Politischer Aschermittwoch

Today I’d like to write about something that is very typically (and only) German. Most of you might be familiar with the idea of Aschermittwoch (Ash Wednesday) in general, but the Political Ash Wednesday is something that only takes place in Germany (as far as my research showed).
So we established the date of the event: [...]

Kartoffeln al dente von Angelo Colagrossi

Ich hoffe, es macht euch nichts aus, dass heutiger Eintrag auf Deutsch geschrieben wird. Der Eintrag wird von einem Buch erzählen, in dem ein Italiener nach Deutschland kommt und ich habe mir gedacht, dazu noch eine Sprache hineinzumischen wäre ein bisschen zu viel (oder „too much“, wie der moderne Deutsche sagen würde).
Das Buch heißt „Kartoffeln [...]

Happy Birthday, Freddie Mercury!

Today is a special day. It’s Freddie Mercury’s birthday. He would have turned 65 today. As he’s been one of my all-time favourite artists since I was a little child (thank you, Mum & Dad!), I decided to dedicate today’s slightly off-topic post to him. Please enjoy a very interesting German version of the absolutely [...]

On different approaches to learning foreign languages

What is your favourite method of learning foreign languages? And which approach is the best and fastest? I have been considering this issue recently because I want to work on my language skills a little bit again soon.

The first question I really need to answer is to which language I want to polish (first). The [...]

Royal Wedding Vocabulary – Fashion

Have you been following the British royal wedding recently? I have to admit I’m a big fan of the British monarchy and hence have been watching and reading a lot about the fairy-tale wedding of the century.
Then I thought I might use my little mania for something good and write a post about it. And [...]

Little Easter cheat-sheet

Time flies and it’s almost Easter time again! The time between Christmas and Easter passed really quickly for me this time even though Easter is so late this year.
I always find it quite confusing how all the days of Holy Week because they have different names in various languages and I always tend to translate [...]

Tokioter, Hallenser and Ivorer – Countries & Cities and their Unusual Names in German

Recently I’ve been reading quite a lot about Tokyo and its inhabitants in the German media. The occasion is a very sad and deeply shocking one but I’m pretty sure many of you have been reading about it too and maybe the same language phenomenon caught your attention.
Namely the term used in German to refer [...]

Winter surprised winter service employees…

…again! There’s a saying in Poland Winter surprised winter service employees and (un)funnily enough it comes to be true every year!
This year’s calendar winter just started yesterday and yet it has caused so many problems all over Europe so far that it’s scary to even think about the months to come.  Lufthansa and other airlines [...]

Le Tête en Friche – My Afternoons with Marguerite or rather My Afternoons with Margueritte!

Le Tête en Friche is a French film directed by Jean Becker and with Gérard Depardieu and Gisèle Casadesus. It’s FilmFest time here in Hamburg, you know, so I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in cinemas recently. That’s why please excuse me another off-topic but I really wanted to share my delight with [...]

Urlaubsreif

I love German word formation creativity! Urlaubsreif is another example from my log list of words that are somehow German-only i.e. usually cannot be translated into other languages with just one word. Urlaubsreif means in desperate need of a holiday and because I consider myself a person in such a state all the linguistic topics [...]