Tom Pugh

2 days ago | thelocal.de | Tom Pugh

Not everyone loves a music festival. For some people they conjure up images of looking for a tent at three o’clock in the morning, or of standing in line for an hour and a half just to use a dixi-klo. For others, it’s an almost religious experience - hearing the right music, in the right location, in the company of thousands of like-minded music fans. As the old saying goes: a festival isn’t just about music. It’s about being part of something bigger than yourself.

2 days ago | thelocal.de | Tom Pugh

What does it mean? Literally, das Knöllchen just means parking ticket, but the magic lies in its origins. The word comes from the Rhineland, where Knolle is slang for a root vegetable, or for anything small, potatoish, and lumpy. Whenever you add the diminutive form 'chen' to a word, it tends to make it smaller and cuter, so a Knöllchen is, literally speaking, a little lumpy vegetable.

5 days ago | thelocal.de | Tom Pugh

According to Deutsche Bahn, the number of train passengers between Berlin and Munich doubled to about 3.6 million per year after a high-speed rail line opened between the two cities in 2017, which translates to approximately 10,000 train passengers per day. Industry figures suggest that rail travel accounts for roughly 40 percent of journeys between the two cities. Of the remainder, approximately 35 percent travel by air, 20 percent by car, and five percent by coach or bus.

5 days ago | thelocal.de | Tom Pugh

It’s a myth that Germans always follow the rules – but it is broadly speaking true that there’s a rule for everything in this country and that most people tend to know what they are. For newcomers, this sense of an underlying, all-pervading order can be intimidating. Few people thrive in chaos – but the fear of breaking one of an apparently infinite number of rules can have a similarly paralysing effect. Am I making too much noise during Ruhezeit, Germany's regulated "quiet time"? (Invariably).

1 week ago | thelocal.de | Tom Pugh

Fortunately, the kind people at Langenscheidt Publishing run a poll each year, designed to discover and crown Germany’s “Youth Word of the Year”. The system is straightforward: tweens and teens between 11 and 20 are invited to submit their suggestions online. The suggestions are evaluated before rounds of voting take place to find a top ten, then a top three, and finally an overall winner.