A slightly ambiguous photo of a park sign… "Please BBQ dogs" (Flickr: bleicher)

If I said to you barbeque, you’d say to me: America! After all, it is the land of BBQ sauce, rib and steak cook-outs and, oddly enough, a variety of grilled “dogs” – which, I have to confess, I always had the Koreans down for, but whaddya know?

Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s a little limited in his range of associative thinking when it comes to barbequed food: after all, how many of you would instantly think of Germany when you smell charcoal and singed sausages?

After last week’s excursion into the pitfalls of using du and Sie, it quickly became clear from the number of comments that this is a topic of no small interest both to Germans and learners of the language alike. So I thought I’d give you a bit more on the same theme this week. Don’t say, oh dearest Young Germany readers, that I never do anything for you.

Now, last week I wrote that there is considerable comedic promise in the fact that German has two forms of second-person address: so let’s look at precisely what is so funny about Siezen and Duzen.

Thanks to – unbelievably – Barack Obama on Flickr

The center of Hamburg in the summer sun (Flickr photo: Mark Max Henckel)

Apart from its reputation for beautiful blond Nordic girls and debauched nightlife, one of the main reasons I moved to Hamburg is the fact that it is, in my view, one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. And I’m not alone in holding that opinion, as any visitor to Hamburg will soon realize simply by turning on the radio: all local radio stations greet listeners with something akin to the following phrase: “Wir senden live aus Hamburg, schönster Stadt der Welt!” – We’re broadcasting live from Hamburg, the most beautiful city in the world!”

Now, I think you probably have to actually have been born in Hamburg to go quite as far as to claim it is the most attractive urban settlement on the entire planet. I mean, come on guys, ever heard of St. Petersburg? Stockholm? Venice?