Archive for 'Travel & Geography'
You Won’t Believe These Crazy German Place Names Posted by Sten on Jan 25, 2022
Every country has some strange Ortsnamen (m, place names). Take American Fork in Utah, or Shitterton in Dorset, UK. And we have our own crazy German place names! Here’s a few that where you can visit and you can take your picture next to the Ortsschild (n, place name sign). Oh, and also how you pronounce them properly…
The World’s Largest Advent Candle Is In Germany Posted by Sten on Dec 2, 2021
Advent, advent, die Kerze brennt! (Advent, advent, the candle is burning!) The four Sundays before Christmas are the four days of Advent, anticipating the birth of Christ. To mark these days, each of them gets a candle – the four Adventskerzen (f, advent candles). They can be attached to Adventskränze (m, advent wreaths) and can be found in…
Weihnachtsgurke: A German Christmas Tradition, Or Not? Posted by Constanze on Nov 30, 2021
Guten Tag! Can I say the W word yet? What’s the W word? Weihnachten (Christmas), of course! I love writing blog posts even more at this time of year, because so many aspects of Christmas have a connection with Germany and/or Austria, and reading about them really gets me in the mood for Christmas time!…
German City And Countryside Signs Posted by Constanze on Sep 22, 2021
Guten Tag! In my last post, I gave you some vocabulary to describe where in the country you are, and what sort of place it is (you can read that post here!). Following on from that post, I thought it’d be useful to include a selection of signs and notices you might come across when…
Where In The Country Are You? Posted by Constanze on Sep 15, 2021
Guten Tag! I have recently come back from a holiday (der Urlaub), and during the long drive there and back I got to thinking about all the different parts of the country we’d travelled through, and all the signs we’d seen along the way. I wondered if this might be a useful thing for German…
The Story Behind A Strange German Greeting: Hummel, Hummel! Posted by Sten on Sep 3, 2021
If you’ve wandered the streets of Hamburg, you may have heard a weird greeting. One shouts Hummel Hummel!, and the other will answer mors, mors! And they’ll just move on with their day as if nothing happened. What does that greeting mean, and where does it come from? It’s a cute story, and there is quite some…
What is the German Deutsche Bahn? Posted by Sten on Aug 12, 2021
This week, Germany’s Öffentliche Verkehrsmittel (m, public transit) are defined by a Streik (m, strike) of Lokführer (m, train drivers) of the Gewerkschaft (f, labor union) GDL. Announced suddenly, the Streik put the Deutsche Bahn in a lot of trouble. But what is the Deutsche Bahn, and how does it work? And what’s with this Streik? What is the Deutsche Bahn? The Deutsche Bahn…