No Tuition Fees at German Universities Updated for 2020 Get 'em while they're hot. If you're a German-related news junkie like we all are at the German Way, you might have seen your Facebook or Twitter feeds filled with headlines like these a few years ago: "Free...
The GW Expat Blog
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History and culture
Racing in the Right (or Wrong) Direction
This post came about because I happened to see a photograph of a German horse race, similar to the photo below. It reminded me that horses usually gallop around a German race track in a clockwise direction, while in the United States they run counterclockwise. It made...
Tag der Deutschen Einheit: a view of Berlin 24 years on
As I sat looking out over the tourist boats on the Spree, drinking up the soft autumn sunshine, I had a flickering insight that this moment encapsulated much of modern Berlin. How fitting, I thought, for the occasion, and returned my mind to the conversation. This was...
Don’t Mention the War. Read About It.
One facet of German culture that continues to impress me is how they have dealt with their WWII history. German authors have written extensively about it from the "inside" of German perspective, although I have yet to delve into their works. As an outsider, it is...
From Bundesland to Bundesland
I received a reminder in my inbox today from my co-blogger Hyde calling to my attention that I had missed my Monday deadline to post here on the German Way blog. This was another casualty of my most recent move. In case you haven't been keeping up with my personal...
Keine Gelegenheit versäumen – don’t miss your chance …
I remember that when I lived in Berlin for a year as a student ten years’ ago, I approached every conversation as a language-learning opportunity. Like a hungry caterpillar, I would gobble up more and more words whether talking to taxi driver or a philosophy...
A German Epic
Of the many cultural highlights I enjoyed while living in Germany, an Abo (subscription) to the local Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra was definitely one of my favorites. We regularly attended concerts featuring world-class musicians at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart,...
Essential Oils and German Sales
For a while now, I have been using essential oils around the house in place of OTC remedies. I got into them through my sister in the US, who was selling them as a sort of side venture. She teaches yoga as her main job. After talking about the oils to all and sundry,...
Gifts from Germany
A visiting friend from New York asked me for some tips on good gift ideas for her to take back home from their summer in Germany. I love this question as it's one that I have to think about and refresh each time I go back home. Here's my list which includes some...
A Golden Cup
Tomorrow one of the most coveted trophies in sport will come to Berlin. Today Germany woke up collectively hungover but with a jubilant smile on its face. Yesterday, just before midnight, the nation erupted into euphoria when the German football team won the World...
A Pseudo-European Teenager Goes to Texas
Our eldest has been in Texas for the past year attending high school, after spending most of her life in Europe - some in Ireland, but mostly in Germany. She is sixteen, and with that comes the sixteen-year-old way of looking at the world. She's been back for a week,...
“Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known” reviewed
What happens when an all American woman with a French-Italian name moves to Switzerland? American writer Chantal Panozzo tells all about it in her recently published book, Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known. With her trademark humor, she shares her evolution as...
Kids’ Birthdays in Germany
This has been a month of kids' birthday parties for us, on the organizational side and on the invitational side. My third child turns seven on Friday and her younger brother attended a birthday party for a friend of ours' son the week before. Olivia attended a ninth...
Green Sauce
The origins of Frankfurter Grüne Sosse (green sauce) are not entirely clear. It is largely believed that the Romans brought it from the Near East. But the route the recipe followed from Italy to Hessen (where it is today a celebrated local speciality) is disputed....
(In-) Convenient
A few years ago while chatting with a friend who, like me, has a German spouse, I had a mini-revelation: "There is no German word for convenient," I said. After a pause, my friend the English teacher says, "Well, that explains a hell of a lot." Both fluent German...
Birthdays at Work (or the Joys of Raw Meat)
My first job here in Germany was in a publishing house (Verlag) in Freiburg, and that job was actually my first real job after college. It was certainly a different way to be indoctrinated into the world of work. It was the early nineties and it was the Schwarzwald....
Playing Monk in Switzerland
It's unusual for me to find that it's my turn to blog and not have a topic or two that I'm bursting to write about. When that happens, I virtually leaf through Spiegel online and its English section, The Local and Deutsche Welle. My Facebook feed also sometimes...
Das Bombing: Graffiti in Germany and Europe
Graffiti and tagging are a phenomenon seen all over the world, but how they are regarded and dealt with varies widely, depending on the location. A stroll through the streets of Berlin quickly reveals why it is sometimes referred to as "the graffiti capital of...
And the sky became a sea of light – Silvester in the Hauptstadt
A Scary New Year's Eve in Berlin We were lucky this year that the Berlin snow waited long enough for Silvester's detritus to be cleared away from the streets. In 2009/10 - the winter of the big freeze, when the pavements stayed covered in thick layers of ice and snow...
White Knuckles
Galavanting about Europe in my early twenties, I spent a spring holiday in Italy. The journey began in Germany, meandering from Frankfurt down through the Black Forest, into Switzerland and through the Gotthard Tunnel (17 km!) to get to the Italian border. The entire...
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