Tag Archives: Germany
culture shock
You know the rules in elevators. You get in, you push the button, you turn and face the front, you watch the numbers. There is no eye contact. There is no chit-chat. In Germany, they have DIFFERENT RULES. You say hello … Continue reading
German lesson of the day
Fascinating German fact of the day: the word for “birth control pill” is apparently Antibabypille. Well, it’s descriptive, isn’t it? I’m reading an article in Die Welt about a woman who was taking birth control pills and died of a pulmonary embolism – … Continue reading
oktoberfest starts in september
This weekend the Burns Fellows had our official almost-end-of-fellowship meeting in Munich (or, if you prefer, München). There’s this little festival you may have heard of in Munich. Happens once a year? Lots of beer and lederhosen? Yeah, Oktoberfest, that’s … Continue reading
making the world more colorful
For today’s Welt I wrote about colorblind monkeys – scientists cured them of their colorblindness with gene therapy. “Cured” is kind of a silly word in this case. The males of this species naturally don’t see red and green, so … Continue reading
oh zaz!
One of the manz interesting things about living in foreign countries is adapting to new computer kezboards. Iäm tzping on mz work computer right now. Have zou guessed which two kezs are switched on a German kezboard? Thatäs right, itäs Y and … Continue reading
dread potato disease
For today’s paper, I wrote about late blight – you may know it better as potato blight, the disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine. It’s still a huge problem for potato and tomato farmers, so a bunch of scientists … Continue reading
my target audience
This weekend I discovered my perfect German audience: three-year-old girls. I was reading a book to the daughter of a friend of a friend about some animals putting on a show. I didn’t quite get the pronunciation of the word … Continue reading
very cold, very dry, very calm
Here’s the story I was talking about yesterday. Yeah, it’s in German. Google Translator actually does a pretty good job with it – select German to English, paste the URL in the box, and it’ll show you the page in … Continue reading
es-tsett
Today I wrote my first story in German! Ok, actually my second story in German. I wrote a little tiny story last week at Bild, but something went tragically wrong and it didn’t get published. But today’s story went into … Continue reading
oh golly
Today was my first day at the new workplace, Die Welt. (“The World.”) It’s got the same publisher as Bild but is somewhat higher-brow. For example, there are no naked ladies on the cover and very few exclamation points in … Continue reading