Connecting Across Cultures
I’ve been thinking a lot about Tante VeraΒ these last days, since she passed away suddenly, but not altogether unexpectedly, on Friday.Β I do have regrets. Knowing that her remaining time was limited, and wanting to share time hearing more of her life’s stories, I had planned to Skype with her. But my schedule was hectic, and…
German has a rep for being one of the harsher sounding languages. It’s a language that can make “butterfly” sound menacing. (Schmetterling! Argh!) But through two decades spent trying to tackle zee German language, I’ve encountered heaps of words that are fun, funny, or just a bit goofy. Hence, I’ve composed a list of seven…
Recently I found myself back in Germany, only two-hundred kilometers northwest of my birthplace (Mainz) in the city of DΓΌsseldorf, strolling along the Rhine River with my friend, Tracy. I’d first met Tracy at a German-language meet-up in Seattle over seven years earlier, before she moved back East, to Boston. These days Tracy’s been living…