Just now – on a street in Berlin – I passed a Volvo with a German license plate, but also with an NPR bumper sticker, and an Obama '08 bumper sticker. Which prompted in me a natural reaction of:
Am I back home in Ithaca??
(Germans don't really do bumper stickers, for the most part, so their very presence is a dead giveaway that Americans are involved!)
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
April Weather
In German, changeable spring weather is known as "Aprilwetter" ("April weather") and that's what we're having right now, though it's not quite April yet. Yesterday all day: steady rain alternating with big, soft balls of hail. Today: the sun is shining and every single bush and flowering tree seems to have burst forth overnight.
It must be spring!
It must be spring!
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Benedict Cumberbatch and the Sign of Three, No, Four!
Man, all these years and Sesame Street is still the most awesome, with its clever references and culturally hip cameos.
Here, Benedict Cumberbatch (aka "Counterbatch") meets Muppet arch-nemesis "Murray-arty" and counts to three – no, four!
(This might be even better than when Benedict Cumberbatch recited R. Kelly lyrics... Or when he did that award acceptance speech in surf shorts... Or when he photobombed U2 at the Oscars... Come to think of it, that dude is just made of win, isn't he?)
Anyway:
"You win this time, Sherlock!"
"...Benedict."
"You win this time, Benedict Sherlock!"
Here, Benedict Cumberbatch (aka "Counterbatch") meets Muppet arch-nemesis "Murray-arty" and counts to three – no, four!
(This might be even better than when Benedict Cumberbatch recited R. Kelly lyrics... Or when he did that award acceptance speech in surf shorts... Or when he photobombed U2 at the Oscars... Come to think of it, that dude is just made of win, isn't he?)
Anyway:
"You win this time, Sherlock!"
"...Benedict."
"You win this time, Benedict Sherlock!"
Monday, March 10, 2014
Man, on Skateboard, with Dog
There's a guy who often whooshes past our office window on a skateboard, with his dog on a leash out front, pulling him down the sidewalk at quite a clip. Both dog and man are hip and artsy looking, and completely blasé about their unusual transportation arrangement. The sight makes us chuckle in appreciation every time.
Berlin's so awesome sometimes!
Berlin's so awesome sometimes!
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Dartmoor, England!
I went to Dartmoor (think Sherlock Holmes in Hound of the
Baskervilles, and just generally lovely, wild nature) for a few days of
hiking in February (yes, in February) and it was fantastic! Here's an
album of pictures that I think captures a little of how dramatic and otherworldly
Dartmoor can be – you step onto the moor and you're suddenly a world
away from the towns and roads and sheep fields that make up the
countryside around it. Plus, being there in February, I caught all kinds
of crazy weather, which made the whole trip seem even more dramatic and
adventurous. Loved it, would go back in a heartbeat.
Anyway, pictures!
Anyway, pictures!
 |
| Dartmoor Days |
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Finland; or, You Know, Whatever
Just for kicks, I took an online quiz called, "Which European Country Do You Actually Belong In?" I figured, well, as a person who lives in Europe, it would be fun to see what an online quiz had to say... My result:
"You got: Finland. You’re extremely liberal and you love being close to nature. You can sometimes seem a bit aloof, but that’s only because you enjoy silence. You’re honest, reliable, and exceptionally loyal."
Huh, that seems pretty reasonable, actually. ...I'd been thinking more along the lines of finding a cabin in the woods in Maine where I could be totally alone and do nothing but write, or a small place somewhere in the English/Scottish countryside where I could go hiking all the time, or going to Iceland and hanging out with all the musicians, but sure, Finland works too!
(I know I've been silent here for ages; my life is going through work-related upheavals and almost definitely headed for a big change of some sort, so I'm actually semi-serious about the whole cabin-in-the-woods-writing-and-hiking thing... Well, we'll see where that takes me in the next months!)
Anyway. Here's the quiz, if you're curious too.
"You got: Finland. You’re extremely liberal and you love being close to nature. You can sometimes seem a bit aloof, but that’s only because you enjoy silence. You’re honest, reliable, and exceptionally loyal."
Huh, that seems pretty reasonable, actually. ...I'd been thinking more along the lines of finding a cabin in the woods in Maine where I could be totally alone and do nothing but write, or a small place somewhere in the English/Scottish countryside where I could go hiking all the time, or going to Iceland and hanging out with all the musicians, but sure, Finland works too!
(I know I've been silent here for ages; my life is going through work-related upheavals and almost definitely headed for a big change of some sort, so I'm actually semi-serious about the whole cabin-in-the-woods-writing-and-hiking thing... Well, we'll see where that takes me in the next months!)
Anyway. Here's the quiz, if you're curious too.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Otterwechsel
We were talking about the verbs "wechseln" and "tauschen" (both more or less mean a variation of "to change/exchange/swap") here in the comments on one of my "language ragbag" posts; that led to the amusing German word "Otterwechsel" – that's equivalent to "otters crossing" (as in, look out for otters, because this is a place where they're likely to be changing sides of the road). But what's delightful about it is that it sounds like it could mean a place for exchanging otters – an otter swap!
Anyway, here's a picture:
(The same word-forming pattern applies to other animals, like "Wildwechsel" (deer crossing) or "Froschwechsel" (frogs crossing) – because, yes, Germany is a country so devoid of large wild animals that people actually take the time to worry about how, where and when frogs cross the road.)
Anyway, here's a picture:
(The same word-forming pattern applies to other animals, like "Wildwechsel" (deer crossing) or "Froschwechsel" (frogs crossing) – because, yes, Germany is a country so devoid of large wild animals that people actually take the time to worry about how, where and when frogs cross the road.)
Not a Guitar, Not a Double Bass
Coming out of the subway station at Alexanderplatz today, there was a guy ahead of me with a cello case on his back. Smack dab in the middle of the case was a big sticker that read, "Das ist ein Cello" ("This is a cello"). Above that, nearly as big, "Nein, keine Gitarre, auch kein Kontrabass" ("No, not a guitar, not a double bass either").
Rock on, dude. Easy to guess which dumb questions he gets asked over and over!
Rock on, dude. Easy to guess which dumb questions he gets asked over and over!
Friday, January 17, 2014
The Schornsteinfeger Cometh
This morning was the annual maintenance visit from the chimney sweep.
Yes, the chimney sweep. Sometimes, in Germany, there are these little moments where I wonder just what century I'm living in!
Every building is required (by law, I think; and in fact by old-timey, convoluted laws, because this is one of those super old professions governed by all kinds of quirky traditions and rules) to pay the chimney sweep once a year to come and check in on things.
In buildings that still have functioning chimneys, I assume part of the chimney sweep's work involves cleaning those, but in modernized buildings like mine, what he does instead is inspect the gas heater. Incidentally, this is a task that's also done by the guy from the heating and gas company, who's also required to come once a year. Hoo boy, that German efficiency you always hear about? It's dead. There's more than enough German bureaucracy to go around, but believe me, bureaucracy is not the same as efficiency.
Anyway, once a year the chimney sweep shows up in his traditional black garb and jaunty little black cap, at some ridiculously early hour of the morning, and cheerfully totes all his gadgets and equipment into my apartment. It's always the same guy (again, if I understood right, there's actually a law that assigns chimney sweeps each a specific bit of the city, and forbids them poaching one another's territory!) In fact, I think this picture I posted three winters ago, of a chimney sweep on the roof of the building opposite, is him, too. He's very nice about explaining what he's doing and answering my curious-foreigner questions!
First he started by opening a little flap in the wall near my (modern, gas, no longer connected to a chimney) kitchen stove and shoveling out the soot and debris that had collected there over the course of the year. I asked him why there's soot in there, given that the chimney hasn't been used in years (I live in a typical Berlin "Altbau," a turn-of-the-twentieth-century six-story apartment building, but one that was completely renovated after the fall of the Wall) and he said that over time, damp air shakes loose a bit more the soot stuck to the inside of the chimney. It must be true, because there's always that bit of soot when he opens the flap!
Once he was done being all anachronistic, with his little black cap and his bucket and spade for mucking out the chimney, he opened up his toolkit and whipped out his modern measuring instruments and turned his attention to my apartment's actual heater, to measure carbon monoxide and things. All in all, it only took a couple minutes, and then he jauntily packed up his things and cheerily headed back out the door. I wonder if all chimney sweeps are that happy? It seems to speak well for the profession!
Yes, the chimney sweep. Sometimes, in Germany, there are these little moments where I wonder just what century I'm living in!
Every building is required (by law, I think; and in fact by old-timey, convoluted laws, because this is one of those super old professions governed by all kinds of quirky traditions and rules) to pay the chimney sweep once a year to come and check in on things.
In buildings that still have functioning chimneys, I assume part of the chimney sweep's work involves cleaning those, but in modernized buildings like mine, what he does instead is inspect the gas heater. Incidentally, this is a task that's also done by the guy from the heating and gas company, who's also required to come once a year. Hoo boy, that German efficiency you always hear about? It's dead. There's more than enough German bureaucracy to go around, but believe me, bureaucracy is not the same as efficiency.
Anyway, once a year the chimney sweep shows up in his traditional black garb and jaunty little black cap, at some ridiculously early hour of the morning, and cheerfully totes all his gadgets and equipment into my apartment. It's always the same guy (again, if I understood right, there's actually a law that assigns chimney sweeps each a specific bit of the city, and forbids them poaching one another's territory!) In fact, I think this picture I posted three winters ago, of a chimney sweep on the roof of the building opposite, is him, too. He's very nice about explaining what he's doing and answering my curious-foreigner questions!
First he started by opening a little flap in the wall near my (modern, gas, no longer connected to a chimney) kitchen stove and shoveling out the soot and debris that had collected there over the course of the year. I asked him why there's soot in there, given that the chimney hasn't been used in years (I live in a typical Berlin "Altbau," a turn-of-the-twentieth-century six-story apartment building, but one that was completely renovated after the fall of the Wall) and he said that over time, damp air shakes loose a bit more the soot stuck to the inside of the chimney. It must be true, because there's always that bit of soot when he opens the flap!
Once he was done being all anachronistic, with his little black cap and his bucket and spade for mucking out the chimney, he opened up his toolkit and whipped out his modern measuring instruments and turned his attention to my apartment's actual heater, to measure carbon monoxide and things. All in all, it only took a couple minutes, and then he jauntily packed up his things and cheerily headed back out the door. I wonder if all chimney sweeps are that happy? It seems to speak well for the profession!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
...to Screw in a Lightbulb?
Ohhh. So, one of the overhead light bulbs in the office just blew, so one of my colleagues got up on a stepladder to try to wrestle apart the light fixture (pretty, arty, but not very convenient when you need to actually get in there and change a bulb) and the rest of us hovered around, stabilizing the stepladder, handing things up to him, giving unhelpful advice, etc.
The whole thing looked very silly (there were four of us, to change a single bulb) and I was tempted to try to make a "How many translators does it take to screw in a light bulb?" joke, at which point I learned that apparently the rest of the world doesn't have light bulb jokes! (The colleagues are French and German.) Sad. I sort of tried to explain the concept, and looked up some examples online, and my colleague kind of got it, but a joke's just not the same once you've had to explain it.
"Why light bulbs specifically?" he asked.
I don't really know – maybe because it's such a simple, mundane task that should be eminently doable by one person, so it lends itself well to being distorted in various humorous directions?
Anyway:
How many translators does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Four: one to replace the bulb and three to research the relevant cultural context in the target language! :-)
The whole thing looked very silly (there were four of us, to change a single bulb) and I was tempted to try to make a "How many translators does it take to screw in a light bulb?" joke, at which point I learned that apparently the rest of the world doesn't have light bulb jokes! (The colleagues are French and German.) Sad. I sort of tried to explain the concept, and looked up some examples online, and my colleague kind of got it, but a joke's just not the same once you've had to explain it.
"Why light bulbs specifically?" he asked.
I don't really know – maybe because it's such a simple, mundane task that should be eminently doable by one person, so it lends itself well to being distorted in various humorous directions?
Anyway:
How many translators does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Four: one to replace the bulb and three to research the relevant cultural context in the target language! :-)
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