Willkommen!!

Welcome to our class blog!

We will be using this blog throughout the semester for two kinds of assignments:

1. Once per chapter, the homework plan will direct you to post a response to the culture readings for the chapter on the blog.

2. Roughly every other week, the homework plan will direct you to post here for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). See Was ist ein AMD, AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas. This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Whenever you post something, please include your name and the name of the assignment (e.g. AMD2, Kultur5) as labels. See "Blog: How To" for more details!

Throughout the semester, you will be posting here roughly every other week for your Abenteuer mit Deutsch (AMD) assignment. First you do a fun activity that involves German, then you post about it. You should spend an hour total on this (maybe 45-55 minutes doing something, 5-15 minutes posting about it). And make sure to add your name as one of the "Labels." See the links on AMD Ideen and Beispiele for ideas! This should get you excited about the kinds of things you can do!

Musik AMD1

The last few weeks I have found myself gravitating more and more toward German music.  That isn't to say classical music, such as Bach or Mozart, but some of the newer bands like Rammstein or Nena.  The way the German language rolls off the tongue when sung gives it many unique characteristics.  I find it very interesting hearing a uvular r in the middle of a chorus or verse.  These characteristics also display themselves in different ways depending on the style of music.  In Rammstein tracks,  the uvular r is very direct and held for a longer time than in pop music like Nena.

I find that many of the music styles vary depending on their location in Germany or the surrounding German speaking areas.  Western Germany and the Austria have many more of the Pop bands such as Nena or Falco, while toward Eastern Germany you get heavier sounding music like Rammstein or Dark Fortress.  I am not sure if this is because of the conditions of East Germany under the Soviets.   Whatever the case, the East German music seems to be darker and more heavy when compared to the lighter Pop tones of the West.

Germany also has one of the biggest techno cultures of Europe.  Popular artists both in Germany and America include Zombie Nation, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream.  It is also the country of origin for "Trance Techno".

Oh and one of my favorite artists, Falco.

Although he is Austrian.

AMD1

First of all, I would like to apologize for posting this twice, but I forgot the labels on the first post.

For my first AMD assignment, I watched a few episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants in German on youtube. But in German, it's call SpongeBob Schwammkopf, which according to google translate, means sponge head. So, the German version of Spongebob roughly translates to SpongeBob SpongeHead. Here is the link to one of the episodes I watched;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMTWmLPU3k&feature=related

I had never seen this episode before, but because it's SpongeBob, it was fairly easy to follow. Basically, SpongeBob and Patrick are annoying Squidward, who's name I can't understand in German, which ends up causing Squidward to get hit in the face with a door making him look better. I was really excited because throughout the entire episode, everybody calls Squidward hübschling, which is one of the words for attractive we learned in class. I was able to understand a few phrases her and there, such as at 2:05, where an old lady fish says that blue is her favorite color. The majority of the episode flew way over my head, but I was pleasantly surprised with how many words I recognized.

Tschüss!

Jake Freund

Gramazio & Kohler Architektur und Digitale Fabrikation

Got an out-of-the-blue email from a German-speaking friend about an architecture firm in Zürich, die Schweiz. Fabio Gramazio und Matthias Kohler are, apparently, two faculty members in die Fakultät Architektur at Eidgenössische Technische Hochshule (ETH) Zürich. (Take a look at Kohler - faculty photos are a little different in Europe!) They specialize in digital fabrication, using robotic arms to assemble complicated brickwork directly from computer design files, rather than relying on human hands and printed drawings and specifications.

What makes their ideas particularly interesting is that they use everyday materials. Gebäude aus Ziegel (brick buildings) are very common in the US, particularly New York, where the wall above was built. Most G&K structures are built in a lab as panels and installed by ein Baukran (crane), but this wall was the first to be built on site (in situ, in engineering terms). Der Roboterarm (robotic arm) for this project was shipped all the way from Switzerland.

The coolest building I found was a winery in Fläsch, Switzerland. G&K designed the facade in only 3 months, starting with looking at the under-construction building as a basket and filling it with giant Weinbeeren (grapes). They created a 2-D image of the basket for each wall and created the shading by rotating bricks robotically to a very precise angle, even ensuring a particular amount of light got through to help with grape fermentation.

They don't do masonry alone. Some of their woodwork involves automated carving.

Then there's the plain old architecture. Which, really, is anything but plain.

Ich bin eine Hochbauingenieurin (structural engineer), aber mein Vater ist ein architekt, so when I see work that marries technical and artistic pursuits like this, it makes me think there's a niche for me after all. Doesn't hurt that it's im schöne Gebirge (beautiful mountains) von die Schweiz. :)

Images and project info found at http://www.gramaziokohler.com/web/d/projekte/index.html.

Patrick Baumhart- AMD 1

For my AMD I chose to read a cultural article from the exberliner website. The article was entitled "The Underrated German Genius." The article explored the influences that German intellectuals had in the 18th century and up through the twentieth century. It highlights many of the achievements in the area of science as Germany quickly went through a transitional period from a rural based system into the boom of the industrial revolution. The article also acknowledges that although the ideologies supported by the Nazi party did dominate much of the German's roles in the twentieth century, many of the scientific breakthroughs were actually fueled by this somewhat... wayward military endeavor.

This interests me because much of the discoveries made in twentieth century Germany were overlooked due to a radical idea supported by a minority of the public. The author does not seem to look very highly on members of the Jewish religion but this may have been an error in my reading, or perhaps the repetition of the word Nazi may have made me biased.

AMD1

Für mein Abenteuer mit Deutsch I watched the Universität Housing Network's German channel. Wann I turned it on, it was in the middle of a sketch comedy show. The show was comparable to Saturday Night Live, but with the language barrier was actually a lot funnier. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I understood. The kurz sketches resulted in a lot of introductions and character descriptions, which was perfect for my limited vocabulary. I "You-Tubed" one of the sketches and posted the link here for others to see. It was probably the most dramatisch of them all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy8RXk2QDGI

Another particularly memorable short showed a man sitting in ein Stuhl in the middle of the road while being questioned by the Polizei. He started mocking their aussehen and I recognized a few vocab words. They also told him "Stehen Sie auf!" I was very excited at first, because I thought I'd follow the whole thing... until he began to yell at them in some very rapid German. Still, it's a start!