Baby Names: In and Out of Fashion Like many other things in life, baby names go in and out of fashion. It's an international phenomenon that applies globally, regardless of language. Some first names (Vornamen) are rather timeless, while others fade away. Baby names...
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USA
Reverse Culture Shock – An American in Berlin Back in the USA
I have spent the last 5 weeks back "home" in the USA after over a decade living in Berlin. This is far from my first visit back. Typically I close down my German household and go back to my home state of Washington every year and a half, with parents visiting in...
Comparing the Covid Response of the USA and Germany
After 2 years of not seeing my family, I was back in the USA twice at the end of last year. In October we booked emergency tickets and were back visiting a sick family member within 72 hours. A Christmas trip was planned. Both trips were a low-key shock to the system....
Germany in the USA and Canada: Part 2
A Preview of German Place Names and Connections: From Leipsic to Winesburg When I first wrote about German Place Names in the USA and Canada more than five months ago, I realized that the topic was far more vast than I had originally thought. Since then, as I have...
Germany in the United States and Canada
North American Communities with German Namesakes This was originally intended as a normal brief blog post about German (and Austria/Swiss) place names in the USA. However, as I was researching and writing this post, I began to realize that the topic was far more...
What Protests are like in Germany and the USA
Sometimes it feels like every day of 2020 can't get any worse...and then it does. Caught in the standstill of Covid-19 malaise, I find myself paying rapt attention to everything happening in the USA. Seattle, where I hale from, is one of the places at the epicenter of...
Questions I Get About Raising Kids in Germany
Even though I am American, I've never raised children in America. I was about 5 years into our German adventure when I had our first Berliner. Now we have two and I am often split between the two countries on my parenting-style; not quite American, not nearly German....
Goethe and Schiller in San Francisco
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...
Krampus, the Christmas Devil of Alpine Europe
Much of Europe has a venerable Christmas or December tradition that pairs the good bishop-like St. Nicholas with a demonic, nasty character known as Krampus (and various other regional names; see our glossary below). In Alpine Austria and southern Bavaria, this...
US Women Destroy Germany’s World Cup Dreams
The headline in today's Bild online says it all: US-Girls zerstören unseren WM-Traum. In a contest between the top two teams in the world last night, the United States came out on top 2-0 in a surprisingly dominant performance, outlasting a loaded German side in the...
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...
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,...
American Expats, the IRS, FATCA and Other F-words
Besides "IRS," Americans can now add another item to their list of ominous acronyms: FATCA. Like most things related to income taxes, the FATCA issue has a lot of people in a dither. As if US tax law wasn't already complicated enough, along comes FATCA to gum up the...
Gone Fishin’
Recently we spent a long weekend on the shores of one of the thousands of lakes that dot Ontario. The weather was fantastic, so we spent lots of time paddling, in canoes and in the pool. Most of the time, however, we spent fishing. The kids had a fantastic time trying...
Luisa Weiss’ Advice for the Expat in Germany
It's Monday, but I got to talk to the creator and author behind the popular food blog The Wednesday Chef, Luisa Weiss, last week. She's also the author of the best-selling memoir, My Berlin Kitchen which came out late last year, and as you may have guessed, she lives...
Gun Laws in Germany
I've shed a tear nearly every morning since the massacre took place at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut on the 14th of December. Any time I look at a newspaper or scroll through my Facebook feed or hear a clip on German or English language radio, there...
Expatriates and the cost of living in A, D, CH
Expatriates don't always have a choice of where they're assigned to work, but they definitely need to know the cost of living in their assignment location. If your salary is paid by a US company, for example, that salary might put you at a huge disadvantage if you are...
Re-expatriating
We've returned to the Fatherland after the grueling process of packing up and moving a household of a family of five. We drove six hours from San Diego to Las Vegas listening to Die Zaueberfloete non-stop. We saturated in ueber-Americana for three days on The Strip....
Germans: We don’t need no stinkin’ apartment numbers
It never really dawned on me that the Germans don't use apartment numbers – until I lived in a German apartment house. The only way the postal carrier (Postbote/Postbotin) can deliver mail to the correct apartment in even a large apartment complex is by the surname on...
How many Germans are international travelers?
Germans have a reputation as travelers. They even claim to be the Reiseweltmeister (world champions of travel). Indeed, many citizens of Germany do travel abroad and in Germany. If you visit US national parks, as I did this month, you could get the impression that...
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