Youtube hearted comments of John Warner (@johncrwarner).

  1. As a Briton who was taught to make a simnel cake by my mother It was the same as her fruit cake (yes, there is that much fruit in a British fruit cake) but with a layer of marzipan and marzipan on top So it was a "Bury style" simnel cake but I was brought up in Huddersfield not too far from Bury (about 30 miles away but culturally very distant LOL) and my mother was from Liverpool originally.
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  2. I hadn't heard "Das ist eine Apotheke" I had heard and use myself the term "Apothekenpreis" for items in stores.
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  3. The only time I have seen logs being hauled in the water was on a ferry trip from Kuopio to Savonlinna in Finland They were moving the logs through the lakes and we spent a long long time passing them. Our reward beyond going on a fabulous ferry journey was going to the opera festival in the castle at Savonlinna the following evening.
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  4. I believe there is a governing body called Snooker USA and it might be worth searching for their website I suspect Chicago will have Snooker tables somewhere.
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  5. Litfaßsäule, invented by Herr Litfaß in the mid 19th century, for me sum up German influenced cultures so you see them in Estonia, Austria etc. My favourite Stolperstein in Bielefeld is the one to a gay communist Jewish man whose last address was in the Innenstadt but who was murdered in Dortmund Prison I am not sure if it was for being gay, a communist or a Jew.
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  6. Thank you both for your entertaining video. I have lived in Germany, being originally from Britain, for 15 years. So I sympathised with your “don't“. Re: carrying cash At least prior to the pandemic cash is king in Germany I have to say I always pay for bread especially with cash. In the pandemic contactless arrived even in bakeries. I still make sure I have cash even though I have a bank card. Re: the Autobahn Lauren's experience reminded me of my mother-in-law. Who when she drove was famous for getting on the Autobahn and driving the wrong way before stopping to phone for directions LOL
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  7. Only going for a North Korea plus model of international isolation would overcome that carefully constructed ruling
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  8. More a different take, largely because the British title references a cultural idea, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was translated as "Dame, König, As, Spion" Again German reference to playing cards. Sometimes because of the way German works compared to English English being a language that tends to use verbs more than nouns although titles can be conveying the same idea the phrasing is different "The Machine Stops" a short story by E. M. Forster gets translated as "Die Maschine steht still" (The Machine Stands Still) as the adverb "still" is doing the work whereas the English "stops" does all the work.
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  9. In my classical Chinese class only after working through Hanfeizi and others were we allowed to work on Zhuangzi His writing is VERY difficult to understand even after I had done five years of an evening degree course in Modern Chinese and a year of Classical Chinese He is however very witty and challenging I had done earlier an exploration of Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty explicitly looking at the rise of Southern Chan Buddhism over Northern Chan Buddhism. When I read the Daoist classics I realised how strong the influence Daoist thought had on Buddhism in China Southern Chan Buddhism - being termed in Japan by the more familiar name Zen Buddhism. At the school I taught at at the end of the school year the teachers offered classes for a week in a topic other than our profession and I did an introduction to Chinese Language and Culture. I mention this as one of the sounds many Westerners have problems with is represented by the pinyin "zh" It is a retroflex sound so the tongue is curled back when it is pronounced. I had a girl in the class who said: "this sound is impossible to say" to which my colleague in the room said I replied: "a quarter of the world's population can say it, so may be you need to try a little harder"
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  10. Sans Soucis is also the name of Fredrick the Great's Summer Palace in Potsdam that he had built as a retreat so the cosmetic brand is very likely trading off that reference too. When the children get older there are a lot of nice inventive wooden games by Steffen-Spiele and Steffen Mühlhäuser the owner designs the games I think he / they are based in Rhineland Palatinate north of you.
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  11. Interestingly The Telegraph and The Daily Mail both had YouTube clips of the audible booing with no commentary except for the titles of the video.
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  12.  @britingermany  In Oelde where I worked there were several with left for USA on them.
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  13. One or two things I noticed with respect to German vs US supermarkets Firstly in my one trip to the US I remember all the fruit and vegetables being big but when you ate them they were "tasteless" They had the taste of a much smaller fruit but were bulked out by a lot of water. The cheese aisle in the US had many many kinds of wrapped single slices of cheese with many additions and flavours and very very little chunks of cheese That was in a small section of "artisan cheese" The last think I found amusing was oatmeal cereals there was apple, cinnamon, apple and cinnamon etc. etc. There were nineteen different ones but no plain oatmeal I asked where it was and it was in completely another aisle the lady said it was near the dog food LOL In Germany, I do shop more often and visit three or four shops plus the market regularly I buy x here because it is better and y there as they stock the one we like. I like that. I also agree about customer service I was once behind a person and they had a problem It was with their Kundenkarte - nothing else. But the cashier didn't say anything to the customer but just contacted her supervisor and we waited while she sorted it out. There was no communication between the customer and the workers and none seemed to be expected. I went to another Kasse and they were still dealing with it when I exited.
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  14. Fascinating video which like a good book I stopped at several points to reflect on and in my case explain something to my partner who was not watching There was so much in this video I will likely watch this again as it has given me several ideas points of departure in thinking.
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  15. Here in Bielefeld above the Aldi-Äquator we only have Aldi-Nord and in our Aldi supermarkets we often have Trader Joe's labelled products in store but I have still to find "Everything but the Bagel" seasoning.
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  16. My partner and I did Raumabanen in the other direction we got the Hurtigruten service to Aalesund the town that burnt down in 1904 and was rebuilt in Art Noveau style which is fascinating to visit Then we got a bus at 06:00 in the morning to Aandalsnes and took the train up the Rauma valley to Dombaas station then on to Trondheim.
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  17.  @britingermany  My partner has a Cologne / Bonn accent and my sister-in-law can do a Frankfurt accent and it far better when they speak Hochdeutsch as it is closer to the Bielefeld accent.
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  18. Was that a Schnitzel with Frankfurter Grüne Soße I saw? With the famous "sieben Kräuter". Perhaps you should make a video about Frankfurter Grüne Soße.
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  19. The best pizza experience I've had was a pizza restaurant in Tana Bru in Northern Norway about 70° N It was run by a Turkish family and they made the nicest garlic bread because it was basically Turkish flatbread with garlic. Pizza is better when the temperatures are low outside!
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