wie geht's?

Sehr gut! Some time ago I had mentioned in passing to the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife that I'd like to learn German so I could chat with my Aunt Uncle and two cousins that hang their hats in the German countryside. They all speak wonderful English so it isn't a matter of being able to communicate with them, I simply want to have the ability to converse with them in their native tongue. And it would also be cool to be able to order a meal or get around a town, or when we ask where the bathrooms are hopefully we don't tell them we're riding a train with purple chickens without pants. Being ever so attentive The Fantastic and Spectacular Wife made a mental note and bought me a No Nonsense Knowledge, German Made Simple book for Christmas. In between rounds of wrestling with Project Make Our Bathroom Less Ugly I've delved into it to see what I can do.

So far I've been trying to memorize definite and indefinite articles and some basic vocabulary. So far so good. We communicate with everyone over there through email primarily, and now my cousins who are both teenagers are reaching that age and have just joined Facebook so my paltry knowledge of the grammar and syntax is receiving an early stress test. I've swapped a message or two with one of them and his reply in English made sense with what I wrote in German, so I didn't muff it too horribly or he's just being really kind. I'm going to have to double down on the reading because we've just bought tickets to go visit them. Our trip is perfectly timed with the confirmation of my youngest cousin. I don't fully understand the social significance of it to the German culture other than it's big. I also know that it happens when you're a certain age - 13, and it's through the church regardless of your attendance record on Sunday mornings. They both attend public schools and I believe they, the schools, are often involved too. Everyone gets all dressed up in their Sunday best and shuttles off to the church for the ceremony. After the ceremony itself wraps the day turns into a massive party complete with lots of time in front of the camera, more awesome delectables of the solid and liquid type than one can handle, and gifts of cold hard cash being bestowed upon the confirmed one. The cash is intended to be a jump start on savings for college or some sort of post high school education. Teaching people to save for their future from an early age, what a crazy idea.

This will be my third trip there, the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife has been to Europe but not Germany. My first tour was back in 2001 just after I graduated from college and the second was for the elder cousin's confirmation back in 2007. This will also be the first meeting of the branch of the family from across the pond and the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife! We're over the moon excited for our trip and have already starting talking about the sights and the food and all the family we'll get to see and meet, and of the course, the beer. Oh the beer. This is the promise land for beer. The country holds a month long celebration of beer every year, the Germans KNOW beer. We're secretly hoping and dreaming we can glean some sort of magical insight into how they make such outstanding beer and then apply that to our very own creations. We're familiar with the famous brewing law, the Reinheitsgebot, the "Purity Law". It's said to be one of the oldest food regulations in the world and still exists today unchanged from the original. Ye Olde Google tells me it was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in the year 1516 and declared that beer should only be brewed from barley, hops and water. Thanks to the regulation, Bavarian beers then became leaders among their peers and other lands of Germany also enforced the regulation. Today, yeast is also recognized as a vital ingredient, but it was a brewing element whose effect was unknown at the time the law was written. Back then, brewers would just use the yeast that was present in the air. Even today the Reinheitsgebot is still the most important law affecting brewing in Germany and German brewers still observe strict compliance with the Reinheitsgebot. Even if we don't have some sort of divining moment of inspiration or epiphany we'll have a marvelous time with friends family and drinking our research!