Archive for July 2008
Burger Meister? What?
We were staying at friends’ flat in Munich a few months ago, and their boy just loves baggers! He’s always going on about the bagger meister this, the bagger meister that…
In German, a bagger is a front loader or excavator; i.e. one of those big yellow pieces of equipment you see at a construction site. The bagger meister, is the dude who drives the bagger.
Digital cameras are just too darn exact. They give you a perfect likeness of the thing you just photographed! There’s no room for interpretation.
I mean, how are you going to convince people that your masterpiece “represents man’s struggle” when they can clearly make out a rusty VW Beetle?
It’s time for a change, people! I challenge you to throw out your digital cameras. (Or at least place them carefully in their protective cases and store them temporarily in the hallway cupboard) It’s time to release your inner-artists by embracing your scanners!
We really enjoyed our time in Sydney last year. Our friends were really good to us, they showed us around, fed us well and made us feel welcome.
Except for Koki.
In Germany, it’s all the craze to modify those cigarette warning labels. (Yeah, I know, them wacky Germans!)
A morbid idea popped into my head while I was chatting with a buddy a few years back on MSN. He was home sick with a stomach flu and evidently could barely move his fingers to type.
It was near Christmas time, and he needed to buy a gift for his friends’ kids, so he was asking me if I knew anything about Pokeman and Pikachu, and that’s when it hit me…
When the re-designed BMW Mini appeared in 2001, one thing that made it cute and appealing was that you could customize it with roof decals. The ones I remember the most were the black-and-white checkerboards, and the striking red-white and blue of Great Britain’s flag.
But since the new version of the Mini was no longer wholly British, I got to thinking…
Being the healthy folk that we are, we consume a lot of bananas (good source of potassium, you know!)
However, we end up with so many of those banana-company stickers. Each one just begging to be re-stuck somewhere!
So we’ve come up with some games that the kids might enjoy…
When you first learn the German language, or when you move to Germany or Austria or Switzerland, certain expressions will cause you to pause.
One well-intentioned phrase is sure to make you giggle.
When you are about to embark on a journey, your friendly Austrian or German or Swiss neighbor will wish you “bon voyage”, or “have a nice trip” in their own special way…