How this happened, I'll give a few bullet points of background and then show the anecdote in English.
______
- For several years, Kari Schmidt in Berlin has run a YouTube channel, Easy German, They now have over 600,000 subscribers and are supported by ads and by the donation service Patreon. It's a lively series of ten minute videos (in German, with English subtitles) aimed at intermediate German listeners.
- Easy German YouTube homepage here.
- Since 2019, they've added a weekly one-hour German podcast (with hosts Kari and her colleague Manuel and sometimes her colorful Polish husband Janusz) - Easy German Podcast. The podcasts are edited and are released with transcripts, vocabulary, etc.
- Easy German Podcast homepage here.
- The all-German conversations are just a bit slowed-down, just a bit clearer-pronounced, to aid learners.
- Under COVID, they've added frequent 15 minute daily updates, chatting, unedited, called Zwischdings (the in-between-things).
- Zwischdings has recently had a regular feature, Merkel Updates, what interesting or amusing noise about the Chancellor there might be.
OK. Regarding Merkel-Updates, I wrote and sent in a paragraph story in German about an encounter with the Chancellor, a few inches from me, suddenly, on a snowy midnight in 2013.
My heart nearly stopped when, the next day, a Zwischending was released with the title - "Ein Mercedes im Schnee" - Mercedes in the snow - it had to be my anecdote.
Kari and Manuel joked they were now getting personal "Merkel News" even from listeners overseas, and introduced mine as "From our listener Bruce in California," and read the whole thing. They may have corrected a mistake or two as they read, but it was basically what I wrote. As a life-long German hobbyist, this was a peak experience for me.
My heart nearly stopped when, the next day, a Zwischending was released with the title - "Ein Mercedes im Schnee" - Mercedes in the snow - it had to be my anecdote.
Kari and Manuel joked they were now getting personal "Merkel News" even from listeners overseas, and introduced mine as "From our listener Bruce in California," and read the whole thing. They may have corrected a mistake or two as they read, but it was basically what I wrote. As a life-long German hobbyist, this was a peak experience for me.
####
The Anecdote
Merkel Anecdote - Merkel in the Snow
I live in California, but in February 2013, I spent a week in Berlin. One night I saw a rare documentary ("Dresden, Come Together, 13 Februar") at Kino Krokodil, with about 3 in the room. Another night, I went to a lecture at Deutsches Historisches Museum/DHM by Museum Island. Walking home at 10 pm, in light snow, up the empty middle of am Kupfergraben. On my right, a black Mercedes sat quietly. Less than a meter from me, a woman inside the car on a cell phone. Merkel! Our eyes met for a moment, I continued walking in the snow, up the street, to my hotel.
##
Almost exactly as read on the podcast:
Ich lebe in Kalifornien, aber im Februar 2013 habe ich eine Winter-Woche in Berlin verbracht. Eine Nacht, sah ich im Kino Krokodil/Prenzlauerberg einen seltenen Dokumentarfilm (heisst "Dresden, Come Together, 13. Februar") mit ungefähr drei Personen im Raum. An einem anderen Abend besuchte ich einen Vortrag im Deutschen Historischen Museum / DHM bei Museum Island. Um 22 Uhr nach Hotel zu gehen, bei leichtem Schnee ging ich die leere Mitte des am Kupfergrabens Strasse hinauf. Zu meiner LLinken, ein stiller schwarzer Mercedes. Weniger als einen Meter von mir entfernt sitzt eine Frau darin, auf einem Handy. Die Merkel! Unsere Augen trafen sich für einen kurzen Moment, und ich ging weiter im Schnee die Straße entlang zu meinem Hotel.
###
Footnote. Why I Know German
When I began my pre-med freshman year, at Creighton University, my Jesuit advisor let me know that he understood, if you major in biology or chemistry, it was good to take German. So my class list included German. Somewhere along Thanksgiving, I noticed there were 500 students in Chem 1010, 500 in Biology 101, and only one of them in German. When I transferred to Stanford, I took some more German classes, lived in the German theme dorm, and kept it up in residency in neuropathology. When a disease was named after a German doctor from the 1880s, I would look up the old German paper and struggle through it. In the past 5 or 10 years, I've become a Berlin-lover, with multiple weeklong trips, and my German has gotten much better (at age 60!) with the abundance of Youtube videos and podcasts at your fingertips.
