Hey guys, this might be a bit of a different post on here but I need your help. Just to clarify a couple of things, I lived in Germany when I was a kid, so this is tied to show that I thing is only specifically aired in Germany. I will do my best to explain the premise of the show for you guys, and give you a bit of context.
I was also quite young when this happened, so I do not remember the whole episode but I vividly remember a specific scene and the premise of that episode. I am talking about the show “Bernd das Brot” (Bernd the bread) which is a puppet that looks like, you guessed it, a loaf of bread. I know how this sounds and I am serious when I am saying that what I watched that day in 2006 truly disturbed me.
Bernd is a cynical and depressed loaf. He is always in a bad mood and that is the joke of the entire Bernd the bred character. He derails the blot of the episodes by seing only the worst in people and life in general, which builds a drastic contrast to other characters that are kids tv show happy.
In the show he lives in a village and much like SpongeBob he has his own house and two other main characters. One of them is a bush named Brigel who is a tech nerd. The other is a sheep with flaming red hair called Chili. The three of them explore the world around them and get into involuntary adventures where they drag along Bernd.
It is honestly quite a good show, and actually worth having a bit of a deep dive into. For the next bit, please keep in mind that Bernd, Chili and Brigel are puppets with sets around them. However the creators of the show do not shy away from utilizing actors in costumes and criticism regarding pretty much anything. Meaning that some of the episodes already feel like a fever dream, especially the “Late night shows” at the TV program “Kika” which is basically a kids chanel that stops their podcast around 8pm in order for kids to go to bed and not watch TV until the late hours. The Late night show here is a recorded loop of aprox. 20 minutes or so of a sketch which includes Bernd trying to escape the loop. (Yes this is real)
Anyhow my story starts with being a kid and having a cold. That meant staying at home and not going to school. And obviously I watched TV all day which included Kika. The episode I am referring to sets the trio in a scenario of a hike. Bernd hates everything from physical activity to nature since he has allergies.
The show plays out like you would expect it to untill the trio finds a cave on a mountain. I vividly remember the music cutting out at this point. The trio stares at each other and the usually lively characters are suddenly quiet and still.
They enter the cave to explore it. In the cave the characters apear to have regained their bright personalities. Brigel has a flashlight that he built himself and is telling them about how it is designed to never run out of power. Obviously the flashlight almost immediately turns off and he can’t get it working again. As the screen is dark you are only able to see the characters eyes. While they are discussing what to do now and how to find the exit, a fourth pair of eyes appears and when they notice it they scream and run away.
They end up in an bigger part of the cave where Brigels flashlight turns on again. The exit appears to be blocked by rocks that the characters can’t move.What follows is like montage of the characters getting increasingly paranoid and hungry. They try different methods of getting out of the cave but fail to do so. Brigel is in a state of apathy only looking into the beam of his flashlight which is positioned right where the camera would be while filming this. So he stares at the screen, the viewer, me with his blank eyes while Chili and Bernd are in the background of the cave. They slowly approach Brigel from behind, now looking disheveled and Chilis clothing torn. They grab Brigel by the shoulders and hold him in a seated position as they start biting into his head.
Brigel starts screaming while still looking at the camera. He is being held there and the sounds of the scream are mixing with the crunching sounds of Chili and Bernd eating away at the top of his head. They tear of chunks untill the brain is exposed. At this point Brigel stopped screaming and his mouth hung open staring into the screen as Bernd and Chili start devouring his brain. The camera nagel changes and we now see a top view of Chili and Bernd eating Brigels brain as he looks into the beam of the camera as the shot slowly pans out and gets more distant, all the while you are able to hear the slurping and chewing sounds. The episode ends.
I was so shocked and disgusted at the time that I just turned of the screen, ran to the bathroom and threw up. I didn’t tell anyone, and honestly I would have chalked this up to me being a kid and having a fever/cold but my Grandma made Maultaschen. Those are basically dough pockets filled with meat and vegetables. Traditionally you would put then in soup, and when cooked the dough would take on a wrinkly form.
And I remember being so traumatised by the depiction of the brain that I couldn’t eat them because the folds/wrinkles in the though looked just like Brigels brain. I said I wasn’t hungry and since we had it for two days I just went without food. Even now I have a hard time eating them when they are prepared in soup.
So I just want to know if anyone else has a similar experience to mine, or can find an episode that even resembles this experience. Maybe my tired brain could come up with something like that, but I honestly doubt it.
This has been on my mind for quite a while and I felt stupid making a post about this, but I just need to know. So to anyone out there who has any clues, please help me out!