august: cleveland county: german

From time to time I'll pick a German video for my Month in German series. Today, I'm going to share some of my favorite German-language YouTube channels. Watching YouTube has been my saving grace since I haven't been to Germany since 2014 - it really helps me keep up my skills, remember how people who aren't news anchors talk, and hear different regional dialects. It's also an excellent way to procrastinate - wasting time on the internet magically becomes brushing up my German.

ConsiderCologne

This is one of my very favorite YouTube channels. It's run by two girls who are in college in Cologne; they do a lot of beauty videos, but what I really love are their weekly vlogs. This is a common theme for me because I like seeing how daily lives in other countries differ from mine.

Ella TheBee

Watching Ella's videos is like getting advice from an older sister who knows what to do about everything. She gives fantastic advice and has interesting other videos as well. I also really like that she's not a full-time blogger - since she has a day job her everyday life isn't too out of the ordinary.

Lenas Wunderwelt

This is the very first German language YouTube channel I ever came across - I was looking for something about a Bioladen and one of her videos came up. She doesn't post often, but I like her videos when she does!

Michael Buchinger

Michael's videos are usually funny - instead of monthly favorites, he does a list of things he hated at the end of each month. I really like his cooking videos and his reality show parodies.

Snukieful

This channel has nothing to do with Jersey Shore as far as I can tell. (They do go to the beach a lot, though.) It's run by a girl named Marie who posts a variety of videos. Her vlog channel, Manda, is also really interesting because she and her boyfriend were in New Zealand for a semester, and they're very different than me because they're really outdoorsy.

LucieRedhead

Lucie is the latest addition to my subscription box. The food diary is a staple video for many YouTubers, but Lucie's food diaries look like something that an actual person might eat - instead of apologizing or saying that she knows what she is eating is bad, she simply says that she likes chocolate, so she eats chocolate for dessert.

marlinelina

This is a bonus - Elina is Swiss and speaks German, but her channel is all in English. She talks about books and language mostly, and is good at talking about why we read.

If anyone has any other suggestions for German-language YouTubers, let me know! I'd love to add a Swiss German channel, but I haven't found anything that I really like so far.

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Month in German - May

aldi

The end of this month's "Month in German" post has taken a sharp turn away from German towards "things I found interesting online this month." Apologies.

After the first round of elections in Austria, Austrian vlogger Anna Laura Kummer mentioned her disappointment with the results at the beginning of this video. I found this interesting because lifestyle vloggers often try to avoid political messages, but she went for it!

Quite a few of my links this month are grocery store-related. I really like going to grocery stores when I visit someplace new - grocery stores show off what sort of things a culture prioritizes and how that place is different from the US.

Aldi Sued is trying out a new concept for its stores. (For those of you keeping track at home, Aldi Sued runs Aldi in the US, Aldi Nord runs Trader Joe's in the US.) This concept makes them look more like the Aldi locations in the US.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung tested a variety of apple juices to find the best one in Germany.

Europe is gearing up for the Euro 2016 soccer championship. I'm so excited to watch it - the last time this tournament was played was when I studied abroad in Munich! (The first day I met my host family, we all sat on the couch and watched Germany lose in the semi-final. This situation was rectified when I sat on the same couch two years later and watched the same team win the semi-final of the World Cup!) Pegida, however, embarrassed itself when it slandered Kinder for making chocolate with minority children on the packaging. They didn't realize that the children featured were the current national soccer team as children. Also, ESPN did a lovely profile of Manuel Neuer ahead of the tournament.

This photo history of Angela Merkel with robots is so sweet. She seems delighted.

The proposed Monsanto/Bayer deal is hilarious to me because the school I worked at in Germany did an entire unit over how Monsanto was an evil corporation, which included a colleague telling me that I might see adverse health effects from growing up on GMOs later in life.

Der Spiegel looked at how Germans voted in Eurovision. Additionally, Stephen Colbert offered a humble song as the US entry for next year.

Finally, to two pieces of non-European news. I loved the BBC's coverage of the North Korean party congress this month. The amount of control that North Korea tries to exert over journalists is amazing.

I'm in Oklahoma, a state that has such weird politics that even The Economist took notice. I found it odd that they didn't mention that in addition to having poor teacher pay, many districts in my state are going to 4 day weeks with limited bus capabilities next year due to budget shortfalls. Experienced teachers are also being encouraged to retire so that new teachers who require lower pay may be utilized instead.

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month in german - march

german

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My Favorite German Twitter Accounts

bundestag

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Month in German - February

german

Another month is almost over, which means it's time for my monthly German wrap-up!

I loved this German language article from Bento about two German college students who took a cross-country trip in the US using Amtrak. Prize quote: "Our American friends were skpetical: "why don't you just fly?""

This tweet from the Left Party in Germany made me laugh - the national leader of the party and presumptive nominee for the chancellorship in the 2017 elections is named Bernd Riexinger.

.@b_riexinger - könnte auch #Kanzler ;-) #FeelTheBernd #LTW16 #BWPlusSozial pic.twitter.com/ayIGtiSPH6

— fds BaWü (@fds_linke_bw) February 5, 2016

The Washington Post has some interesting photos from Karneval earlier this month. The most controversial was a float which features Donald Trump with the slogan "Make Fascism Great Again."

Also, Thuringian governor Bodo Ramelow visited the Pope at the end of the month, which made this thesis-writer very happy.

pic.twitter.com/vvfCDmapeM

— Bodo Ramelow (@bodoramelow) February 26, 2016

If you've ever watched Tatort, you'll enjoy this series of thoughts that two Americans who don't speak German had while watching an episode of the show.

Congrats to Switzerland - the country voted to reject a plan that would make it easier to deport foreigners for minor crimes last week. The measure, proposed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party, was defeated with 59% of the vote against the new plan.

Mostly I've been reading things related to my thesis and watching vlogs in German this month, so there's not a whole lot of new things here. But if you like podcasts, you should know that you can listen to tagesschau as an audio podcast - I like to do that while I'm getting ready if NPR isn't talking about news.

At the end of January I got my hands on a copy of Heisser Sommer, a musical that was very popular in East Germany. It was about what you'd expect from a late 60s musical that was made in the GDR. GDR films are always problematic since they tend to paper over the realities of life under that regime, like in this film where no one seems to be wanting for anything and the police are portrayed as understanding friends. However, if you acknowledge these shortcomings, the film is pretty okay.

That's about it for this month - maybe next time I'll have a few more links for you! Bis dann!

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Power of Words II: Trainwreck

bad aibling

This morning, two trains run by the Meridian company had a head-on collision on the route from Holzkirchen to Rosenheim, near the town of Bad Aibling. Here's the BBC's story as well as the German-language story from the Holzkirchner Merkur

If you don't know, I did my study abroad in Holzkirchen. It was perhaps the greatest experience of my life. It helped me become more independent and sure that studying German was, for me, the proper choice. It also means that I saw the trains that ran on the line where the crash occurred almost every single day on my way to school during the summer of 2012 since the train station was between my house and the school. I even took a train on that route once when I went to Austria for a day.

Additionally, Meridian operates my favorite train of all time, the BOB (Bayerische Oberlandbahn; Bavarian Overland Train). The BOB offers service between Munich and Holzkirchen in less than an hour. We took this train into the city at least twice a week while I was studying abroad, and I used it again later when I visited Holzkirchen while working in Erfurt. The BOB is such a quintessential German experience for me: quiet, on-time trains that offer reliable service without having to drive. Since the train is privately owned and only covers a short distance, it is usually very clean. There are so many differences between the south-central United States and Germany, but this is the first one that I encountered, and the one that I'm most fond of.

Train wrecks in Germany often make me think about language and how our language must sound to others. In German, the word for wreck is "Unglück." However, the work "Glück" means "joy" or "luck." Every time I see a wreck or disaster mentioned in the German media, my first thought is that this seems like a horrible situation to term "unlucky." Then I remember that the word means "disaster" in this case. Our words are such a powerful thing, and yet sometimes we may not think through how it is perceived by those who don't share our language. There is no German word that better describes this incident than "Unglück." Words such as this, which cause me to do an unnecessary double-take, make me wonder if it is possible to be totally fluent in a language I learned as an adult. It also makes me wonder what our English words are worth. People are always "heartbroken" after tragedies, even if they have no connection to the incident. How many times can your heart break for disasters before it ceases to cause you pain?

One of the last things my study abroad group did in Holzkirchen was act out the final scene of the play Der Besuch der alten Dame at the train station. The Germans there thought we were crazy, but the final scene of the play takes place at a train station, so there we were. The empty platform on the right in the photo is the place from which the Holzkirchen-Rosenheim train leaves.

__________

Photos from own collection.