Was soll der Quatsch?

Wieso dichtet Dr. Huch seine Weisheiten, auf die die Welt nicht gewartet hat, plötzlich auf Englisch?

Ganz einfach, es übt ungemein und man bekommt plötzlich auch Feedback von Leuten, die man sonst nicht erreichen würde. Laßt mir halt meinen kleinen persönlichen Beitrag zur Völkerverständigung…

Außerdem war ichs einfach leid, zwei Blogs gleichzeitig zu vernachlässigen, ich kümmere mich jetzt nur noch um einen kaum und ignoriere den anderen komplett

The only stereotype that makes my blood boil

There really is nothing particularly bad about stereotypes, in fact I cultivate a flock of them myself. But there is one that the English speaking world repeats over and over again until over the years (centuries?) it has been accepted as a fact and noone subjects it to critical analysis: Germans are rude and blunt. Dr. Huch disagrees wholeheartedly.

Ok, this is going to be a bit complicated, so lets assume that conversation between two people is always like a duel.

Duelling with someone in the tongue of my fathers (in my case, surprise, surprise, in German) means I have a vast choice of weapons for every occasion. Pistols, rifles, swords, sabers, rapiers, epees, daggers, guns of all calibers imaginable, poison, toothpicks, in short, everything you need for a civilized exchange of words, because you can be sure that your opponent knows the rules. His or her armory might or might not be better stacked than my own but we are more or less on even ground.

Now, all of a sudden there is someone else to deal with. My German language armory which has so well served me over the years will suddenly not help me in the least, because my counterpart normally will know little or nothing about my duelling culture. But, conversation necesse est, so I need to play by foreign rules. I roam my English armory, lots of cobwebs and a club. Nothing very useful for a formidable and eloquent dialog, but it will have to do.

The bitter consequence: My opponent hears me using his language like some stoneage Fred Flintstone, rough, raw and untrained, just barely enough to get the message across. He will see me as uncivilized, blunt, direct, rude…and why? Just because I was polite enough to duel him on his terms, just because he didn’t even bother to put as much as a nail file into his German word armory.

So folks, of course you still have every right to call me rude, but first let me see your skills with the verbal Schwert, Säbel, Degen, Florett oder Pistole…it’s your choice of weapons.

Remember the times…

…when sex was fun and skydiving was dangerous? Yes, me too.

Nowadays things are a little more complicated, so Dr. Huch, dirty old man that he is, feels the need to set a few things straight.

A funny yet potentially embaressing misunderstanding when planning Anglo-German intercourse („Geschlechtsverkehr“, literally translated „sex traffic“ ) involves preservatives. Well, normally you would not expect that food chemistry would be a favorable topic in the bedroom – unless you’re dating a chemist maybe. But the German word for condom happens to be „Präservativ“ while preservative translates to „Konservierungsstoff“.

To make things more complicated, a multitude of other names are frequently used for condoms, normally depending on the company your in:

„Kondom“ – you would not have guessed, would you?
„Pariser“ (Parisian) – yes, the French have a certain reputation in these matters
„Gummi“ (rubber)
„Verhüterli“ – contraceptorlet (this highly innovative term is (c) Dr. Huch)
„Lümmeltüte“ – (bugger bag)
„Präser“ – short for „Präservativ“

So, next time you’re in a very intimate mood and someone asks you „Hast Du nen Gummi dabei?“ you are well prepared and will know that he or she is not referring to something made by haribo…

By the way: maybe someone can one day enlighten me as to how „condominiums“ got their strange name…

Am I really the only one who liked Kanzleramt?

Let’s for once pretend there is more to life than hanging around in chat rooms…

Dr. Huch has been quite busy these days, no time for chatting, just lots of work that kept me in the office for long hours. So this post will be about the only pastime activity I manage to slip into my schedule now and then.

About two years ago German public television channel ZDF started a new series called „Kanzleramt“ (chancellery) which we were told was inspired by the highly acclaimed American TV series „The West Wing“. I found Kanzleramt to be very entertaining, but seem to have been one of very few with such notion. Viewing rates did not satisfy ZDFs management so the series saw no second season.

I started asking myself: If the knock-off was fun, what would the orignal be like? Unlike many other TV series (some of them had better never crossed the Atlantic, we should consider sending Daniel Küblböck over in revenge) The West Wing was never shown in Germany. Too much American politics for German viewers, they said. The more I read the more my curiosity grew, so I decided to invest in an EU-import from Great Britain and ordered a DVD set of all 7 seasons of The West Wing. My English is normally sufficient to cope with „King of Queens“ or even the notorious „Gilmore Girls“, but The West Wing nearly drove tears in my eyes…lots of people talking fast and concurrently, abbreviations in heaps and lots of political stuff I had only ever heard about because I translated some of the corresponding Wikipedia articles into German not too long ago.

Now, as most of my fellow countrymen I despise subtitles, either you are capable of understanding the real thing or you have to go with the dubbed version, but never ever give me annoying lines of text obscuring a third of the screen…

Ahem. After a few episodes I swallowed my pride and switched on English subtitles, which made life a lot easier. Needless to say that subtitles in Swedish and Swahili were available, but not in German, which was fine with me and somehow soothing for my bashed self-esteem.

I learned quite a lot about American politics and the art of making complicated stuff into an entertaining TV series. And I learned why nobody was willing to translate it to German „Donna, hol mir die OMB-Unterlagen für das DNC vom OEOB und schieb das Meeting mit dem NAACP auf morgen“ - hey, does that sound like fun to you?

Also Leute, wem der amerikanische Vorwahlkampf noch nicht unterhaltsam genug ist und wer Lust auf mehr Intrigantenstadel hat, auf Ebay gibts The West Wing als DVD-Sammlung, viel Unterhaltung für relativ wenig Geld…

“Bring lots of cash, because German stores won’t accept your credit card”

Plastic money is common in Germany, but debit cards are used more regularly than credit cards.
However, all car rental companies, big brand gas stations, airlines, most hotels and many restaurants will accept all major credit cards.
Since credit card companies charge relatively high commissions (e.g. 3%) from shop owners, your Mastercard/VISA/Amex/Whatever will be more welcome in exclusive retail stores than in the smaller ones or discounts.
Because pricing is higly competitive especially in the food industry (leading to food prices often substantially lower than in the U.S.), most supermarkets will not accept credit cards but only debit cards (Maestro or the like).
Rule of thumb: use cash for amounts below 10 Euros, debit cards for up to 500 Euros (usually this is the maximum guaranteed by bank) and credit cards for over 25 Euros.
Many debit cards nowadays have an integrated money card-chip (”Geldkarte”) which can be loaded with up to 250 Euros and used to by stuff from vending machines (e.g. for railway tickets).