Expanding the Bavarian curse repertoire

Cross post!

Half Maximiliansweg Day 5: Bergen to Inzell

Day 5: Sunday, July 17

Following our 12-mile off-route "rest day," I stayed up way too late exploring alternative routes for Day 5. The original plan was to take the Seilbahn up to Hochfelln, to rejoin the Maximiliansweg after ditching it on Day 4. But at this point, pretty much every muscle in Leslie's legs was complaining, and I was nursing some burgeoning plantar fasciitis in my right heel. I also still had some lingering uneasiness about the unexpected T3-rated trail section on Kampenwand and was reluctant to get all the way up to Hochfelln only to encounter another exposed trail. Finally, the urge to have a connected point-to-point hike rather than a gap between Bergen and Hochfelln was strong. 

After waffling about the route all through breakfast, I phoned Stefan and asked if he'd still respect me if we skipped Hochfelln and took a direct route from Bergen to Inzell instead. "Oh, Hochfelln," he said, "That's a known peak." Meaning people know it by name and by profile. A known peak! But he said he'd still respect me for connecting 80 miles via a lower route. He noted that acrophobia (fear of heights) isn't the same as being nicht schwindelfrei (not free from giddiness) on trails that are ausgesetzt (exposed), and suggested I try that vocabulary out on the locals to ask if the trail from Hochfelln to Inzell had any exposed stretches.

Thus it was that we asked both the cleaning woman who knocked on our door, and then the bakery owners, when we paid for our room, whether they knew if the Hochfelln part of the Maximiliansweg had stretches that were ausgesetzt, because we were nicht schwindelfrei--and learned that not only were the trails on Hochfelln more or less fine for those with exposurephobia, but also that no one at the pension had ever heard of the Maximiliansweg, at least by that name.

Having determined we could handle Hochfelln, our decision-making process no longer needed to include saving face. We yielded to the pull of a connected point-to-point route and the concerns of sore legs and feet. Just to be 100% certain, we walked to the lift station, where we found a large, maskless, cigarette-smoking crowd of tourists waiting for the 9:30 gondola. Decision made.

Our new route took us through fields and woods up to yet another pilgrimage church, Maria Eck...

Grottos are a thing in Chiemgau...

..and then south through verdant valley...

...to Ruhpolding, where our route rejoined the Maximiliansweg. 

Stefan had advised us in advance not to say RUH-pol-ding or Ruh-POL-ding, but Ruh-pol-DING, so we wouldn't stand out as tourists, but we never had opportunity to mention the name to anyone while we were there. 

We ate lunch at a swanky but oddly furnished hotel, where wending one's way to the restroom was like entering a Star Trek holodeck. Afterward, Leslie, who was DONE WALKING, caught a bus to Inzell, while I hiked the rest of the way. Thanks again, 9-Euro ticket!  

Descending the last bit of hill before Inzell

For all of the mountains that surrounded it, Inzell was surprisingly flat--like a small bit of central Illinois plopped down on the edge of the Alps. I have no photos to prove this, of course, because I was too busy being shocked by the flatness, but the map below gives a sense of it. Also shocking were the wide, oddly US-suburban-style streets and sidewalks, the first indication, as I entered town, that Inzell is very young by German standards (incorporated 1818). 

Ta da! 14 miles.

App amusements

Well, that was excellent! Before I start posting Steinebach-to-Immenstadt photo dumps, some observations about two apps: Meteoblue and Komoot.

Locals recommended Meteoblue as the most accurate weather forecasting site. My cell phone kept translating the site from German to English, so I would get forecasts like this:

What day of the week is Mrs.? That would be Friday, Freitag, abbreviated Fr, which is an abbreviation for Frau, which is Mrs. in English. I'm not sure how my cell phone translator managed to get from Sa (Samstag) to sat (Saturday, obviously, but written as the past tense of sit). On Fridays, the sat forecast is not actually for morning--it's just translated that way because Morgen means both tomorrow and morning. I can't explain why Sunday, Sonntag, made it through the translator as So, with a capital S, rather than so, but I enjoy thinking of it as an exclamation. So. Despite these amusing quirks, auto-translate software has come a huge way since the last time we were in Germany on a sabbatical.  

Turns out the Meteoblue mobile website is psychologically more helpful than the app, with variably [in]accurate hourly predictions rather than variably [in]accurate 3-hour predictions. It took me a few days to notice that the website always includes a statement on the accuracy of the forecasts, from "the forecast for Friday is very stable and a high level of accuracy is assumed" to "the forecast for Sunday is wildly changeable and who knows what's going to happen."

The most accurate weather forecasting tool I found on my trek was in a yard just west of Roßhaupten:

Stone Age Weather Station:
Stone - dry = sunny
Stone - wet = rain
Stone - moving = stormy
Stone - in water = flooding
Stone - steamy = heat + rain
Stone - grey = hoarfrost
Stone - white = snow
Stone - not visible = fog
Stone - up above = world upside down
Stone - gone = thievery 

Komoot, which I used for route planning and navigation, was indispensable. It has a few faults--like directing me to cross a bridge in Immenstadt that was still under construction and did not yet span the river, and often telling me to go left when it meant right or right when it meant left, or remaining silent at two- or three-pronged forks in the road--but I eventually came to understand its left-right-straight [il]logic, and I relied on its excellent maps to walk 182 km (113 miles) across southern Bavaria. 

Apparently I turned on a Komoot setting that told it to speak to me in English when navigating; this provided regular doses of entertainment. Clearly Komoot has a limited database on how to pronounce English vowels and consonants. The letter y was consistently pronounced as in hyphen, so I was often told to continue straight for e.g. fiff-tye meters. Komoot always pronounced German street names as though they were in English, which was (1) totally unnecessary and (2) if you know even the bare minimum of how to pronounce words in German, amazingly hard to purposely botch as well as Komoot botches it. For example, Dießener Straße (roughly DEEssenehr SHTRAHsseh) becomes dyeSENNur STRASS and Bergweg (roughly BEHRG VAYG) becomes BRG whegg.

Are moose to elk as pie is to Kuchen?

Tonight, I learned that the European word for moose (Alces alces) is Elch. The scientific name for moose (clearly bestowed by Europeans) is basically Latin for Elk elk.

Alaskan moose = Elch

In the U.S., we use the word "elk" not for moose, but for wapiti--Cervus canadensis. This is because early European explorers in North America thought Cervus canadensis looked like European moose, which they had already named "elk."

The word "moose" comes from an Algonquin language, Eastern Abenaki: mos. Wikipedia's entry on Elk adds that Asian elk are usually called wapiti (but doesn't say by whom)--from a Shawnee/Cree word, waapiti, meaning "white rump"--because Europeans call moose "elk." Calling Asian elk "elk" would confuse them with moose.

Wapiti standing in a Nebraska field = "elk" in
North American English. This is not a moose.

This topic came up at dinner tonight through a series of moose homonyms.

We were discussing words I find difficult to distinguish, like Abfall (garbage) and Apfel (apple). The difference in pronunciation lies in the vowel of the second syllable (faahl vs. fll), but sometimes the vowel zips past in a vague context, and I can't tell what the speaker means. For example, yesterday S suggested to E that perhaps E could do something about the Abfall/Apfel. We had some apples that needed eating, as well as some garbage that needed to be taken out. Which was it?

Discussing this at dinner tonight, our friend B observed that unlike Apfelmus (applesauce), Abfallmus (garbage puree) wouldn't be very pleasant. "Das muss sein" ("that must be"), he added, making a joke out of Mus (puree) and muss (must)--both of which sound similar to "moose." Naturally, I asked, "wie sagt man moose?" ("how does one say 'moose'?")--which everyone heard as "wie sagt man mousse?", because Germans have heard of Mousse, but not moose--because moose are Elch.

For most of the evening, I thought the word "moose" should join the word "pie" on the list of words the German language should adopt, because in North America, moose and elk are clearly different animals. But then I learned that the moose/elk issue really stems from Europeans wrongly calling North American wapiti elk, not from calling European moose elk--because moose were roaming around Europe long before Europeans had the opportunity to learn the word mos.

Tomorrow I'll ask S and B "wie sagt man 'wapiti' auf deutsch?"

Chukotka moose or east Siberian moose (= Elch)

Puns in German

German is not a language for puns.

For the record, the OED dryly defines "pun" as "the use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect; a play on words."

My favorite pun is bilingual:

Why do the French only eat one egg for breakfast? --Beacuse one egg is un oeuf. 

See? One sound, double meaning: one egg = un oeuf = enough.

Here's another favorite:

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing, but you mean a mother.

Get it? Another? A Mother? Freud? Funny, right?

In German, puns operate more like this American English device:

TruxTop.

Get it? It's a truck stop called "TruxTop." The letters XT make the same sound as CKST, but a play on spelling rather than meaning does not a pun make.

Now behold a pun from Berlin, auf Deutsch:

Farschule B-Standen. "Traffic School B-STANDEN."

B-STANDEN is the name of the traffic school. In English, it means "B-Stood." Stefan and his niece say it's a funny name because "B-STANDEN" sounds like "Bestanden," which means "Passed." Get it? "Traffic School Passed." Like, you go to this traffic school, and you pass. But instead of calling it "Traffic School Passed," they call it "Traffic School PAS-sed." Or maybe "Traffic Skool Passed"? Or "Traffic School P-Assed" (which is a little more passive-aggressively funny in English than B-STANDEN is in German). It's hard to translate, but in any case, it's about as subtle and clever as TruxTop--which is to say, it is neither subtle nor clever.

I have tried making up puns in German, but Germans are linguistic literalists, and they simply stare at me with blank faces. Think there's potential to do something with Abfall/Apfel (trash/apple)? Nope. One means trash, the other means apple, and the words don't sound remotely similar. How about Mutter/Mutter (mother/screw nut)? No, the meaning is clear from context. And who would call their mother a screw nut anyway? (See? That's already funny in English.) Perhaps in Bavaria, pining for spring, one could wistfully sigh, "ja Mai"/"ja mei" (yes May/oh my)--but it probably wouldn't be funny.

Of course, I'm a non-native German speaker, with limited exposure to the nuances of the language. Know a pun in German that's actually funny? As funny as un oeuf or a mother? Please share it in the comments section!