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- Category: German culture and food
When the calendar turns to the holiday season, it's time to talk about holiday greetings! This year Christmas and Hanukkah even take place at the same time. So here you've got all the holiday greetings you need for this week & next!
But wait! It's still Advent--it isn't even the Christmas season yet!
Advent! - die Vorweihnachtszeit
In the US we fever and shop and practically race our way to Christmas and Advent is often left up to the church calendar. However in Germany it's also cultural--Advent ist nicht Weihnachten! Advent is the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas--it's the time of waiting for Jesus' birth.
Words to know:
der Advent - Advent
die Vorweihnachtszeit - the pre-Christmas time. a/k/a Advent.
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- Category: German culture and food
Besides books and reading, it's safe to say the board games are an important German cultural element. Games are so important to Germans that there is a Verein (club) that reviews games every year known as the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year).
German board games are awesome and some of them are now cult games of epic proportions. You might have seen Catan spread out on the coffee table in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. (Das war echt toll zu sehen.)
Here are a few games you could get to know any day of the year, and if you're looking for some German Christmas presents, they'll serve you well!
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- Category: German vocabulary
Suchen Sie einen neuen Job?
Brauchen Sie neue Kunden?
Wollen Sie jemandem helfen, eine ganz neue Karriere anzufangen?
Dann brauchen Sie Vitamin "B".
"B" für Beziehung
Everybody knows you need vitamins, preferrably from fruits and vegetables, or from vitamin tablets. There are real B vitamins in Germany, like Vitamin B12, however they also have this special vitamin known as "Beziehung"...relationship.
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- Category: German learning methods
I have a confession to make: my first German teacher was so bad, I blocked him from my memory.
For years now I've been working on this website, cultivating each page and making everything as genuine and transparent as possible. And then it hit me: I have indeed had another German teacher (a professor, actually), from whom I learned exactly 3 words of German in 2 semesters at college:
ein Glas Limonade
Yep, das war alles.
So it's no wonder I'd blocked it all out. It was just that bad.
I wanted to demonstrate to you, dear reader, what fantastic skills I learned from my teachers, from the teacher at Eloquia and at the Goethe-Institut, and how those skills carried me for years after! Each lesson was beneficial, the learning and memorizational techniques demanding and helpful, helping me store everything in my long-term memory as soon as possible. These teachers were absolute pros!
This particular professor was the exact opposite.
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- Category: German vocabulary
In German there are a few words that express something so specific, so perfect, that we really need them in English. Like Gemütlichkeit! We don't have a word or a specific concept just like that to describe feeling "comfortable, happy, and content" in English, and we also don't have the slang use of Schmerzensgeld that the Germans have--and sometimes we really need it.
The dictionary definition of Schmerzensgeld is "money for pain and suffering." As in the legal term, if you are wrongfully injured and receive a settlement, you may receive money not only to pay your medical bills, but also for your pain & suffering. This is an official, legal term, that you will find in newspapers and in legal paperwork.
The slang definition, however, is perfect to describe situations when you:
- feel taken advantage of by a customer
- worked too hard for a customer last time and now they're coming back for more
- actually charge someone more for being a pain in the you-know-what
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