darkoshi

I have a memory from the 1980s of a certain semi-public restroom (like in restaurants, but this was a building with a big meeting room where one of my aunt's clubs had meetings and events) in Germany. The building itself was probably built in the preceding decades.

The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.

The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.

The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.

This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine

The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking

That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.

In German, many words that refer to people have an extra suffix ("in" for singular; "innen" for plural) when used to refer to women. To refer to both men and women with that word, you can't use only the masculine term; you need to use both.

So for example, the German word for "teacher" (masculine singular and plural) is "Lehrer". The feminine singular form is "Lehrerin"; the feminine plural is "Lehrerinnen". To refer to both male and female teachers in speech you would use "Lehrer und Lehrerinnen".

Based on the linked site, you can also put the feminine form first, ie. "Lehrerinnen und Lehrer", but this sounds quite awkward to me. My knowledge of the German language is mostly from my childhood however, not from the past 30 years, so perhaps the latter form has become more common nowadays.

To simplify this kind of expression in writing, various short forms have been devised, as shown on the above (www.genderator.app) website. Some of these short forms are inclusive of non-binary genders too. Here I have listed the nominative case forms from that site:

Paarform (unabbreviated):
👤 die Lehrerin bzw. der Lehrer
👥 die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer

Schrägstrichschreibung (using slashes):
👤 der/die Lehrer/-in
👥 die Lehrer/-innen

Klammerform (using parentheses):
👤 der/die Lehrer(in)
👥 die Lehrer(innen)

Binnenmajuskel (using internal capitalization):
👤 der/die LehrerIn
👥 die LehrerInnen

Gendersternchen / Genderstar (nicht binär) (using asterisks; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der*die Lehrer*in
👥 die Lehrer*innen

Genderdoppelpunkt (nicht binär) (using colons; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der:die Lehrer:in
👥 die Lehrer:innen

Gendergap (nicht binär) (using underscores; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der_die Lehrer_in
👥 die Lehrer_innen

Today I came across some job postings on a German website. The advertised jobs include:
- eine(n) Schlussredakteur(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Software-Tester(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Systemadministrator(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Postmaster(in) (m/w/d)

I wasn't familiar with the (mwd) abbreviation.

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/mwd-meaning

https://fashionunited.info/news/business/q-a-about-m-w-d-german-gender-regulations/20190725147

It stands for "männlich, weiblich oder divers" - "male, female or diverse".
The 2nd page explains about the legal reasons for including this in the job postings.

In November 2017, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that civil status law must allow a third gender option, besides "female" or "male". The changes are aimed at all those who can not or do not want to be assigned to any gender within the so-called binary gender system and protect their “right to personality”.

This means, for example, that birth certificates cannot have blank gender entries for intersex and/or nonbinary people and as of mid-2018, they need to provide a third option. The deadline for the Federal Government to improve the civil law accordingly was 31 December 2018. As of 2019 employers and recruiters should comply with the same rule, by not excluding non-binary people and offering gender-neutral job advertisements.
...
In Germany, according to the General Equal Treatment Act from 2006, employers are not allowed to discriminate against an applicant on grounds of gender. The gender identities of people are diverse. This must be considered also in recruitment circumstances, job postings included so that no gender is discriminated against.

Another interesting German-language topic:
“Freundin“ means both friend and girlfriend. How do you differentiate between the two in conversation?

https://www.wordsense.eu/heuer/

adverb (regional, southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
heuer: this year

Example: Der Münchner Christkindlmarkt fällt heuer aus. (GMX, 30 October 2020)

Note to self: It does not mean "heutzutage" (nowadays).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heuer
Etymology:
From Middle High German hiure, from Old High German hiuro, hiuru, from hiu (“in this”) +‎ jāru (“year”).

A couple years ago I watched a funny German movie via FireTV and a German TV app.
It was one in a series of movies. The other movies in the series aren't available anywhere online to stream (for either free or pay). So I ordered the 7-DVD set from a German seller on Amazon.de (I was surprised how easy doing that was), and it was delivered today.

While opening the package, I belatedly remembered foreign DVDs might not play in an American DVD player. I was thinking of the video format being different, like PAL/SECAM vs NTSC. But no, the problem is actually with the region codes embedded on the DVD and with DVD players programmed to only play discs from a certain region. Luckily I have a region-free DVD player which I bought a long long time ago for just this purpose. (I'm curious what foreign DVDs I watched back then; I don't even remember.)

Indeed, the first DVD of the set did not play in our American DVD player hooked up to the big TV. It does play in the region free player. But I couldn't get the subtitles to display. When I watched the movie online, it had subtitles. The movies feature characters speaking a Bavarian dialect with heavy accents (which is part of the fun), but I need the subtitles as otherwise I can barely figure out half of what is said.

I'd prefer to play the DVDs on my laptop too, as then I could play them either at my house or Qiao's without lugging around a big DVD player.

My laptop does! have a built-in DVD drive which I'd half-forgotten about. After having some initial difficulties, it seems that VLC (the program) can! (or sometimes can?) play DVDs regardless of their region code. But the subtitles weren't working in VLC either.

I finally see on the back of the DVD case where it says that Discs 2-7 have closed captioning, but apparently the first disc doesn't. Weird. But that's ok, as Disc 1 is the one I saw already.

So now I want to try playing the 2nd DVD to see if its subtitles work.

But now I CAN'T EVEN FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET IT OUT OF THE PLASTIC DVD CASE!!! AAAAAAARRRGGGGGGGGHHH.

The first DVD on the left side of the case had one of those buttons in the middle you can push to release it. The other 6 DVDs in the case don't. I tried prying the DVD up from the side, but that made it bend dangerously. I don't want to break it. Jeez. The case doesn't have any instructions on how to get the discs out. Is there a special tool for this? I don't see any tool included in the case.

And now it is after 3am and just GAH.

..

OKAY. I got it OUT:
The center holder part has a hard plastic cylinder surrounded by 5 hard plastic tabs and a gap on one side where there is no tab. You need to put your thumb on the gap side and put your fingernails under the opposite edge of the DVD (and pull upwards a bit on the same-side edge of the DVD with your other hand too) and pry it up that way.

And FINALLY, I have the subtitles working. YAY.

Now I just have to deal with my laptop's audio issues, and finding time to actually watch the movies someday.

On another site, I saw a comment by someone with surname "Bumgarner".

I'm familiar with the surname "Baumgartner" which comes from German and means something like "Tree Gardener". So I wondered if that was the person's real name, and he'd shortened it like that as a joke... bum-garner... gatherer of bums... I was thinking of the British definition of "bum", ie. "buttocks", though gatherer of tramps could be amusing too.

But no, according to the 2010 Census there were over 6000 people in the U.S. with the surname Bumgarner.

It truly is however, a "Respelling of German Baumgartner."

Bumgarner History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms - This page seems lip-curling to me. It shows the "Ancient Arms of Bumgarner" image with a tree and a small picket fence around it. It says "They are believed to have been of the order of the Teutonic Knights." Jeez Louize, the site is trying to sell stuff. It says the name means "Orchard" when it must have meant someone who worked in an orchard - the name comes from BaumgartNER, not BaumgarTEN. But anyway, the page also has some good stuff:
"Spelling variations of this family name include: Baumgarner, Baumgarten, Baumgart, Paumgarten, Baumgartel, Paumgartel, Paumgart, Bomgarten, Baumgarden, Pomgarten, Pomgarden, Baumgartner, Paumgartner, Baumgarden, Bamgardner, Bogart, Bogaard, Bogaart and many more."

So the name Bogart (from Dutch) (as in Humphrey Bogart) also comes from, or is related to Baumgartner! And actually, boomgaard is the Dutch word for "orchard", so ok then.

.

Kudos to

conuly, for letting me know about this online etymology dictionary!

This was another post intended to be quick and short on something that amused me, which while writing it morphed into umpteen more things of curiosity to me. It's now an hour and a half later. This is why I shouldn't...

It also took longer to write due to words being difficult to me this morning.

.

Other items of curiosity:

Bummer - is related to the German verb "bummeln - to go slowly, waste time." In my experience, "bummeln" is used in a positive sense, as in "let's go have a good time, strolling around downtown looking at stores and things."

Bumptious - an adjective that means "offensively assertive".

(distraction #...)

I've been curious what sea buckthorn tastes like, ever since I learned of it and saw the photos of its orange berries.

Sometime back, I bought a bar of Nordi Sea Buckthorn & Salty Caramel Dark Chocolate. Tasting it today, it reminds me of a flavor that is common in Germany. So I looked up the translation of "sea buckthorn" into German... Oh, so sea buckthorn is Sanddorn! So I knew what it tasted like all along, I just didn't know that I knew!

It's not one of my favorite flavors, admittedly, but in.. whatchmacallums, it was always pretty good. Gosh darn it, now I'm trying to remember what those whatchamacullums are called...

Fruchtschnitte! (ie,. "fruit slices"; I thought they had a more memorable name than that. They are a snack made of sweetened dried fruit and nut filling (various different flavors) pressed between a top & bottom layer of wafers.

I got a strange voicemail in Chinese on my cellphone from the number 202-495-3793 (a Washington, DC area code). It's a short official-sounding recorded message in a female voice, with a simple musical tune in the background. (I like how the Chinese language, being tone-based, is itself melodic even without the music.)

I was curious as to what the message said, so I saved it to an audio file on my laptop. Then I opened Google Translate in the Chrome browser (the option for translating from audio / microphone input is only available in Chrome, not Firefox). The page's text input box has a microphone icon in the lower left that you click for it to start listening. But first you need to select the language; it won't auto-detect when using the mic input. Then I played the audio file.

The translating didn't work very well. I tried it several times. Mostly, it didn't recognize any words, and showed no output. A couple of times, it showed the following output. This is only a small portion of what was said:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi
Chinese Ambassador to the United States

But I'm not even sure that much of it is correct. In the audio, I can hear "Zhongguó zhù" at the very beginning, but not "mei dàshi" after it. Maybe that is from a different part of it. It's spoken so fast that I can't tell.. I do hear "shi" a few times but not sure about the rest.

I tried again and this time got:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan
中国驻美大使馆
Chinese Embassy in the United States

Zhongguó = China
dàshi guan = Embassy

I also tried playing back the recording at 2/3s speed, in hopes that would let Google Translate hear the words better. But it did not help.

Hum, this is sort of fun: Try to say Chinese sounding things and see what it translates to. But you have to click the mic to stop and restart in between, as otherwise it seems to output the same thing over and over again. ("No no no")

I seem to have learned how to say "China" (Zhongguó) pretty well! (But I doubt I'll remember it.)

Ah, in my trying to read "Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan", it instead translates it to "The beauty of life".

But I tested translating from me speaking German, and it translates that very well! I can hardly say anything that it doesn't understand! Even with my not-so-great speaking voice.

On PBS, I watched the Nova episode The Planets: Saturn

From the transcript:

"At 5,000 miles deep, the pressure of the atmosphere is 80 times greater than that at the bottom of our deepest oceans, enough to transform this sooty, graphite rain into diamonds. But even these diamonds are likely destroyed by the pressures of Saturn, eventually dissolving."

Here's another article about it:
'Diamond rain' falls on Saturn and Jupiter

Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond. These diamond "hail stones" eventually melt into a liquid sea in the planets' hot cores...

It made me think of a song I once downloaded and bought, named "Diamonds Shower" by Friedrich Liechtenstein:

Watch on YouTube

Video title: Friedrich Liechtenstein tanzt zu Diamonds Shower vor Raffinerie
Posted by: Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mb3MqB6YNU
Date posted: Oct 12, 2015

I looked up info on the artist...
Once an Ornamental Hermit, Now a German Media Darling

I found this amusing Edeka (German grocery store) ad featuring the same artist, which I'd actually seen before, but it is still funny. The video doesn't show an English translation, but "Supergeil" means basically "super-cool" or "super-awesome", although the word "geil" originally meant "horny".

Watch on YouTube

Video title: EDEKA Supergeil (feat. Friedrich Liechtenstein)
Posted by: EDEKA
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxVcgDMBU94
Date posted: Feb 20, 2014

Then I found these even more amusing videos by BVG (the Berlin Transport Company), which runs the public transport in Berlin. The videos have English closed captions that can be turned on. This first one feels especially heart-warming to me:

Watch on YouTube

Video title: BVG "Is mir egal" (feat. Kazim Akboga)
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvcpy4WjZMs
Date posted: Dec 11, 2015

"Alles Absicht" means "Everything on purpose".

Watch on YouTube

Video title: BVG "Alles Absicht"
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pic3FnvUrY
Date posted: Sep 26, 2016

Watch on YouTube

Video title: BVG-Arie
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlKhh6HFGdI
Date posted: Jul 5, 2017

The guy in the first BVG video is Kazim Akboga:
https://www.youtube.com/user/KazimAkboga/videos

From reading comments on his videos, I found out the sad news that he had suffered from depression and killed himself in Feb. 2017.
:-(

Dictionary.com's word of the year is "existential". But the runner-up was "nonbinary". Woo!

.

It was pointed out to me that when political pollsters call, they may show up as an unrecognized number. So if I want my voice to be counted in those polls, I'd need to start answering unrecognized numbers again, for the very slim chance that they'd call me. I'm not even sure what I'd answer about who I'm planning to vote for in the primary.

Based on this page about the debate qualifications, the candidates need to get at least 4% in 4 polls to qualify. Yang has 3 qualifying polls so far, so would I answer Yang, hoping to help him get the 4th necessary poll numbers? Or should I answer Castro or Booker, both of whom haven't even reached 4% in a single poll yet?

I was surprised and disappointed to hear that Kamala Harris dropped out of the race, when she had been doing better than my favorites, number-wise. Should I finally admit to myself that there's no feasible chance at all for Yang, Booker, or Castro to win?

.

My left wrist has been aching a lot this week; I'm wearing a wrist brace again to reduce strain while on the computer.

My lower back started aching a lot yesterday while I was out shopping. So much that I considered sitting down on the floor right there in the store, before I remembered the benches in the shoe section.

Before this, it's been quite a while since my wrists or back bothered me. These problems seem to keep coming for a while and then going away for a while, and I can't figure out what the triggers are.

My last two periods were 16 days apart, and now it's been almost 5 weeks without signs of the next one. Yay, peri-menopause.

I wonder if it is all related.

.

Before my back started aching, I took a look in a store named Five Below. They had a section of bulk loose candy for 10 cents each. These included both Zotz fizzy candies and Goldenberg's dark chocolate mini Peanut Chews! I was glad to find those because Qiao, who only rarely eats sweets, surprised me by eating up ALL the peanut chews that had been leftover from Halloween without me noticing until after they were all gone. I didn't take THOSE to work because I like them too much to give away.

So I got myself some candy for St. Nikolaus' Day.

.

Aww... This is a rather impressive Christmas ad from the German store Edeka. The robot is cute enough to be from Star Wars.

Watch on YouTube

The newspaper headline shown is "Humans flee from artificial intelligence!"
The text at the end says "Without love, it is only a fest / party".

.

I was really searching for the song, "Lasst uns froh und munter sein" (Bald ist Nikolaus Abend da). Nikolaus Abend (St Nikolaus' eve) is when kids in Germany would put a boot out by the front door for St Nikolaus to fill with sweets and treats overnight.

Mainly for myself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1dNkDW9i4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcDAR71W0xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwgXNMwIMI

There are various versions of the song lyrics. Some sing it as "Weihnachtsabend" (Christmas Eve) instead of St. Nikolaus' Eve, and with "Christkind" (Christ child) instead of St.Nikolaus, etc.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/lasst-uns-froh-und-munter-sein-let-us-be-happy-and-cheerful.html

https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/german-language/german-christmas-carols/lasst-uns-froh-und-munter-sein/

This Kazakh music video is both visually and audibly (the sound of the Kazakh language) intriguing to me, even though I don't like the scenes of war and fighting. From what I've been able to find, it was made in honor of Kazakhstan's 550th anniversary. The music group is named Gauhartas.

"Гаухартас- "Казагым-ай" (клип 2015)" (Watch on YouTube)

Video title: Гаухартас- "Казагым-ай" (клип 2015) (Gauhartas "Kazagim-ay")
Posted by: Айганым Баймуратова
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FlBCJbb2oo
Date posted: Oct 23, 2015

Here are the lyrics along with an English translation. Some of the translation does not make much sense, and Google Translate seems to do a better job for those parts.

Some things I learned after watching the video:
Kazakhstan has a small ethnic group of Germans.
The Volga Germans were ethnic Germans who settled in a region of Russia in the 18th century.
About 100,000 ethnic Germans from Russia immigrated to the U.S. by 1900.
During WW2, the Soviet Union deported all of the Volga Germans (over 900,000) to camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan as a "preventive measure". A third of them died during the deportation.

Wait a minute... is "house shoes" a common American/English synonym for slippers, or not?

Do I only think it is, because it's the common German term, and it's pronounced basically the same in German (Hausschuhe) and English, and because my German mom may have used the term with me when I was growing up?

(Similarly, I used to think "short-armed" and "long-armed" (shirts) was a normal thing to say, until I learned that the correct English term was "short-sleeved" and "long-sleeved".)

..

For some reason, today the German word "Schiess-stoff" came to mind. I thought it was the word for gunpowder, but there's another word, Schiesspulver for the latter. Stoff means material.

https://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/chemie/schiessstoffe/8229
That page says that Shiess-stoff is a general term for both gunpowder and rocket fuel.

Anyway, I was thinking about how hard that word would be for an American to pronounce.
Sh - ee - ss - sht - off

Sort of like the "She sells seashells" phrase, except the middle of the work is an S sound followed immediately by a SH sound, and then a T sound.

("St" at the beginning of a word is pronounced "sht" in German. And since Schiess-stoff is a compound word, it is pronounced that way in there too.)

You can click the "listen" icon on the Google translate page to hear it:
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=schiessstoff

Hum. "Strumpf" and "Strumpfhosen" must also be hard for Americans to pronounce.
Sh-t-r and m-p-f-h
https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=strumpfhosen
But the English word triumph is similar.

I came across this old flyer in my things a while after posting about the Little Oktoberfest that used to be held by the American military housing area in Munich. The flyer is from the last year I lived in Germany, 1985.

Text Transcription:

Postwurfsendung
[ image of Fireworks ]
Traditionelles 29. deutsch- amerikanisches
"Kleines Oktoberfest"
in der amerikanischen Wohnsiedlung am Perlacher Forst LincolnStraße
BAYERISCHES BIERZELT
mit erstklassigem Musikprogramm täglich bis 23.00 Uhr
Täglich großer VERGNÜGUNGSPARK ab 13.00 Uhr
Ice Cream, "Hamburgers", "Hot Dogs" und andere amerik. Spezialitäten

15. Juni, 17 Uhr ............. Eröffnung und Bieranstich
20. u. 27. Juni, 14-19 Uhr ... Familientage mit erm. Preisen an allen Fahrgeschäften
23. Juni ..................... Erstmals in München Tagesfeuerwerk
29. u. 30. Juni .............. 15. Internationale deutsch- amerikanische Wandertage
.............................. (Start und Ziel im Bierzelt)
30. Juni nach 22 Uhr ......... Großfeuerwerk

Straßenbahnverbindung: Linie 27 bis Endhaltestelle Schwanseestraße, dann 10 Min. Fußweg, S-Bahn
Linie 2 - Haltestelle Fasangarten - Parkmöglichkeit nur an der Lincolnstraße

vom 15. Juni mit 30. Juni 1985
Veranstalter: Amerikanischer Verband für Freizeitgestaltung, München

...

My memories of the fest, in general:

In content, it was rather similar to the State Fairs they have here in SC every year. There were food booths, rides, games. There was a beer tent, but I don't remember much of that.

I remember there was a wall, maybe part of a building, on the outskirts of the area, where the men who had drunk too much beer, went to piss.

There was a dunking booth.
I think there was a test of strength game, where you'd hit down hard on something using a sledgehammer, which would cause something to lift up high based on how hard the hit was. Maybe when it got to the top, it activated the dunk. Or maybe the dunking booth was a different game, throwing a baseball hard at something. Maybe I'm getting memories mixed up.

There were the kind of games where you throw balls at a target, to try to win a prize.

They sold blocks of American ice cream in in box containers. I remember the Neapolitan flavor, stripes of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. The same stuff the we could buy in the military commissary. There were other American staples like hamburgers and corn on the cob - a lot of Germans came for the food.

They sold German Dampfnudeln, as mentioned in my other post.

One time, on one of the rides that spins you around up in the air and back and forth, around and around, my head slid off the side of headrest, and the momentum of the ride was so strong, that it was a hard struggle for me to pull my head back into place against the headrest. It was scary, but I think I was too embarrassed to mention it to anyone. I still wonder if that incident is why, as an adult, I find it hard to lean my head back to look upwards at tall things. My neck gets tired and achy very quickly when doing that. Or maybe my neck was weak to begin with.

One time, I went on a ride with my mom, which I wouldn't normally go on due to my fear of heights. The kind where 2 people are locked into a cage-like thing with 2 seats, and it gets pulled up high, and then the cage is spun around head-over heels a few times. It looked sort of like this Zipper ride, though I don't remember the whole thing rotating like that one. Maybe it did. Regardless, it was scary.

https://www.muenchenwiki.de/wiki/Little_Oktoberfest
http://munich-greeter.de/en/2014/07/amerikanische-geschichte-in-muenchen-teil-1/

Qiao is switching from AT&T to Spectrum for his TV & internet (& home phone). He was paying about $130/month with AT&T, but the initial 2 year contract period was over and they had told him his bill was going to increase substantially (wow, way for them to shoot themselves in the foot. I don't understand why they would do that when there's still a cheaper alternative in town.)

So now he's supposedly going to be paying about $120/month with Spectrum. He didn't need the home phone part, but without bundling it, his bill would have instead been $150/month. (I don't understand that part either; even though I believe someone else on my list had mentioned something similar with their bill.)

In comparison, I don't subscribe to cable or satellite TV. I only watch over-the-air channels, and internet streaming. (Though I do also watch Q's TV, when I'm over at his house.) My internet bill is $41.95/month. My home phone bill is now nearly $36/month, but I plan to drop that in the near future.

Anyway, Spectrum installed the cable line in Q's house today, and this evening we tried to get everything working again. Q had bought his own router... the wired internet connection on it was working but not wi-fi, even though the wi-fi had worked earlier. I finally figured out that the router had a wi-fi button which had accidentally been switched off.

Next problem was that the Amazon FireTV box was only partially working. We've had similar trouble with it before. The resolution was set wrong, causing the screen to be black. Because the screen is black, you can't get into the settings to change the resolution. You have to press 2 buttons on the remote for 5 seconds and then it supposedly starts switching between resolutions, so you can choose the one that works. But that wasn't working right either, until after 5 or 6 tries and unplugging and replugging and restarting, it finally did.

Then I started looking through the apps on the Amazon FireTV. Had trouble getting them to work right at first; whenever I clicked on any of them, Netflix kept coming up instead. But then finally the other apps started working too. Youtube & Vimeo, in high resolution on the big screen!

Then I found several German TV apps on it. You can watch German TV shows for free! It's mostly news shows, but there were some other non-news shows mixed in too. I'll have to explore it more. Only in one of those apps did I bump into a geographic restriction preventing it from playing some of the selections.

I guess these apps should work on Android too? I'm not sure.
ARD Mediathek
3Sat Mediathek
Deutsche Welle
ZDF Heute
ARD Tagesschau
And others.

I didn't install this one, but I'm curious about it:
YouTV videorecorder Deutsches TV german television

..

In our area, we used to have Time Warner Cable, but it was taken over by Spectrum.
I thought I had heard that Spectrum and AT&T were planning a merger too, which was concerning to me as then there'd only be one internet & TV company to choose from in this area.

Yes, there are two Time Warners, and AT&T isn’t buying the cable company - from October, 2016. This may explain some of my confusion.
AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner Inc. It is not trying to buy Time Warner Cable.
...
If AT&T wanted to buy Time Warner Cable, it would have to talk with its new owner, cable company Charter Communications that now calls itself Spectrum. It completed a $60 billion buyout of the cable company in May.

But then again:
AT&T and Spectrum To Merge??

Tapeten (German) - wallpaper

Tapetenwechsel (German) - literally, a change of wallpaper. Figuratively, a change of scenery or surroundings.

daffadilly (chiefly British) - daffodil

daffadowndilly (chiefly British) - daffodil (the link is a nice poem)

Annett Louisan - Ich brauch Tapetenwechsel

Watch on YouTube

The above song is originally by someone else, but I like this cover of it. The song is both cute and sad, about a birch tree which wanted a change of scenery, and went looking for it.
German lyrics
English translation of lyrics

Mark Knopfler - Redbud Tree

Watch on YouTube

The vocal notes/key/whatever you call it in part of this song reminds me of kd lang's Ingénue album. I need to check out more of his music. Mark Knopfler's name isn't familiar to me, but he used to be in the Dire Straits.

I'm reading Terra Aluvis, volume 2 (pre-release), in German.

In a couple of places, it uses "seine" to refer to "das Mädchen". For example, "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände". (And she's looking at her own hand, not someone else's). That sounds totally wrong to me. "Seine" is what you use for males. But "ihre" is what you use for females. Even if Mädchen is a neuter word as indicated by the "Das", "seine" still sounds totally wrong for it.

So I looked it up.
heisst es "das Mädchen und sein Bruder" oder "das Mädchen und ihr Bruder"

Based on the answers, "seine" is grammatically correct. But several of the replies (and they sound like native German speakers) reflect my own gut feeling, that it should be "ihr", ganz klar, NATÜRLICH.

And now I realize that German doesn't have a separate pronoun for "its". The same word "sein" is used for both "his" and "its". Yet I generally translate it as "his". So "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände" sounds to me not like "The girl looked at its hands" (which is bad enough), but rather "The girl looked at his hands" which makes no sense, unless I imagine her as a gender-bending girl.

.

Another thing that has confused me is the use of Ihr/Euch/Eurer for 2nd person singular pronouns. Normally you use "Du" for friends/family, or "Sie" for strangers/politeness/formal situations. Ihr/Euch is the informal 2nd person plural, not singular. But in the book some of the characters are royalty or nobility, so this usage seems to correspond to the English royal we/majestic plural. Looking at the book again, now I see that it is always capitalized in the royal sense, but lower case in the 2nd person plural sense.
.

erbarmen - to arouse someone's pity; to take pity on; to have mercy on.

Erbarmen - mercy/pity

erbarmenswert - pitiable, wretched, pitiful

erbarmungslos - pitiless, merciless

erbarmungsvoll - compassionate, full of pity

erbärmlich - pitiful, wretched, terrible

Erbärmlichkeit - wretchedness, misery, awfulness, terribleness

barmherzig - compassionate

Barmherzigkeit - compassion, mercy

.

leiden - to suffer

Leiden - suffering, tribulation

Leidenschaft - passion

leidenschaftlich - passionate

leidenschaftslos - dispassionate

Leid - sorrow, grief; misfortune, harm.

leid tun - to be sorry

leidlich - reasonable, fair; more or less, so-so.

.

hervorragend, herausragend - outstanding

sagenhaft - incredible

zaghaft - timid

.

Umgehung (accent on 2nd syllable) - avoidance, circumvention, bypass

umgehen (transitive verb)(accent on 2nd syllable) - to avoid.

umgehen (intransitive verb)(accent on 1st syllable) - to walk around; to treat/handle something; ...

umgehend (accent on 1st syllable) - immediate; immediately. Etymology explained here

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/665445.html

Zweifel = doubt
bezweifelt = doubtful
verzweifelt = despairing, desperate, frantic

bedrückt = depressed (drucken = to press!)

schlummernd = slumbering
dösen = to doze (dösten = dozed)

Zwielicht = twilight
zwielichtig = shady (as in character)

innehalten (hielt inne) = to pause

gering = low, small, slight
geringer = less, lesser, smaller
geringerer = (komparativ. See: declensions)

schlicht = simple
schlichtweg = simply

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/661964.html

An uncle* of mine has written a book/memoir of his life:
The Kraut: On Being German after 1940

He was born in Germany, grew up in the U.K., and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17.

I've been reading it during my lunch times, in between walking** and eating. Some of it is rather dark, topic-wise, and some of it is hard to follow. But it's quite interesting.

It's available on Kindle or as a paperback, if anyone is curious about it.

* My mom's half-sister's cousin's husband's first wife's son.

** I've increased my walking circuit by about 10 minutes. My pedometer indicates I'm now getting up to about 8000 steps per day doing so.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/647783.html

I've gone through a few more old family documents. A couple are written in an old German cursive script that was hard for me to decipher. But I was finally able to read them using the charts shown at the top of this page.

.

There are so many weird noises in this room. I saw a cockroach a few days ago; it hid before I could catch it. I think it must be making some of the noises. Several times over the last months, every once in a while I hear a distinct chewing/crunching noise from inside the wall at the top of the doorway to the kitchen. It usually happens late at night. I've wondered if a squirrel could have gotten in between the walls. Or a mouse or rat. But maybe that is a cockroach too; it's weird how small things can make big noises sometimes.

Tonight, while watching Downton Abbey, I heard a noise to the right, looked over, and even saw the cup on top of the small cabinet move/shake! I picked up a flashlight (there are bunches of flashlights in this house) and carefully peeked behind the cabinet. Nothing there. I peeked into the cup. Nothing there.

If I believed in ghosts, I'd think there was a ghost in this room.

.

Sherlock season 3 is being aired on our local PBS station on Sundays right after Downton Abbey. It starts at 10pm and is scheduled for 2 hours each episode. That would make me late for bed. I decided to watch the rerun instead, which starts an hour earlier on Thursday. Last Sunday I was tempted to stay up and watch part of it anyway, but had to nix that due to dealing with a malfunctioning washer.

I ended up watching it online on Tuesday and on TV on Thursday. For the TV broadcast, I turned on closed captions, to catch some of the dialogue I missed during my first viewing.

Today I was good again and turned off the TV before Sherlock came on. I'm still up late for other reasons, but I'll surely be in bed earlier than I would be otherwise.

.

Oh gosh now a noise is coming from behind a different cabinet.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/552403.html

This is a sweet story about a boy who likes wearing skirts and dresses, and what his father decided to do about it.

The original German version is here.

Excerpt from the end:
When other boys (it’s nearly always boys) want to make fun of him, he smiles and says, "You just don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses, because your dads don’t dare to either."

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/485984.html

The sound of German church bells ringing triggers a combination of emotions in me. Awe, appreciation, nostalgia, familiarity, aloneness, anxiety, emptiness.

I was thinking of posting a vid from my Germany trip last summer, with the sound of church bells ringing at Marienplatz in Munich. But the below videos are better, I suppose, as you can see the actual gigantic bells ringing.

.

Cologne Cathedral... this nifty video shows the inside of the bell tower with bunches of bells ringing at once (you see them start one by one, and it takes a few minutes for them all to get going). Includes the "largest church bell of the world" at 24,000 kg. I wonder how they recorded this so close to the bells without overloading their microphone.

"" (Watch on YouTube)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqZGW-5XOZs

.

Munich Frauenkirche - not much to see in this video, but has good sound. Starts with the bells ringing 3 o'clock, then all the bells ringing.

[video no longer available]

.

"Susanna" Bell (Salveglocke), Munich Frauenkirche - a close-up of one of the large bells as it starts to swing back and forth, and then rings. ~8000 kg in weight; 2.06m diameter; poured in the year 1490.

[video no longer available]
.

"Frauenglocke" - another bell of the Munich Frauenkirche. ~3000kg in weight; 1.66m diameter; poured in the year 1617.

[video no longer available]

Profile

Darkoshi

Darkoshi's Enchantment

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Violet Night by nornoriel

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Wednesday, December 31st, 2025 02:38 am

Entries tagged with germany

soap and towels in olden day public restrooms

gender inclusive job postings in Germany

heuer = this year

I've about had it with this old tech (half-rant)

names. TREES. ALL the TREES and trees and trees.

sea buckthorn, Sanddorn

translating spoken Chinese from audio file

diamond showers, supergeil, is mir egal, Kazim Akboga

12/7

Kazakh

mindless mutterings

Little Oktoberfest

Amazon FireTV & German TV channels / AT&T, TWC, Spectrum

words trees flowers

German words (updated with more)

German words

book

cursive ghost lock

the skirted duo

german church/cathedral bells

Profile

December 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags