August 30th, 2010
Recently I enjoyed reading Julia Child’s My Life in France (with Alex Prud’homme). It’s a great book (and the first one I ever read as a Kindle edition on my iPhone). Anyone who has lived abroad or spent only a brief time in the French capital will appreciate it even more. Julia’s husband Paul worked for the United States Information Service (USIS) in Paris from 1948 to 1954. A remark he made about language learning somehow struck me as profound:
“It’s easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don’t bring you oysters.”
- Paul Child, quoted in My Life in France*
Julia goes on to say: “At least he could communicate. The longer I was in Paris, the worse my French seemed to get. I had gotten over my initial astonishment that anyone could understand what I said at all. But I loathed my gauche accent, my impoverished phraseology, my inability to communicate in any but the most rudimentary way. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, German language, learning German |
Tags: ACTFL, German language, Hyde, ILR, language proficiency, learning German | No Comments
August 2nd, 2010
I was recently reminded of how much vacation time Germans get. I sent an email to a gentleman at a German publishing house with whom I had been corresponding, only to get a reply from his secretary that read: “Danke für Ihr Mail an Herrn K. Hier nur ein Zwischenbescheid: Herr K ist zur Zeit im Urlaub.” (”Thanks for your email to Herr K. Here just an interim notice: Herr K is on vacation.”)
What was I thinking? Trying to contact a German business person in mid-July or August? The whole country goes on vacation in the summer. (That’s in addition to the week or two they spent in Greece, Spain or Turkey during the winter.) Northern Europeans live to see the sun in the summer that they never saw all winter! Germans can fly to the US for a four-week summer vacation, with all of that time being paid annual leave. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, Work and employment matters |
Tags: EU, Germany, holidays, Hyde, paid leave, vacation | No Comments
June 30th, 2010
You’ve probably heard of the 1930s and ’40s screen star Hedy Lamarr, but you may not know about her fascinating contribution to science. If you’ve never heard of Konrad Zuse, that’s understandable, but it’s way past time you learned about him!
Google paid tribute to Zuse with this odd logo on June 22, 2010, the 100th anniversary of the German inventor's birth.
The German engineer Konrad Zuse was born in Germany in 1910. Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria in 1913. They were European contemporaries, but their lives took very different paths. Zuse lived all of his very productive life in Germany. Lamarr left Austria in 1937 to become a Hollywood movie star at MGM. (more…)
Categories: History and culture |
Tags: computers, Hedy Lamarr, Hyde, Konrad Zuse | No Comments
June 7th, 2010
The reports of its death are premature
Lately, the Germans have had more important things to worry about than the death of their language. But once they have dealt with the collapse of the euro and the resignation of their flaky President Köhler, they’ll get back to worrying about the demise of German, one of their favorite things to worry about.
As I wrote in my book, The German Way, it is no accident that the term “angst” comes to us from German. Worrying is a national pastime in Germany. Next to soccer (Fußball), worrying is the number one German pastime. To be sure, there are sometimes truly serious things to worry about. I think the endangered euro falls into that category, since it also has to do with European unity, the EU and all that. (By the way, Angela, you really could be more of a cheerleader for European unity.)
When it comes to their native tongue, Germans are terribly conflicted. On the one hand, they take immense pride in what a difficult language Deutsch is, almost daring foreigners to learn it. (more…)
Categories: German language, History and culture |
Tags: Denglish, English, German language, Hyde, Mark Twain | No Comments
May 10th, 2010
I’m currently in Hawaii. As usual, I’m on the outlook for Germanic connections, and even here, so far away from Europe, there are many. First, I wanted to see if there were any direct historic ties between the Sandwich Islands (now better known as Hawai’i) and the German-speaking countries. I didn’t have to look very far. Aboard the Resolution, the ship that took Capt. James Cook to his discovery of the Hawaiian archipelago in 1778, were a German-Swiss artist and three German sailors.
Since Cook’s discovery, Hawaii has been influenced – positively and negatively – by other haoles (outsiders), including Americans, British, French, Portuguese and Asians. It turns out that people from the German-speaking parts of Europe have played some key roles in Hawaiian history. If you study Hawaii’s past, you’ll run across many German names: Hackfeld, Hillebrand, Isenberg, von Chamisso, Lemke, Pflueger, Scheffer, Spreckels, and Zimmermann. At one time, the island of Kauai in particular had a sizeable German population. The island’s main town, Lihue, was nicknamed “German Town.” There were German Lutheran churches and schools in Lihue and Honolulu (Oahu).
World War I pretty much put an end to the German presence in Hawaii, but I want to concentrate on two enduring legacies: one German and over a century ago, the other Austrian and much more recent. (more…)
Categories: History and culture |
Tags: Alfred Preis, Austria, Germany, Hawaii, Heinrich Berger, Henry Berger, Honolulu, Hyde, Pearl Harbor, Royal Hawaiian Band, USS Arizona Monument | No Comments
April 12th, 2010
Today’s blog is inspired by two recent events in Germany: (1) The vehement opposition to Google Street View from some Germans and Austrians, and (2) the March 2, 2010 German Federal Constitutional Court decision that overturned a law that allowed government authorities to store telephone call and email data for up to six months, for possible use by the police and security agencies. The court ruled that the law was a “grave intrusion” of personal privacy rights.
One day not so long ago in Berlin I learned how seriously some Germans take their personal privacy. I was walking around shooting some photos of typical everyday, non-tourist scenes of life in Berlin, when I saw a new wing of a hospital that looked architecturally interesting. There was also a small courtyard with trees and benches where patients and visitors could get some fresh air. I was on a public sidewalk, far enough away so that any people in the scene would really not be recognizable. About a split second after taking my first shot, some guy in a robe sitting on one of the benches stands up and starts screaming and cursing at me in English with a German accent. (All photographers are Ausländer?) (more…)
Categories: Daily life, History and culture |
Tags: data protection, Datenschutz, Germany, Google, Hyde, images, photos, privacy, Street View | 1 Comment
March 15th, 2010
Who’s left holding the (grocery) bag?
One definition of culture shock: The first time an American goes through the checkout lane at a German grocery store. The first shock is seeing the cashier/checker comfortably seated rather than standing. The second comes as the purchased items come zipping across the laser scanner — and you, the customer, discover that you are also the bagger (Einpacker). And you are under pressure from the person behind you when the checker starts scanning his/her groceries, barely a split second after you have paid. (The third shock comes if you don’t have your own bag.)
German entrepreneur Martin Lettenmeier wants to change that. At least the bagging part. He has founded a company in Fürstenfeldbruck, Bavaria with a typically “German” name: Friendly Service. (He probably chose the English name because the concept barely exists in German.) Based on his experience in the USA, Lettenmeier wants to spread the idea of the friendly grocery bagger in Germany. (”Profis stehen den Kunden beim Einpacken bei.”) (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, Work and employment matters |
Tags: baggers, economy, Einpackhilfe, Friendly Service, Germany, grocery stores, Hyde, Lettenmeier, null-euro-jobs, shopping, supermarkets, tips, Trinkgeld, zero-hour-jobs | 2 Comments
February 14th, 2010
A segment of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street.
Photo: Hyde Flippo
Things can move slowly in Germany and Berlin. Especially things having to do with “the war” and the Nazi past.
The German-born film actress Marlene Dietrich falls into this category. Some Germans (the dumb ones) still view Dietrich as a traitor to Germany. They fail to grasp the big difference between being anti-Hitler and being anti-German. Dietrich, working in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, refused to support the Nazis. She became an American citizen and entertained US troops. Her return to West Germany in 1960 drew a mixed reception. She was cheered and jeered. Later she said famously: “The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.” But after she died in self-imposed exile in Paris in 1992, Dietrich was buried in Berlin, at her request. In 1993 Berlin purchased her vast memorabilia collection for the film museum there for $5 million. (more…)
Categories: History and culture |
Tags: Berlin, Berlinale, cinema, culture, Germany, Hollywood, Hyde, Marlene Dietrich, walk of fame | No Comments
January 20th, 2010
German culture at the “Goldenen Thor”
During a recent visit to San Francisco I got a surprising reminder of how truly widespread and important German culture once was in the United States – before two world wars drastically changed the role it played in America.
My wife and I were standing in a very long line of people, slowly making our way towards the entrance to the California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park. (And we all already had tickets!) As the line flowed at its glacial pace, I noticed a statue of two figures standing on a stone pedestal. I remarked to my wife that it looked like a German or European statue. As we got closer, the bronze figures seemed even more familiar.
Once we were standing right in front of the statue, I was amazed to read the inscription on the reddish stone base: “Goethe. Schiller.” As I gazed up at the large bronze figures of Germany’s two greatest poets and philosophers, I realized why they looked so familiar. This statue seemed to be the same one my wife and I had seen a few years earlier in Weimar, Germany. How the heck did it get here? What was the story behind this larger-than-life symbol of German culture standing in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco? Did any of these people in line, besides my wife and me, even know who Goethe and Schiller were?
I took out my iPhone and snapped a picture of the statue (see photo), thinking I would try to solve this mystery later. (more…)
Categories: German language, History and culture |
Tags: Cleveland, culture, German-Americans, Germany, Goethe, Golden Gate Park, Hyde, Milwaukee, monuments, San Francisco, Schiller, statues, Syracuse, USA, Weimar | No Comments
December 21st, 2009
Germans don’t do small talk. (Well, sometimes they do – but they rarely admit it.) Most German-speakers will tell you that their language is too serious and precise to be wasted on small talk or chitchat, especially with strangers. Anyone who has lived in Berlin for any length of time knows that Berliners in particular aren’t prone to idle chatter – even if they know you fairly well.
So I was amused to read an article on German stereotypes and “Chatiness” in the latest issue of The Atlantic Times (Dec. 2009). Jabeen Bhatti writes of her astonishment when – in a single day in Berlin – she experienced several strangers chatting with her, something “as rare as seeing a white Rhino.”
In the US, such banter among perfect strangers is nothing unusual. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, German language |
Tags: American, culture shock, Germany, Hyde, shopping, social rules, speaking German, USA | 2 Comments
