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Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

End Polio Now

Posted in Music on July 19, 2010| 1 Comment »

Stammtisch member David Biermann and his wife Susan have helped create a CD to raise fund to ‘End Polio Now’. It comprises of 12 pop, folk and classical tracks and has raised to date of £2,000. The proceeds of one CD pay for five vaccinations in the remaining countries with Polio: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. David will have copies of the CD at the BBQ Stammtisch on 26 July at the Mansion House in Jesmond, Newcastle. The cost per CD is £5.

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Samba & Railways

Posted in Music, Travel on July 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The small Franconian town of Coburg has just hosted the world’s largest Samba Festival outside of Brazil. Around 200,000 visitors attended the yearly celebration with Samba groups from all over the world.  Participants included Rio’s reigning Carnival Queen who probably wondered in temperatures of mid 30˚C if she was on the wrong continent. Stern Online has some images of the celebration – click here.

With increasing flight costs and the odd volcano outburst, train travel – in particular on high speed trains – will maybe become more of an alternative for business and leisure travellers. State owned Deutsche Bahn has ambitious growth plans, also in the UK. It already has various operations here such as Chiltern Railways, Wrexham and Shropshire Railways, London Overground, DB Schenker, the Tyne & Wear Metro and possibly soon also bus and train operator Arriva.

The new €4 billion New Heart of Europe project will establish a high speed rail link between Stuttgart and Ulm and complete the high speed route between Budapest and Paris. This includes moving rail infrastructure and the main train station underground and redeveloping the then newly available land in the centre of Stuttgart.

Over the next four years, Deutsche Bahn plans to invest a total of €41 billion in infrastructure and new trains. Click here for full article.

If you enjoy travelling by rail and are looking for a good source of information, The Man in Seat Sixty-One is probably your best bet. Mark Smith has worked in railways throughout his career, initially for British Rail, two major UK train companies and the Dept for Transport. His passion for European and international rail travel means that other travellers can now draw from his experiences and even rail travel agents refer their passengers to his award winning blog.

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Summer Festival Season in Germany

Posted in Culture, Music, Travel on June 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Are your planning some trips to Germany over the summer? Here are some ideas of various festivals you might enjoy:

  • Coburg hosts the largest Samba Festival outside of Brazil from 9 – 11 July
  • The free Bardentreffen takes place for 35th time in Nuremberg from 30 July to 1 August
  • The Leipziger Jazz Tage are this year from 24 September up to 3 October
  • And opera fans might head to Bayreuth from the 25 July – 28 August

A list of free festivals is available at www.festivalfieber.de/kostenlose-festivals

You might also have heard of the Oberammergau Passion Play, which was played for the first time in 1634. It only takes place every ten years, so if you’re interested – 2010 is a year to go.

And last, but not least, the Oktoberfest celebrates this year 200 years. To mark the occasion, we should really organise quite some event here too – if anybody has ideas, please share them with us!

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German Choir at Durham Cathedral

Posted in Music on May 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Suedwestdeutscher Kammerchor Tuebingen will play at Durham Cathedral on Friday, 4 June at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £15 and the proceeds will go to the Percy Hedley Foundation, which supports disabled children and adults throughout the North East.

For tickets, contact Sheila Coltman on 0191 238 1321 or email s.coltman@percyhedley.org.uk

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Easter Stammtisch – 12 April

Posted in Books, Food & Drink, Stammtisch on April 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Our Easter Stammtisch will be on Monday, 12 April, starting at around 6.30pm, with food arriving at 7pm. The Easter menu will follow in due course – any suggestions for typical food for this season, let us know! The venue is again the Hilton at the Quayside in Gateshead.

The Stammtisch group is constantly growing and we expect another great turnout – make sure you let us know that you’re coming so we have enough food! Email: info@lexica-communications.com.

50 einfache Dinge, die einfach deutsch sind gives you an insight into Germans – for example their obsession with sitting outside, trying not to be typical German or avoiding fellow Germans when on holiday. It covers the ‘Fräuleinwunder’, our politicians, ‘Modern Talking’ and so on. One of our Stammtisch regulars has a copy, if somebody wants to have a peek on Monday.

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German Films in the North East

Posted in Film on April 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Forum in Hexham will show The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) on 18 April. For further details, visit the Forum Website.

The next German film to be shown at the Tyneside Cinema will be Run Lola Run on 20 May at 9pm.

It’s now also 80 years ago that Josef von Sternberg’s ‘Der Blaue Engel’ had its premiere in Berlin, launching a Hollywood career for its star Marlene Dietrich. Maybe another film worth seeing in 2010?

If there are any films (recent or classics), Stammtisch members would like to see here in Newcastle, please let me know and we can maybe arrange a special viewing.

One of those might be Plastic Planet, a new documentary, that examines the impact that the material has on our life, health and the environment. The Austrian director Werner Boote, whose grandfather himself was the MD of a plastics company, travelled around the world to find answers. If you want to find out more about what he discovered, visit http://plastic-planet.de/index.html for details, news and a trailer (part German/part English).

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German Films at the Tyneside Cinema

Posted in Film on February 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In March, the Tyneside Cinema will screen two more films as part of its Learning Revolution:

On 7 March it will show Oscar award winning ‘Nirgendwo in Afrika‘.

There will also be a free showing of the 1968 film ‘Heisser Sommer’ on 11 March. It’s advertised as East Germany’s answer to Grease and apparently they even did a musical in Berlin – check out YouTube for some clips/music.  It could be fun 🙂

There are of course also French and Spanish language films as part of the Language Cafe series.

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A Happy 2010 to the Stammtisch

Posted in Film, Food & Drink, Languages & Communications, Stammtisch on January 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The first Stammtisch event of the year will be at the Hilton in Gateshead on Rosenmontag (carnival Monday), 15 February. Our theme will be ‘Heaven & Hell’ (optional of course), with a carnival buffet on the evening at a cost of £15 per person.

We are delighted that the German Consul, Mr Wolfgang Moessinger will also be able to join us and say a few words. The event starts at around 6.30pm and the buffet opens at 7pm. Please let me know if you can make it, so that we have an idea about numbers for catering. It would be great to see you all.

In the forthcoming three months, the Tyneside Cinema will feature German, Spanish and French movies as part of the Language Café initiative. German movies will be shown on the following dates:

Tuesday, 19 January @ 17:45     Das Leben der Anderen
Sunday, 14 February @ 17:35     M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
Sunday, 7 March @ tbc              Nirgendwo in Afrika

Following each performance, there’s also a free get-together where you can talk about the film in German. Click here for the full Tyneside Cinema programme.

If your New Year’s resolution includes to learn German, visit the BBC’s website for a taster. They have an entertaining German language section, which is also quite good fun for native speakers. In ten short videos, German comedian Henning Wehn explains ‘What’s so funny about German’. Let me know what you think J

Now that the snow fall in the UK has calmed down a bit, ‘Daisy’ has been causing havoc in northern Germany. The Stern magazine has some impressive photographs online.

Last, but not least – the Ruhr area/Essen is this year’s Capital of Culture. With daily flights from Newcastle to Düsseldorf, you might fancy a weekend trip to the celebrations – check out RUHR2010.

See you soon!

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Book & Film Exchange

Posted in Books, Film on July 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I own a  few German books/films that I would be happy to lend to our Stammtisch members.

If that is of interest, send some comments back and we can exchange at the next meeting(s). Here are a couple of books/films for info:

Urlaub mit Papa – Dora Heldt (just seen on the web they’re making a film out of it – to be screened on German telly in the autumn)

Resturlaub – Tommy Jaud. He also wrote ‘Volliodiot’ (which was turned into a movie) and Millionaer – I think I have these too.

Der Hahn ist tot – Ingrid Noll. Scary lady that’s all I can say. Whoever remembers Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction – this one is even scarier.

Das Superweib – Vera Lind. I think again they made a film. Would have been a chick flick.

And here are a few films – click on each film for further info:

Good-bye Lenin

Es geschah am hellichten Tag

Das Leben der Anderen

Maenner

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