Language and Culture in Austria, Germany and Switzerland
Author: HF
Born in New Mexico USA. Grew up in Calif., N.C., Florida. Tulane and U. of Nev. Reno. Taught German for 28 years. Lived in Berlin twice (2011, 2007-2008). Extensive travel in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, much of Europe, and Mexico. Book author and publisher - with expat interests.
Bavaria is the Texas of Germany.
A valid comparison?
Despite what many North Americans believe, any German will tell you that Bavaria is not “Germany.” Lederhosen and dirndls are not even worn by everyone in Bavaria, much less by all Germans. On the other hand, many Germans think that Texas is the United States. Germans who have actually visited the US know that not all Americans wear cowboy boots.
I have already written about Landeskunde for Expats, pointing out that that American, British, and other expatriates living in Germany do much better when they are aware of the key geographic, historic, and political aspects of their new home. If that German home is the Free State of Bavaria (Freistaat Bayern), there’s a lot to learn!
If we do nothing else here, I hope we can destroy some of the myths and stereotypes on both sides of the Atlantic. The Bavaria versus Texas comparison is not really new or original, but it is valid in many ways – with a caveat: Bavaria and Texas are both large, diverse states, and generalizing can be iffy – as can stereotypes. Texas is not all cowboy boots and hats, while Bavaria is not all beer gardens and lederhosen. In both places, there is a stark contrast between rural and urban politics and lifestyles.
Germans first settled in the Texas Hill Country in the 1830s. A view of the Hill Country State Natural Area in Bandera County. PHOTO: Cody Ely (Wikimedia Commons)
Both of these songs refer to a flower. But they are otherwise as different as night and day.
One was written in English for an American musical production. The other was written in German as a military marching song. But both songs are often mistakenly believed to be native folk songs.
Edelweiß growing in the French Alps south of Grenoble in the Massif des Ecrins. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons
Edelweiss: The Flower
Commonly known as Edelweiß (edel/noble + weiß/white) in German, the Alpine flower’s Latin name is Leontopodium nivale (“snowy lion’s paw”). In the French Alps the flower is called “Étoile des Alpes,” while in Italian-speaking regions it is known as “Stella Alpina.” Both names translate as “Alpine star.”
The Edelweiss flower has become a common symbol and an icon in the German-speaking world. The flower is protected in Austria, and it is illegal to pick or disturb the plant. It was featured on the old Austrian one-schilling coin. It can also now be seen on the two-cent Euro coin. An Edelweiss image is also worn as a cap emblem by certain Austrian Army units and the German Gebirgsjäger (mountain troopers) stationed in the Austrian or Bavarian Alps.
“Edelweiss”: The Song (1959)
Music: Richard Rogers Words: Oscar Hammerstein II
“Edelweiss” was the last song that Oscar Hammerstein II wrote before his death in 1960. He died nine months after The Sound of Music opened on Broadway.
A 1975 German postage stamp honoring the Alpine flower Edelweiß. PHOTO: Deutsche Post (Wikimedia Commons)
Theodore Bikel tells the tale of the “Sound of Music” audience member who told him after the show that he enjoyed the song “Edelweiss” sung by Bikel on stage, but adding that he had long known it in the original German. In fact, that was not possible, since the song did not even exist until it was written by Oscar Hammerstein II in English for a 1959 American Broadway musical set in Austria that was adapted as a movie in 1965. The German lyrics weren’t written until later.
Since Bikel played guitar and sang, the song was composed for him to play and sing in the stage production of “The Sound of Music.” He performed the song one time in each performance in his role as Captain von Trapp on Broadway. For the film version the song was featured twice, performed by Christopher Plummer – whose singing voice was dubbed by Bill Lee, who did a lot of hidden singing in other Hollywood films.
Fans of Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle are also familiar with the haunting version of “Edelweiss” used in the opening sequence of that science-fiction production. Performed by the Swedish singer Jeanette Olsson, “Edelweiss” takes on an entirely different character. Her “icy, sparse rendition infuses the song’s sibilants with an extra, telling hiss.” (The Atlantic) The lyrics also have been slightly altered. The second line of the original (“every morning you greet me”) disappears, as does the last line of the first verse (“You look happy to meet me”). A song that was never really German to begin with is used in a film about an alternate universe in which the United States of America has been taken over by the Nazis and Japanese who won the war.
Here are the lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, as sung in The Sound of Music.
Germany’s More Erudite Donald Duck and “Donaldism”
He still looks pretty good for an 85-year-old duck (as of 2019). The German Donald Duck lives in the town of Entenhausen (Duckburg) with his nephews Tick, Trick and Track (Huey, Dewey and Louie). His wealthy uncle Dagobert Duck (Scrooge McDuck) and the inventor Daniel Düsentrieb (Gyro Gearloose) also live there – in a fantasy world invented by…
A 1974 edition of a German Donald Duck comic book.
If you wanted to say Walt Disney, you’d be wrong. The man who actually invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants was named Carl Barks (1901-2000). Barks was a Disney Studio illustrator and comic-book creator, who went to work for Disney in 1935. It was Barks who invented most of Donald Duck’s world, including Scrooge McDuck. (Donald was created originally by Disney in 1934, as a minor character and foil for Mickey Mouse.) Like all of Disney’s illustrators at the time, Barks remained anonymous, but his work was very recognizable and soon earned him the moniker “the good artist.” His actual name only became known later. Among his fans Carl Barks became as famous as Donald Duck himself.
In Germany, Donald and the duck tales are no Micky Maus operation. The Disney comic books continue to be bestsellers in Germany, and are read by more teens and adults than children. The Lustiges Taschenbuch (LTB, “funny pocketbook”) print editions are more popular than the animated cartoons, so you well may ask just what is it that makes Donald Duck such an attraction in Germany — so popular that a 2009 lavish 8,000-page German collector’s edition sold out despite its hefty price tag of almost $1,900. Continue reading “Donald Duck in German”
Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt and Their Home in Tegel
Berlin is a vast metropolis that no one can ever fully explore, but it can be a lot of fun trying. I have spent a lot of time in the German capital, with many visits over several decades and even living there twice. While I have seen more of the city than most Berliners, I still have a long Berlin to-do list that may never get done. But Berlin in the 1970s was definitely not the Berlin of the 1990s or today. Beside being a huge collection of neighborhoods (Kieze) and districts (Bezirke), Berlin is constantly evolving and metamorphosing.
A map of Tegel and its location in Berlin-Reinickendorf. IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons
Even Berlin’s historic sites keep changing. Think of the Reichstag, the East Side Gallery, or Tempelhof Airport (now a park). But there are a few places in greater Berlin that are timeless and “far from the madding crowd.” Personally I find these more obscure but interesting spots very rewarding. It’s not that I think you shouldn’t visit the Reichstag dome with several hundred of your best friends, but that experience is just a different kind of animal compared to more isolated attractions. I like to do both.
A visit to Schloss Tegel (Tegel Palace) definitely falls into the more-obscure-but-interesting category.
Tegel
Tegel today is a sleepy locality (Ortsteil) surrounded by the green Tegeler Forst woods in the Berlin district of Reinickendorf. Most of Tegel lies northwest of the airport that bears its name. Known for its eponymous lake, the Tegeler See (the second largest in Berlin after the Müggelsee), and two man-made islands in Tegel harbor: the narrow 618-meter-long Humboldt Island and the even smaller Tegel Island (known locally as Hundeinsel), both now covered with luxury condos and apartment buildings. Until recently, the islands were being used for industrial purposes, but Tegel, like many other parts of Berlin, has been gentrifying in the last decade. Tegel was once a remote and tiny “church village” (Kirchdorf) with little more than a Lutheran church and a few houses on the shore of Lake Tegel. Besides the church, the most imposing structure in Tegel was a former hunting lodge that became known as Schloss Tegel or das Humboldt-Schloss. Continue reading “Hidden Sights in Berlin: Schloss Tegel or Humboldt Palace”
Whether you’re living in German-speaking Europe or somewhere else in the world where it’s not that easy to watch German-language television, these apps allow you to watch TV and movies that the locals watch. Even if you’re in Germany, there are times when it’s nice to be able to use your smartphone or tablet device to read, watch, or listen to news and entertainment in German.
Language-learners also love these apps. If you want to improve your listening skills, vocabulary, and pronunciation, there’s nothing better than hearing real German spoken by real Germans (or Austrians and Swiss). Watching TV or listening to the radio via a mobile app lets you do that when you have some free time almost anywhere.
There are also apps that expats can use for watching TV or listening to radio from their homeland, but here we concentrate on apps for German media. If you know of a good app for German television or movies not mentioned here, please let us know with a comment below or via Contact Us. Apps are listed below in alphabetical order. All of the apps listed are available for the iPhone and iPad (iOS) from the Apple App Store. Most are also available for Android devices, but I have not verified that. All of the apps offer a sharp HD picture (usually 720p), as long as you have a reasonably fast internet connection (12 Mbps or better).
NEXTV: The Bad News and the Good News
Before we get to the apps, a few words about NEXTV and their new app. Those of us who remember the glory days of NEXTV, when this streaming television service offered a full lineup of German television channels, have been unhappy to see the diminished schedule since 2015. That was the year when NEXTV suddenly dropped most of its extensive German channel lineup. Which is why that was also the year I began looking for alternate ways of watching German, Austrian, and Swiss television. Continue reading “Mobile Apps for Watching German-Language TV and Movies”
Whether you’re an expat in Germany looking for a bargain flight for a visit to North America, or a tourist looking for a good deal on a flight to Europe, there are tricks and tactics you need to know in order to save money and have a good trip. Your cheap air ticket options are increasing, especially if you consider new airlines, departure cities and destinations. Flexibility in dates also can save you a lot of money, even with legacy airlines.
The German airline Condor offers low-cost flights between Germany and cities in the USA and Canada that you may not have have even considered. PHOTO: Condor
If you have never considered Las Vegas, New Orleans, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), or Seattle before, Condor (Thomas Cook) will offer nonstop or direct flights to Frankfurt, Munich, or other German destinations from those cities in 2019, at rates much lower than legacy airlines. If you add newer airlines such as Edelweiss or Norwegian to your plans, you can fly internationally to or from many cities for less. Of course, there can be catches, so read more below.
Budget Carriers That Are No Longer Flying
Travelers who had a ticket on WOW Air were left stranded when the Icelandic low-cost airline went out of business without any warning on March 28, 2019. Germany’s Air Berlin disappeared in 2017. Monarch in Britain is now history. Austria’s Niki has also faded away. (It is now a shrunken Lauda.) Over the years, many airlines have disappeared, even former giants like TWA and PanAm. (Anyone remember Freddy Laker’s low-cost Skytrain?) Long-haul and leisure budget carriers are even more risky financial ventures. Air Berlin was Germany’s second largest airline before its bubble burst. Will upstart Norwegian avoid a similar fate? Only time will tell.
Flying across the Atlantic has never been particularly cheap, but the cost of a round-trip air ticket between North America and Europe has risen a bit in the last few years. (Adjusted for inflation, transatlantic flights are far cheaper than in the 1960s, thanks in part to deregulation and more competition.) In high season, in the summer months, the round-trip, nonstop economy fare from the US East Coast to Frankfurt (FRA) runs between $800 to $1200, depending on the airline, dates, and times. Flights from West Coast airports add $300 or more to that. That’s for legacy carriers such as American, United, or Lufthansa. But travelers can save even more (sometimes) using an alternative to the usual major carriers: discount international airlines.
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A new crop of budget intercontinental airlines has applied the Southwest Airlines model for money-saving domestic flights to international air travel. They attract travelers with bargain fares that are usually below those of major carriers, and in some cases as much as $500-600 cheaper per round-trip ticket. These budget carriers (Billigflieger in German) use a variety of tactics that allow them to still make a profit while saving their passengers money. Continue reading “Flying Across the Atlantic for Less”
In January 2015 there was a court ruling in a lawsuit in Düsseldorf, Germany. The judge ruled in favor of a man’s right to urinate while standing up – rebuffing a landlord’s demand that a male tenant pay damages resulting from uric acid splashing onto the bathroom’s marble floor. The judge ruled in the tenant’s favor, stating that men “urinating standing up is still common practice,” something that usually passes for obvious in most countries. The man did not have to pay the €1,900 in damages his landlord had claimed. But the German term “Sitzpinkler” (a man who sits to pee) has become a derogatory label implying that a man is not so manly.
I don’t know if that was the inspiration for this book or its title, but it was published about a year after the Düsseldorf court case. The book sometimes reflects the fact that it was written by two men (a German and an Irishman), starting with the title and front cover, and some chapters (“Watch German porn”), but it is written in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek style that’s easy to read. The information is something expats and other foreigners will find useful. Continue reading “Book Review: German Men Sit Down to Pee”
I don’t think there’s a German over the age of five or six who doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Seeing an 80-year-old German lady zipping along on her bike is nothing unusual in Germany.
This sign means the sidewalk is shared by pedestrians and cyclists. It screams: “Pedestrians, watch out for your lives!” PHOTO: Hyde Flippo
I have witnessed rush hour in the small town of Burghausen, Bavaria, which means swarms of bicycles, not cars, going to and from the Wacker chemical plant. In much larger Berlin and other German cities, the bike is also a popular mode of transportation. Estimates are that Berlin has 710 bicycles per 1,000 residents, almost twice its 342 cars per 1,000. An estimated 500,000 bikes stream across Berlin on an average day, and in 2018 there were also 18,000 shared bicycles in the capital from eight companies. If we compare the USA and Germany, travel to work or school makes up only 11 percent of all bike trips in the US, compared to 28 percent in Germany. Shopping trips account for only 5 percent of all bike trips in the US, versus 20 percent in Germany.
So you might think that cyclists have a special place in the hearts and minds of most Germans. Well, they do, but it’s usually a negative place. The average German motorist despises cyclists (and vice versa). Although Germans often maintain that most people are both motorists and cyclists who should not hate each other, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Once a cyclist gets in a car, a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation takes place as the driver grasps the steering wheel and heads out to do battle with people on bicycles. And there are a lot of them in the average German municipality, large or small.
Safer than on the streets of Berlin: Cycling on the field of former Tempelhof airport, now a park. PHOTO: Hyde Flippo
But that’s a topic we’ll save for another day. Here I want to discuss a different bike battle: cyclists (Radfahrer) versus pedestrians (Fußgänger). I have my own battlefield experience on the sidewalks of Berlin when it comes to cyclists versus people on foot, particularly from the viewpoint of the pedestrian. During my time in Berlin I often rode the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, but I didn’t have a bike. I was always the Fußgänger going up against the Radfahrer. Luckily, my Berlin battle scars are only mental, but I had a few close calls in which I only missed being run down by a speeding bicycle by milliseconds. I’m now a war veteran who has somehow survived the insane German practice of putting pedestrians and cyclists on the same stretch of pavement. Continue reading “Germany’s Bicycle Autobahns and the Battle Between Cyclists and Pedestrians”
