Dresden

The capital city of Sachsen-Anhalt (the state that Leipzig is in) is Dresden. At the beginning of September we went there for our wedding anniversary (I know, it took a while to get around to writing this entry!).

There is some rivalry between Dresden and Leipzig (the second main city in this state). Dresden is where the ruler was - the city of culture, administration, etc. Leipzig was a city of trade. Each city needed the other, but often didn't like each other. Like many of these things, the rivalry continues to the present day.

Dresden is much more popular with tourists than Leipzig, and it definitely has a more interesting and beautiful zentrum (inner city). It is on a river, and has the remains of an impressive city wall. Here is a picture over the river from the top of the wall.

Another nice spot is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). It was completely bombed out near the end of WWII, and has been rebuilt over the past few years. As much as possible they have tried to use the old stonework in the original positions. In this photo you can see the mixture of the old stones (darker in colour) and the newer ones.


On one side of the church is the restored statue of Martin Luther. As well as being instrumental in the Reformation, Luthor's life and work had a profound effect on the history of the German people.

We were fortunate to hit Dresden during a festival of some kind. It was a little like a mini Oktoberfest, with beer, bratwurst and handicraft stalls around.

Here's a picture of Jo in front of one of the stalls. The hearts are made of gingerbread, and have various valentines days phrases in German, some of which are quite amusing. There's the usual "Ich liebe dich" - I love you. There's also "Ich will dich" I want you. "Du bist süß" - you are sweet. "Ohne dich bin ich nichts" without you, I am nothing. "Ohne dich kann ich nicht leben" - without you I can't live. "Du bist mein Schatz" - you are my dear. "Nur du allein" Only you alone. "Ich träume nur von dir" - I only dream of you. Bookmark this page - you never know when you might need some of these phrases!

Wie sagt man "No" auf Deutsch? (How do you say "No" in German?)

The obvious answer, which most people know, is "Nein". You pronounce it a bit like the english number "9".

The real answer is that it depends where in Germany you are.

In the part of Germany we are in (Sachsen), they say naaay (a little scottish?). In some parts of Germany, they say Naaaah (lazy australian?). In yet others they say Nooo (standard english?), and elsewhere noieee (if someone can tell us where else they say this, let us know!).

Fortunately, they all understand (and occassionally use) the standard "Nein".

Fußball (Football, Soccer)

The Germans are into Fußball. Nathan has been given lessons in the basic positional patterns (4/3/3 and 4/4/2), optimal substitution times (45, 55, 60 or 75 minutes), the best attributes at each position (eg very tall, heavier players for centre defenders compared to smaller and quicker players as the outside defenders).

Nathan has even been assigned a football team to barrack for - Borussia Dortmund. The reason being that they have the same colours as his NRL team - the Wests Tigers. Normally Nathan doesn't tell people that he goes for the Tigers, as they are usually near the bottom of the table. The year that he's out of Australia, they are doing the best they've ever done since the Balmain Tigers were in the grand final in 1989. Tomorrow they are playing in the Preliminary final against St George for a place in the Grand final! [Later note - they won, and are in the grand final!!!]

Borussia is currently in 9th place out of 18 teams.

Difficult German language concept: Separable verbs (Trennenbare Verben)
In German, you can combine verbs with prefixes to give different meanings. eg aufstehen = up stand = get up. Zusammenbauen = together build = assemble. There is a similar concept in English, such as overhear, understand, describe. And, just like English, there are some seperable verbs that don't make intuitive sense. eg übersitzen = Over Put = Translate. aufhören = on listen = stop. That's not so bad, except that these verbs are separable, which means that the preposition is usually said at the end of the sentence. I'll give you an equivelant english example:

Did you hear what they said over? = Did you overhear what they said?

What makes it even worse, is that different prepositions at the end of the sentence will change the meaning totally, and you might not remember the rest of the sentence by the time you work out the main action taking place.

eg
I can't stand the attack under the wall at our left flank which will leave our archers unprotected under.
I can't stand the attack under the wall at our left flank which will leave our archers unprotected with.

The Germans have fought many battles in their long history. I wonder how many were lost because the messenger forgot the last word?

Deutschland entscheidet (Germany Decides)

Over the past week, we have learn more about German politics than we knew about Australian politics (well, maybe not quite...). In case you missed it, Germany had an election last weekend, and the result has got everyone in Germany talking.

The problem is - no one won the election. The election was particularly close, and neither of the main coalitions have a majority. Unlike Australian politics, there are 5 significant parties in Germany, and none of them are in as close a coalition as the Liberal/National coalition (ie they often backstab each other). This means that the 5 parties must now negotiate with each other to form a new coalition that will have a majority.

What makes German politics fun, is that each party has its own colour.

CDU/CSU - Black (a bit like the Liberal/National coalition).
SPD - Red (a bit like the ALP).
Greens - Green (like the Greens).
FDP - Yellow (economic rationalists).
The Lefts - RED (communists).

OK, I know there's two red parties, but that's not my fault. The lefts are new, and since they're communist, they have to be red!

OK, now the fun starts.

The two biggest parties are the Black and Red, each with around 35% of the votes. They both have smaller partners (Black with Yellow, Red with Green) of around 10% each, and there is the RED party with around 10%.

So the traditional Black/Yellow or Red/Green coalitions are not strong enough to form Government. What happens now?

The obvious solution is that one of the coalitions accepts the RED party into their coalition, and form government. Sorry, won't work - both main coalitions made it very clear they will not talk to the REDS. They are the bad guys at the moment.

OK, so there is an impasse. What's the solution? The coalitions will need to mix up. Three options have been put forward:

The traffic light coalition (ampel). Red, Yellow, Green - get it? Traffic light? So this requires the Yellow faction to betray their Black partners. They already said they will not do this.

The Jamaica coalition. Black, Green Yellow is the Jamaican flag. This requires the Greens to betray their Red partners. The greens are open to this, and this seems a likely possibility.

The GRAND coalition. Wait for it - the Black and Reds get together and form government, each ditching their respective coalition partners. The closest parallel I can think of is like the ALP right faction and Liberals getting together to form goverment and ditching the rest of the ALP and the nationals. Can you imagine that? Well, the leaders of the Reds and Blacks refuse to consider the grand coalition unless they themselves get to be the Chancellor. There can only be one Chancellor, so that's a problem.

So - are you confused? Don't worry, when a German was explaining to Nathan, he said "Don't worry if you're confused... we're confused, and we're German"!

There was a funny caricature of the three potential Jamaica coalition leaders dressed as Jamaicans. Here's a link - hope it still works!
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20050922&hn=24325

Erneuerbare Energie (Renewable energy)

As you should know, the reason we are in Germany is because of renewable energy, specifically Solar (Sonnenenergie). In Germany, about 10% of it energy is obtained from renewable sources - Wind (Windenergie), Solar and Biomass (Biomasse). This is quite an achievement.

Wind energy makes up the bulk of this (60%), and the landscape is in some places dominated by the wind turbines. Many of the Germans have complained about how ugly they look, but Nathan likes the look of them. Jo agrees with the Germans!

Above is a picture of a wind turbine. It doesn't look like much in a photo, but up close they are REALLY big. Can you see Nathan in the picture? If not, here is a close-up of the base. Impressive, aren't they?

Ich fahre, du fahrst, er fahrt (I drive, you drive, he fart... I mean drives)

More on driving in Leipzig.

* Some traffic lights are turned off in the evening and weekends, because there isn't enough traffic to justify keeping them on.


* Blitzer = Speed camera. These take photos from the front! They need to have a photo of your face. Unlike in Australia, the actual driver is solely responsible, not the owner of the car. This means in theory that if you obstruct the view of your face you could potentially get away with not paying a fine because they can’t be 100% sure it was you. Can you spot the blitzer?

* Yellow rectangle signs with a town/city name on it mean “go at 50km/h”. It doesn’t actually have the number 50 anywhere or any ‘speed sign’ near it. You’re just supposed to know it. There’s one on the way into Leipzig from the north and there is a blitzer soon after it. Very sneaky if you ask us. How are you supposed to know that! Fortunately Nathan was given plenty of warning about this particular nasty.

* There are blue speed signs that mean you must go FASTER than the stated speed. Only in Germany....

Shau Mama - ohne Hände! (Look mum, no hands!)

Gib mir mein Ampelmann zuruck! (Give me back my traffic light man!)

Strange German Culture #3. In former East Germany (GDR, which includes Leipzig), the traffic lights have quite distinctive pedestrian signals. Let me explain.

During GDR times, the East Germans developed their own ampelmann signs. Here are some pictures of the red and green Ampelmann.

Ampel = traffic lights. Mann = man. Notice the cute hats and unique walking style.

When East and West Germany were united, East Germany was more or less absorbed into West Germany. One of the changes was the replacement of all the old Ampelmann with the West German standard. Sometimes people just go too far. There was an uproar.

"You can take away our industries, take away our jobs, take away our government... but you can't take away our ampelmann!".

With such an impassioned plea as this, how could you say no. The East German Ampelmann was brought back out of retirement to adorn the streets yet again.

Leipzig Englisch Kirche (Leipzig English Church)

As previously mentioned, one of the highlights of our time here has been our new church. We contacted this church months ago before we even started packing up our house. It has been wonderful to attend here. We were welcomed from the moment we stepped into the building. It’s a little strange when we meet people (we meet someone we don’t know every week we go) and they say “oh you’re the ones from Australia”. Apparently they’ve never had Australians attend the church before. LEC has a very international feel – there are people from so may parts of the world (England, USA, Canada, Africa, Indonesia, Brunei, Germany, China and now Australia!). There are always people coming and going. For the first few weeks the congregation was saying goodbye to someone or other. We attend in the morning at 10:30am. It has a mixture of families and some students. You can check out the website for this church at http://www.leipzig-english-church.de/


Here's a picture of the family we stayed with for our first month in Leipzig.


We meet in a Lutheran church hall (Gemaindehaus). The actual Lutheran church building for this hall is across the road and only used for special events e.g. weddings. Some years ago, it’s congregation (German) merged with another Lutheran church and they meet at that other church building. Here is a picture of the church building that we DON'T meet in.

Nathan is planning to help a little with the Sunday School, which lacks male teachers. Jo is going to play the piano for the church service sometimes. We hope to attend a home group soon and Jo will likely go to the women’s bible study group one morning a week.

Spaghetti Eis (Spaghetti Ice Cream)

Strange German culture #2. Spaghetti Ice Cream?? Did I hear that right? You sure did. Spaghetti Eis is a dessert you can buy here which is supposed to look like Spaghetti Bolognese, but is actually made up of ice cream (spaghetti), strawberry sauce (bolognese), and white chocolate flakes (parmesan cheese). Needless to say, Nathan just had to try this. Here's a picture of them making the spaghetti.

And here's a picture of the finished product. The verdict? It doesn't taste like spaghetti, but it's not bad. It was a bit surprising to try and eat pure cream at the bottom. Don't know why it was there...