Within the past half hour Germany has won the 55th Eurovision Song Contest with a song called “Satellite” and performed by a previously unknown artist – “Lena”.

Germany picked up points from most of the countries voting, so even though many gave 12 points to their traditional neighbouring recipients, eventually they could not be caught.

German television has shown live scenes from Hamburg with a crowed of 70,000 people celebrating the win.

Here is the winning song:

Many restaurants in Germany offer a free item on their menu.  It is usually hidden away at one end of the children’s section and is called a “Räuberteller”.

It really is free and almost looks out of place being listed with € 0,00.

But what is it?

Put quite simply, a Räuberteller is a plate and a set of cutlery.  The word literally translates as “thief’s plate” and that is exactly what it is.

For small children who would not manage even a child’s portion of food (or prefer something else than the few items on offer), they can use the plate to eat small portions of food from their parents, grandparents, or other people who are in the restaurant with them.

This not only reduces the cost of the meal, but it also saves on waste if they are lacking in appetite.

Listeners to The Monday Podcast may remember that in an early episode we took a walk around the building sites in the area.  One of those has now received its name and is called “Lina-Himmelhuber-Strasse”.

I was unaware of this until I came across the name a few days ago and decided to look up where the street is.  My immediate questions was, “who was Lina Himmelhuber”?

The obvious place to start looking was in either Google or Wikipedia.  But whilst the latter does not currently have any entries about Frau Himmelhuber, Google at least provides a partial answer.

The town of Oberursel has decided that when naming any new streets priority will be given to “bekannte Frauenpersönlichkeiten” – famous women – who are connected with the town.  There appears to be a lack of such street names at present, and streets that have been named after famous women in the past have not necessarily had a local connection.

So now I know that she is someone connected to Oberursel, but that is all I know.

That is why I decided to contact the town hall (Rathaus) and ask.  The receptionist told me that this was not the first request for this information, and that she had read it somewhere.  But she could not find the answer in her documents.

She passed me on to the department for town development (Stadtentwicklung) who were also not able to answer the question.  They did, however, know someone who would be able to tell me and I now have their telephone number.

But they were not available this afternoon.  I will try and contact them another day, but maybe someone reading this can tell me instead?

Who was Lina Himmelhuber?