The first time I had ever heard of “Swiss German” was when I was preparing to move from Düsseldorf, Germany to Rapperswil, Switzerland. My German neighbors had me over for a farewell barbecue and they said to me: “Whatever you do, don’t come back and visit us speaking that Swiss German.” I was aware that the Germans had a somewhat love/hate relationship with their southern neighbors, but I had no idea the Swiss spoke some different form of their common language. In fact, I was quite confident with the German that I had picked up over my three years in Düsseldorf, and I figured it would be quite an easy transition from one country to the other. I was wrong.
Posts in category German language
Max Raabe in Reno
An illuminated sign inside the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino in Reno announces coming attractions, including Max Raabe.
Although his first big hit song in Germany, “Kein Schwein ruft mich an,” was in 1992, I didn’t become fully aware of Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester until I was living in Berlin in 2007-2008. After hearing him on the radio, I bought one of his CDs and enjoyed listening to tunes from the 1920s and ’30s – and Raabe’s wry, light-hearted approach to a repertoire of songs rarely heard over the last 80 years or so. (If you don’t know anything about him, please see the GW article about Max Raabe.) He regularly performs live in Berlin and other German cities, although I missed his June 2008 open-air Waldbühne concert in Berlin.
I knew that Raabe and his orchestra had also performed outside of Germany in places like New York and Tokyo, but the last thing I ever expected was to see him on stage in my hometown of Reno, Nevada. Las Vegas or San Francisco maybe, but Reno?
So a few weeks ago, while watching a PBS TV broadcast of a 2009 concert by Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester at Berlin’s Admiralspalast theater, I was a bit stunned to hear that Raabe was going to perform in Reno on April 10, 2011. I immediately went online to buy tickets for my wife and me. READ MORE »
Birthdays and Friends
This year is a momentous one in the eyes of some people, because I am turning forty. I’m turning forty in a new country, and all of my oldest and closest friends live in other ones. But I am not despairing, and I am not ignoring this runden Geburtstag. (A runder Geburtstag is one that ends in a zero.) If I were still in Germany, I would most definitely be having a party. So, we’ll be having one here in Ireland as well, and as expected, many of my German friends have already said they are coming. What a perfect excuse to go on vacation! With 30 days of holidays at their disposal and a booming economy, my German friends can afford to come over to the Emerald Isle.
Ah, but what are friends? Americans seem to call everyone their friends. Facebook has turned even the most distance of acquaintances, from someone you met on the bus yesterday to someone you knew in preschool, into “friends.” One of the first things I discovered when I moved to Germany to be with my future husband, having already lived there for seven years in the previous decade, was the meaning of friends in a German context. Many of his friends have been with him since childhood. Part of that is because people used to grow up in a house and stay in the area. This may not apply as much nowadays, what with Fernbeziehungen and the global economy, but it was still true for my husband, until I dragged him off to Ireland. READ MORE »
Watching German TV in the USA and Canada
When it comes to television in the USA and Germany, I’m not sure which is worse. Germany has copied from US TV (judge shows in German, dubbed crime series, late-night talk) and vice versa (some reality and quiz shows). Daytime TV in either country is a big waste of time. Late night TV in Germany, with its more titillating offerings, can be a shock for Americans. The German commercial channels (RTL, ProSieben) can be more ad-riddled than anything you’ll ever see in the US.
But we former Germany expats can get a bit homesick for German Fernsehen, especially in the realm of news. While we may have once used German TV for help with conquering the language, now we’d like to get a taste of it back in North America.
I once thought that satellite reception would be the solution to this problem, but it turns out that READ MORE »
They don’t teach you those words in German class
I enrolled in an intensive course (a must-have when you plan to live in a foreign country and need to assimilate, FAST) within three weeks of moving to Germany. It met five days a week, five hours a day. The learning curve was steep. It was great. Within two months I was able to speak to the Turkish girls in my class who didn’t know any English. That was a rewarding day, when we realized we could speak almost freely with each other. It was easy to make friends after that point.
When you take an intensive course, you learn what you will need to function in your new country of residence. You learn a lot of daily vocabulary. You learn how to grocery shop. You learn telling the time and reading bus schedules. You don’t learn Graphic Design language. And you most certainly don’t learn Yoga language.
As someone who currently teaches English for a language school and understands how the classes and teacher assignments work, I know that I can’t just sign up (or even ask) for a “Yoga German” class. These are highly specialized in terms of subject matter, and there’s just too great a chance that I’ll get a teacher who has never practiced yoga and is teaching out of a yoga deck of cards. It’s way easier, and cheaper, to do the self-study in this case. READ MORE »
Transatlantic with the Toddler
There are so many horror stories I could share involving transatlantic travel. I entertained my babysitter the other day by regaling my worst memories of flights between Europe and North America, some of which involve being sandwiched between an overweight, unhappy married couple, or missing my connection due to the deranged older woman who caused the plane to turn around mid-ocean. I was used to the long-haul flight, the hours of boredom and unrest, the painful itching in your legs to get up and move when there are still three hours to go, but that was all paradise compared to international travel with children.
An Adjusted Adventszeit
In the past week, I had to adjust to the fact that Christmas is OVER, a week earlier than I had become accustomed to. I was used to our southern German world being shut down not just from the week of Christmas to New Year’s but also through the first week of January thanks to Three Kings. (Note: During my time writing for the German Way blog, the most Wiki-ed or Google-ed things I’ve had to look up are Catholic holidays and food.) I missed my older daughter’s first gymnastics class last Wednesday. Back in Aalen, there wouldn’t have been Turnen or any Musik Schule or anything like that scheduled.
This year, I missed the Adventszeit and the tradition of celebrating Christmas time for the whole month of December. And although Christmas decorations start being sold at Target the minute Halloween goes on clearance, that is not the same. I feel that Christmas is largely for consumerism here. Adventszeit is more oriented towards baking Weihnachtsplätzchen together (though I’ll concede that an American Christmas cookie exchange is an efficient and smart thing. I admire my friend Moni and my husband’s Tante Liane for baking at least 10 different kinds of cookies for their cookie bags/tins each year.) The point of a Christkindelmarkt in every town is not just to sell as many tschotchke to as many suckers as possible, but rather to provide a cozy space for people to drink their Glühwein together, for children to pet some farm animals and ride some rides and of course for us to find some sweet, handmade, wooden ornaments to share with our poor, plastic-invaded relatives back home. READ MORE »
Losing my German
We have been in Ireland for about three months now, and every time I speak to my closest German friend, I notice words slipping away. I was “home” this weekend, so I am feeling better about that again, but it is amazing how quickly it happens.
When we arrived in Ireland in August, our youngest, who was almost two, spoke mostly German. He had started in German Krippe in February of that year and was speaking it all day. His dad speaks German with him as well, so his only English tended to come from me, and sometimes from his older sisters, who mixed languages with the best of them, but were more likely to come out with English than German after seven years in Heidelberg. He did have some English, and understood everything I said, but his first tendency was almost always German.
The Voices in the TV
One of the things that I absolutely was not prepared for when I moved here was the television. I knew that Germany had a lot of American shows on the television; I knew that they were definitely not in English, but I didn’t realize what that meant. I’m going to chalk that up to that blissful pre-move state we all get into: we know we’re doing something awesome and huge, but aren’t thinking about the little things, like how to get a job in a land that speaks another language, where we’ll go grocery shopping, etc.
You know, the small but actually really important things. The ones that help you survive and/or feel comfortable.
About 11 months ago, I thought I’d never get used to the voices. The Americans in Germany know what I mean: the voice actors. I didn’t realize what a huge deal voice acting was over here… I also didn’t realize what a hold American TV has on the international market. I imagined before moving that I’d get addicted to some random German TV shows that would be obscure to my American friends.
Wrong. I get to watch the same shows over here that I did over there (although sometimes a season later, because of the voice-acting). I have tried, really hard to enjoy actual German television and I haven’t found anything that I like yet, although I have to say I really enjoy the German non-biased reporting style for the news and documentaries. READ MORE »
U vs Ü
Driving in the car with my family the other day, I overheard my four-year old son say to his younger brother: “I am so frustrating! No! I am so frustrating! Stop doing that!”
I had difficulty suppressing my laughter, tickled at the irony of his statement. Yes, I thought, I sometimes find you frustrating too. Of course, he wanted to tell his brother that he was frustrated. I’m sure the tone of his voice communicated exactly what he meant, and his brother doesn’t really talk yet so the message most likely came across as intended.
Living in Germany and learning to speak the language as an adult has often left me feeling a bit like a four-year old at times, or even younger. My ability to articulate is painfully stunted, and my vocabulary limited, even after 10 years in the country. My frustrating (frustrated) son reminded me of one of my own blunders in learning German. READ MORE »
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