Knall! Bang! The Black Screen of Death

I'm blogging from Stefan's laptop this evening, as mine has been kissed by the black screen of death. My noble husband has rescued the several hundred photographs I've taken since June, and is now attempting to restore the Windows Vista operating system (a.k.a. "this piece of crap").

I'm still in yesterday's confession mode, so I'll mention that I tossed my copy of Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch aside several hundred pages ago, almost as soon as Elias finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I'm back on the bandwagon again, I swear. Today I purchased Harry Potter und der Orden des Phoenix at the Thalia bookstore in the Altstadt. The book's first linguistic lesson (which I should have learned from the previous book, but better late than never) is that the German word "Knall" pales next to the English word "bang." "Bang" is delightfully onomatopœic: the explosive B moves with shocking abruptness into the vowel a before the word fades into the velar nasal ng. "Bang" ranks right up there with other one-syllable classics such as "pow," "bam," and "biff." Stefan claims "Knall" is onomatopœic too: "kh'-nnahlllll," he demonstrates, sounding more like a purring cat than a gunshot. "Well, it's explosive for us anyway," he shrugs, speaking on behalf of His People.

This evening we met up with the friendly and knowledgable Frau H. for Part II of her Altstadt tour. Alas, Altstadt anecdotes and other observations must wait until my laptop emerges from the dark side.