Category Archives: Travel

Weißer Schwarzwald

We had a friend from the UK staying with us this week and went on a day trip to the Black Forest with her on Thursday. We had a little bit of snow at home (very low, very near to the Rhine river), but there was more than enough in the Black Forest! We stopped at the Mummelsee (elevation 1028m) and climbed the highest mountain in the Northern Black Forest, the Hornisgrinde (elevation 1163m). We experienced a few short snow showers, but mostly the weather looked like this:

(Click photos to enlarge.)

Bayerische Auswanderer in den USA

Auf Bayern 3 lief über die Weihnachtstage eine dreiteilige Serie von “Gernstl unterwegs”, in der er in drei Metropolen der USA bayerische Auswanderer besucht hat. Man kann sie in der Mediathek anschauen:

Gernstl unterwegs in Los Angeles. 25.12.2016, 18:45 Uhr, BR Fernsehen, 43 Min.

Gernstl unterwegs in San Francisco. 26.12.2016, 18:45 Uhr, BR Fernsehen, 44 Min.

Gernstl unterwegs in New York. 27.12.2016, 18:45 Uhr, BR Fernsehen, 43 Min.

You’ve probably never heard of the language they deemed the hardest of them all

The Economist (on Medium): We went in search of the world’s hardest language. “English is pretty simple. Learning to speak Ubykh or !Xóõ presents more of a challenge.”

“With all that in mind, which is the hardest language? On balance The Economist would go for Tuyuca, of the eastern Amazon. It has a sound system with simple consonants and a few nasal vowels, so is not as hard to speak as Ubykh or !Xóõ. […]

Most fascinating is a feature that would make any journalist tremble. Tuyuca requires verb-endings on statements to show how the speaker knows something. Diga ape-wi means that “the boy played soccer (I know because I saw him)“ , while diga ape-hiyi means “the boy played soccer (I assume)“ . English can provide such information, but for Tuyuca that is an obligatory ending on the verb. Evidential languages force speakers to think hard about how they learned what they say they know.”

Link via MetaFilter.

Our Summer Vacation 2016

André posted a set of photos from our trip to the US this summer:

Spicy Noodles on Flickr: USA Southwest 2016 – Four-Week Roadtrip through Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah.

Some of the highlights: