Do you listen to music on Spotify? If you don’t know what it is, Spotify is an online music station. You can listen for free or pay a subscription. If you listen for free you’ll get to hear some adverts every so often between the songs. If you go to https://www.spotify.com/ and register you can then either … Read more
Last week I wrote about German business letters which lead to the question: Is there anything I need to watch out when writing a German email? Just like with the letters, you still use the formal salutation – Sehr geehrter Herr … (Dear Mr …) Sehr geehrte Frau … (Dear Mrs …) Sehr geehrte Damen und … Read more
Every year a German organisation declares a word as ‘Unwort des Jahres’, the word of the year which shouldn’t be used. This morning they announced the ‘Unwort des Jahres 2013’. The word this time is Sozialtourismus – social tourism. According to a report from the University of Westminster, “Social tourism” is a term used to describe a … Read more
The 6th December is St Nicholas Day. There is an interesting article on Wikipeda about the history and legends but for German children there are far more interesting things to decide, like which plate to put outside their door! According to legend, during the night from the 5th to the 6th December, Nikolaus brings sweets, fruit, nuts … Read more
A while ago I posted about a website which lets you read a lot about Beethoven. Here is a similar website giving you lots of reading and listening practice about Germany’s history. Aimed at German children, the site covers 100 years of history, from the Imperial Era to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Again … Read more
Bernhard-Victor Christoph-Carl von Bülow would have celebrated his 90th birthday today. He was born on the 12th November 1923 in Brandenburg an der Havel in Germany and died on the 22nd August 2011. Under the name Loriot he was a famous German comedian, well known for his cartoons and sketches. If you’d like to check him out search … Read more
The Germans call ‘carnival’ Karneval, Fastnacht, Fasching or even ‘die fünfte Jahreszeit’ (the 5th season). It ends the day before Ash Wednesday with many processions and parties going on during the week up to that Tuesday. But why am I writing about this today? As you can imagine, those processions take a long time to … Read more
Adolf Dassler was born on the 3rd November 1900 and was a German businessman. He trained as a cobbler and later went into business with his brother. That didn’t quite work out, they separated and Adolf founded his own business. He died on the 6th September 1975. His business is still very well known. Oh, … Read more
EDIT 2016: Sadly, the idea was more difficult to keep going than they thought and Emmas Enkel has been sold to a large supermarket chain. I still like the idea, so will leave my post. The Germans call a corner shop ‘Tante-Emma-Laden’ as children used to address the shop assistants as auntie, like Auntie Emma. … Read more
Reutlingen is a town about 22 miles south of Stuttgart and it is famous for one street, the Spreuerhofstraße, because it’s the narrowest street in the world. In order to be called a street, a lane has to be wide enough for somebody to walk through and you can just about do that as the … Read more
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