
Do you suffer from hay fever? If you do I’m afraid learning German will not help you cope with it, although if you find it does, please let me know!
If, however, you are on holidays in Germany and find you’ve left whatever you use for your hay fever at home, you’ll need some vocabulary to help you buy some.
Most importantly, in English you would ask the chemist for something FOR hay fever, but in German you ask for something AGAINST hay fever (Heuschnupfen).
So, when you go into the chemist’s (die Apotheke) and the chemist (der Apotheker/ die Apothekerin) asks if they can help you (Kann ich Ihnen helfen?), you say “Ich brauche etwas gegen Heuschnupfen.”
The chemist might want to know what your symptoms (Symptome) are before they can suggest something.
- Niesen – sneezing
- Fließschnupfen – runny nose
- Augenjucken – itchy eyes
- verstopfte Nase – blocked nose
- trockener Husten – dry cough
You might like to watch these two German videos with a little explanation about hay fever and some tips what you can do to make it easier to live with it.
If you like to know how the German pollen season (Pollensaison) looks like, I found a German pollen calendar which has a nice list and also another link to the actual pollen forecast in different parts of Germany. EDIT 2019, the list has been taken down but they still have up-to-date information about pollen in Germany. Have a look here if you intend to go to Germany and suffer from hay fever.
To help you with all the different trees and grasses I took screenshots of the calendar and added the English names of them.
I hope you found this post useful and interesting, but I also hope that you’ll never need any of this information!