High-quality advertising

German advertising is subtly different from US advertising. Well, sometimes it's not so subtle: Kaya wrote a great post about some of the ads that are run here that would probably never see airtime in north America. But there is a more subtle bias to German advertising I have noticed: german ads often stress the quality of their products much more. It is a rare comestible that does not advertise itself as "spitzenqualität" (top quality) and many even bear the grade they received in a consumer-reports-style product test.

See? both at once: "Spitzenqualitat" at the top, and a prize sticker at the bottom for being the best... cooked ham. they've got me there, that's for sure!

But these appeals seem to work: Bittburger Pils, the most popular beer in Germany, runs an ad campaign based almost exclusively on emphasizing the purity of its ingredients. Anything I don't need to tell you that German auto companies do the same.

The whole attitude reminds me of those old ads in National Geographic. You know, the ads for stuff like Rolex and Cadillac that were more text than picture. This is an extreme example, but this style of "persuasive" advertising, that attempts to sell something by giving a pitch, instead of just associating it with a good feeling, like most advertisements these days, is basically gone in the US, but lives on in Germany.

Bonus best line from the Rolex ad: "On its clasp, you'll recognize the Rolex crown. So will other people."

Dinner For One

A curious tradition of German New Year is the yearly showing of Dinner for One. Every year since 1972 German television runs a short, english stage skit on New Year's Eve. It is arguably the most popular thing in German television: in 2003, it was broadcast 19 times on various channels on New Year's, and has been broadcast in total more than 230 times, making it the most frequently rerun television program in the world. All this despite being in in English, presented without subtitles, and being totally unknown in English-speaking countries.



My German host family knows the dialogue by heart, and was highly confused when I hadn't heard of it.

German Customs Law and Peanut Butter Balls.

So, some weeks ago, my parents sent me a package of various things. Top of my list was reeds for my oboe, which are ridiculously expensive in Gemany, and my reed-working kit, which I don't really know how to use, but would in theory allow me to make them better. My mother added to these some random things, like gloves and my nice Rotary sweatshirt, which I had forgotten, and yet more pins for exchanging. I now have over two hundred pins for a district of maybe 75 exchange students. I'm making friends, but not that quickly!

The best thing by far promised in this packet, though, was the peanut butter balls. Peanut butter balls are a strange snack made of peanut butter, oatmeal, and honey mixed together into a sort of dough, than rolled in coconut flakes. Very simple, and absolutely delicious. Strangely, though, I hadn't had any in years. They were a common feature of my preschool days, but had been somehow forgotten about as the years went on. Now that I'm in Germany, my mother seems to be remembering all sorts of cool stuff.

This is all great, but instead of a package arriving punctually last week, we received an envelope telling us that the package was in Koblenz, and would be returned to sender if we did not visit it within the week and pay a tariff of 19% on it's stated value of $150. What was up? Are peanut butter balls a restricted substance in Germany?

A phone call (made, thankfully, by my host mother) cleared things up. My package was supposed to be considered a gift, but due to the high labeled worth, the customs people had a look inside. Inside, they saw the pins. "Hmm..." they thought to themselves "who gives 100 identical pins as a gift? This David Loring fellow must want to sell these California pins without having to pay import tariff, and undercut good German california-pin businesses!" and so they held on to it.

All was not lost, however. My host mother was able to explain the concept of a rotary blazer, and pin exchanges, to the customs man on the phone, and he agreed that it sounded like a real gift, and would look inside with us when we got there and re-estimate the value, probably under the 45 euro tax-free threshold. And today, I drove with my host-Grandparents to the office in Koblenz, and retrieved my booty.

Progress Report

This is a little thing I wrote more for Rotary back home than the blog, but it's no secret, so I'll put it here too.

The honeymoon is definitely over. Summer is over, and the rapidly shortening days have shut the door firmly on further warm weather. My German, though adequate for the purposes of everyday conversation, doesn't allow me to really read the book in German class or give me voice in a discussion in Ethics. My throat hurts, and I hope it isn't the swine flu. In short, every day has ceased to be better than the last. You warned me this would happen.

But don't worry too much. Even the darkest days are shot through with little moments of brilliance. Maybe it's some combination of song and scenery on the bus ride to school, maybe a beautiful configuration of the ever-changing clouds. Some days it's a good conversation, another word, another piece of the German jigsaw puzzle. Whatever it is, I seem to catch a lot more of it here than before. Being in a foreign land really gets your brain going on new directions, changes the way you think. That's another thing you told me.

Thanks for everything,

David Loring

This is a passage from the book I am reading in German class, Der Sandmann by E.T.A Hoffman.I have in general had a lot of trouble with this book, because it's old, thick German prose, but it is pretty dang awesome. Take this passage, where the Sandman fable is told. I did the translation, so sorry about that.

"I asked the old lady, whom my youngest sister waited on, who this Sandman was. 'Oh, child,' said she 'don't you know? He is a bad man, who comes to children who don't go to bed and throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that their eyeballs jump bloodily out of their heads, which he gathers in his sack and takes up to the half-moon to feed his children, who sit there in a nest and who have owl's beaks, with which they pick the disobedient childrens' eyes out.'"

Awesome, oder?