Throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. -Mark Twain
One of the biggest draws of Germany in the wintertime are the different Christmas markets that spring up in almost every town, and Hamburg is no exception. Germany’s second-largest city has dozens of different Christmas markets, all with unique themes and styles, and there is scarcely time to see them all in the six weeks leading up to Christmas.
Continue reading “Exploring Hamburg’s various Christmas markets”
On November 10, 2015, just three days before the infamous Paris attacks, Hamburg lost a legend.
Helmut Schmidt, one of Germany’s most loved politicians and a Hamburg native, died.
Continue reading “Remembering Helmut Schmidt: Hamburg mourns a legend”
For a country known for its bloated bureaucracy and strict regulations, Germany has comparatively lax food safety laws – at least in comparison to Washington state.
To get my Washington food worker’s card, I had to watch a little video online about various food-related rules and answer simple questions related to them afterwards.
In Germany, I showed up one evening at a repurposed furniture store, sat in a crowded room, and watched a video on an ill-fated food worker who got a bad case of food poisoning and had to stay home three days from work. Continue reading “The surprisingly slack standards of food safety in Germany”
One of the most memorable university orientation events was the Stadtrallye. It turns out “rally” has a completely different meaning in German than in English, and rather than a pep assembly or political demonstration, this was more of a scavenger hunt/team challenge.
Continue reading “Stadtrallye – a different kind of new-student orientation”
There is no hotter topic in German media right now than refugees.
I’ve told several friends about my job teaching German to refugees and gotten a lot of positive feedback. Several have asked if I get paid (I do) and said they’d like to be involved in something like that, even on a volunteer basis. Everyone is talking about the refugee crisis right now, with Germany taking in more refugees per month now than it has in twelve months in the past. (I believe the statistic I heard was, Germany took in more refugees in June of this year than it did in all of 2013). Chancellor Angela Merkel is under close scrutiny for the country’s refugee policy right now, especially after that video of her accidentally making a little girl cry went viral. Continue reading “#RefugeesWelcome”
Following the Wanderlust 