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One more German goon reporting in. I was born, raised and still live in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. So if anyone has questions about, well, East Germany/Ex-GDR stuff, I can answer those. We're not all xenophobic neonazis, honest! 
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Jan 4, 2010 19:16
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 23:36 |
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Yeah, feeling guilty over the actions of the people in the Third Reich is still a huge deal in Germany. Some of the fallout is that prominently displaying a German flag or talking about national pride will get you lumped in with "that crowd" quite quickly. This isn't helped by the fact that since we banned most of the symbols and slogans of the actual Nazis, the neonazis and their sympathizers have been hiding behind this kind of ultra-nationalism. As for foreigners speaking German, you might as well accept that you will never be mistaken for a local no matter how hard you work at it. German depends a lot on being a native speaker so you pick up an intuitive understanding of grammar rather than trying to somehow make sense of the massive amount of rules you need to learn. Apparently, a couple years ago someone interviewed German people on the street and asked them what grammatical grammar made-up German-sounding words were. The results were incredibly consistent, so you might say that as a native speaker you internalize the complex underlying ruleset so well that you can even make dead-on guesses about features of words that do not actually exist. And even if you somehow manage to duplicate that as a foreign speaker, your accent will be off. All that said, though, learning to speak German well enough to make yourself understood isn't very hard, and most Germans I've met are delighted when someone tries, and even failing that most speak enough English that you can make do that way.
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Jan 18, 2010 19:33
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On the topic of German music, there are of course the obvious answers (Rammstein!), but I think you'll also find sizeable populations of punk and hip hip music. I caution against the latter because a) they lyrics can be extremely hard to penetrate for non-native speakers (hell, I can sometimes hardly keep pace) and b) the currently popular wave of rap seems to be entirely gangsta posing. I'd recommend Die Ärzte (Video NSFW), Die Toten Hosen, Die Beginner and Fettes Brot. You can also find texts of some popular German music with translations / translation cues here.
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Jan 22, 2010 10:43
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Disclaimer: Applies to Magdeburg, smack in the middle of what used to be the GDR. My city has a lot of Asian students in general. I think we have a lot of Vietnamese and Korean exchange students, but I know there's Chinese students and it wouldn't surprise me to find out there's Thai students here, too. I'd say the next biggest group is Eastern European, I hear Russian being spoken by student-age people on the streets on occasion. Recently, I'm also running into more black people, but I'm not familiar enough with African languages to tell you exactly where they're from. They're probably not African-American or Brits, since I haven't met one who spoke English as primary language. Actually, native English speakers in general seem to be vanishingly rare here.
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Mar 2, 2010 00:36
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Fasheem posted:You have successfully scared me away from Munich, not that I was ever really considering it in the first place. I'm taking this as the opportunity to pimp my hometown Magdeburg. Student life in Germany doesn't get much cheaper than here, since a) we still have a good overstock of housing that keeps prices low, b) you only pay student fees and c) those fees include a ticket for the tram and bus, which can take you all over town. Magdeburg also punches above its weight class in shopping and entertainment, has a *lot* of green spaces and is close to several of the big northern cities. I've spent time both in the big university "Otto von Guericke" and the smaller University of Applied Sciences. They're both nice in their own way: the former has a big campus and a wide selection of classes, the latter is a little more specialised and cozy, plus it's out in the green, which is *really* nice in summer. Both have brought a lot of foreign students here, so I think it's transitioning out of the "insider tip" territory quite nicely.
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Mar 14, 2010 09:59
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Not as big as they were in the 90s, but who is?
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Mar 15, 2010 09:42
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Magdeburg resident here, and I'll second the vouch. The university's good, so's the city. Lots of international students here.
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Apr 24, 2010 10:50
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The word you're all looking for is "Kanten".
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Jul 21, 2011 15:11
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Und Militärseelsorge auf Grundlage von psychiatrischer Betreuung anstatt der bzw. zumindest ergänzend zu kirchlichen Betreuern wäre auch eine gute Idee.
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Sep 25, 2011 12:39
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niethan posted:Mimimi ich habe mich freiwillig als Mörder für den Staat gemeldet und jetzt habe ich ein schlechtes Gewissen weil ich Kinder hingerichtet habe / bin traumatisiert weil sich die Leute gegen uns gewehrt haben. Die Rolle der Bundeswehr und ihrer Verwendung in Auslandseinsätzen ist sicher diskutabel, aber das ist Polemik aus der untersten Schublade, die auch nicht als sarkastischer Humor gesellschaftsfähig ist. Aus dem Stegreif fünf ernsthafte Ansätze zum Thema Bundeswehr im Ausland: - Inwieweit hat die Bundeswehr als internationale Eingreiftruppe (so wie sich das ja in den letzten Jahren gestaltet) noch einen Bezug zur Defensivarmee, als die sie ursprünglich aufgestellt wurde? Man kann natürlich argumentieren, dass die Defensivrolle in Zeiten der EU und der "Umzingelung durch Freunde" komplett überflüssig ist, aber das heißt nicht automatisch, dass wir deshalb unsere Soldaten ins Ausland schicken müssen, um der ganzen Geschichte einen neuen Sinn einzuhauchen. - Anhaltene Budgetkürzungen und Verzögerungen in der Ausrüstungsentwicklung. Hier tut sich zwar einiges, aber im Großen und Ganzen tut sich die Bundeswehr doch recht schwer damit, die High-Tech-Visionen umzusetzen, für die wir Geld in Forschung und Entwicklung gebuttert haben. Redet noch wer vom "Infanterist der Zukunft"? Von daher natürlich auch die Frage, inwieweit die bestehende Ausrüstung für den Auslandseinsatz wirklich tauglich ist. - Bündnisverpflichtungen innerhalb der NATO. Man bestaune einmal das Polittheater, dass sich um NATO-Aktionen mit schöner Regelmäßigkeit aufbaut - immer wieder gut, damit sich einige Akteure öffentlich profilieren können, aber die tiefere Frage ist doch, wie die ursprüngliche NATO-Mission (als Verteidigungsbündnis) für die letzten Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr anwendbar ist. Haben wir hier überhaupt Verpflichtungen oder geht das alles über die Mission der NATO hinaus? - Fließender Übergang von humanitärer Mission bis hin zur Kriegsführung. Frieden stiften kontra Frieden sichern? Wie weit gehen unsere Einsatzbefehle und was machen wir, wenn wir an die Grenzen stoßen? Denn hier sehe ich Potential, dass wir uns die Rosinen rauspicken (sprich, nur PR-tauglich Nahrungsmittel verteilen oder Feldkrankenhäuser aufstellen), aber bei ernsthaften Schwierigkeiten doch immer Uncle Sam bitten müssen, die bösen Jungs wegzubomben, damit wir uns nicht die Finger schmutzig machen. Spielen wir bei solchen internationalen Einsätzen mit voller Kraft oder sind wir nur Schönwetter-Allierte? - Die Rolle des Soldaten in der Gesellschaft. Erst seit kurzem dürfen sich wiederkehrende Soldaten wieder öffentlich als "Veteranen" bezeichnet hören. Es schwingt die Idee mit, dass unsere Jungs keine echten Soldaten wie die Amis sind. Wie siehts für einen Soldaten am Ende seiner Dienstverpflichtung aus? Wir müssen uns - wie das US Militär seit 2003 - jetzt ernsthaft Gedanken machen, wie wir mit unseren neuen Veteranen umgehen, was für Hilfestellung sie eventuell brauchen, und wie wir einen öffentlichen Dialog hierzu anstoßen, wenn der ganze Themenkomplex so gerne totgeschwiegen wird. So, jetzt hab ich mich ernstmal genug ausgekotzt, zurück zum Thema Kirche und Gesellschaft...
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Sep 25, 2011 14:11
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Allotment gardens are serious business, yeah. My city (Magdeburg) has at least six big clusters of them and my Dad has a half-plot, so I know they tend to be the refuge of crusty old men who would rather deal with weeds than people. There's attendant laws and regulations on how much you can use for agriculture versus recreation, what features structures can have, noise levels, the ever-tightening rules on burning stuff on them...the list goes on.
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Oct 30, 2011 22:08
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I've tried Mac & Cheese and I think it's nasty. Nudeln mit Tomatensoße all the way.
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Jan 16, 2012 11:44
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Yeah, the cops are after scammers who cheat tourists.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:16
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Yeah, that's totally a German accent - I sound very similar to that when I speak English. It's not just how you pronounce words, it's also the intonation and emphasis that has proven very hard to get rid of. I wouldn't be down on anyone else for it, but I dislike how I sound quite a bit, if that makes sense. It's like, you've got all the vocabulary and grammar down pat, now why do you still sound like an idiot? It's particularly bad with some phonemes - I still can't speak words starting with a "th" to my satisfaction. Maybe I'm just overly self-conscious about it. But what I do hate is pretty much every attempt I've seen in movies and on TV to fake a German-accented English. Some do it better than others, but inevitably you get to the part where the script mandates that they actually say something in German and that's where it completely falls apart.
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Sep 8, 2012 08:29
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Quick question to Munich goons: I plan to spend a week in Munich in August. I think I can keep myself occupied, but being that I am a goon, I'm also looking to make sure I get a hotel with decent wifi. I know Munich's introducing municipal wifi downtown, but I need the interwebs when I'm vegging out in my room after a long day of sightseeing, and my travel experience with hotels that proclaim to have complimentary wifi is rather mixed. It doesn't have to be super-cheap and if it's within, say, 20 minutes of walking and public transit to downtown that'll be fine for my purposes. Does anyone have any experience in this regard? I'll also be digging through the thread and some more sites to figure out my itinerary re: sightseeing, but if you guys want to drop some science on me and tell me about stuff I desperately need to see, I'm all ears.
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Jun 14, 2013 20:37
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I live literally right down the street from the Technology Museum in Magdeburg, and it's frankly not worth the trip here. It has some cool old DDR vehicles and tools/machines, but it's literally just an old factory hall that takes maybe thirty minutes to go through if you take your time. If you come here at all, go visit the Cathedral and the Hundertwasserhaus (which are pretty much right next to each other). I very much second the Technology Museum in Berlin, though. It has a particularly cool exhibit about computing as well as railway development. The Deutsches Museum in Munich blows it away, but it blows everything away, to a degree where I'd wager it's basically Central Europe's Smithsonian. Note that I say this without ever having actually been to the Smithsonian, sadly, but the DM is really awesome. As in having a half mile of tunnels underneath it that's one long diorama about the development of mining technology.
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May 15, 2014 17:53
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One more Magdeburg goon checking in. My perspective is that the city has really gentrified quite a bit since the awful post-Wende years, and specifically shopping- and culture-wise we're attracting a crowd from all over Saxony-Anhalt and beyond now, especially the more - shall we saw - provincial parts, so that explains a bit of the whole "weirdness magnet" thing. There's certainly still parts of town that I consider a little rough, but you show me a city this size that doesn't have those. The Hauptbahnhof and the plaza in front of it can get a little weird with groups of no-poo poo actual punks hanging out, but overall I really like the vibe downtown Magdeburg has now. I always have a hard time picking out one thing that stands out so much that I could say "You gotta come to Magdeburg to see the X!", but if you're coming here for one reason or another there's plenty to see and do. That said, I just wish we weren't the red-headed stepchild of transit. No highspeed rail because the ICE line from Hannover to Berlin bypasses us, the A14 North-South connection is dragging its feet, the airport situation is a joke - it really makes it feel like you need to go literally anywhere but here first to get anywhere. Everything's via Hannover or Berlin or Leipzig, and that rankles because we're in a really good position for a regional hub. Alas. Oh, and while I'm laying out my wish list, we need a goddamn legit Mexican restaurant/taqueria.
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Oct 21, 2014 16:28
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I'm not even talking about the differences between authentic Mexican and Tex-Mex, just something. But I guess if there's a good sit-down Mexican restaurant in Braunschweig, that means there's at least one reason to go there now. No, what I want specifically is something like Munich's Milagros. Nothing super-fancy, just good eats to go. (And that Agua Fresca, drat.)
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Oct 21, 2014 18:39
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Might have better luck in a local Baumarkt.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:17
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rumtherapy posted:I see that's in the north. I forgot where but I recall a piece of information telling me that the south of Germany is usually more expensive, but then again this is just one Uni and I've got no other basis. Neat info though ,thanks. Yes, come to Magdeburg. We have everything (except good Mexican food).
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Mar 4, 2015 12:41
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If you're into tech (and seeing several car museums on your list, I'm pretty sure you are), check out the Deutsches Museum. The main museum doesn't have much car-related that I recall, but it does have several rare/unique aircraft and is just overall a treasure trove of all kinds of cool stuff, with the mining section a particular highlight for me. It also has two branches, one about aviation history in particular and one about transit that has buses and trains.
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Oct 17, 2015 08:44
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Amazon.de actually offers two credit cards; the one I have is from their partnership with LBB, is a Visa "real" card that costs 20 Euros per year but you get points for buying stuff that you can redeem for credit on that price or on Amazon shopping. I think I started off with a 1500 Euro limit and am up to 2500 Euros, where I've been sitting for two years now, though admittedly I have the kind of spending habits that would not engender grand confidence. You can pick how much you want to repay each month by direct debit from whatever Giro account you use, anything from full balance to like 10% (though that still comes to a minimum of 50 Euros) to just paying what you want. You can also get a free second VisaPay EC card that basically lets you pay just about everywhere as direct debit with your credit card account - I've pretty much moved all my debit transactions to using that and only use my "real" bank EC card for cash withdrawals these days. The card also has some other random benefit poo poo I've never looked at in detail; honestly all I cared about was getting a card that's cheaper than from my bank, the EC card thing is a very welcome bonus, though. The biggest drawback I find is that it doesn't play nice with any external programs that manage your accounts and everything has to be done through their web portal, which isn't bad but not as convenient as it could be. Amazon is also currently promoting another credit card that is (I think) Maestro/Mastercard with no yearly fee, but I have no idea what the details are on that.
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Feb 5, 2016 19:31
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Drone posted:Good advice To this I would add the following:
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Mar 31, 2016 16:44
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I'm hardly an expert, but essentially: If your employer provides access to a Dienstwagen (company vehicle) which it also lets you use in your private life, the tax authority considers this a job perk subject to taxation - a "geldwerter Vorteil". Your employer is supposed to "add" the value of this job perk to your gross income to determine how many taxes and duties they're supposed to pay for you. The law assumes that this job perk is worth one percent of the vehicle's list price (rounded down to the nearest hundred Euros) per month, plus a certain amount per kilometer you're using the vehicle for to cover running costs for your travel between your home and your workplace. As usual in German law, there are multiple ways to calculate that, but generally the easiest rule is to say that it's equal to 0.03% of the list value per kilometer. Say this shiny new bike costs a thousand Euros, on the dot. One percent is ten Euros. Say it's exactly ten kilometers between home and work that you are gonna travel on that bike. That's (0.03% times 10 kilometers times 1000 Euros) = 3 Euros on top. The "geldwerter Vorteil" in total would be 13 Euros per month. Your employer then pays taxes on the salary they're paying you as if it was 13 Euros higher. If your employer charges a monthly fee for the privilege of letting you use the vehicle privately, then that's deducted from this fictional job perk and can (if the fee is equal or higher than the calculated worth of the perk) in theory completely eliminate it. You said that the fee they'd charge would be over 36 months. It's possible that at the end of this period the bike is either returned (and you may be given the option to get a new one and pay the fees for that), or they'll work out some voodoo and tell you "Hey, if you pay us X Euros (likely whatever corporate math says the bike is still worth on the books), we'll let you own the bike." Or whatever, this very much depends on what's in the Überlassungsvertrag. Bottom line for you, as far as I understand it: you don't need to do any accounting for this other than determine the distance between your home and work so they can work out the Kilometerpauschale. The tax (and math) burden is on your employer. I assume they'll work it out so that their monthly fee is equal to or greater than the "worth" of the job perk so they don't need to deal with paying more taxes for you. The advantage to you over buying your own bike in the first place is that this will likely cost you less money up front than getting the bike on a 36-month loan payment scheme from the shop yourself, the interesting part is liable to be at the end where you might have to decide whether to buy the darn thing or turn it in. Along the way, the bike does remain company property, so they'll (probably) cover maintenance and repairs and whatever, but you'll be expected to handle it with the appropriate amount of care. The details will all be in the Überlassungsvertrag. Again, not an expert, talk to a Steuerberater if you're still unclear or want to ask your questions to somebody who actually knows this poo poo.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:33
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Because decent German kids spend their free time out in the sunshine and fresh air playing soccer! ...or because pinball machines and arcade games kinda got lumped in with slot machines and gambling, and would be found in licensed Spielhallen, where surprise surprise kids weren't allowed. Germany has historically been fairly alarmist about protecting the youth from the ills of gambling, and don't get me started on the evils of video games. By the time we chilled out a bit, classic 70s/80s arcade gaming as you might expect from the US or Japan was way out of favor. That said, there are some places that have a large assortment of these old video games, but it's more explicitly "retro" and museum-ish. If you want to talk to Germans about electronic gaming from that era, find a Commodore 64 or Atari fan. That's where it was at, back in the day. Quote this if you had a floppy disk box full of pirated games. 
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Jul 24, 2017 15:04
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 23:36 |
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Berliner Unterwelten offers tours of underground installations both WW2 and Cold War. Highly recommended.
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Mar 16, 2019 08:55
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