This blogger hearts the Deutsche Bahn. Photo (cc) flickr user Train Chartering and Private Rail Cars

Everyone in Germany, it seems, likes to complain about the trains.  A train will be five, ten minutes late, and you know that at least a dozen people somewhere are muttering (loudly) under their breath about how intolerably unreliable the Deutsche Bahn is.  But I am an American, and frankly, the tendency to be disappointed in the state of the German public transportation system is a cultural tick that I will never understand.  The people grumbling about the delays have obviously never ridden Amtrak or Greyhound.

When my train is five minutes late, I’m not disappointed, I’m ecstatic.  “Five minutes late?!” I might say to a friend who’s just finishing complaining about the same.  “Amazing!  The train system here is GREAT.”  The delays I’ve experienced on American public transportation have been of a different caliber.  I’ve been delayed for eight hours, four hours, three hours, DAYS on American trains.  Entire bus stations have disappeared into the ether overnight.  As for the idea of local public transportation, that just doesn’t exist in most of America.  I’ve lived here for over six years, and it’s still a bit novel to me to be able to take a bus to, well, anywhere. And at the end of the day, the trains in Germany aren’t late as often as the grumblers might lead you to suspect.

Once upon a time the Deutsche Bahn was two state-owned and operated systems: the Deutsche Bundesbahn (West Germany) and the Deutsche Reichsbahn (East Germany).  Though the first German rail tracks were laid between Fürth and Nuremberg in 1835, the Deutsche Bahn has only been around since 1994, when the two companies merged under the old West German logo and the new title.  Though this was also a move toward privatization of the system—the DB is a “public limited company”—the German government currently holds all the company’s shares.  Plans shifting further toward complete privatization and otherwise crop up every few years and have always been surrounded by heated debate.

Roughly 2 billion passengers ride the DB rails every year, and the company is the largest railway operator in Europe.  Though—get this—it is only the second largest transport company in Germany.  That title is held by another Sate-run-turned-private company: the Deutsche Post.

While, yeah, I’ve ridden my share of delayed German trains and dealt with my share of Schienenersatzverkehr (which is when the tracks are being repaired and the DB shuffles all the passengers onto replacement buses and trains), I’m still enamored with the entire public transportation system.  It’s reliable, it’s clean, and it’s often relatively affordable (sometimes this gets iffy with longer trips, but there are a number of deals and discounts that can make this easier).  You’ll never hear me grumbling about a five minute delay on a German train station platform.

Are you a fan of German public transport too?  Leave us your thoughts in the comments!

Thinking of packing your suitcase and becoming an expat? Here are some tips on how to make it happen. Photo cc flickr user Jonas Design & Photography

Ever since I started blogging about my expat life in Germany, I’ve gotten questions from readers asking for help.  People wanted to know more about my decision to come here, about getting a job or a visa, and about learning the language.  As I often get the same questions again and again, I’ve put together a few of the most frequently asked so that it is easier for you to find answers.  If I haven’t touched upon something you’d love to know more about, leave your questions in the comments, and I will include them in future Q&A blog posts.

How did you end up in Germany?

The story goes something like this: I graduate college with a degree in English literature in the United States. Two weeks after graduation I start my first full-time desk job. Said full-time desk job makes me nuts. A year later—after breaking down in tears in a windowless grey meeting room over a pile of proofs—I decide to look for work abroad. I would have gone anywhere, so I started by looking at a lot of rather serious, scary jobs that I, in retrospect, am glad I didn’t get. On a whim I registered with an au pair placement agency and in two weeks I had an offer to live in Frankfurt with a family of seven. I accepted, quit my job, helped my mom move to a new house, and flew to Germany with a one-way ticket. (Despite the one-way ticket, I was expecting to come back after my year au pairing at the time, no plans of staying forever and ever then. I just didn’t want to have to commit to an exact date.)

Which makes the short, short answer to that question: completely by accident. I had never considering nannying before, and though I enjoyed the babysitting that I did occasionally, I wasn’t that into children. I just wanted a job that would allow me to be abroad and explore Europe. Au pairing was what fell into my lap, so an au pair I became. A German family responded to my application, so I moved to Germany. Au pairing turned out not to be my dream career, but it also was incredibly interesting and got me free trips to both Dubai and Cyprus, so in the end it was a pretty good score.

By the end of that first year I’d started to feel at home in Frankfurt, so I decided to stay and teach English.

How much money did it cost you to get there?

Because of the au pair job—which included room, board, health insurance, and visa organization—I didn’t have a lot of initial costs. I already had a passport, so I bought an adapter for my laptop (probably about 20 bucks) and a plane ticket (about 400 dollars I think).

After my year au pairing I went back to the United States to travel for a few months, then returned to get my own life in Germany started. I stayed at my then-boyfriend’s apartment while looking for my own place and needed about 1000 euro (I think, my memory for detail on this one is a bit foggy) for the deposit on my apartment, as well as money (something between 300 and 400 dollars I reckon) to get me through that first month of apartment and job hunting.

How did you get a visa?

My very first visa—made out to “can stay and au pair for one year”—was incredibly easy. My host mother drove me around to all the necessary offices, filled out the forms, and paid the fees. American citizens—of which I am one—are allowed to stay in Germany for three months on a tourist visa, so I didn’t even need to do anything before arriving. I had my official one-year au pairing visa in my passport by November (I arrived in September).

My second visa was a bit more trying—I applied on the basis of having work as a freelance English teacher. If you’re considering doing the same, here’s what you’ll need (or what I needed in 2005): letters from your employers estimating how much money you will make working for them each month, proof of a bank account, a rental agreement (proving that you have a place to live and informing them of your rent costs), and proof of health insurance. If you only have one employer, you might still get through, but it is a really good idea to have at least two when applying for this type of visa (as otherwise the German government would prefer that the company hire you for real and pay into things like social health care and retirement funds for you). Many of my colleagues at inlingua, my main employer at the time, had only one employer and were given visas for six months. I had two and was immediately given a visa for three years.

Problems I encountered: the people at the Frankfurt aliens office are incredibly unfriendly and a lot of health insurance companies and banks don’t want to do business with you unless you already have a visa. Can’t get a visa without a bank account, can’t get a bank account without a visa. (Sparkasse, to name names, wouldn’t give me an account without one, but Dresdner, now Commerz did without blinking.) Which later became, can’t get health insurance without a visa, can’t get a visa without health insurance. (In this case, I managed to convince the insurance agent that this was ridiculous and to sell me a policy anyway.) Can’t get an apartment without a visa? Well, there I didn’t have a problem. My landlord was used to renting to students, and he didn’t ask me any visa questions.

My advice to anyone trying to do this themselves is to get themselves down to the appropriate Amt and to ask for an application. Could be that requirements have changed since I went through the process, and it could be that each state has different hoops for you to jump through. Oh, and they really like it if you can speak German. (Bring someone with you to translate if you can’t speak German and can find a buddy willing to help. This will make them like you more.)

My third visa was (and is) a “married to a German person” visa. That required a a good deal of paperwork (that then had to be expensively translated), but involved dealing with the very friendly Mainz aliens office instead of the over-crowded, bad-mood-bear Frankfurt office.  So I might actually consider it the easier of the three. That visa is for three years, and if we are still married at the end of those three years, I’ll get a “stay in Germany forever” visa and can finally kiss the whole visa process goodbye.

Did you learn German before you went? Or did you learn it as you went along?

Before I moved to Germany I had already taken nine years of German classes (took it in high school and minored in it in college) under my belt. And yet I learned more German in my first six months here than in those nine years put together. So I’d say it was a little bit of both. During my first year here I also took some refresher courses at the Volkshochschule (VHS). Otherwise it was all trial by fire and practice, practice, practice.

If any of you have other questions about getting set up as an expat (or if I didn’t explain something in enough detail), leave ‘em in the comments, and I’ll make this Q&A into a regular series.

It turns out that with the same amount of time and effort, adults are just as capable as children at learning a new language quickly. Photo (cc) flickr user tilitran

You’ve heard it said before, “Kids learn foreign languages more quickly than adults.”  And you’ve probably—if you’re struggling to learn a foreign language yourself—let out a deep, tormented sigh of jealousy.  “Why didn’t I start learning this while I was still young?!” you ask yourself, wringing your hands.  “When my brain was still so fresh and absorbent!”  But have you ever thought to stop and ask yourself if the statement is actually true?

I had never questioned it before.  Having watched kids learning a new language and been astounded at the rate of their progress, I felt like I could confirm it as fact from my own experience.  But a few spotty observations do not a scientific study make.

In preparation for the baby we’re expecting in February—the baby who we will be raising speaking both German and English—I’ve been reading a book called The Bilingual Family by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley.  Written by two academics with experience raising bi-lingual children and full of scientific data about how humans acquire language, it was this book that finally made me question that assumption.

“It is generally believed that the individual’s ability to learn a language gradually diminishes with age.  To a very large extent, this belief is based on an uncritical observation of children learning to speak—in fact children put vast amounts of time and effort into mastering a language: where adults do likewise, they seem to learn just as well, pronunciation excepted.  In fact, they do better in terms of rate of acquisition, and not so well in terms of eventual outcome,” the authors say in a section about successive bilingualism.

After reading this paragraph, I stopped and thought about it.  My observations of children learning a second language had been brief, and my observations lacking in depth.  Maybe they had a point.  Maybe the difference simply was that children spent more time (and had more time spent on them by others) learning new languages.  I read on…

“This may seem nonsense to parents who have seen their children learn a second language in a matter of months while they still struggle along after a number of years.  But if we actually compare the learning opportunities available to children and adults both quantitatively and qualitatively, we will see that children usually have enormous advantages: if young children learn languages it is because the whole of society is organized in such a way as to teach children languages while they are young and because children have little else to do to distract them from the task.  A survey of all the research and evidence (Singleton, 1989) shows clearly that age, in itself is not particularly relevant to success in language learning, whereas motivation and opportunity are.”

Well! I thought to myself.  They really have a point there.  When I first started learning German I had three 45-minute-long classes a week.  Outside of class, there was no reason to practice German or think about German, except for the time I spent doing my homework.  But as a child suddenly immersed in a new language, maybe even attending school in that language, you would have a lot more motivation and focus on getting that learning done in a timely way.

So don’t despair, frustrated adults learning German!  With enough time and effort, we can become as good at our adopted languages as the children whose natural talent we used to eye so jealously!

Something as simple as saying the alphabet can trip you up in a second language. Photo (cc) flickr user james.swenson

Sometimes when you’re learning a foreign language, it feels like you’re doing everything backwards.  When children learn a language they start small, maybe asking for a toy simply by saying “me doll!”  While adults may resort to similar sentences in must-communicate situations in their adopted language, they often have the disadvantage of wanting to start with more complex subject matter.

Asking for directions, ordering at restaurants, making a doctor’s appointment on the telephone—these topics may sound simple, but they are conversations we don’t expect young children to be able to handle, and they are conversations that can be a huge challenge for a beginner.  Not to mention the moments when we want to try to express complex feelings about a politcal or personal issue in our stumbling German (or French or Russian or whatever language we happen to be tackling).  As adults it is hard to truly start with the basics because our minds are already used to processing and communicating much more complicated thoughts.

So we jump right into the fire.  We go to classes, and we attempt to memorize the ways in which we can tell someone that we are feeling dissatisfied with our jobs or are really enjoying a new book or are falling in love.  We start big and we start complex, and this makes the process frustrating.  But most adults have more complicated concerns than getting their hands on our favorite toys, playground antics, or what’s for dinner.  And though we deal with a lot of frustration because of it (and tend to be envious of the way kids can pick up new languages at light speed), most of us eventually arrive at a point where we can express more complex thoughts in our adopted language.  But sometimes the attempt to get to adult-level speech fast means we leave certain basics behind.  Which brings me to a confession.

I still cannot spell words in German.  I don’t mean that I spell German words incorrectly, I mean that when someone asks me “Can you spell that for me” auf Deutsch, I often can’t do it.  I don’t have trouble with the consonants, but the vowels give me trouble.  Ask me to spell a word with both “i”s and “e”s in it, and I will start to stutter.  The pronounciation of the German alphabet is very similar to the that of the American alphabet.  Most of it is no trouble.  But I never learned it.  So now I’m in a position where I can talk about complex issues in a language whose alphabet I can’t even recite without a few lengthy pauses.  I can read a 600-page novel, but I can’t spell the word out loud “bier” correctly on the first try.

The good news is, of course, that it’s never too late to learn, and I’ve been attempting to fill in this missing knowledge.  (How embarassing will it be if my child’s teacher needs me to spell something and my five-year-old can do it better than I can?  Me, a professional writer!)  I practice spelling words with lots of my problem letters in them (unfortunately a list that includes my own name), and someday when someone asks me to spell something on the phone, I won’t have to ask them if it is ok if I spell it in English.

What trips you up in the foreign language(s) you have studied?

The first: A female blogger posted her nude photo in a protest scream demanding more freedom for women. What she did was not extraordinary. Let’s grow up and face the fact that the internet is full of pictures of naked women from all races.  But what this blogger really did – and that’s why this incident’s received so much attention – was to make the photo in such an artistic way that she forced everyone who saw it to stop and think for a minute, “Hey, there’s a message here”. It’s not just a nude photo of someone seeking attention – she actually has a message. This blogger also challenged the dominant paradigm of the Arabic male which sees women as objects in a culture which continues to oppress women. This struck a chord in people’s hearts and minds which caused them to look inside themselves in judgment before judging others. This means that she succeeded in getting her message across…which is why most of the online comments were harsh and defensive. Funny enough, her blog also has two photos of nude men, however, no one even mentioned them in their comments.

The second incident: This happened after the airing of an episode of a talk show on a local TV channel. The program mostly discussed the parliamentary election, political parties and so on. The show’s producers invited some of the candidates on to discuss their views, basically televised campaigning, nothing more. However, in this episode the talk show host was requested, or rather forced, to wear a veil in order to conduct an interview with a spokesperson from the Salafi party who refused to speak with an unveiled woman. This brought fear to many about the ultra-conservative religious group’s real views regarding women’s rights.

Seeing the contradiction between the two cases, one where a woman uncovers herself and another where she is covered, some may argue that both incidents are extremes and don’t really reflect the reality of Egyptian society. I beg to differ.  These two incidents show the pace of changes we are undergoing. I can’t help but fear for where women’s rights may be heading in Egypt with the winning of religious parties and their role in governing. Their participation will influence, or rather most likely hinder, the progress we’ve made in regards to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Which made me wonder: Will women pay the price of the revolution? Will we go backward 30,40 or maybe another 100 years? Or will we move forward?

Islam is a religion of free choice; you choose your actions and bear the consequences. No one should impose his or her religious beliefs or views on others. We – the Egyptian community – also have a bigger fish to fry concerning gender equality. Rather than interfering in women’s freedom and discriminating between women, those who veil or those who don’t, women should not be considered and treated as a minority population. They statistically count for almost half the Egyptian population and shed their blood together with men to make this revolution happen and continue to happen. Despite this, female candidates have been scarce in the elections. This comes as no surprise when the political arena, newspapers, talk shows, political debates and TV and radio interviews have become almost an all-male club.

And there’s more. Women still lag far behind men in many areas including access to health care, education, jobs and other services. We really need to work harder because it is not only disappointing but quite frankly embarrassing to see not just Egypt, but the Middle East failing to adopt more gender sensitive policies.

Finally, GOOD GOVERNANCE CANNOT BE ACHIEVED WITHOUT EQUALITY!!!

Fear of speaking keeping you from practicing a foreign language? Here's how I got over it. Photo (cc) flickr user greenpeanut

After deciding to take German to fill my high school foreign language requirement in the eighth grade, I spent four years in classes figuring out the grammar, memorizing vocabulary, and practicing short conversations.  My teacher’s logical approach to explaining grammar clicked easily for me, and I always got good grades.  But that didn’t mean I was anywhere near being good in German.  In fact, I was terrified to speak it.

I had chosen German because it had fit me the best of our three choices (Spanish, French, or German), as I explained in a reccent blog.  At least, that was one of the factors.  The other factor was this: German was the only language in our school with an exchange program, and I wanted to travel.  So after three and a half years of classes—in the eleventh grade—I joined about 25 of my classmates in signing up for the program.  During our school year a group of German students came to live and attend school with us.  We were all nervous to meet our new friends, but when they arrived it turned out that there was a much subtler form of terror: they all spoke amazing English.  They had read books in English.  We could barely speak in the passive voice.  How would we ever get up the courage to speak our broken German to these masters of English?  So most of us didn’t.  Which was fine while we were still in the United States.

During the following summer, our class group flew to Germany for our turn on foreign ground, and we brought our language anxieties with us.  The first week of our trip was spent traveling from Munich, where we’d arrived, to Krefeld, where we’d be spending our exchange time.  We visited most of the country’s major tourist sights, and we congratulated ourselves at successfully ordering in restaurants and buying souveneirs in Germany.  But as long as we were traveling with a large group of Americans, we didn’t need to speak German in our everyday interactions.  When we arrived in Krefeld and each went off to our host familes, it was a different story.

Everyone managed to speak to a varying degree, but besides one or two real language talents, most of us spoke more English than German.  I was too nervous to try.  Despite the fact that, when I did finally get a sentence or two out, my host sister told me my German was just fine.  Even though my host mother couldn’t speak a word of English and not speaking German meant not being able to communicate with her, not being able to tell her that I didn’t really like Leberwurst (which often showed up on the mid-day snacks she sent with me to school) or how much I appreciated her hospitality.

By the end of our month in Germany, I had amassed a few measely hours of German-language time.  It was a bit of a waste, language-wise, but I just hadn’t figured out how to let go and babble in a language I couldn’t fully control—one of the biggest fears that keeps people from practicing a new language.  So how did I finally get over it?

Let go.  Don’t be afraid of sounding stupid.  Do you think people who make mistakes speaking your native language are jerks?  Probably not.  Just like nobody is going to think you’re a jerk for making a few grammatical errors when you’re trying to tell them about your day in German.  In fact, my friends have told me (much to my chagrin) those grammatical mistakes are often kind of cute, and most people will appreciate the effort you’ve put in to learn something about their culture.  Never underestimate the exoctic appeal of a person with an accent, and never assume that a mistake in a work-in-progress is something to be ashamed of.  And if somebody does think you sound stupid?  Ask them to say something in your language, and then walk away.

Seek out practice situations that make you comfortable and in which you feel less inhibited.  Getting over your speaking fears can take some time, so you might want to start loosening your tongue with other non-native speakers to get the hang of speaking up.  For many people a few beers are all it takes to get them babbling comfortably in their adopted language.  If you’re shy focus on finding one good friend with whom you can practice.  If you want to try but don’t want to humilate yourself in front of colleagues, go to an out-of-the-way bar (or restaurant or cafe) you’d be perfectly happy never visiting again and talk up everyone in the room.  You’ll get your practice and no one at work (or in your cirlce of friends, etc) will be the wiser.

Once I reached legal drinking age, I found myself practicing my German more and more—as luck would have it beer loosens my tongue and I started dating someone from my German class with whom I could practice whenever the mood struck.  Practicing with him got me used to the idea of practicing at all, and by the time I moved to Germany I had no inhibitions left.  Suddenly I was the girl talking to everyone in broken German, stubbornly replying in German when people would switch to English, and getting better and better at it with each passing day.  Because Übung macht den Meister (practice makes perfet), as they say.

What has helped you get over fears of speaking a foreign language with native speakers?

Welcome to our new YG blogger Jesse! Photo (c) Jesse Woods

According to Wikipedia, the term Military brat “describes people who spend their childhood or adolescence while a parent (or parents) serve full-time in the armed forces.”

I have lived in Germany for most of my life, but I feel like I have really only lived in Germany during the last two years working for a small German Internet company and hosting a weekly talent show at a local German night club.

Many foreigners think about living in Germany after studying an interesting university language course, visiting on a family vacation, discovering a foreign job opportunity,  or even after seeing a movie with scenes of Germany’s beautiful castles and countryside.

My introduction to Germany was different. I first came to the country as an military brat when I was only two years old, far too young to appreciate Germany for its cool culture and rich history.

I did get the chance, however, to grow up in different parts of Germany, moving from military base to military base with my parents until I graduated high school and returned back to the USA. You would probably think that after having spent most of my life living in Germany, I would have had the perfect introduction to the country. Not exactly.

I never learned the German language. I never had a real chance to develop friendships with German kids living in my area. I never got to stay home from school on German holidays or have Christmas on the 24th of December like most of the kids in Germany. Why?

Growing up on an American military base in Germany is like living in a self-sufficient mini-USA. It was nice having everything you need in one place, but there was no real incentive  to step outside of the base community and get to know the host country or it’s language. So why did I return to Germany?

During a winter recess from college in the USA, I visited my dad in Germany, who was still living there with the military. On this trip, I met a German girl, we started a relationship, and I continued a long-distance relationship with her until I graduated college. After graduation, I finally had my incentive to return to Germany to live. Love.

I had finished college, I was in love, plus Germany felt more like home than the USA. However, I was unprepared for a life in Germany, completely different from the life I previously lived as a military brat. I would be living in Germany independent from the U.S. military, and this new life brought new challenges.

When I returned to Germany at the age of 22, not only did I not know the language, but I also knew nothing about how to get a residence and working permit, finding a job, acquiring health insurance, or how to meet other essential needs for living.

Soon after I had returned to Germany, my relationship with my girlfriend had failed, and I was fortunate to be able to live with my father while I decided whether to stay in Germany or go back to the USA. Ultimately, I decided to stay and finally discover the country I had called home for most of my life. Finally, I felt like I was living in Germany.

Check back at the Young Germany blog regularly to read more about our new blogger Jesse’s life in Germany.  Welcome Jesse!

Berlin's famous tv tower. Photo (cc) flickr user Robby van Moor

Fernando is a British-Brazilian expatriate living in Berlin, Germany and working for iversity, whose work we’ve featured on Young Germany here.  In today’s guest post he’s here to tell us a little about his experiences in Germany and working for iversity.  Welcome Fernando!

When I first heard about iversity, I had been in Berlin for only over a month and had just been awarded a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Politics from the University of Sheffield in the UK. Having been born and brought up in Brazil, I spent the last five years in England, where my family and I now call home. However, some people say home is where your heart is. At this very moment, my heart is all over Berlin. I’ve had the chance to experience so much that this exciting city has to offer. Not only an amazing nightlife, with dozens of great bars and clubs, but also plenty of interesting people from all over the world to meet―including a few Germans. And, let’s not forget Club Mate, which all my friends know, I’ve grown pretty fond of in the past months.

Of course, there have been challenges too. The multiple attempts to register at the Bürgeramt (citizen center), having to wake up at very ungodly hours, as well as my disjointed conversation with the Steuernummer (tax number) lady, are just a couple of examples. But for these evils there is always a friendly and polite English-speaking Herr Roy to help you open a bank account. Berlin has exposed me to a lot of challenges―that of finding a place to live, for example―however, this experience has been rewarding in all aspects. The excitement of living in such a great city, and working for such a cool start-up, has so far overweighed any difficulties that I’ve come across.

For me, however, working at iversity is showing me the truly endless possibilities of using the web to enhance and transform academic research and teaching. Working at iversity exposed me to the fast changing realities of higher education around the world. Those skeptical about the vital role of technology in making higher education not only better, but also more accessible to all, are having to rethink their positions. And I must say I’m very excited to be part of it!

Unfortunately, Jonas and Hannes started iversity three years too late! At university, I still had to use what we like to call pdf-cemeteries. This pre-historical platform offered the least useful and most user-unfriendly online tools one could think of; it often became an obstacle rather than a help. And how ugly it looked! Gladly, this will soon be part of the past, where dinosaurs belong.

Since we launched the new website a few weeks ago the excitement―and the workload―has continuously increased. During team meetings we are shown the progress of the developers in polishing up the platform, and we discuss how we can make our service even more dynamic and user-friendly. With every new mention of iversity in the press a not-so-discrete buzz follows in the office. If we go on this way, the office will be getting a lot louder―to the dismay of our quiet neighbours at Hoppegarten.

We have already received some great feedback from our users and from the press all over the world. But of course, iversity has just started! So don’t forget to follow us on Twitter  and facebook!  Bis Bald!

The entrance to the Mainz Christmas market. Photo © Click Clack Gorilla

Though technically winter doesn’t start until the solstice—that is the shortest day and longest night of the year around December 22nd—for me the season is heralded by two things, regardless of the date: snow and Christmas markets.  So now it finally feels official: though the Christmas market has been up and running since the end of November, the first snow arrived on my doorstep yesterday.  The holiday season can begin.

In Germany December is dominated by Christmas celebrations.  Red and gold and green and silver bobbles adorn shop windows and street lamps.  Twinkle lights and bits of greenery are draped across streets.  Little stands selling roasted chestnuts pop up on city corners, and the shopping district fills up with more traffic than it has seen all year.  A part of every German city is transformed into a hut-speckled marketplace filled with visitors drinking Gluhwein (mulled wine), eating their way through the large selection of greasey or sugary snacks, and shopping for trinkets and gifts.

Growing up in America I had never been to a Christmas market, and then I marked the beginning of the season by the appearance of Santa Clauses around the city—sitting in temporary cabins at the mall for photos with children or ringing bells on street corners in order to collect donations for one charity or another.  But you won’t see Santa Claus anywhere in Germany in late December.  Here Santa, or St. Niklaus, comes on December 6th to fill children’s shoes, while it is the Christkind that brings presents to German children on Heilige Abend (December 24th).

At the heart of the Mainzer Christmas market. Photo © Click Clack Gorilla

Despite the fact that the Christkind is a part of every celebrating German’s Christmas tradition, I have yet to meet someone who could explain to me who exactly this person in white actually is and why I should expect it to bring me presents in late December.  “It’s some sort of angel, I think,” a friend once told me.  “Everyone has to leave the room and then the Christkind comes and puts the presents under the tree.  Then a bell rings and you can go back in and open the presents.  So you usually don’t even see him.”

“The name makes it sound like it’s Jesus who is bringing the presents,” I replied.

“Yeah, something like that,” was his vague answer.  So finally I did what I always do when I want to know the story behind a foreign concept, and I turned to wikipedia.  There I learned that the Christkind was an invention of Martin Luther during the Reformation, created “explicitly to discourage the figure of St. Nicholas.”  And who is the Christkind exactly? Says wikipedia: “The Christkind is a sprite-like child, usually depicted with blond hair and angelic wings.  Martin Luther intended it to be a reference to the incarnation of Jesus as an infant. Sometimes the Christ Child is, instead of the infant Jesus, interpreted as a specific angel bringing the presents, as it appears in some processions together with an image of little Jesus Christ.”

Christmas decorations pop up all over the city come December. Photo © Click Clack Gorilla

After over six years in Germany, my Decembers are now marked by many new traditions.  Every year at least one visit to the Christmas market for a glass of something warm and a bag full of roasted chestnuts or a crepe smothered in Nutella.  Far less snow than I was used to in upstate New York, but a sprinkling or two to keep me in the winter spirit.  And though the Christkind won’t be visiting our house (neither will St. Nick for that matter), when bells start ringing in houses across Germany on December 24th, at least I’ll finally understand why.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!  And for those who don’t: what makes your Decembers special?

As a word lover I am constantly thrilled by in the ins and outs of foreign languages, picking favorite words and expressions. Do you have a favorite word in German? Photo (cc) flickr user Charlie P Barker

When I was in the eighth grade, our class was told that the time had come to choose a foreign language.  Our high school offered German, French, and Spanish, so we would spend a third of that year studying each one.  That way, our teachers explained, we could make an informed decision about which language we wanted to spend the next couple of years studying in more depth.  At the end of the year I decided for German.

There were a lot of reasons involved in my decision, but the most convincing was the one reason no one ever believed when I explained it to them: for me, German had been the easiest.  Sure, Spanish had a reputation for being the easiest (for English native speakers anyway) and French had a reputation for being the prettiest.  But there was something very logical about the way the German language worked that appealed to me, that made it click in my brain in a way that Spanish and French did not.  It didn’t hurt that the German teacher was the best of the three either.  (Three cheers for Frau Harder!)

Of course, more detailed study of the German language eventually revealed a number of complexities and irritants (helloooo adjective endings) that would make it seem anything but easy.  But to this day I am still struck by the simplicity of the logic behind many German words, particularly the compounds that I have previously described as being a lot like playing with Legos.  For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with German grammar stylings I will sum it up for you: you can invent a new word by pasting two words together, and many standard words are compounds whose definitions a little bit of creative luck can reveal without cracking a dictionary.  I loved it then, and even now I often find myself getting excited over the new compound words I meet on German pages.  Brilliant! I grin to myself.  It just makes so. much. sense!

Most German compounds are completely self explanatory.  German’s notorious longest word—Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitin—means just what its components mean when translated directly (a Donau steam boat captain), and this is how the majority of compounds work.  But there are others, many of which I have already described, whose combination reveals something more subtle and interesting, a perspective from which (I assume) someone must have seen the world when the word first came into use.

Which brings me to my new favorite word.  Because I am currently pregnant, I am finding myself learning new vocabulary left and right.  Pregnancy just isn’t a topic that gets covered in a standard German class, useful though being able to talk about it might prove to be for many.  Like any new specialty subject I have suddenly found myself needing to talk about, I’ve had to start from scratch with vocabulary.  At the beginning I stutter a lot, my lack of knowledge leaving big holes in conversations where those words should be.  At the beginning, a lot of conversations end with the words, “Oh never mind.”  But then, bit by bit I look up the words that I find myself needing the most—a quick dictionary flip before a doctor’s appointment or a chat with my midwife—and things start getting easier.  When, after a few attempts, I find myself capable of talking about the new subject after all, there is a noticeable sense of achievement.

During my pregnancy-related vocab-cramming, I came across a compound that sounded kind of funny.  Mutterkuchen.  (Literally, mother cake.)  What could that be?  It sounded like the fluffiest, most delicious cake your mother ever baked.  I tried to guess at the meaning, though now I can no longer remember if I got it right.  (Can you?  Don’t cheat and look it up!  Take a guess right now, before continuing to the next paragraph.)

When I finally looked it up and found out it meant “placenta” I laughed out loud—of course “mother’s cake” would be the part of a women’s body that feeds a baby while in utero.  Placenta!  Mutterkuchen!  BRILLIANT! I thought to myself.  What amusing pictorial logic.   And Mutterkuchen instantly became my favorite German word, an honor previously held by the words Schnürsenkel (shoe lace) and Schmetterling (butterfly).

Do you have a favorite German word?