Santa On A Jet Ski

A day of new things.

We travelled over the Rhein to visit the Xmas Market there.  It's bigger than the market in Wiesbaden and is a bit different but also very similar.

And today's Blip is what we saw on the Rhein.

We wandered round - ever on the look out for the Monk-Eating-Sausages Candle* - ate some things, bought some things and enjoyed some lovely sunshine.

Afterwards we had a trip round a Museum in Mainz - a bit of learning never goes astray.

And then we went to the Brauhaus (brew house) in Mainz Kastell for a taste of their beer and some enormous plates of food.  Recommended.

One of the themes of conversation of the last few days has been the similarities & differences between English & German.  Our friends were delighted to be introduced to the word that describes when something has been accepted in German usage - eingedeutscht.

Some of the words I hear at work are really funny.  It's quite normal for the past participle of a German verb to be "ge".  So a verb like sehen (to see) becomes gesehen in the past tense. 

Some verbs here can be separated - anbieten (to offer) is conjugated as  ich biete etwas an ("I offer something") and has the past tense form "angeboten", the "ge" going in the middle.

Such tendencies are often applied to words that the Germans now use in business.  I have heard outgesourced, downgeloadet and upgegraded for example.  I'm sure there are many, many more examples.

However the conversation spawned some lovely new (and very rude) eingedeutschte Verben - don't read any further if bad words offend.

My favourite is definitely offgebuggert, as in "Er ist offgebuggert" (he has buggered off)  The correct German verb here is abhauen (sie sind abgehauen) but I see scope for offgebuggert and it is fun to say.

So you can imagine the verbs we made from all the English expressions that end with "off".  All you have to do is build "off" + "ge" + past tense of the verb and away you go.

Childish?  Well I know you are but what am I?

*A bit of a lost cause but we search and hope.