Things you wouldn’t know

14: Things you wouldn’t know: more German idioms

November 14, 2016 filed under: Germany, NaBloPoMo, Things you wouldn't know

I’ve done posts like these in the last few years for NaBloPoMo, because learning idioms from other languages is fun and gives you insight on how language works.

Let’s see if I can come up with a few more fun German idioms for you this time around. They might distract you from the doomsday feeling that is going around.
All of these are (as far as I know) still pretty standard to use, unfortunately I don’t really know from where most of these originated. I use all of those idioms (some more than others). I hope you enjoy them!

Find the first rounds of idioms here, here, and here and here.

“Du hast wohl einen Clown gefrühstückt.” Seems like you had a clown for breakfast. You can use this phrase sarcastically, to say that somebody is not particularly funny, or if you want to point out that someone is extraordinarily silly.

“Klappe zu, Affe tot.” Close the lid, the monkey is dead. This means ‘that’s it, end of story.” It can be used to shut down any further discussion or to say that something has come to a tragic end.

“Mal mal den Teufel nicht an die Wand.” Don’t paint the devil on the wall. We use this to say that you shouldn’t expect the worst, but be hopeful.

“Eine Pappnase sein.” To be a cardboard-nose. Here’s another ‘clown-reference’. It means that someone is inept or silly (or both).

“Mal sehen wie der Hase läuft.” Let’s see how the bunny runs. It basically means that we have no idea how things are going to play out and we’ll have to wait and see. The English phrase would be “to see how the cookie crumbles”. There is also the phrase “Wissen, wie der Hase läuft” (to know how the bunny runs) and that means that you know the ins and outs of something.

“Er hat die Arschkarte gezogen.” He pulled the ass card. Self-explanatory, right? It means, ‘he drew the short straw’. (Very useful phrase, just saying.)

“Dir haben sie wohl etwas in den Kaffee getan.” Someone must have put something in your coffee. We use that to say that somebody lost their mind or to say ‘you’ve got to be kidding’.

“Sei kein Frosch!” Don’t be a frog. This can either mean “don’t be a chicken” or “don’t be a partypooper”.

“Es kostet nur einen Apfel und ein Ei.” It costs only an apple and an egg. This phrase means that something only costs peanuts or that it’s very inexpensive.

“Selbst ist die Frau.” Self is the woman. If you want a thing done right, do it yourself.

Teach me an idiom! Or ask me for the translation of an English idiom into German!

10: Things you wouldn’t know: More German idioms

November 10, 2015 filed under: Germany, NaBloPoMo, Things you wouldn't know

If you’ve been around for previous NaBloPoMo-years, you might remember that I’ve posted German idioms before. I am a language nerd, appreciate good grammar, spelling, and punctuation and mastering the art of a foreign language definitely includes idioms. I’ve taught J many Germans idioms over the years and I am still learning new English idioms all the time. I think they’re fun.

Find the first rounds of idioms here, here, and here.

This time, I thought I’d share some German words that don’t have a direct English translation but are very useful, IMHO.

1. Fernweh (Distance pain)
This word describes the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. It’s the opposite of homesickness (Heimweh in German), a longing for a place that isn’t where you are right now. Fernweh is closely related to Wanderlust, a word that has been adopted in the English-speaking world.

2. Fremdschämen (External shame)
One of my favorite words! If you cringe inside when others make a fool of themselves, this word describes what you’re feeling. You’re embarrassed for someone else and would like to ‘disappear in a hole’ on their behalf.

3. Sitzfleisch (Sit flesh)
This word describes a (sometimes annoying) character trait. The word Sitzfleisch itself literally refers to a person’s butt. Figuratively, “Sitzfleisch haben” (to have sit flesh) means to have the ability to endure or persevere in an activity, to have the ability to sit still on your butt for hours and hours of time. However, the context it’s more commonly used in (at least as far as I know) is to describe when someone overstays their welcome and doesn’t get up to leave when the party is over.

4. Fingerspitzengefühl (fingertip feeling)
The German dictionary describes it as “Sensitivity; a talent for empathy in interaction with things and people”. If you have Fingerspitzengefühl, you are acutely and intuitively aware of changing situations and know how to act accordingly and with care.

5. Schnapsidee (schnaps idea)
A Schnapsidee is a word for an ingenious idea that comes to you when you’re drunk – or a plan that is simply too stupid to be carried out successfully.

6. Sandkastenfreund (sand box friend)
This is a friend that you’ve known since your childhood, regardless if you actually played in a sandbox together ;)

7. Bildungslücke (education gap)
A critical piece of information that one is expected to know at a certain point in time. If you don’t know it, you have a serious Bildungslücke.

8. Reisefieber (travel fever)
This feeling describes all the feelings of joy, excitement, anticipation and worry before a big trip.

9. Feierabend (celebration evening)
We call the time after work Feierabend (celebration evening) in German. Now, isn’t that nice? Fits nicely with the concept that Germans “work hard and party hard”. You can also say “Ich mache jetzt Feierabend” (I make Feierabend) to refer to the time when you’re getting off work.

10. Weltschmerz (World pain)
Don’t we all have it from time to time? Weltschmerz describes the state of sadness that we feel at how the world keeps falling short of expectations and how there are so many things wrong in this world.

Now it’s your turn! Teach me an idiom!

21: Things you wouldn’t know: even more German idioms

November 21, 2014 filed under: Expat stories, Germany, NaBloPoMo, Things you wouldn't know

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that in the last two years during NaBloPoMo, I started a little series about German idioms. Idioms are awesome in every language and the more idioms you know in a foreign language, the closer you’ll get to perfecting your language skills.

J and I still have fun finding (and using and teaching each other!) new idioms both in English and German and since some of you have enjoyed these posts in the past, I thought I’d keep with the tradition and share with you even more German idioms. All of these are (as far as I know) still pretty standard to use. I use all of these (some more than others, just to make sure you’re not thinking that I am giving you outdated resources here!). I hope you enjoy them!

Find the first round of idioms here and the second round here.

“Ich könnte mir in den Arsch beißen.” I could bite myself in the ass. It means that you could kick yourself.

“Ich habe die Nase voll.” I have the nose full. This has nothing to do with having a stuffy nose, it simply means that you’re tired or sick of something.

“Hopfen und Malz ist verloren.” Hop and malt is lost. This expression is used to say that something is a lost cause. The idiom stems – surprise surprise! – from beer brewing. What would we Germans do without idioms that have a reference to beer? Exactly. When something in the brewing process went wrong, the ingredients were considered wasted and therefore the chance of getting a good beer was a lost cause.

“Da liegt der Hund begraben .” That’s where the dog is buried. I am not sure where this idiom came from, but the English equivalent is That’s the crux of the matter.

“Hier spielt die Musik.” Here is where the music is playing. I love this idiom and have heard it a lot. Teachers have often used it in school to get their students’ attention when they were distracted by something else. It means that here is where the action is or where you should pay attention.

“Einen (dicken) Hals haben / bekommen.” To have/get a (thick) neck. This is an expression of anger or general annoyance. Have you ever been so angry that you could feel your neck muscles tensing? That’s what this is describing. If you say, “ich habe einen (dicken) Hals”, you’re saying that someone or something really annoys you.

“Aus der Reihe tanzen”. To dance outside of the line. This can be used in a negative and positive way and it describes someone who stands out either by getting out of line or acting different from everyone else.

“Seinen Senf dazugeben.” To add your mustard. It means to put in your two cents. Don’t know why we have an obsession with food-related idioms, but there are many!

“Kopfkino”. Head cinema. This is what happens when the imagination runs wild and you involuntarily use your imagination to think of troubling or disgusting things in graphic detail.

“Bist du lebensmüde?” Are you life-tired? You use that if someone is doing something that is stupid and could possibly get them killed. It’s like asking “are you trying to kill yourself?”

Teach me an idiom! Or ask me for the translation of an English idiom in German!

10: 25 years ago, the Berlin wall fell

November 10, 2014 filed under: Expat stories, Germany, Things you wouldn't know

This photo was taken in 2006 when I visited Berlin. It was one of the stretches of wall that were still standing.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a peaceful victory by people that took to the streets and courageously resisted a dictatorship and started a peaceful revolution.

I was only thirteen when it happened. Too young to really understand the impact of what was happening, especially because my family lived in the far western part of (West) Germany, close to the Dutch border, and we didn’t have any direct connection (no family, no friends) to East Germany. Yes, of course, I knew about the “two Germanys” and I did understand that something “life-changing” was happening, but at the time, I felt more like a spectator than a “part” of this historical event.

Now, I have a lot of friends that grew up and used to live in East Germany and I’ve visited the united Berlin a couple of times since the wall came down. I am so very grateful for having the privilege of having those wonderful people in my life, and for that – admittedly selfish reason – alone, it was worth for the Berlin wall to come down. Every year I am reminded of that.

When I went to Berlin a few years ago, I obviously walked along the brick path that today marks the location of the former Berlin wall. It always reminds me a bit of the Freedom trail in Boston — similar concept — with the tiny difference that in Berlin, there actually was a 3.6m high wall in its place. Even though there were spots where parts of the wall were still standing (see picture above), it’s hard to imagine now that this wall ran through a very huge part of the city.

To honor the special historic anniversary of its fall yesterday, a Berlin light artist and his brother created the Lichtgrenze ( “border of light”) project. 8,000 luminous, white balloons, perched 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) high on poles – matching the height of the wall that divided the city — recreated the Berlin wall along its original path. The artist said that the reason behind the project was that it would trigger understanding of what it meant to have a wall in front of one’s door. This is something I struggle with to this day. The wall was basically put up over night and some people woke up and couldn’t cross their streets anymore, because there was a wall there. Seems kinda crazy, right?

Last night on the 25th anniversary eve of East Germany opening its borders to the West, 8,000 citizens lined up to release the balloons which floated into the sky, one by one, carrying personal messages with them, symbolically reenacting the wall’s collapse. I can only imagine what a beautiful, emotional event that must have been.

I know it must be hard to comprehend how this, something like a wall dividing a city, was even possible. When I watch movies about East Germany, I find it hard to believe that that was the reality behind the wall… the spying on people, the censorship on literature and other media. (Here are a few German movies I’d like to recommend, if you are interested in the topic — and you know, would like an easy-to-swallow history lessons as a side benefit: “Goodbye Lenin”, “The Lives of Others“, “Barbara“, and “The Tunnel“. I think the first three are available on Netflix.)

By no means has the reunification been an easy one. To this day, there are still lingering east-west political, economic and social divisions in the city and country. Voting patterns in east Berlin and eastern Germany are different, and there is still an east-west income and wealth gap. 40 years have left their marks and are not easily wiped away. However, the unification of Germany is still one of the most important historic milestones of my country.

“The fall of the Berlin Wall showed us that dreams can come true – and that nothing has to stay the way it is, no matter how high the hurdles might seem to be.” — Angela Merkel

Things you wouldn’t know: There is no jury duty in Germany.

July 24, 2014 filed under: Germany, Things you wouldn't know, USA

The reason I bring this up? I was summoned for jury duty a couple of months ago.

I guess I had lulled myself into a false sense of security that I wouldn’t be summoned any time soon, after I had to decline my last jury summon on the grounds that I wasn’t a US citizen at the time. I falsely assumed that that had taken me off their radar for a while, but I heard that they select people through the DMV system and I guess drivers license renewals puts you right back on the top of the list. Well, guess who just a couple of months ago got her license renewed? Moi.

Coincidence?

Maybe. Either way, I had to report at the courthouse a few weeks ago.

In Germany, there is no such thing as jury duty. It was abolished in the 1920’s as the verdicts were perceived as unjust and inconsistent. So, imagine my complete lack of pre-knowledge or understanding of what was going to await me at jury duty.

Mostly, I just thought I am going to show up, sit around for most of the day and then be dismissed without actually having to do anything. But, that was absolutely not what happened.

I showed up for jury duty on the day of my summon (actually I had to call the day before to find out if my group actually had to report or not, and alas, my group was called in for the next day, Tuesday morning).

I showed up at 8 a.m., had to sign in, fill out a questionaire and then took a seat to wait for “orientation”, which is basically the lady at the registration counter yelling instructions over a speaker system.
We were told that we were possibly going to be sent to one (or multiple) court rooms during the day until we were either dismissed by a judge or chosen for a jury.

I still really had no idea what to expect. I was anticipating a long day of waiting and sitting around. But, at 9 a.m. my name – along with about 30 others – was called to court room 17. In the courtroom, we were presented with some details of the case:

Criminal case — two defendants charged with
Count 1: murder (discharging a weapon out of a moving vehicle against a human being with the intent to inflict death)
Count 2: discharging a weapon out of a moving vehicle

My heart dropped into my boots.

When I was summoned for jury duty, I had joked that with my luck, I’d be assigned to a murder case, but I never thought that this was actually a possibility! Well, until it became one.

I also didn’t expect to be confronted with the two defendants right there in the court room. I thought that we might get some details of the case, but I didn’t expect to learn about the charges and suspects before becoming part of the jury. But oh no, all that information is presented during the selection process.

The judge explained some organizational stuff, explained the schedule for the trial and then asked anyone with a “hardship” (e.g. self-employed people, people who are caretakers and don’t have any other help, etc.) to fill out the provided forms. Everybody else was dismissed and asked to come back a few hours later.

After lunch, we were called in the courtroom again and this time, 18 of us – including me! – had to come forward and take a seat in (or in front of) the jury box.The rest of potential jurors were seated in the back of the room.

The judge explained some more details of the trial and then he interviewed us. He asked some general questions (for which we had to raise our hands, if applicable) and then he interviewed everyone in the jury box individually.
We were asked about our backgrounds, if we had previous experiences with law enforcement, crimes (as a victim or perpetrator) and if we knew people who worked in law enforcement.
We were also asked if we were biased towards certain people and about our abilities to assess someone’s credibility in the witness stand.

To be quite honest, I was kind of stunned how many of those people who were sitting in the jury box with me claimed that they completely unbiased and that they were definitely able to tell if someone was lying or telling the truth! Witnesses that are complete strangers to them, nonetheless! Isn’t that a little presumptuous?

While I do think that I am not a very biased person and that I aim to treat all people equally, I don’t think that I could claim to be completely unbiased. Aren’t we all a little biased against other people? Don’t we all judge people – even if only a little bit – by our first impressions of them? I couldn’t help but steal a glance at the defendants and think “do I think they could have committed such a crime?”.

Maybe I am too honest. Maybe I take this responsibility a little more seriously than others, but it would be stretching a point to claim that not some of my judgement of the situation (beyond the hard facts) would be influenced by some sort of bias.
Isn’t claiming to know if someone lies or tells the truth a bias in itself?
When it comes down to it, jurors will, in the end, use some biased judgement in deciding a case, especially if the hard facts don’t solve the case and they have to rely on witnesses mostly.

Of course, if I had been chosen for the jury, which I – spoiler alert! – did not, I would have tried my best to be objective, unbiased and judge the situation by the facts, but since I knew nothing more about the case and the people that were involved in it, it was a pretty bold statement to claim that those details didn’t matter.

The judge dismissed us in the afternoon and we had to come back the next morning, when the prosecutor and the two defense attorneys got the chance to ask us questions before they started dismissing people.

The judge cautioned us right away that there was no point in speculating why we were dismissed or not, because there are many different factors that play into the decisions of prosecutors and defense attorneys.
However, when the prosecutor dismissed me, I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t because I had been quite honest about the fact that I don’t believe that people can be completely unbiased (even if that would be desired, obviously!).

I found the selection of the jurors quite random, I have to admit. I am not sure what I expected during the process, but I didn’t expect to be asked “do you think you’re unbiased? Ok then!”

Ok, this is obviously an exaggeration, but how can someone, within a couple of hours and with the help of some questions that will be answered very subjectively, make a decision if someone is fit to be a juror or not? I mean, most individuals are simply not free from holding social and cognitive biases, although it’s believed that those biases are controlled when people work together as part of a group.

Since I was dismissed that day and had to leave the court room right away, I have no idea how many people of the original 18 were picked, how many people in the audience were interviewed and who eventually made it on the jury. I would have loved to know that.

I have thought a lot about the experience since then and about the jury system and the reasons why we don’t have it in Germany. There is a tremendous amount of bureaucracy and time involved to summon and select jurors before you even get to the actual trial. It seems like a hell of a lot of effort, since jurors are selected on a case-by-base basis and prosecutors and defense attorney decide if you’re a “fit”. I still don’t know how I feel about it.

Well, anyway, I am glad I didn’t get picked for the case, mostly because I just found out about the outcome of the trial a couple of weeks ago. The two defendants were convicted of murder and are expected to be sentenced to life without parole. They’re both just over 20 years old. Though I do feel that they need to be punished for killing another human being — obviously! — it always makes me sad when young people “throw away their lives” like that.

Here’s a quick summery of how trials work in Germany, in case you’re interested.

Today, most misdemeanors are tried by a Strafrichter (criminal judge), meaning a single judge at an Amtsgericht (district court); felonies and more severe misdemeanors are tried by a Schöffengericht (court of lay assessors), also located at the Amtsgericht, composed of 1 judge and 2 lay judges; some felonies are heard by Erweitertes Schöffengericht, or extended Schöffengericht, composed of 2 judges and 2 lay judges; severe felonies and other “special” crimes are tried by the große Strafkammer (criminal chamber), composed of 3 judges and 2 lay judges at the Landgericht (regional court), with specially assigned courts for some crimes called Sonderstrafkammer; felonies resulting in the death of a human being are tried by the Schwurgericht (jury court), composed of 3 judges and 2 lay judges, located at the Landgericht; and serious crimes against the state are tried by the Strafsenat (criminal division), composed of 5 judges, at an Oberlandesgericht (regional appeal court).(Source: Wikipedia).