Sehr geehrte(r) Herr/Frau Doktor(in) Professor(in)

I continue to maintain a little friendly distance with my organ teacher here. I've been experimenting with signing my emails "--Liz" rather than "Elizabeth Paley," and with varying the more formal closing, "Mit freundlichen Gruessen," with the snappier "Beste Gruesse" and "Freundliche Gruesse," but at this early point in our relationship (five months of email, one phone call, one two-hour lesson, and a two-page German-to-English translation), there's just no getting around that formal introductory greeting, "Sehr geehrter [title] [name]" (Very honorable [title] [name]). I have admittedly been dropping the "Herr" and "Doktor" bits, going just for "Professor," which has felt closer to my informal American style. Still, for one-sentence responses (e.g. "yes, 10am Monday works for me"), it would be nice not to have to type out the "Sehr geehrter Professor" phrase. And as I continue always to be "Sehr geehrte Frau Paley," despite my "--Liz"s, we're clearly not yet at the informal "Lieber [title] [name]" (Dear [title] [name]) stage.

This seems like a great opportunity for an abbreviation, but typing "S.g.H.D.P.[name]" looks crude rather than speedily formal. Perhaps after the next lesson...

Accursed cheese and Landeck

Today, while we were stuck in a traffic jam in the rain, Stefan inadvertently taught me another way to curse auf Bairisch: "So a Kaas." Literally, this translates as "what a cheese" ("so ein Kaese"*), but the tone of voice suggests cheese here is yet another metaphor for Mist.

We were on our way to Landeck, which was supposed to be a quick trip up the road just past Emmendingen. The good news, I suppose, is that I'm not the only driver in my family who gets lost on occasion. Or maybe that's bad news. In any case, it took most of the afternoon to travel, as the crow flies, 15 km and back, yielding what Stefan's mother Helen described as "eine wunderschoene Schwarzwaldreise." "Das Wetter wurde immer besser" ("the weather got better and better") she insists, describing the light drizzle that had turned into a heavy downpour by the time we got home.

Our destination was the Ruinen Landeck, which offered a good excuse for a rainy-day excursion with Helen. Like so many other area Burgs, Landeck was erected in the 13th century by the local nobility (in this case, the knight Dietrich von Geroldsecker) and trashed in 1525 by angry peasants during the Bauernkrieg. The remaining ivy-covered ruins include part of a church and part of the main residence, and the stonework and easily accessible location suggest the Burg was of the posh and expansive--rather than cold and isolated--variety.

*"Kaese," by the way, is another one of those special words that ends with an -e but is masculine rather than feminine, like "Name."

Organ lesson and tape worms

On Thursday, at long last, I met up with organ teacher Herr Doktor Professor D. By the end of my two-hour power lesson, I had learned a huge amount about pedal technique, lyrical French style, swell work, and how to have faith in reed-heavy French registrations, as well as how much work I still have to do on Franck's Grand Pièce Symphonique.

In exchange for that first lesson, I'm translating some text into English for Professor D., who kindly suggested that I don't need to replicate the "tapeworm-length sentences" so typical of German. According to Wikipedia, "Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm, can grow up to 40 feet long (12 m); other species may grow to over 100 feet (30 m)." I thus thank Professor D. not only for the excellent organ lesson, but also for the most vivid yet accurate metaphor for German sentence length that I've ever had the privilege of hearing.

Overview

Once upon a time, back in the sepia-tinted olden days, Stefan was a student at the University of Hamburg, where one of his friends in the Holzwirtschaft program was named Matthias. Yesterday, Matthias, his wife Bettina, and their kids Jona and Lina visited us in Freiburg. We did the touristy thing and went on a double-loop downtown meander. In addition to the requisite farmer's market shopping trip, Muenster tower climb, Gummibaerchen purchases, and Schlossberg hike, we also enjoyed the annual bread market at the Rathausplatz, where Stefan bought a round loaf a good two feet in diameter, and Elias tried his very first, long-coveted "Spaghetti Eis"--vanilla ice cream extruded to look like noodles, with strawberries (tomato sauce) and grated white chocolate (parmesan cheese) on top.

I'm pleased to report that, having survived climbing the Muenster tower last month, I gamely climbed it again. I learned that it is much easier to climb steep, narrow stone stairs when you do it with other people, as instead of imagining plummeting through the protective wrought-iron fence onto the hard cobblestones several stories below, you are forced to focus on the Arsch ahead of you lest you bump into it.

Which reminds me that Elias's peer-taught cursing vocabulary has progressed from "Mist" ("manure") to the slightly more expressive "Mist Haufen" ("heaping pile of manure"). The Badische Zeitung had an article on Saturday that refered to the pastoral odor of the Bavarian town Wahl, where the early morning air smells specifically of "Kuhmist" ("cow Mist"). Apparently there's a vast array of different Mist bouquets waiting to be smelled in Germany.

The article on the village Wahl (where, barring accidents, they expect 100% turn-out of all seven or so registered voters) was in honor of the national elections (Wahl/Waehlen) being held today. Germans vote on Sundays, when few people work and almost every business is closed, so no one has an excuse not to vote--except Stefan, alas, for reasons having to do with changes of address, non-fucntioning websites, and a slow postal system.

<-- Blooming artichokes, Batman!

A little friendly distance

Stefan's brother and sister-in-law returned this evening from their bicycle tour of the Black Forest. Thus I was fresh off a leisurely two-hour dinner conversation with Bavarians when I arrived at the Lutheran Church's choir practice and said "Gruessdi!" to my fellow Tenoress. "Gruessdi" is Bavarian for "Greetings to informal-you-singular!"

A shocked expression crossed her face and she replied, "Wir siezen, bitte" ("we shall call one another formal-you, please"). Thereupon followed a quite educational conversation during which I tried to say, "I'm so sorry, I always get that mixed up in German, plus I was recently speaking with Bavarians. In English we have only one word for informal-you-singular, informal-you-plural, and formal-you-singular-or-plural, and that word is 'you,' unless one lives in the south, where one may also say 'y'all.'"

"No," Frau T. replied, "it is not at all complicated in German. You-formal and I are not intimate acquaintances. It is important to maintain a little friendly distance. Young people these days, they duzen [call one another informal-you] all the time. They don't understand that a little friendly distance is important. You can be friends with someone for thirty years without ever duzening. Yes, it is useful to keep a little friendly distance."

Meanwhile, one of the sopranos I met last week sailed past us and, seeing me, said, "oh yes, informal-you're Regina, right?" "No, I'm Liz," I corrected her; "and informal-you are...?" "Alex!" she said cheerfully, continuing on her way.

Introductions are important. It's generally OK to duzen with people who offer you their first names, but certainly you should siezen with people who tell you only their last names. Had I actually understood my fellow Tenoress when she introduced herself last week ("Ich bin frauzeh," she said, and I thought "well, I'll have to look up that adjective when I get home"), I would probably have been able to figure out that Zeh ("toe") was an unlikely first name--although, looking back on it, I'm sure I was siezening with her last week, because she's significantly older than I am, and courtesy dictates that you always siezen with your elders. So tonight I just messed up.

Complicating matters is that in Bavaria, when you meet strangers on a path, you are allowed to say "Gruessdi" (or "Gruess euch" if you encounter a group). Because you and your fellow wanderer both like to take walks, you have a special bond that permits such ebullient informality. If you are afraid someone will take you to task for duzening on the trail, you can play it safe and say "Gruess Gott" ("Grettings to God"), which in Southern Germany allows you to sound less like a foreigner than "Guten Morgen," "Guten Tag," or "Guten Abend." (Perish the thought that you would ever say "Gute Nacht" as a greeting--that's for late-night farewells only.)

One way to figure out whether you are supposed to siezen or duzen is to wait for the person with whom you are speaking to use a pronoun first. Until then, construct sentences that avoid pronouns altogether.

Perhaps the challenge young people these days have with keeping all these informal and formal yous straight is the reason that greetings have degenerated over the past twenty years from "Guten Tag" and "Gruess Gott" to the far cruder "Hallo." My fellow Tenoress agrees that "Hallo" is too informal and wonders what this world is coming to.

Mist postscript

OK, I was trying to keep this a family friendly blog by sticking with the most polite synonym for "snap" that I could find. But as Nancy rightly commented, it means more than "drat." Stefan adds that I mistranslated "Mist" as well. He says Mist is the manure one shovels out of a stable ("usually mixed with urine and wheat straw"). So oddly, Mist literally means what snap only figuratively alludes to in order to convey something even more uncouth. Perhaps there's a linguistic terms for such a twist?

Autumn mist

My parents have been here for about 24 hours, and my father has already struck up more conversations with the natives than I have in my entire three months here--and in English, no less. Yesterday, we walked over to the farmers' market on the corner, and it happened that one of the local candidates for the SPD (Social Democrats) was there schmoozing for votes. His supporters--dressed in bright red and handing out bright red pencils, balloons, and political info--were happy to chat with the camera-wielding tourists about how great it is that Obama has cancelled plans for an American missile shield in Europe and to ask why Americans can't get health care right. At a Thai restaurant in the Altstadt, my dad struck up a conversation with the Philippino waiter about linguistic similarities between Tagalog and Malay. Oh, to be an extrovert.

Today's itinerary included a stop at the Lienhart bakery to see if my blog-reading mother could tell the difference between Kuchen and Torte; and the Best-of-Ruins-Reachable-by-Car tour, featuring Hochburg and Kastelburg.

Thanks to a week of school, Elias now knows how to say "snap" in German. For those of you who came of age a generation or more ago, "snap" is the current American elementary-school version of "drat." German kids say "Mist." (I looked up "Mist" in a German-English dictionary, and the dictionary said it meant "Bugger! [Brit]." I haven't told Elias what "bugger" means, but he heard the word and now thinks "Mist" means "booger," a substitute he finds sufficiently scatalogical).

German engineering

Because Stefan is in our bedroom cursing about "idiotisch" German over-engineering ("wie kann man nur so 'an Scheiss konstruieren!"), I should probably say a few words about the quality of German products.

Pretty reliably over the years, whenever we'd lug a new box home from Home Depot containing, say, a power saw or a lamp, we'd lay out all the pieces on the floor and follow the assembly instructions only to find that a part was too big or too small or missing a hole, or that the nuts didn't fit the bolts, or that the wiring was frayed, or whatever. And pretty reliably, Stefan would furrow his brow and mutter angrily about the design flaws and the shoddy construction. "Typical American quality," he'd say. I'd reply defensively, "hey, you don't know that this was made in the U.S." And inevitably, the box would say "Made in the U.S.A."

In contrast, the phrase "Made in Germany" signifies precise engineering. Everything fits to a T. Pieces are precision cut, materials are long-lasting, and designs are aesthetically pleasing. Yet such industrious thoroughness has its faults.

Consider, for example, the sleek but humble toilet. If you're lucky, the reason your toilet doesn't work is that the only accessible Dichtung (how I love that word) is leaking. You buy a new gasket for a few Euros, replace the old one, and continue with your life. If you're unlucky, you're only option is to replace the entire tank, for the complex labyrinthine inner workings of German toilets are neither standardized nor do-it-yourself reparable. "Himmel, Arsch, und Zwirn."

Then there's the stainless steel toaster, glossy and proud, able to toast two thick slices of Vollkornbrot and gently warm a crusty Semmel all at the same time. It will never break. Nor will you ever be able to clean out that accumulating pile of crud in the bottom, unless you have a precision screwdriver handy, as the crumb tray is tightly attached to the appliance with four elegant, teeny tiny screws.

The current object of Stefan's disdain is a bed frame. The frame was designed to hold together with a mere twelve wooden pins and a couple of screws. So confident were its creators about its durable construction that they didn't leave any way to access the screw heads after years of changing humidity loosened all the joints. "So was bloedes."

The practical benefit that I reap from German design, of course, is learning how to curse auf Bairisch.

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.

Tuniberg

In our effort to give him much needed quality time with kids his age, Elias started a five-day "Bernd Voss Fussball Camp" today in Opfingen. By this evening, he was well exercised, tired, and quite happy.

Opfingen is one of a handful of small communities incorporated into Freiburg yet situated several kilometers to the west along the Tuniberg, a sizable hill terraced with vineyard after flourishing vineyard. While Elias was learning new soccer moves, I jogged from Opfingen north around the Tuniberg to Gottenheim, then walked back over the hill, enjoying in the views of grapes and the mountains beyond. In July, when we stayed in Waltershofen (one town north of Opfingen, also part of the Freiburg municipality), all of the grapes on the Tuniberg were green. They have since ripened into purple, red, and yellow-green clusters, and the season of new-wine fests is upon us.

The local wines are quite delectable. With Deutsch-als-Fremdsprache enthusiasm, I've been describing them to people here as tasting like the local dialect sounds: "leicht und knusprig" (light and crisp). This generally elicits skeptical looks, perhaps because most folks here haven't spent a lot of time listening to the extended diphthongs of Bo'arisch (Bairisch), where a simple three-letter word might be drawn out into a four- or five-letter one without a second thought (e.g. turning "gut" into "gu'at[h]"). Bavarian sounds more like a full-bodied red might taste, in contrast to the airy Spaetburgunder flavor of the Badisch dialect. My word choice is possibly also confusing because "knusprig" means "crispy" as well as "crisp," which might evoke images of words and wines infused with rice crispies. Nonetheless, I stand by my choice of adjectives.

As my friend Melissa points out, molted cicada shells are also light and crispy. For those who find that analogy helpful, I would suggest that full-bodied reds are the whole cicada: more than you'd necessarily want to encounter on a warm summer evening. With Badisch Spaetburgunders, you get to appreciate all the essential features of the cicada, without the undesirable heaviness of the squishy parts.

But back to the Tuniberg. In the Google Earth image below, you can see the entire hill (my trot covered only the north end). The Rhine river curves into the left of the image, about 8.5 km west of Opfingen as the cicada flies.

When short words are too long

This evening we went to the last summer organ concert in St. Peter and heard Raymond O'Donnell playing Clerambault, Stanford, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Preston, and an encore improvisation on an Irish folk song. Afterward, we met up with the delightful Frau F., a friend of a friend, for drinks. The conversation turned to Twain's essay, and she reminded us that while Germans are always happy to cram words together into ridiculously long compound nouns, they also like abbreviations.

Thus one says:

"StÜPl" (pronounced shteupl) for "Standortuebungsplatz" (the local troop training ground);

"StVZO" (pronounced ess-tay-fow-tzet-oh) for "Strassenverkehrszulassungsordnung" (regulations governing admissibility of components of street vehicles);

"ErzBer" (pronounced ertzbear) for "Erziehungsberechtigter" (a child's guardian);

and KFZ (pronounced kah-eff-ztet) for "Kraftfahrzeug" (motor-powered vehicle).

Careful readers will have noticed that while the first three abbreviations save one a little breath, KFZ is a three-syllable substitution for a modest three-syllable word. But let us not be judgmental: after all, Germans get to say "vay vay vay" rather than "double-U double-U double-U" when they talk about the world wide web.

Traffic-related abbreviations are especially popular. In addition to KFZ, there's also PKW (pronounced pay-kah-vay) for Personenkraftwagen (passenger car), and LKW (pronounced ell-kah-vay) for Lastkraftwagen (truck).

Why say "Personenkraftwagen" rather than the briefer "Auto"? Stefan explains that "Personenkraftwagen" is more formal. Thus, one might read in the newspaper that the robbers escaped "in einem PKW."

We did not get around to abbreviating Donaudampfschifffarhtsgesellschaftskapitaensgattin, but following the StÜPl model, it would probably be something like DoDaSchFaGeKaGa, which has the benefit of actually being pronounceable.

"The Awful German Language"

In 1880, Mark Twain claimed to have spent at least nine weeks trying to learn German. His observations about The Awful German Language are well worth reading. If your life partner is German, read Twain's essay out loud together and then say "I told you so."

Twain himself maintained a museum of ridiculously long German words. Topping his list: Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. According to one website, the current record for a legitimate German word is held by the 67-letter compound noun Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungs-zuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.

Doh

This story's only going to make sense if you can read a little German...

There's a word that's new to me that keeps cropping up in Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch: "söben."

Often when I'm reading, I gloss over words I don't know, especially if I understand most of the surrounding text. If I'm lucky, I can accurately figure out the meaning of a new word from context, as with "Verteidigung" in "Verteidigung gegen die dunklen Kuenste" (defense against the dark arts). But not so with "söben," and it really occurs all over the place. So I looked it up in my little Collins Gem German-English Dictionary.

"I don't understand how I could have gotten by all these years without ever having heard the word söben," I told Stefan.

"Söben?" he said, "I don't know that word."

"But it's all over the place in Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch. Söben."

He looked dubious. "Are you sure? How do you spell it?"

"Tsk, of course I'm sure. It's spelled s-o-e-b-e-n: söben."

"Söben? No, there's no such word in German."

"It's in my dictionary!" I insisted. "It means 'just now.' S-o-e-b-e-n."

Stefan pondered a moment--"S-o-e-b-e-n, s-o-e-b-e-n..."--then laughed. "Oh, you mean so-eben!"

Doh. I know the word soeben. And I had wondered why the typesetters had gone for the oe instead of an ö. Three cheers for another compound word!

Rainy day news

I had a mix of successful and unsuccessful German-as-a-foreign-Sprache experiences today. The main challenge for me in Freiburg--aside from having to speak with complete strangers, as opposed to supportive friends and relatives who pretend everything I say makes sense--is that folks here speak with a Badensisch accent, which is very different from the Bairisch accent I've grown used to hearing over the past 20 years.

After Stefan dropped us off downtown, Elias and I found a quiet plaza to sit in, and I phoned the Hochschule fuer Musik to contact the Herr Doktor Professor with whom I hope to take organ lessons this fall. I stumbled over my carefully rehearsed polite opening, Hallo, meine Name ist... "Dang!," I thought, "that was supposed to be 'mein,' not 'meine'--curse you, O noun that ends with an E but isn't feminine like the vast majority of other German E-ending nouns!" That thought took up so much mental space that I couldn't quite follow the receptionist when he said Herr D. was in the concert hall--or maybe on a concert tour--or, well, doing something or being somewhere involving one of those long compound nouns Germans are so good at. I did manage to learn that Herr D.'s telephone number was private, which saved me the embarrassment of a second phone call. Thank goodness for email.

After that, Elias and I stepped inside a bookstore. The salesperson addressed me in English, and I responded determinedly auf Deutsch, successfully asking for and being cheerfully offered exactly the books I was looking for. Yay me!

In other good news, Elias observed brightly this afternoon, "I think maybe I will not fall in a gutter today." And he didn't! We also enjoyed some pea-sized hail, to his great delight.

This evening, I learned that the Muenster was one of the few buildings in the Altstadt not to be destroyed in World War II. The present-day "old town," modeled on medieval city plans, includes several reconstructions of original buildings, with the rest of the new construction in a congruent style.

Having learned this, I'm trying not to feel so embarrassed by the big McDonald's sign on the gate over Kaiser Joseph Strasse, since reconstructed historic integrity isn't quite as precious as the real thing. Or is it? Still, the sign is cringe-worthy.

The cobblestone walks are all relatively new, and they're charming. Many of the mosaics indicate what the adjacent stores sell: a pretzel for baked goods, scissors for haircuts, and a goose for...um...geese? Many of the designs have endured longer than their corresponding businesses, so you might find a toy store with a mosaic pair of scissors on the sidewalk out front. The sidewalk stones are all quite small--ranging in size from about an index finger to a pinky.