Advertisement
Published: October 27th 2005
Edit Blog Post
I'm back in Stockum. =) It really felt like coming home when I arrived today. Was such a nice feeling. The train ride was actually pretty nice. It was a little under 5 hours (long travel day). But thankfully none of the trains where really full. On the first train I sat in a whole section all by myself. I was also able to lower the window so I got a couple nice pics of the areas we drove through. I'll post em here as soon as I load the pics. (Prob. Sun morning). It was an absolutely gorgeous day. I'm guessing it was in the mid-seventies. The weekend is supposed to be like this... (crossing fingers.. oh I hope I hope I hope)... It's really unusual weather for the end of Oct. (Of course I'm not complaining at all... =Þ) Dennis picked me up from the trainstation cause no one else could. That was very very nice of him... oh, before I forget.....
In my global studies class we had had to read an article titled 'McDonaldization' (don't remember who wrote it). In the article, the author talked about how in China for instance McDoland's had changed the expectations
of cleanliness. McDonald's became the standard that other places were held to. While I was walking around the train station in Köln (Cologne) waiting for my train, I came across the bathrooms. Guess what they were called.... 'McClean'. Meaning that they are very clean public bathrooms. Maybe the fact that they're called
McClean' has nothing to do with McDonald's but Iit could. I find it really interesting that 'Mc' was used.... Anyways... kinda random, but interesting
Back to my day.... Today's Oma's (my grandma) birthday. When I got here everyone was at her place, next door. She celebrated with her siblings and a few friends her age today. (Tomorrow, kids and grandkids are celebrating with her). I sat with Mama and was talking with some of Oma's sister's. A little before Mama and I left, Oma and one of her sisters read some things in Plattdeutsch (low German). It was really interesting to hear. I could hardly understand anything. In this region Plattdüütsch or Plattdeutsch is a dying language. In other regions of Germany Plattdeutsch is still the language spoken outside of academics business and so forth. In this region, however, there were a lot of immigrants from other countries and after WWII a lot of East Germans that came here. They of course spoke high German (Plattdeutsch was spoken all over Germany, but each region had there own form of Plattdeutsch), as it was the language in which everyone could understand eachother. That, however, has caused this regions Plattdeutsch to die out. Now only the older generation (Oma's generation) can still understand, speak, read and write it. The next generation (my Mama's) can understand it, but that's it and the following generation (my generation of German's) can't even understand it. Oma belongs to a group that meets every now and then to talk in Plattdeutsch in an attempt to keep it going. In a couple of my anthropology courses we've talked about dying languages, but I've never really talked with people who speak a dying langauge. It was interesting to learn a little more about the language.
I'm gonna head off to bed now. I'll probably write again tomorrow and tell you about Kegeln (a regional sort of bowling). =) It's quite fun. I haven't kegeled in... hmmm... about 3-4 years... should be good times. Night all! Ciao!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.207s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 13; qc: 71; dbt: 0.1279s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Darren
non-member comment
Plattdeutsch
My Grandfather could speak both high german and low german. Was interesting to hear him switch when he spoke to different people. Hi! Darren