GermanPod101.com Blog

Germany won last night 3:2 against Turkey, after a very spannend (exciting) match. Both Mannschaften (teams) played exceedingly well. Of course LOTS of people were watching, many of them at public viewing places, so they could share the Erfahrung (experience) with other fans. One of the largest public viewings was in Berlin between the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) and Yitzhak-Rabin-Straße. 500,000 people could fit there - and already one hour before the match that limit was reached and further fans could not be accomodated. Can you imagine that? A tenth of the Bevölkerung (population) of Berlin’s larger metropolitan area was there to see the match, one hour before it even started!

Also a lot of people were probably watching the match in their local Kneipe (pub) or on their TV - public television broadcast the match live, though with some Sendestörungen (disruptions of the transmission).

Anyway, now Germany will face either Spain or Russia in the finals. The Gegner (opponent) is decided tonight, and the big match will be on Sunday. If you are at all into soccer, don’t miss this! Of course the best thing to do for your German is to watch the match with German commentary - after you have studied Advanced Audio Blog #6 for some basic vocabulary.

Welcome!

This new category of blog posts will help you gradually improve your German by mingling German words with the English blog text (with translations in brackets). It is a very painless way of learning, much less tiring than reading an entire text in German, and you can easily include it in your schedule because it doesn’t take much time. The posts will be about learning German, living in Germany, topics of German news or any kind of interesting observation really. The posts may also include short examples of real authentic German language, for example quotations or newspaper excerpts.

Let me know what you think of this idea! I hope this blog will become a very useful and entertaining way for you to add some German to your life!