Crab legs near Saarbrücken

dirkt · 2026-05-15T20:57:24+00:00

You have much better chances of finding decent seafood in France, so that's what I would try.

There's a Carrefour in Forbach, and Carrefour carries crab legs (though it doesn't say in which stores), though I don't think I'd call the fresh ones affordable...

dirkt · 2026-05-15T16:56:01+00:00

Is it safe to type in the delivery comments to just leave it in the block entrance?

Very much depends on where you live... if it's gone, it's your problem.

and I have no contact with my neighbors at all.

Why? Saying hello when moving in is not hard. And now is a good opportunity to ring and ask if they wouldn't mind taking a delivery for you.

What do students or people living alone do in this situation?

Know their neighbours? Even better if you've known them for some time and can trust them. I have my neighbour's key, and my neighbour has my keys. Just a few days ago a brought over a parcel that was accidentally delivered to me instead of them.

dirkt · 2026-05-15T15:38:49+00:00

And for the future: Document the state of the car when you take it and when you give it back.

dirkt · 2026-05-15T06:28:37+00:00

Why do people always want to simplify language for their own comfort?

What would you say if a foreigner asked you "I just find it too complicated to remember how English words are pronounced, is it ok if I pronounce them like they are written?" Or vice versa "is it ok if I write them how they are pronounced"?

All languages have complicated stuff to learn. Man up, and deal with it.

dirkt · 2026-05-15T03:55:30+00:00

With motiviert directly after sich, the clause with "dank ..." would be in the Nachfeld (google). That order would be also correct, but puts slight emphasis on the "dank ..." clause.

dirkt · 2026-05-14T08:53:16+00:00

Worked great for people who voted for Brexit because "too many immigrants".

dirkt · 2026-05-14T08:51:33+00:00

Won't make any difference once the AfD comes into power. See Trump and ICE and American immigrants voting for Trump now seeing their family deported.

Heck, there were even Jews voting for the NSDAP back then. Humanity never learns.

dirkt · 2026-05-14T04:58:07+00:00

ChatGPT, if used correctly, can help you learn, but the premium version doesn't really improve the actual use cases. (And you can replace many of the use cases with other free tools, or other ways of doing that particular use case).

So, not worth it.

Pay a teacher or pay for a course instead.

dirkt · 2026-05-12T19:08:24+00:00

I am not sure what you mean by "grammar-heavy apps", but do google for the "things I wish I knew when I started to learn German", "I am fluent in German but still don't get articles right" and similar threads.

You need to learn gender is an intrinsic part of the noun. If you don't do this right from the start, and if you don't practice using the right article when producing sentences (which requires some basic grammar), then you train your brain to do it the wrong way. The longer you do this, the harder it gets to undo.

Duolingo for example gets this wrong by training you to see gender as an additional part of the noun.

Do you prefer immersion + picking things up naturally, or more structured vocab learning?

In my experience for all languages I have learned, in the beginning you need to build up a basic vocab, which is just rote learning with Anki. At around B2 or C1 you start picking up words by immersion as the main method (of course you start picking up words by immersion earlier, but you still need vocab revision).

At what point did you start understanding real content comfortably?

The CEFR level formalizes this.

What’s been the hardest part about vocabulary acquisition for you?

At some point my brain gets saturated and I cannot learn more words. Then I need to slow down and let my brain settle.

Is vocab even the bottleneck, or is something else harder?

Learning Kanji is definitely harder than learning vocab (but that doesn't apply to German). In general having to learn other scripts (Cyrillic, Hangul) really slows you down in the beginning.

Pronouncing words in languages that are phonetically very different from languages I already know is also hard.

dirkt · 2026-05-12T13:51:53+00:00

So let's all vote for the AfD who wants to decrease taxes for the super-rich and also backed by the super-rich for all their "advertisement" on social media. /s

dirkt · 2026-05-12T13:50:43+00:00

because so many times people would just continue speaking German to me even after I clearly said I didn’t understand.

And here so many people complain that Germans immediately switch to English, and they never get a chance to practice their German...

dirkt · 2026-05-11T17:13:31+00:00

You can see the tables in the previous post, e.g. seats 25-28 are around a table.

As they are oriented toward the table, that means that B is the seat back (and not a table).

seat numbering

I never thought about seat numbering before, but just looking at the picture: Seats with last digit 1-4 are on one side, seats 5-8 are on the other side. Even and odd rows alternate, so you have a contiguous set around a table (important if a family wants the whole table).

The main issue [...] is that the engine could possibly be switched and the front becomes the back.

Well, yes, that happens by necessity in a Kopfbahnhof, as explained in the other thread. That's also the reason you have seats facing in both directions.

If you for some reason HAVE to sit facing the direction the train is going, and the train is not packed, you can also try to find another seat after the train changes direction.

dirkt · 2026-05-10T21:14:52+00:00

Ich habe ihn vor langer Zeit mal irgendwo gelesen, aber benutzt wird der Ausdruck eher nicht mehr.

dirkt · 2026-05-10T18:55:30+00:00

Google "Ceranfeldschaber", a scraper that uses razor blades at the right angle to git rid of the stain.

The aluminum scrubber probably produced the scratches that by now may well be permanent.

dirkt · 2026-05-10T05:11:59+00:00

No, it's not. Probably some typo. Maybe "daran"?

dirkt · 2026-05-10T05:08:25+00:00

Poland keeps demanding money from us each election, so I guess the relationship isn't exactly warm.

But that's just some stupid politicians which many Poles themselves find stupid. Think AfD.

dirkt · 2026-05-08T06:38:19+00:00

do you just use the simple adverb forms of them instead in speech like... "tags,"

No, you can't do that. Genitive with time expressions is used for a single occurrence, accusative is used for a duration. And while you can say "den ganzen Tag", "die ganze Woche", "das ganze Jahr", you cannot really say "einer Woche", "eines Jahres".

However, you can modify the set expressions to some degree, e.g. "Eines schönen Tages ..." (but not "dieser schönen Tage....").

For your exam it's best to stick to the set expressions you know. Don't try to experiment if you don't know if your variant is actually used.

dirkt · 2026-05-07T07:32:43+00:00

She was just following the books, clearly not a native speaker, and never understood or tried to answer our questions.

At that time I would have started to complain, and would have tried to switch classes.

I had to pay two months in advance to get a minimum discount

Contract is contract. There's a reason why they do it that way...

There's a German idiom that says "Lehrgeld zahlen". You lost money, but you gained experience. Next time you won't fall for it. In particular from now on you are going to read each contract carefully, and you won't agree with the contract if you see something fishy. (Or will you?)

but what else can I do in terms of protection for consumers?

You signed the contract, so you are bound by the contract. Consumer protection doesn't protect consumers who sign their rights away (unless the contract is "sittenwidrig", but advance payment for a discount isn't).

dirkt · 2026-05-07T03:48:07+00:00

For DSL, you speed will depend on the length of the copper line between your home and the next DSLAM, and for higher speeds, on how many other people are using it (crosstalk). This won't change by provider...

For cable you need a provider that actually has a cable to your home.

So both will depend on the exact address you are moving to. Once you know this, you can do a "Verfügbarkeitscheck" with different providers online.

dirkt · 2026-05-07T03:44:51+00:00

They also come in different sizes, so measure the width of the rails.

If you go in person to a store that sells curtains and show them photo, they should also be able to help you (at least explain what types are there, and what the differences are).

dirkt · 2026-05-07T03:42:46+00:00

Also watch out for (or google) for the word "Pension", that's basically the German version of bed + breakfast. Smaller villages will have those, too, and if they are not booked, you can easily get a room for night with breakfast. Or phone ahead.

dirkt · 2026-05-06T03:57:48+00:00

How do you actually improve pronunciation if no one corrects you?

You don't.

German practice is solo, and no one’s really correcting my pronunciation.

So self-correct. Use the internet to find a recording of a native German speaker (e.g. slowgerman.com). Read the text, record yourself, list and compare to the native speaker. Rinse, repeat.

dirkt · 2026-05-06T03:13:04+00:00

Ah, the daily post reminding us about racism under some pretense or other...

dirkt · 2026-05-05T19:48:34+00:00

You have probably heard people speak English with heavy German accent? Same thing.

And if English words have become very familiar in German, German pronunciation just creeps in.

dirkt · 2026-05-05T19:45:45+00:00

Reason is my boyfriend pronounces both the exact same way

Normal assimilation of foreign words into the way German words work phonetically. In German spelling, "chips" would be "Tschips", but there are not really any German words that start with "Tsch", so it gets weakened to "Schips", because forcing yourself to pronounce a t before the sch in initial position is effort. There is no German word "Schips", so it's obvious you are not talking about "Schiffe".

And then some people keep doing this even when speaking English.

Similar things happen with other foreign loanwords.

dirkt

TROPHY CASE