Not just any socks

Part of the process of starting a blog includes choosing a url. Blogspot.com then searches its records to determine whether your desired web address has already been taken. Wouldn't you know, brotzeit.blogspot.com and pretty much every conceivable variation of [kaes]spaetzl[i, en, n].blogspot.com are in use. (We didn't know that in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Brotzeit is called Vesper; for the record, vesper.blogspot.com is also unavailable.) So Stefan started suggesting culturally relevant words that only a privileged few would know. Thus was born wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com.

You can tell from the L without a neighboring vowel that "Wadlstrumpf" is a Bavarian word. Other Germans spell Wadl "Wade[n]." Stefan says it is difficult for Bavarians to say "Wadde," so they say the much easier-on-the-tongue "Wadl" instead. Besides which, other Germans don't wear Wadlstruempfe anyway, so Bavarians can call them whatever they want. "Wadl" means "calf"; "Strumpf" means stocking. So a Wadlstrumpf is a calf-stocking.

Note that the men in the photograph are not wearing Wadlstruempfe: they are wearing socks. Wadlstruempfe are for the calves only. Take away the grey part below the bottom green stripe, and you have a Wadlstrumpf. You see a lot more socks than Wadlstruempfe in Bavaria. How's that for a concept familiar to only the privieleged few?