Some German slang and low pants

I love having the opportunity to speak to German natives to work on my language skills. Plus, it's a great way to learn things that wouldn't necessarily be mentioned in a textbook.

During the campout this weekend, I saw a guy dancing and his pants were a bit low. I commented to my Bekanntin that it looked like half of a full moon.

She shared the German word term with me: Maurerdekolletee. A Maurer is a wall builder, and a décolleté (in German, dekolletee) is also a French term that means a low-cut neck on a dress (which, in turn, would expose part of one's chest). Apparently wall builders have a tough time keeping their pants up enough too! We cracked up over that one and as I explained our other term, "plumber's crack."

December's Adventure: Day 3, Strasbourg, France

On our third day of our trip, we hopped into the car for a two hour drive to Strasbourg, France, which is south of Kaiserslautern. I've visited Strasbourg once before this spring but never did get to writing about it (oops!). The nice thing about my prior visit was that it saved me some research for this visit since I basically already knew the layout of town. In other words, I knew exactly where to go since I had already bumbled through some wrong turns during the previous visit. Yay for learning!


From my last visit, I knew that the wise thing to do with my car was leave it in the Park and Ride lot on the edge of the downtown. I chose the Rotonde parking garage which is just west of downtown. It's super convenient because the tram is just outside the parking lot and it's a quick journey into town. Even better yet? It's super cheap! To park in the garage and ride the tram into downtown and back is only 4 euros for up to seven passengers. It's sooo much cheaper and less stressful than parking in the city (more P+R Strasbourg info available here).

We didn't have a set plan other than visiting the cathedral and the Christmas market. After we took the tram into town, we came across the first Christmas Market at Place Kléber, a square. There were just a few booths and they were all non-profit organizations. We decided this would be an excellent place to drink some vin chaud ("hot wine"), the French version of glühwein. After all, once must drink hot, spiced wine at Christmas markets and supporting non-profits by purchasing it from them is even better!

Lovely vin chaud. Now, how to get the deposit back?

My cousins both speak a bit of French from learning it in high school so they ordered successfully. I tried to order some wine using French and it was a mess. Some of it came out in German and instead of 3 glasses of wine we received 2 glasses instead. Eep. We finally got everything sorted out and my cousins had their glasses of red wine and I had white. It was tasty and similar to glühwein. Finishing our glasses, we were then left to figure out how to get our deposit back. We even had to figure out if we had paid a deposit for the cups. It's pretty standard practice if the cups aren't the cheap disposable ones. We spent a while watching other people to see what they were doing and finally just took the cups back to the stand and handed them back. We were rewarded with our deposit being returned. Success!

We learned that each year, there is a special guest country to the market. This year, the guest was Croatia, being honored for recently joining the EU (as of 1 July 2013). There were some stalls in the Place Gutenberg set up with Croatian food, crafts, and information.

Then we moved on to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, a major landmark of the city. Part of the building was started in 1015,  but the Gothic spire was not completed until 1439, according to Strasbourg's Tourism website. We marveled at the amazing church, noting the astronomical clock inside and the elaborately decorated facade.

I made special note of the super creepy stained glass window showing scenes from Hell. I was especially alarmed by the white devil (? I think that's what it is) that bears some resemblance to Bumble the Abominable Snow Monster from the children's film Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Freaky.

Creepy creepy! Bumble, is that you?

Beautiful church facade, evil gnome poisoning the vin chaud outside (maybe not).

That was enough of creepy stained glass windows. As we toured the rest of the town, we found something else that I've since seen repeated in other European towns: Santa Claus in various stages of breaking into people's homes. More pictures of this phenomenon will follow, of course.

There is more to the visit to Strasbourg but that will be another entry since this one is super long as it is. The next entry will be full of additional excitement (! maybe): how we ended up (sort of) on French television in Petite France; saw gnomes gone bad (and it was bloody!); went mountain climbing in the French burrito restaurant; and went into giggling hysterics over weird mannequins. I'm sure you can't wait.

Bob, I didn't know you had so many names

A few years ago (and before I lived in Germany), my brother and I were in Paris. We flipped on the tv and were thrilled to see SpongeBob on tv -- in French (yes, of course). We were even more thrilled when we saw that his name is Bob L'Eponge (Bob the Sponge) in French. For some reason, that really was funny to us.

In German class, I asked what his name is in German; it's SpongeBob Schwammkopf. That seems like a lot of sponges in one name, since it's SpongeBob Spongehead. It makes me laugh every time, but it's still kind of weird to me and possibly a little mean to call someone a spongehead. Well, I guess it's not any weirder than a cartoon about a piece of grumpy bread (Bernd das Brot, which I watch when I go to Berlin).

--

The rest of our conversation in class was just as deep. We talked about woolly caterpillars. I knew there was something special about them, but I couldn't put my finger on it, so I looked it up. There is an old wives' tale that if the caterpillar's middle band of color (brown) is wider, the upcoming winter will be milder. Our conversation then devolved into the hypothesis that if the caterpillar is wearing a scarf, winter will be colder and if he has socks on all his feet, it's going to be a horrible winter.

This conversation, as well as one I had in the US with my German teacher there about the "bumps on a log" snack, might be why my German isn't as far along as it could be but why I've enjoyed the lessons so much. See? German class also includes Entomology and culinary skills.

Take that, in whatever language

From Sep 28, 2010

Tonight marked the beginning of French class for me. Our instructor is absolutely adorable, and of course, very French. She was telling us a story about when she was living and working abroad in an expat community. Her boss was American and used the F-word all the time. She had an inkling that it wasn't a nice word, but didn't realize that it was the granddaddy of bad words. Her boss asked her to work on the f-ing report and give it back to him the following week.

She willingly completed the report, handed it to him and said "there's your f-ing report." Her boss's supervisor heard her say that, took her aside, and asked her if she knew what the word meant. She thought it was something along the lines of "stupid." She was absolutely mortified when she learned the actual meaning of it.

That's always a fear when learning another language and trying to operate in that language's world; will you commit a faux pas? [Will there be fox paws?] At worst, will you say something horribly offensive and get yourself in trouble, or at best, will you call yourself a doughnut? Such are the joys of different languages.
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And I apologize to the French language; I did things to it tonight that no language ever deserves. It was bad (but the instructor was so sweet and supportive, even though my pronunciation was probably like nails on a chalkboard to her).

Frenchies, please count bettah!

Dear French language:

you are a beautiful language. I will give you that. Also, people who use you can come up with hilarious insults that still sound oh so pretty in your tongue. I would’ve never thought of putting someone down by calling them a shampooer of dogs. It sounds so fancy when one says it in French.

However, I take big issue with your numbering system. Look, I hate math. I love you, French language, because you’re oh so sexy and I’d feel pretentious and special if I could speak you properly. However, WHY do you have to be so difficult and after the number 60, we have to do math to say 70, 80, and 90? I mean, 60 + 10 is how one says 70 in French? How about saying septante? Oh, wait, your cousins in Switzerland say that. Your family in Canada says it that way too (yes, I know that French people don’t think that the Canadians speak “real” French, but they feel that they do, so I’m not getting into the middle of that one). And then, when we get to the number 80, we have to break out the multiplication. C’mon, people! Please don’t ask me to drop many of the last letters in pronunciation, remember the gender and number for words, and then have to do math on top of it. My poor little peabrain is liable to explode.