Positivity

As the most wonderful time of the year (TM) draws near, let's review German expressions of approval. These are suitable for use in approving of the weather, the food, the decor - whatever, go crazy! "But do," you ask, "Germans actually approve of things?"

Yup! Sometimes! And when they do, they say things like this:

• Dieser Schnitzel ist der Hammer! (Literally: This schnitzel is the hammer!)
• Dein neues T-shirt ist geil! (Literally: Your new t-shirt is horny!)
• And the ultimate expression of approval: Das Backstreet Boys Konzert war sau geil! (The Backstreet Boys concert was sow* horny!)

In conclusion, if you work really, really hard, maybe someday you, like me**, can be the hammer. Or pig horny. Whichever you prefer.

* sow, a pig, a female pig; ray, a drop of golden suuuuun...
** me, a name I call myself; far, a long long way to ruuuuun...

Weapon of mass multiplication*

Yes, I know what it looks like (poo. It looks like poo.), but hold the judgement until you've tasted one. It's called a Granatsplitter, which translates to grenade splinter, and it's an ingenious way of recycling and selling bakery scraps. The bakers take the leftover dough from pies/cakes/whatever, mix it up with a bit (or sometimes a lot) of alcohol, and dunk it in chocolate. YUM.

And then you buy one, eat it, and spend the next half hour contemplating whether this was the best or the worst decision of your life. Then you realize that you need a larger sample size to draw a reliable conclusion and are forced to repeat the process. The travail of the scientific method, I tell you.

For the longest time I couldn't remember the name of these delectable... piles... and I was forced to develop a memory aid, which went as follows: "If you eat too many of these, you're going to be a real granite splitter." Granite splitter = Granatsplitter. And that's what you call a mnemonic device, kids.

*by which I mean that these top the list of "Things That Would Make Me Fat If I Spent Too Long in Germany."

Linguistic differences

As previously discussed, I love the German language. But as also previously discussed, I love JOKEZ more.

Luftwaffe

Now that football is over until 2014, it's time to turn our attention to another German national obsession: lüften. This translates to "airing out" and is one of the first words I learned in Germany because they use it, well, constantly. In Germany, there is nothing that can't be lüften-ed: bedrooms, bathrooms, classrooms, cars, clothes, kitchens, sheets, pillows, rugs, tents, shoes, sleeping bags... if you can name it, Germans can lüften it. It is absolutely essential to lüften regularly in order to get rid of schlechte Luft (bad air, which most Germans visualize as a malevolent presence hovering over them at all times) and replace it with frische Luft (fresh air).

These are the same Germans, by the way, who are convinced that if you go outside with wet hair you will 100% no doubt about it get a cold or a bladder infection or maybe even a heart attack. Clearly, Germans have a deeply ambivalent relationship with Luft.

Füncar

This is how you spell fun in German!*


*It's not.

Not romantic

Disclaimer: I really like the German language. I like speaking it and listening to it and singing in it. However, I also like making jokes about it, and this one is funny.

I'm still not entirely sure why so many people think German is a harsh language. I mean sure, it's no French, and it has quite a lot of ch and sch sounds, but GIVE IT A CHANCE. Anyway, ask me sometime and I'll say nice things to you in German. We'll rehabilitate German's rep yet.

Incidentally, check this out if you've ever wondered why Romance languages are called Romance languages and if it's connected to romance. Spoiler alert: it is, but not in the way you probably think.

Basically the best joke

Q. What comes between fear and sex?

A. Fünf.

If you don't get it, you can see me after class.

Fernsehturm

Quite a few cities in Germany, including Nuremberg, have old TV towers which haven't served much purpose since satellites came along. You have to admit that they're picturesque, though.

The Berlin TV tower is particularly iconic (you can take an elevator to the top, buy a t-shirt, elongate a penny, etc.), but I like the Nuremberg one a lot. Apparently it used to be open for tours, but it's kind of in the middle of nowhere and I expect it didn't get many visitors.

The German word is Fernsehturm (pronunciation: exactly what it looks like), which literally means "far-see-tower". This comes from the German word for TV, Fernsehen - "far-see". Duh.

This picture was taken on a beautiful March day, just a few minutes after my first ice cream of 2012. Oh, the memories...

Sunday night German lesson

My new skis and I just got back from a weekend of ski-touring in Austria, which means it's time for a topical German word.


It's genießen (geh-knee-sen)! It means "enjoy" and just saying it is enjoyable. Try it! Let me show you.

Say, "I enjoyed that ice cream."
Now say, "I totally genießed that ice cream."

Which better captures the feeling of enjoying an ice cream? There's only one right answer.

P.S. Those are not my skis. Blatant misrepresentation, I know.
P.P.S. That's not how you conjugate genießen, but this is a Sunday night vocabulary lesson, not a Sunday night grammar lesson.

Begone

Ask me what I hate about Germany. Go on, ask me!

The pillows. I hate the freaking pillows. I would say that German pillows are like someone took a giant square bag and half-filled it with feathers, except that "like" implies a comparison and I just told you exactly what German pillows are. No matter how you fold, knead, squish, squash, or shape them, your head just sinks right through. And on a related note - why are they so gigantic and square? A pillow is for your head, not for your ENTIRE UPPER BODY (a fact that should be abundantly clear to Germans, seeing as the word is Kopfkissen - headpillow).


Anyway, I finally asked Tim to bring me some £2 grocery store pillows from England and they're better than any 40-Euro ergonomic feather nonsense. If it were up to me, I would cultural imperialism those pillows right out of Europe. Seriously, they're the worst.

Make it longer. Longer, I said!

I know there are a lot of jokes about ridiculously long German words, but guess why? It's because a lot of German words are really freaking long. Take this sign at the organic supermarket near my apartment.


They want to let you know that they're there for you if you have an intolerance to certain foods. It's just that in German, the word for "intolerance to certain foods" is Lebensmittelunverträglichkeiten.

Glühbirne

In the interests of giving you something to talk about at cocktail parties (you're welcome), I'm going to teach you some of my favourite German words.

First up (and closest to my heart) is the German word for lightbulb - Glühbirne (glue-beer-nuh) - which literally means glowpear. Because it's shaped like a pear and it glows, see?

In German, all the nouns (as opposed to just proper nouns) are capitalized. The more you know! Which brings me to a joke with two punchlines:

Q: How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One.

Q: How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Ve are asking ze qvestions!