Rüdesheim Christmas Market

The Christmas Market on the bank of the Rhine

The Christmas Market on the bank of the Rhine

This week the Monday Podcast visited the Christmas Market in Rüdesheim – also known as the “Christmas Market of Nations“.

Having visited Rüdesheim previously, I drove to a car park near the centre of the town, rather than using the signed car parks for the Christmas Market, which turned out to be futher away.

The market itself is located in the streets of the town centre and along the bank of the Rhine.  There are stalls with food and drink, but also handicraft stalls selling Christmas decorations and household goods.

The Obergasse in Rüdesheim

The Obergasse in Rüdesheim

Two particular highlights are the nativity scene in the market square and the Christkind who opens a door on the advent calendar each evening at 6pm.

The market has an international theme, so that many of the stalls sell traditional goods and dishes from their own countries.

Eating Churros - a Spanish speciality

Eating Churros – a Spanish speciality

Unfortunately it rained on and off throughout the day, but even so there were large numbers of people there – especially after it got dark.

To find out more, listen to the podcast:

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Großes ß

It’s not often that I can say this, but I used a new letter of the alphabet for the first time this weekend.

Now it’s quite possible, that you are not even aware that the German alphabet has a new letter.  It is, in fact the Eszett (ß), which now has a capital equivalent.

Until now, the letter ß – which replaces ss or sz in a word  – has strictly speaking only be a lower case letter.  If you wrote a work in capital letters, you were expected to write it out in full.  eg. muß became MUSS.

Apparently there was a capital ß in East Germany for a time and it was even used on the cover of the East-German Duden dictionary for a number of years, but only in April of this year did it become formally recognised for the whole of Germany.  (For techies out there: it is part of ISO/IEC 10646, unicode U+1E9E)

So when I was writing my Christmas cards this weekend, I addressed them to “GROßBRITANNIEN” – hence writing my first capital ß.

Neue Methode der britischen Polizei

Die Tagesschau.de berichtet über erstaunliche Erkenntnisse der britischen Polizei. Die Polizei in Bolton versucht der Gewaltbereitschaft betrunkener Menschen entgegenzuwirken, in dem sie Seifenblasenfläschchen verteilt. Die Menschen sollen abgelenkt werden und mit den Seifenblasen werden Kindheitserinnerungen geweckt. Sie sollen helfen zu vergessen, dass sie sich eigentlich gerade prügeln wollten. Auch in Italien und Deutschland soll dies getestet werden. Es mag dann schon lustig aussehen wie auf dem Hamburger Kiez  lauter betrunkene Kerle mit glänzenden Augen Seifenblasen pusten. Was die netten Damen dann wohl dazu sagen wenn die “Kundschaft” Seifenblasen besser findet?

Aber es bleibt noch herauszufinden ob sich das wirklich einbürgert und sich die Betrunkenen darauf einlassen können bzw. noch in der Lage sind Seifenblasen hinzukriegen oder ob der Traum einer “fast” gewaltfreien Trunkenheit wie eine Seifenblase zerplatzt.

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