Party Vibe

@Angel 561915 wrote:

Where do your love for Germany and Holland come from GL?

may have come from my Dad (who also was interested in electronics) – in 1971 (just after my mum was pregnant but before she would not be able to travel) my parents also went on a coach holiday across Europe, there was a photo of them standing in front of some sign with “ZOLL/DOUANE”, and Dad did try to learn German from some books and cassette tapes, though the furthest he got was singing the “Muss I Denn” bit from Wooden Heart by Elvis whilst on the WC (and he took as many benzos as Elvis and just about managed to outlive him). This behaviour is however not uncommon amongst the Chinese of Malaysia and Singapore (many of whom also appear to have ended up in the border area of NL and DE, as there are about 18 “Chinese” restaurants just in Groningen (these are often run by Chinese from these countries).

Also if you grew up in the 80s and were interested in electronics, a lot of the components were from Philips, Siemens and Telefunken (some of the German telephone exchanges were certainly used in England); particularly what high schools got (usually whatever British Telecom had finally declared obsolete, some folk in Wales would carefully take it apart and the bits were given to schools), and when the Internet started up in the 1990s I noticed the Germans and the Dutch were not only way ahead of us but would share a lot of useful info, not all of which got translated. the same applies to DK and NO although websites about electronics often get translated into DE or EN to encourage more people to read them due to the small population.

There seems to be a wider culture in mainland North Europe of sharing info about technology and trying to teach others which isn’t as common in England – either people don’t want to learn, or don’t want to teach a potential competitor.

@Angel 561931 wrote:

I hated German, got kicked out of the German lessons in schools but ended up with really good grades anyway. Maybe it was our teacher I didn’t like because I thaught myself German instead and speak it well now. I had to speak German working in the hotel when I worked as a chef. We have a lot of German tourists where I live.

Although I didn’t mind learning it my high school (and most English high schools) has this thing called “options” where at age 14 you must decide after year 9 which subjects you take from a limited block. I couldn’t therefore take Computer Studies and German at the same time, (maybe Maggie thought we might all defect to the East/Soviet Union or become spies (they did have better computers, but you didn’t need to go that far as the East and West youngsters shared their info anyway. It wasn’t spying, just that they would rather use the computers to have fun with than make equipment to blow Europe to ash!). This still annoys me today as Britain could have been a lot more advanced if we had stopped fighting WW II in 1945 like everyone else did, instead of around 1988.

So any German after 1987 I had to learn myself. It was actually this record which inspired me (and at least this version is in Hochdeutsch, his previous tracks are in the Austrian dialect (which curiously is closer to Dutch even though they are the other side of Europe!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbf_KIgM2w

Unfortunately not only did Falco end up doing way too mahy drugs and get killed in a car crash, the older German dude who made the website said that Telekom stopped the training courses in 1989 (as they would of course just use the cheap labour from the engineers the Soviets trained now the wall was gone); and like many of his age he fears a lot of basic skills are lost, as young folk today might be just about able to write a computer game, but have no idea how the electricity gets to the computer, or how the broadband works and the importance of basic principles.

EN, DE, NL, DK, NO and SE once all had virtually the same language (including æ and Ø); but one thing they all seem to be doing (which isn’t a good idea) is changing the kindergarten/junior school (age 5-11 in UK, possibly different in other countries). In the 1970s/80s a lot of it was based around play and there were no such things as exams when you were not even 10.

Even the religious schools I went to were less strict than todays secular junior schools; the nuns let me sit in a different place in class each time, I could even get away with sitting next to girls and on the left of the class (which is the bit where the Devil is supposed to be) and I never got hit with the ruler. Curiously all I can remember from there are prayers,the times tables and some other maths; but the nuns must have realised that if the kids had to pray as well between every two other lessons they would be getting an extra maths lesson, as you have to count loads of stuff in the rosary and the Bible has a lot of maths in it to (I expect the same must apply to the Koran and any other religious books).

I noticed when I read the German textbooks that these had assumed the young apprentices (who would have been age 16/17 upwards) were intelligent but might not have got top grades in high school because they were too busy having fun being teenagers; so they went over the basics again and also explained why you should work carefully so that everyone had telephones that worked, and also television, radio and computer data transmission as it was good for Germany and Europe to have these. (they had ISDN in 1987!)

It also seems to be this generation (now about my age) who still make electronic stuff as a hobby, as their school and work did not destroy their interest in the subject…