The Germans have a word for it: Kurschatten

The word-for-word translation of Kurschatten is "spa shadow", i.e. someone who follows you around - or "shadows you" - at a spa resort. This is a man or woman you have a little love affair - or as the Germans would put it a Techtelmechtel - with while staying at a spa resort. Since stays can be up to 6 weeks long, that's plenty of time for something romantic or flirty to develop. 

Normally, things don't go any further than the spa resort. What happens in Baden Baden stays in Baden Baden.

In the past, going on a "cure" was very popular in Germany. My civil servant aunts in Berlin went every four years for a 6-week Kur or "cure" ever four years, whether they needed one or not. A "cure" is meant to prevent any disease or condition from developing. Later, there was a medical reform in order to save money and this rhythm was then changed to four weeks every six years. I'm not sure what the current situation is.

Even now, though, if you are an employee and have national health insurance, you'll often get prescribed "Reha" or Rehabilitation, i.e. physiotherapy and that is very much like a Kur. For example, if you get a new hip, you'll spend 6 weeks in a "Rehaklinik", which is where you could develop a little fling with someone for the duration. 

Six weeks of physiotherapy in a clinic after hip surgery - totally unheard of in the UK. The mother of a colleague of mine had a hip replacement somewhere in the north of England and was back at home two days later. She was given a list of exercises to do and a nurse came by twice a week to check on her progress.

Imagine, though, six weeks and the chance of a bit of hanky panky or Techtelmechtel to boot [noch dazu]! I should think a lot of Brits would love that. And all on the National Health Service! What's not to like?

The Germans have a word for it: Kummerspeck

Sometimes, the Germans come up with a word you never knew you needed. "Kummerspeck" or, literally, "heartache bacon" is the weight you put on when you are feeling down after, say, breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend or losing a job. Basically, it's the result of "comfort eating". 

Whenever my mother visited her family in Berlin, she used to buy Speck, which is a thick, subcutaneous layer of fat from the back of the pig. There are two types: one with bits of meat in it, and one that is pure white fat. Like this:

My mother always opted for the all-fat version, wrapped in plastic, sometimes taking two of them back with her in her luggage, just in case she didn't go back to Berlin for a while. 

And what did she do with it? She'd cut off some slices, dice the Speck finely and then fry the small cubes in a pan and use them to flavour mashed potatoes or red cabbage. As the British would agree, bacon makes everything taste better. Even Brussels sprouts [Rosenkohl].

The weird thing is that, although I hate fat and will cut even the smallest amount of it off meat, I adored eating this white Speck. Go figure, as the Americans would say. Or, in German, "Wahnsinn, oder?"

Hence, if Speck is the layer of fat on their backs that the Germans encourage their pigs to grow, then Kummerspeck is the layer of fat heartbroken, depressed or melancholic people gain when they eat, eat, eat to suppress their sadness.

I might not know why the caged bird sings, but I know why Karstadt is going out of business

When I was a little girl visiting my grandparents in Berlin, I often trailed my relatives around vast emporia known as "department stores". They were myriad: Karstadt, Wertheim, Hertie... When you went into them, you felt as though you were walking into Ali Baba's cave: they were crammed full of delights, lots of them glittering and sparkling. You name it, you could find it in one of these places. They were packed with people.

Many branches of Wertheim were either closed or converted to Karstadt. Hertie was also taken over by Karstadt in 1994. In the German town where I now live, they used to have Kaufhof, which itself gradually took over Horten, the fourth largest German department store chain at the time. But even Kaufhof, established in 1879, was merged with Karstadt in 2020 to form Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof. 

Now... although Galeria is still the third largest chain of department stores in Europe (after El Corte Ingles in Spain and Marks & Spencer in the UK), on 2 October 2026 the company filed for insolvency proceedings for the FOURTH (!) time in seven years. As some people have commented to me, the company keeps getting bailed out by means of taxpayers' money. And that's despite the fact that since 2020, 47 branches have been closed down. They just can't seem to make a go of it [etwas zu einem Erfolg machen].

And why is the company struggling so much? Well, yes, it is convenient to order stuff from the comfort of your own sofa. But it's harder to compare stuff online; it's much easier to go to a shop, place things side by side and then compare them. And the colour on the screen might look very different in daylight. And you can't feel the fabric. Many's the time I have been attracted to some item of clothing in a shop and when I went over and touched it, I recoiled [zurückweichen]. It felt too synthetic - or looked too cheap. Finally, you can't try it on until it arrives through the post and then if it's not the right size, then there's the hassle of returning it. No thank you.

Last week, I went to Karstadt's haberdashery [Kurzwaren] department - my favourite bit of the shop. What was once a magnificent section of the store now looks a shadow of its former self. About half the variety of bales of cloth [Stoffballen] for one thing. Large gaps where tables used to be. I had a list of things I needed, I got only one. 

And embroidery threads? For years and years, I've been going there to "feed" my cross-stitching habit. I've been buying Anchor embroidery floss since they were priced at 75 cents each. They now cost €1.75. Karstadt had the whole array of colours - over 300 of them. 

Not any more though. "Oh, no, we now only offer Rico embroidery thread." Who on earth wants that? They might be cheaper, but the colour range is much smaller and the quality is lower. The end result of your embroidery has no sheen [Schimmer]. And all my patterns specify either Anchor or DMC - for which I have a conversion chart.

While I was there, trying to track down ribbons (also on my list), another woman came in and asked for heading tape to make curtains (that's the strip that goes at the top and which you can pull together to make pleats and where the curtain hooks go into). "We don't stock that." Off she went, muttering under her breath - something about taxpayers' money going to waste.

But she's right. It is frustrating. You go to an actual bricks-and-mortar shop - rather than shopping online - only to be told that they don't offer that any more. 

Over the years, Karstadt has dwindled. No longer a "box of delights", selling goods that ranged in price from cheap to expensive via "reasonable", it has closed the following departments:

- pet and gardening equipment

- photography

- printers

- picture framing

- curtains (ready-made and material)

- books

- lighting

That's all I can think of at the moment...

The less one offers, the less reason people have to come to you.

And that's why Galeria Karstadt is in trouble... yet again.

Multiple-choice walks

When I leave this building, turn left and walk for around 100 metres, I find myself in a huge park, all 70 hectares or 700,000 square metres of it. It's so big that it contains a cemetery - which has the feel of a park, it is so beautifully maintained - and the German versions of allotment gardens, Schrebergärten. 

The park consists of various areas that were then melded together: a park that was first opened in the late 19th century, a plot of wasteland, along with the allotments and the cemetery and some fallow land [Brachland]. Anyway, in the late 80s, they were all redesigned so that you can walk around all those areas freely. The result was 22 km of pathways. 

When I go for a walk there - and I can easily do 5 km just walking round the park once - I have a usual route that takes me past all my favourite parts, such as the water features and the dahlias in late summer. However, just for fun, I sometimes decide to mix things up a bit and go down paths I've never been down before. In fact, I believe I could walk in that park every day for the rest of my life and create a new variation every time. I really do. It's lovely when you have so much choice right on your doorstep.

Sorry, what did you just call me?

I was supposed to be called Christopher. That was the name that my parents had chosen for me, but when I was born, I turned out to be female. Christine was not possible, as my 11-month older cousin already bore that name. Hence, for four days, I was called "it" as in "Wie sollen wir es (das Baby) nennen?" It had to be a name that the Welsh and German relatives could pronounce with ease and without too much distortion. (For example, the names Jonathan and Ruth sound nice in English but not so in German.)

In the end, it was my German aunt who suggested Martina and, although my parents had bought a book of girls names and had even looked up the meaning of that name ("of Mars and warklike), they went ahead with it.

In Wales, the name is unusual. Well, in Britain really. After all, it is said to be more of a Catholic name: there is a Saint Martina, whose saint day is 30 January. But at least the short form, Tina, sounds okay. Unlike the long form when said with a slight Liverpudlian twang - and there were a few people in my area of Wales from Liverpool. 

But, oh, it seems to be so hard for people to remember my name. Especially over here in Germany where I have been called all sorts of names. It seems that people see me and think "something beginning with M". That means I've been called all of the following at least once: Martine, Marina, Maria, Marita, Martha, Margaret, Moira, Mary, Marianna, Marion etc. etc. 

I've even been called Bettina and Susan. Why Susan? Well, the person who called me by that name said, "Well, I know that that person over there with the same surname as you is called Susan, so I thought maybe every woman with that surname is called Susan." What logic!

But in the last month, I've had two new variations: firstly, someone printed my name on a certificate of attendance as Martin. So all of a sudden, I was male. And an e-mail from Telekom addressed me as Emma. 

I despair. 

After the most famous Martina of all - Navratilova - you'd have thought that people could cope with the name, but it seems not.

My latest acronym: OHIO

Of all the people in my family - on both the Welsh and German sides - I am the untidiest. Not dirty, just untidy. Oh, I can get everything looking just perfect, especially when I've got someone coming to stay with me, but with no-one in the flat, I can turn around and half an hour later, everything untidy again. 

I often find that as soon as I've put everything away - a place for everything and everything in its place, as they say - then it only takes 30 minutes for me to start pulling everything out of the drawers again: scissors, pens, needles, crochet hooks, books, papers..... Why do I bother?

And, of course, when it comes to day-to-day household chores, I can always find something more interesting to do, such as reading or "making things". And until the latest handicraft project is finished, the place gets covered in threads and bits of fluff and polyester stuffing and, recently, plastic pellets to create a bit of weight in my frog bean bags. Boy, did the vacuum cleaner rattle when those plastic pellets went into it.

Often, I just can't be bothered tidying up and I'll put something down somewhere to "put away later". However, I have recently stumbled across a new acronym (i.e. an abbreviation that can be said like a word, such as NATO) which is meant to help people keep a neat and tidy home: OHIO, which stands for "Only Handle It Once").

For example, if you have a book in your hand, put it back on the shelf straight away instead of putting it on some pile to sort out "later". Why do that? It only means you have to pick it up again some other time. If you have a pullover in your hand that you only wore for an hour or so, don't drape it over a chair, fold it up and put it away now. If there is an e-mail that asks you to send the writer something, then do it at once and you won't have to put it on a to-do list or keep it in your mind all day, or even for the next few days. When you unload your groceries from the shopping bags, put them away as you take them out of the bags. Don't just let them lie around on the kitchen counter until "later".

This way, to-do lists become shorter and you become a bit calmer because you don't have to remind yourself all the time what you still have to do. 

As Nike's slogan says: Just do it!

The Germans have a word for it: Holschuld and Bringschuld

It's been quite a while since I stumbled over these words in a text that I was translating. From a legal perspective, it relates to money or "debt", i.e. Schuld. Holschuld in that context means "debt collectible by the creditor, or debt to be collected at the debtor's residence". And Bringschuld means "debt to be discharged at the creditor's domicile".

But the translation wasn't referring to money at all but to information and in this case, Holschuld (literally: "fetch obligation") means that you have to actively gather (or "fetch") the information you need to do a particular job, e.g. from colleagues or superiors. It's down to you to seek out the data.

Thus, conversely, Bringschuld ("bring obligation") describes the idea that you automatically receive the information required to do a particular job, i.e. you don't have to go in search of it or to ask for it. It should be sent to you as a matter of form.

You can tell that these terms are a very German concept by searching for them on Wikipedia. They are there, but only in German and not in any other language. That's because they are unique to the German way of thinking. In no other country has anyone else thought it necessary to invent a word to describe such concepts. 

Here's a nice little thought to end with. The quote in the picture loosely translates as "Knowledge is not something that is owed to you. Knowledge is something you must seek out yourself".

Maybe my father is wrong

Gosh, has it really been 3 months since my last post? Apparently so.

What has been "eating" at me recently - and over decades, really - is the treatment I received from my parents while growing up under their roof and even now: criticism, name-calling, belittlment. And in my teenage years, physical abuse, when they took their violent tempers out on me with their hands and slippers and, once, even a wooden stick. 

On a visit to the UK at Easter 2019, my father and I were coming back from a visit to an old family friend and, in the car, he said to me, "When you are with other people, you should keep your mouth shut. No-one is interested in hearing what you have to say." Pretty breath-taking from someone who has known you since birth. You'd think he'd be on your side, right? Nope.

Those words really hurt and lockdown didn't help either: I started to withdraw. I've become a bit of a hermit, always looking for a reason to stay at home, even not going to the supermarket round the corner, which means trying to find something to eat in the kitchen. This is why I often organise things such as walks, or tell my students of talks and other events - in an effort to oblige myself to leave my flat and actually meet and mingle with people again.

A few Sundays ago, however, I was invited to a thank-you lunch for various people who had helped a young man on his journey through life so far. As of a week or so, he is now a law student at a prestigious German university. I didn't know any of the other guests I sat next to, apart from the father. And yet, I had pleasant conversations with them and they said they had enjoyed talking to me, one woman even asked me for my contact details. 

Two days later, I was at a talk, where people came up to me afterwards and chatted to me, with smiles on their faces, as though they were pleased to see me. And the same thing happened when I walked into a restaurant where an "English club" was taking place: smiles and people coming up to me to talk to me.

How can this be? Two years ago, when my father was celebrating a big birthday, I returned to Wales, for the first time since 2019. And within less than 24 hours, my father "exploded" and shouted at me because I had dared to talk to my aunt when he was talking to her. I just wanted to tell her a quick anecdote about him. I'd not seen my aunt since 2019 either. He was enraged. And I spent four days in tears, because I'm not used to people shouting at me. And that wasn't the only time he shouted at me during that visit either.

At one point, he also mentioned that my sister was "the same". "When she comes by, she talks about herself, too," he complained. 

So this is confusing for me. My father tells me to shut my mouth permanently and not talk to people. He complains that I go "poking my nose into other people's lives" and I shouldn't do anything involving other people. 

And on the other hand, people want me to "poke my nose" into their lives: story time for toddlers, walks for two groups, classes, social events...I've even given talks that people have paid money to listen to.

So who is right? My father, who has known me since birth? Or strangers who haven't known me for as long as he has?

This is why I withdraw myself from society and stay at home and don't even bother posting here. If my parent isn't for me, why should anyone else be?

I capitulate!

You may have read in the press, heard on the radio or seen on TV that Europe is suffering from a so-called "heat dome". Germany has seen temperatures of 40 C and higher. Incredible. Unheard of. 

Here in this town, the highest temperature reached so far has been 38 C. And throughout all this time, I've tried to stay cool in my flat by putting the awning [Markise] on my balcony down, putting up two sun umbrellas on the sides of the balcony, letting down the venetian blinds [Jalousien], pulling the curtains shut, and dressing in light clothes. A cold footbath and wiping my body down with a damp face flannel also helps. As do cold drinks. And my "Spanish air-conditioning" as I call it, a Spanish fan. Made of wood and cloth, it's bio-degradable, doesn't need batteries or power packs, and can be dropped without breaking. My current one is already 16 years old. 

But all these measures were not enough to prevent me from feeling exhausted by the heat. So...today...after 8 days of feeling as though I was crawling through the Saharan desert rather than living in northern Germany, a supposedly temperate climate, I capitulated. I gave up. I surrendered my principles and... got the electric fan out of its box in the box room [Abstellraum]. 

One reason for all this global warming is the burning of fossil fuels, which, among other things, are burnt to produce electricity. Hence, by putting on an electric fan and thus increasing my demand for electricity, I'm contributing to the increased burning of fossil fuels and thus global warming. That's what is called a "vicious circle" [Teufelskreis].

So you might wonder why I have an electric fan after all, if it goes against my principle of trying not to contribute to global warming. The answer is "gerbils" [Rennmäuse]. Yep, gerbils. In about 2003, when the first heatwave hit Europe and around 5,000 people in Paris alone died because of the heat, I got some gerbils from my Danish teacher. At the time, I was living in a small flat under a flat roof. Boy, did it get hot - so hot, that the poor gerbils couldn't cope and they died. The heat killed them, too.

And that's when I got a fan, because in those days, I couldn't live without gerbils and I didn't want any other pet of mine to suffer the same fate.

That means that their deaths were, as the Germans say, "ein Glück im Unglück" or a "blessing in disguise". Without them, I'd not be enjoying any relief from the heat.

The Germans have a word for it: Dunkelziffer - very Donald Rumsfeld

Some of you might recall a certain person called Donald Rumsfeld. To quote Wikipedia: "Donald Henry Rumsfeld was an American politician, businessman, naval officer, and diplomat who served as the 13th United States secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and again as the 21st secretary of defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush."

One of the things he was most famous for was something he said at a press conference held on 12 February 2002: 

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

At the time, many people thought he was babbling, talking nonsense, that he'd "lost the plot" [den Faden verlieren].

However, when you work your way through it, what he said does make sense. And the Germans have a similiar concept encapsulated in the word "Dunkelziffer". 

Let's say you are talking about crime statistics and state that there were 1,000 reported rape cases last year. You would then say that the "Dunkelziffer", which literally means "dark number", is probably four times higher, since most people do not go to the police to report a rape. Or you might give a figure for the number of people diagnosed with a certain disease or condition and then say that you have no idea how many have not yet been diagnosed but you make an informed guess - that's the "Dunkelziffer".

"Dunkelziffer" means the unknown (and estimated) number of cases or events that were not reported or are not known about. 

It is, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, a "known unknown"; we cannot know how many actual cases or events took place; we can only guess at the figure.

Trust [man kann sich darauf verlassen, dass] the Germans to come up with a single word to sum up a complicated concept.

I told you so!

Sometimes, it's not great to be right after all.

The local adult education school (VHS) finally managed to move into its newly renovated premises - only 8 years after the initial idea and about 2.5 years after the planned opening. A sum of 10 million euros was spent on renovating the building and €4 million will have to be spent on the lease every year; and it's a 30-year lease. I know my maths isn't very good, but even I can calculate €120 million!! I was shocked by the figures here. How can this go well, I thought. They've spent too much. It's not like this is the only school that is having money thrown at it. Off the top of my head, I can think of three secondary schools that are being rebuilt or built new in this town. I did mention to the Head of English that I feared for the future of this particular school. And it seems I was right to be fearful.

With a four-million price tag for the building's lease every year, that means that the roughly 50,000 students a year contribute €80 each to cover that cost.

The reason for moving into the building in the first place was two-fold: firstly, they wanted to amalgamate three sites and bring them all together in one place; secondly, they wanted to attract younger students and the new location is next to a management school and a university of applied sciences.

Unfortunately, this town is now drowning in debt and late last week, all English teachers got an e-mail saying that, since the town has to make savings across the board [global, allgemein] the courses offered would be affected. There wasn't enough money to pay all the teachers.

In the English department, that means that courses in the categories of "English Extras, "General Business English", AND "Professional English" will ALL be cut. Completely. Some of the other, more general courses will disappear, too, or be shortened. And yet....at the same time... the powers that be [höhere Mächte] have increased the price they pay each teacher by one euro per 45-minute lesson. As the Americans say, "go figure" [Wahnsinn, oder? Stell dir vor].

I'm still trying to figure out how cutting business English and professional English is going to attract the younger students that the move to the new location was meant to attract.

And why pay more money per lesson when you are forced to cut the number of courses because you can't pay the teachers?

Mind-boggling. Irrsinnig!

The Germans have a word for it: fremdschämen

A lot of people see German as an ugly language. It doesn't sound nice - all those throat-clearing 'ch' sounds, for example  "mit Ach und Krach" (by the skin of one's teeth). There's a video on YouTube on the various European words for "butterfly", which are all supposed to sound pretty until you come to the German word for it: "Schmetterling". 

How to pronounce butterfly in five languages

However, German has one major advantage and that is you can slam two words together to make a new one. And it can encapsulate in that one single word a concept that would take several words to explain in English. One of the most famous examples of this is "Schadenfreude" (literally "damage delight"). If you look it up, you'll find a definition along the lines of "taking a malicious delight in the misfortunes of others".

In this little series entitled "The Germans have a word for it", I'd like to share a few German words that I've collected over the years and for which the English-speaking world has no word.

The first in the series is "fremdschämen", a verb. It's relatively recent, having made it into Duden, the famous German dictionary, in 2009. It means that you yourself feel embarrassed on behalf of another person who is behaving in such a way that should make them feel embarrassed - but they're not. One possible translation is "vicarious embarrassment". LEO - an excellent online dictionary, one I often consult on a daily basis - suggests that "zum Fremdschämen" could be translated as "cringeworthy".

                    Die Rede des Politikers war so schlecht und peinlich, dass der gesamte Auftritt zum Fremdschämen war.

                    The politician's speech was so bad and awkward, that the entire performance was cringeworthy.

Back from 17 minutes in New Zealand

 And how did I manage to spend a mere 17 minutes in New Zealand this morning? Well, it's all thanks to the gym - and the cross-trainer that has a special screen which allows you to select various options to keep you occupied while trudging hard and going nowhere.

Only, today, I did go somewhere. I recently found out that one of the things you could choose from were walks from all around the world - Alaska, north-west USA, Hawaii - and New Zealand. So I chose New Zealand and did three trails before getting too bored. 

It was lovely - the greenery, the geology and the little bits of information that popped up as I went along the trails. 

I look forward to walking in Hawaii next. A mini-holiday without the need to pack and get on a plane.

In the meantime, here's a photo of the end of the second trail (or as they say in New Zealand 'tramp'):

Why?

Why is it that, when I have a day off, I wake up at 4.30 a.m. and can't get to sleep again, no matter how I try, so I get up and do stuff, but when I have to do work, I sleep until 6 a.m. and am then so groggy that I can't get myself into gear [mich aufraffen]? I then lie in bed for an hour or so, semi-comatose, unable to move, incapable of even opening my eyes - despite the fact that work awaits me.

It's so unfair.

The morbid nature of the Germans

 Last Friday, I did a short 11 km walk which nearly killed me, so hilly it was. Since I had about 40 minutes to kill before the train came, I rewarded myself with a nice cup of tea in a newly opened cafe. At least...I thought it was going to be a pleasant sit-down in the place.

Unfortunately, I can understand German perfectly and there was a 74-year-old man, talking to a 42-year-old women (so detailed were they that I got all this information within a minute or two) about ill health, strokes, and "Scheintod", or "apparent death". 

He went on about how people have been buried alive and that was only discovered when they had to open the casket or coffin again long after the burial. The people who opened the coffin found scratch marks on the inside. Ugh!

Could I ignore the morbid nature of the talk? Could I heck. They were the only two other guests in the smallish place. After a few minutes and a couple of glares in their direction, I picked up my stuff and the tea cup and moved outside. 

Oh, what a difference. Sunshine. Peace. And pleasantness restored.

The actual cafe: Café Alma am Mariendom in Neviges.

I feel bereft

 Yes, bereft [beraubt] is how I feel.

A couple of weeks ago, I wondered why I hadn't had any articles on the subject of stationery [Schreibwaren] to translate for a while and looked up "Insights-X", the name of the stationery trade fair [Messe] organised by the people in Nuremberg. I discovered that, after 8 years, it had been discontinued. How sad.

I mentioned this to the agency that had given me the articles to translate and got another piece of bad news. The organisers of one of the largest trade fairs in Germany - the Spielwarenmesse or International Toy Fair - had decided to use artificial intelligence, AI, to translate all the articles in the future. The trade fair company offered the agency the chance to "tidy up" the translations, which they refused. 

So now, I feel bereft. No longer will I learn about the innovations in the world of model railways. Never again will I be in the know when it comes to the latest board games, new toys for toddlers, smart building blocks, creative games, learning games and the like. And I shall never hear of the latest trends in stationery either: scrap-booking, calligraphy, marker pens and diaries... 

One thing I like about translation is that you're never quite sure what you are going to get from one day to the next. One minute, you're translating something relating to the environment or economics and the next text to come along is all about glitter pens or jigsaw puzzles.

Life has become just a little bit more boring and flat.

TV series recommendation: The Other Bennet Sister

The BBC has come up with a little gem: an eight-part series based on a book by Janice Hadlow called The Other Bennet Sister. Anyone who is remotely familiar with the works of Jane Austen will instantly recall that the Bennet family crops up in her novel Pride and Prejudice, and, indeed, this story is a continuation of that book.

The first two half-hour episodes basically recap [zusammenfassen] the tale that Jane Austen wrote. It's as of episode three that the story gets really interesting and answers the question of what happened to the unmarried, plain Jane [Mauerblümchen] sister called Mary. Bookish, a bit gawky, not at all girly, she doesn't fit in with her sisters, and doesn't sparkle like they do - much to the despair of her mother, brilliantly played by Ruth Jones.

The actors in each role are credible, just right for their roles, the costumes are wonderful and the sets have been dressed to perfection. You can almost imagine that it was filmed on site in the past. Almost. Two things didn't seem quite in keeping with the rest. One was the scene at a gathering in a private house when everone chants "Sing, sing" over and over again. I didn't think people would do that in those days. Secondly, we sometimes see the London street she ends up living in: it's too clean. In those days, it would have been filfthy, what with all the horses for one thing. As it is, there's not a speck of dirt or a scrap of waste. Too unbelievable. But those are minor faults and, overall, the effect is pleasing.

But it's the blossoming of the little "ugly duckling" that is so wonderful. From an awkward and gauche young woman lacking any kind of confidence, unaware that people are actually on her side or interested in her, we see that she finally grows comfortable in her own skin and realises that she is likeable and welcome and even lovable. That sounds very serious, but, believe me, there are plenty of laughs along the way.

What makes me so fascinated by the story is that I can identify with the main character so well myself: nose in a book all the time, socially awkward, believing no-one could put up with her and with an overbearing [herrisch] mother who never failed to indicate when she was disappointed in her daughter.

This is why I cheer Mary on, why I want her to come out on top in the end. I want her to have a happy ending, and, without wishing to give anything away, a happy ending is what she gets. Hurray! At least there's some good news on the small screen these days.

Is it any wonder that I'm watching it for the third time already?

Guess which one of them is Mary?

But can the actress playing the role - Ella Bruccoleri - really be called plain?

A welcome pain in the neck - for once

This year has been a very slow year workwise. If I've not been twiddling my thumbs, I've been crocheting hats and scarves and sewing and stuffing small teddy bears for a children's charity headquartered in Berlin. And doing a bit of studying. I've even re-joined my old gym and attempt (note the word) to go there two or three times a week.

All that, however, really fails to fill in all my waking hours and I have found myself simply bored out of my skull for most of the time.

Fortunately, things changed drastically on Monday, when a colleague in Cologne e-mailed me to ask whether I fancied taking some work off her hands. Did I? Of course, I did! So 25 pages about alarm systems winged their way over to me across the ether. Along with files and files of reference material and glossaries. Wonderful.

Two and a half hours later, I read another e-mail offering me 66 pages of translation, which I also accepted.

As they say, "feast or famine" - literally "Festessen oder Hungernot". Or as one German phrase would have it "Sekt oder Selters".

And what has this got to do with my neck? Well, I'll tell you. When I start on these huge texts, I sort of "batten down the hatches" (sich auf etwas gefasst machen) and I sit, in one position, scarcely breathing, forgetting to drink anything, not moving a millimetre - and I do this for hours and hours at a time. I feel that I have to "break the back" of the large text and won't relax until I sense that I have got the text in my grip. 

What this means is that my muscles get stiff, especially those in my neck and shoulders, so much so that by the next day, I had developed a painful neck and something that felt like but wasn't actually a headache. This lasted 48 hours, until I felt I could relax and start moving again.

But did I complain about the pain my neck? Not likely. Not when it's because I finally get to do what I enjoy, namely translating. It's a bit like the Holy Trinity or the Kinder Surprise eggs in that it's like a three-in-one thing:

1. It's a mental challenge: I get to engage my brain cells and drag out all the knowledge I've accumulated over the years. And it's even better when there's a tight deadline. Without a deadline looming, my brain doesn't wake up.

2. It satisfies my creative streak: I might not be able to write an original book, but I still get to 'create' a sentence by choosing the grammar, the vocabulary and the word order. Even in a legal text.

3. And it pays the bills - but I get to earn money by doing something that is very satisfying for me. At the end of the day, there's a text. Much more satisfying than working in an office, pushing papers around all day or wasting time with other people's egos in meetings. 

I've had experience of working in offices in Wales, London, a place on Mallorca and here in Germany and I still count myself lucky that I can sit in my nice big office, all alone, with the radio on in the background and as much tea and coffee I can handle and no-one looking over my shoulder.

For that, I'll happily accept a pain in the neck every now and then.

And this film is a comedy, you say?

Last month, I took myself off to the cinema to see a German film: Extrawurst with a local German actor, Hape (short for Hans-Peter) Kerkeling.

The word "Extrawurst" translates literally as "extra sausage", but it means figuratively "special treatment". 

The film opens at a committee meeting of a tennis club. The chairman is merely rubber-stamping [durchwinken] the decisions he makes, not giving the vice-chairman a chance to get a word in edgeways [auch mal zum Wort kommen]. Just when they want to wrap up the meeting, a woman gets up and proposes buying a second barbecue grill so that the Muslims don't have to eat food that has been cooked on the same grill that has had pork sausages on it. 

The chairman points out that the tennis club has only one Muslim member and the man in question says he is quite happy with the current situation and doesn't need any special treatment.

This is all in the first 5 minutes or so... and then the argument really kicks off. And continues for the next 40 or 45 minutes - non-stop. Really. Just as you think they've calmed down and have agreed on a solution, then everything flares up [aufflackern] again. 

The insults and accusations each of the five main characters throw at each other are very close to the true thoughts of many man and woman in the street. I've heard or read these thoughts and ideas over the years coming out of the mouths of ordinary people. It was shocking to hear them all come out, relentlessly, one after the other. You couldn't laugh. Really, you couldn't. 

The only bit of laughter from me was when a ball machine that was being repaired in the maintenance man's small room suddenly started up and balls went flying all around the room, sometimes actually hitting the people inside it.

Another woman laughed as a chairlift at Hape Kerkeling's home went wrong and threw him onto the floor and against a wall. She laughed for at least 5 minutes. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there aghast [fassungslos] and wondering how someone can laugh at someone's physical discomfort.

One more bit of slapstick [Klamauk] was yet to come towards the end of the film: a woman in a wheelchair rolls down a gentle slope and lands in a pond. Oh, what larks [was für einene Spaß]. Or maybe not.

And this film is classed as a comedy. Right. Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

For a taste of what the film was like, watch the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qwEWk5Gxi4

Carnival? - I'm outta here

It's that time of the year again: the main celebraitons of the Carnival season are getting ever closer.

Now, not all parts of Germany celebrate Carnival, which officially starts on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year. (Unfortunately, this is Remembrance Day in the UK, when everyone commemorates the soldiers fallen in past wars.) Carnival is a big thing in Catholic areas of Germany: Cologne (in particular), Düsseldorf, and Mainz are the largest towns that celebrate the season.

Festivities come to a climax with the parades on Rosenmontag (crazy Monday), which is the day before Shrove Tuesday (also known as Pancake Day in the UK - yum!). People dress up in costumes ranging from cowboys to princesses, astronauts to clowns, pirates to superheroes. On Rosenmontag, long parades consisting of floats with papier-mâché figures, often of a political nature, most famously made by Jacques Tilly. 

Here is one by Jacques Tilly - no words required

The clowns

And the marching bands - Germans do seem to like a uniform

And the people on most of the floats throw sweets (and sometimes other things, like packets of seeds)

Which are eagerly caught by all the people lining the streets

Who are in their colourful costumes

Now, the although Rosenmontag is the main day, there is also Altweiberfastnacht (literally: "old women's fasting night") on the Thursday before that Monday, that is to say on Fat Thursday (yes, really). On this day, women storm the Town Hall and snip off the ends of any man's tie that they can find, a symbolic emasculting gesture. For once, the women are supposed to be in power. 

And, of course, there is no reason not to wear a costume at the weekend and go out drinking and celebrating - until Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, when things get serious again. 

However, what I cannot understand is why so many people announce to me that they are leaving town for a week in order to avoid the Carnival festivities. All these festivities generally take place in the centre of town. 

My solution? Just stay at home. Why go to all the fuss and extra expense to "escape" the noisy people in town? Buy enough food, put your feet up, watch TV, read, play music, go for a walk in a park (no revellers there), phone friends, invite friends around, cook (for yourself or guests), do some DIY, clear out some cupboards, etc.

I can honestly say that in all my life, when I've stayed at home, I've barely noticed Carnival. Just don't go into town.