion into the east, much still divides Ossies and Wessies, and the vitriol is never more acid than between one Ossie who has made it in the west and another who hasn't.

Gertraud and Helmut Weyhe, easterners, live in Johanngeorgenstadt, in Saxony, but went to a health spa in the west, in the Bavarian town of Bad Füssen. There, for 25 euros ($24.50), they bought a plastic kitchen utensil with a steel blade from Horst Giessmann, 68, the manufacturer, who sold his products from a stand.

Once home, they didn't like their Gurkenhobel, so they mailed it back to Mr. Giessmann, who wrote them a blistering letter with their refund, misspelling their surname. Whenever he gets the rare complaint, he said, it's always from the former eastern zone. In the past, easterners would have been ecstatic to buy such an extremely valuable product "under the table."

Now, he continued, "from the Ossies who benefited exclusively from the fall of the wall, there is a kind of complaint hysteria," so much so that businesses would contribute voluntarily to the reconstruction of the wall, "preferably twice as high."

It was Western money to pension funds that made the Weyhes' spa stay possible, Mr. Giessmann wrote. "I recommend you go back to using your former East German scrap because you cannot cope with the demands of a valuable, high-quality product." He then said that because the box was damaged, "we are deducting 50 cents for the package."

The press went mad with the story, especially the tabloid Bild, which got a "four-star chef," Eckard Witzigmann, to test the Gurkenhobel. "The device fulfills its purpose, but not in a particularly professional way," he said. "I'd rather use a sharp knife."

Ossies were outraged, Wessies embarrassed.

Mr. Giessmann finally admitted that he's an Ossie, too, having moved to Gerolzhofen, in Bavaria, after the wall fell. The mayor of the little town of 7,500, Hartmut Bräuer, apologized to the Weyhes and all Ossies. "I couldn't believe that an inhabitant of my town could say something like that," Mr. Bräuer said.

Mr. Giessmann, somewhat chastened by the furor, finally told ARD television: "I'd like to apologize to the people in the east. It was not my intention to attack them."

In this case, I blame it on the editors of this paper being 'pissed' because of something and they want to 'pay it back' by publishing silly stories.

huh?!? The New York Times is like the biggest national newspaper here...

In this case, I blame it on the editors of this paper being 'pissed' because of something and they want to 'pay it back' by publishing silly stories.