All day today I have either read on blogs, heard on the radio, seen on TV or spoken to some of my students about Armistice Day and it made me realise that apart from my post about St Martin's Day there should be another blog today:
about living with guilt.

You see, as a German living in England I always feel uneasy around this time of year. A lot of people don't understand why I feel like I do and it isn't that easy to explain. Why should I feel uneasy? Like eveybody else in England I am extrem...

Continue reading ...

I have been teaching a new beginners German class tonight and at the end of the lesson one student came and told me a funny story.
It was about a Battle of Britain celebration he went to a few years ago. The RAF base invited a few German and Italian pilots to the celebration but then got quite worried how the Germans would feel about the anniversary.
It seemed the Germans had the same thoughts because they arrived wearing T-shirts, printed with the following:


"Battle of Britain 1940 runners up"...

Continue reading ...

Thinking back to shortly after I moved to England, this was the time before satellite TV, although England just got Channel 4 and therefore had  one more TV channel than Germany. Still, Saturday afternoons were awful. All you could watch was either Wrestling or Snooker or black & white war films (at least that's what it felt like). Those black & white films weren't just black & white instead of colour, the topics were also very black & white. All American or English soldiers were good and all...
Continue reading ...