Saturday, August 31, 2013

Germany Anniversary

Today is my German anniversary – I've been living here for seven years exactly.

It's a strange feeling. I've now lived in Germany significantly longer than I've lived any other place aside from the town I grew up in. I suppose I could also take this as conclusive proof I'm a grown-up, that I've lived for seven years in a place I first moved to after college?

Friday, August 30, 2013

Particle Land

Hi folks! I've been thinking today about particles.

That's particles in the linguistic sense, as in the little filler words that add shades of meaning to a sentence. These are notoriously ubiquitous in German, and notoriously difficult to translate (or to learn how to use any other way than simply through the osmosis of being immersed in the language on a daily basis).

I started thinking about this after seeing an election campaign poster that read something like (I don't remember it exactly) "Mach ja doch mal!"

Now, the only "actual" word in that sentence is "mach" – the command form of "machen," or "do." Everything else is slippery particles. But saying just "Mach!" would come off as inexcusably harsh, the equivalent of shouting, "DO IT!!!"

"Doch" has a gentling effect – it makes the command into "Come on, do it" or "Hey, do this." Or even, "Why don't you do this?"

"Mal" (short for "einmal," literally "once") also softens a command – it's the difference between "Smile, NOW!" and "Hey, give us a smile."

"Ja," though, I would say, has a strengthening effect – "Just do it!"

I'm not sure I could tell you what the combination of all three at once – "Mach ja doch mal" – gives you. Something that's at once cajoling, playful and forceful, perhaps?

In any case, I started thinking: Just how many particles could one reasonably cram into one single, non-complex sentence? (German has a LOT of particles – doch, ja, schon, halt, nun, nun mal, eben, also, also doch, aber, vielleicht, eigentlich, wohl, auch, bloß, denn, irgendwie, nur, zwar... and I'm sure that's only a partial list.)

The best I've been able to create so far is "Mach ja doch mal schon!" which would be something like "Hey, come on and just do it already!" And the only actual verb in that sentence is still "mach."

Anyone want to add to that?

(Wikipedia has a good explanation of German particles here (three form systems! languages with no words for "yes" and "no"! Aaaah, the rabbit hole of linguistic fabulousness!)

Berlin's Best Bagels

Here's a great article about "Fine Bagels," newest project of Laurel, co-owner of the lovely local English bookstore Shakespeare and Sons.

(I've written about Laurel here and here, and about the truly abysmal state of the pathetic knockoffs that get marketed as "bagels" in Germany here and here.)


The article also delves a little, in the end, into the way Germans overcompensate for their history by trying to come off as ultra-supportive of anything that is in any way identified as Jewish:

"The times I mentioned the knishes on the menu were a kind of ‘Jewish dumpling,’ the sell-rate was near 100 percent," she said. "Though the Jewishness is, of course, irrelevant to the taste."

This is a whole other topic, and probably deserving of a blog post of its own, if not an entire blog!


Thursday, August 29, 2013

Germany Doesn't Care about Your Molars

I learned an interesting thing today at the dentist: German health insurance will cover fillings in your front teeth, but not in your back teeth. "Anything that can be seen," said the dental assistant, with a shrug and a roll of the eyes at what weird logic that is.

Now let me say first of all, I have few complaints with Germany's health care system. It works, it covers an amazing range and level of care, it understands (in most cases) that paying for preventive care now saves costs later, and everybody has coverage. No appalling gaps in care like in the US, no horrendous waiting times like in Canada, no being locked into one provider like in the UK (at least in my shaky grasp of that system, which I admit is only based on a sole experience of once having had to take a local friend to the emergency room in Scotland.)

In Germany, you have a choice of which doctor to see, you generally get an appointment within a reasonable time frame, and if it's necessary care you're receiving, your insurance pays for it.

How does Germany afford this? Yes, a hefty government contribution. (This is where the whole European high-taxes-in-exchange-for-high-quality-of-life thing comes in.) But also everyone's pays insurance costs that are a percentage of their earnings; for those who can't pay, the government steps in. The more you earn the more you pay, up to a certain limit, and then you're allowed to opt out and buy private insurance instead.

(This is my one major complaint, that it's two-tier system – everyone below a certain cut-off has regular, compulsory insurance; those over the cut-off can choose instead to buy private insurance at a fixed price, which at some income level becomes a better deal than the percentage-based compulsory insurance. This is problematic because private patients get preferential treatment – some doctors will only see private patients. Hard to propose a better alternative, though, when this is the natural result of an income-based payment system. Maybe keep the percentage-based payments, but have a certain cap to the amount any one person has to pay? But it does seem to me everyone should have the same basic coverage, and then optional extras could be, you know, optional: e.g., those who want to add on, say, full dental coverage have the option to do so on top of the basic coverage they share with everyone... /End of digression.)

Anyway, one of the system's little oddities I've been thinking about lately is that insurance will cover the cost of a consultation with a doctor – which includes the doctor writing a prescription – even if it doesn't cover the actual thing the doctor prescribes.

(For example: An ophthalmologist visit, including an eye test and a prescription for glasses, is free, even though the glasses themselves aren't. Consultation with a gynecologist about which birth control to use is free, but the birth control itself isn't covered. Emergency appointment with a G.P. for flu/bronchitis/whatever is free, but there's a copay on the medication prescribed. I'm not saying insurance necessarily needs to cover eyeglasses or whatever, it's just funny that it would cover the visit to the doctor who tells you that you need a specific thing, but stop short of providing the thing you need.)

The insurance is also a bit odd when it comes to dental care – two yearly check-ups are included, but a routine cleaning (something every person needs) isn't. Yet the exorbitant cost of treatment for gum disease (which you might well get if you never have a professional cleaning) is covered!

Ah well, coming from a country where generally no dental care is covered, I still think Germany is doing a great job.

How interesting, though, that while Germany wants to fill cavities in your incisors, it doesn't care about your molars.

Monday, August 26, 2013

"Anhalten"

Another one of those little "German verbs, why??" moments:

The verb "anhalten" means both "to continue" and "to stop" (as in to pause, halt, or pull your car to the side of the road). In other words, two things that are exactly opposite.

Anyone out there care to explain??


(Also, one of Germany's 16 federal states is called Sachsen-Anhalt, so if you wanted to translate that super overly literally, you'd have to call it "Saxon-Stop"!)


Thursday, August 22, 2013

Ostsee Excursion: Zingst, Darss and a Dash of FKK

I spent last weekend at the Baltic Sea (that's Ostsee, or "East Sea," in German). As relaxation getaways go, it was a small one (Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon) but it was a very good decision.

It proved easiest to be based in Zingst, part of a long, narrow barrier almost-island, and also the name of a hopping little tourist town with a stretch of sand beach and all the attendant trappings of a German seaside tourist town. (These consist largely of numerous iconic "Strandkorb" chairs, a kind of beach chair/shelter that can be rented for the day on windy German beaches.)

Here's the pier at Zingst in the early evening:


Zingst was not really the point, though; the point was the day I spent with a rented bicycle, crisscrossing the middle part of the peninsula, known as Darss, much of which is a national park.

First, out along the bike path that runs east-west atop the dike paralleling the dunes and the sea, then through the woods and out to the great, flat stretch of Nordstrand (North Beach) at low tide and high noon, where jellyfish lay stranded at the tide line and mussel shells crunched underfoot, the sea, sand and sky all flat as glass.


Then further on foot through the national park, a looping trail through marshlands and dunes that finally opens out to the wild, untamed beach at Darsser Ort. (I'd been here once before, in deepest winter my first year living in Berlin, and this spot where the path crests the dune and opens out to the sea is the image that has always stayed with me from that visit.)


Then, the afternoon at Weststrand (West Beach), reached by a path through the woods and cheerfully dotted with colorful beach tents and windscreens.

What I loved possibly the most about Weststrand was the way East Germany's well-established "FKK" (nudist) culture plays out here. On the more established, tourist-town beaches, there are posted signs for nudist or non-nudist beaches (the latter are called "textile" beaches, in a charming nod to how normal the non-textile alternative is), but at the more remote Weststrand, everybody mixed easily. About half the people were walking around with clothes on and half with none, and nobody cared in the least either way. As an American, coming from a culture that can still be insidiously Puritanical, despite the actual Puritans being centuries gone, that just seems like a very healthy culture to me.

(Equally charming was a boy of maybe 6 or 7 I saw playing on the beach, completely absorbed in some sort of driftwood fort he was building and just as completely indifferent to the naked adults around him.)


Then in the evening back to Zingst, and here, have a special bonus of an awesome playground near the school there. (That's a dragon, a unicorn and some sort of over-sized percussion toy/instrument, in case you can't tell. Someday maybe I really will make an album of all my pictures of awesome Germany playgrounds.)



Then back to Berlin late on Sunday, rested and soaked with sun and sea, and finding a weekend away very, very worth it.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Ta-Ta and Hello

Here's a nice piece by a New York Times correspondent about returning to the US after a long-term (18 years!) stint as an expat. Sarah Lyall was based in London, so her most of her anecdotes focus on Englishness, but many of the America-vs.-Europe comparisons would apply to Germany and other countries as well.

Enjoy!

Ta-Ta, London. Hello, Awesome.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Glen Hansard in Berlin

Glen Hansard is a phenomenon every single time. Even in the pouring rain, even in a sea of umbrellas.

I'd try to list highlights, but basically everything was a highlight: the old songs, the new songs, the covers (Bruce Springsteen...Kraftwerk...Van Morrison...The Pixies...the man can quite literally do anything), as well as the strange, wonderful stories he tells as song introductions, and just the sheer fun the band was having together.

Also, this song:


Thursday, August 8, 2013

Road or River?

Nonstop torrential rain one morning while I was in Ithaca caused impressive flash flooding on South Meadow Street. (This is Ithaca's unfortunate big-box-store strip, and the flooding is a prime example of why paving over wetlands is never a great idea!)

Anyway, this picture doesn't do it justice, but there were long lines of cars backed up in both directions to ford the section of the road that was under some quite deep water – definitely the deepest I've forded outside of Iceland and an Icelandic river-fording truck!


Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Ithaca Airport: Now Boarding through the Side Door

 Oh, Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport. So small that the planes have propellers.


(I gotta say, though, the airline employees at the Ithaca airport are probably the nicest and most helpful I've dealt with anywhere. That's a perk to being tiny! And another one is that there's not exactly a long line to go through security...)


Flight to Philadelphia now boarding through gate... actually, you know what, just come out this side door.


The Comfiest Bus Stop

A bus stop in Ithaca, complete with armchair and lamp (and a friend for scale).