I found one of my favourite beers - Kilkenny (from Ireland) in a Dresden supermarket the other day. Six bottles sell for only for 5 Euro and change - a bargain! I'd be lucky to get ONE beer at a pub in Dublin for that price. Four cans in Toronto cost nearly nine dollars. Sadly, my local Irish pub ("local" meaning near my home in Oakville) stopped selling it. I don't know why, exactly, but it probably had something to do with the fact that a couple of the waitresses pronounced it KILLKA-nee (instead of kill-KEN-nee) so the customers probably didn't recognize it when it was read out on the list of available beers...
School ended at 8pm so, having started at 10am, I was anxious to get home. Conny, Gerald and I shared the beers in the garden with caprese (Italian salad of tomato and mozzarella), made by yours truly. To my surprise, Conny and Gerald revealed that the bargain I thought I had found was no bargain at all. They informed me that six bottles of Beck's beer (from Germany) sells for only three and a half Euro. Other, lesser-known brands, sell for even less. It's no wonder that everyone - and I mean everyone - walks the streets drinking beer from one hand while holding a few more bottles in the other. The supermarkets sell beer individually too. Now THAT is a convenience store.
As usual, I practiced my broken German sentences with my loyal and helpful audience, majorly blundering a few times which made me think of the (discounted) controvery over JFK's doughnut moment in 1963. For those of you who are (also) too young to have seen JFK's speech on TV, you can watch it on You Tube after which you might get the joke about Mayor Quimby stating "Ich bin ein Springfielder" on The Simpsons.
There is a German symbol for a double ss which looks like a capital b. It is called an eszet and it looks like this - ß. The Swiss Germans don't use it and it will never appear in a German crossword puzzle, but it has puzzled me as I haven't solved the logic of when to use it. I was spelling the word for snack (as I served the caprese salad) as i-m-b-i-ß when Gerald said "ISS". I was sure that the eszet was in use for this word but he was pointing to the sky. The International Space Station was passing by overhead. Lina - this one's for you. It was "COOL"!
School ended at 8pm so, having started at 10am, I was anxious to get home. Conny, Gerald and I shared the beers in the garden with caprese (Italian salad of tomato and mozzarella), made by yours truly. To my surprise, Conny and Gerald revealed that the bargain I thought I had found was no bargain at all. They informed me that six bottles of Beck's beer (from Germany) sells for only three and a half Euro. Other, lesser-known brands, sell for even less. It's no wonder that everyone - and I mean everyone - walks the streets drinking beer from one hand while holding a few more bottles in the other. The supermarkets sell beer individually too. Now THAT is a convenience store.
As usual, I practiced my broken German sentences with my loyal and helpful audience, majorly blundering a few times which made me think of the (discounted) controvery over JFK's doughnut moment in 1963. For those of you who are (also) too young to have seen JFK's speech on TV, you can watch it on You Tube after which you might get the joke about Mayor Quimby stating "Ich bin ein Springfielder" on The Simpsons.
There is a German symbol for a double ss which looks like a capital b. It is called an eszet and it looks like this - ß. The Swiss Germans don't use it and it will never appear in a German crossword puzzle, but it has puzzled me as I haven't solved the logic of when to use it. I was spelling the word for snack (as I served the caprese salad) as i-m-b-i-ß when Gerald said "ISS". I was sure that the eszet was in use for this word but he was pointing to the sky. The International Space Station was passing by overhead. Lina - this one's for you. It was "COOL"!
