Proverbial faraway places in German
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- Опубліковано 11 лип 2024
- German has a lot of expressions for places that are far away, thinly populated, or both. I decided to explore a few of them, a virtual journey that takes me to the Dutch border, Romania, India, and even Mali. Join me as I talk about the most boring places a German can imagine.
Chapters:
00:00 The pampas
00:53 Timbuktu
01:34 Buxtehude
02:37 Meppen
03:15 Hintertupfing(en)
03:36 Where the pepper grows
04:08 Walachia
04:32 A long way out
05:05 The fox and the hare
05:30 The slightly NSFW phrase
Music:
"Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com/
Creative Commons Attribution licence
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In the popular and lovely children's novel "Der Räuber Hotzenplotz" (or "Hotzenplotz the Robber"), one character is a sorcerer called Petrosilius Zwackelmann. At a crucial point in the story, he leaves his magic castle to attend a magic convention in Buxtehude. This is why I imagined the town as a romantic and mysterious place, and I was shocked to discover as an adult that you can take an ordinary S-Bahn from Hamburg to Buxtehude, instead of flying on a magic coat as Zwackelmann did.
Honorary mention that Hotzenplotz is an actual place, too
Similar experience for me. I only realized that, when I moved to Hamburg 11 years ago. However, if you want to go to Buxtehude for real, since the Fahrplanwechsel a week ago, the S-Bahn there is now the new "S5" line. 😆
I have to admit that I always knew about Buxtehude as a real place, as Johann Sebastian Bach took lessons to play the organ with Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck. Ironically I later learned, that Dieterich Buxtehude was born in Helsingborg, Danemark at the time, and now Sweden, and his family hails from Bad Oldesloe, much closer to Lübeck, and had for generations not lived in or near Buxtehude.
@@SiqueScarface Which is most likely, as Buxtehude is the high german name of the town that was only put in place AFTER that Dieterich Buxtehude already died. In the middle ages they called it Buchstadihude.
It could have been worse. He could have gone to Bielefeld.
The famous physicist, quarks/quantum researcher and nobel prize winner Richard Feynman once spent a time in Germany.
He went to a supermarket and discovered Quark in the cooling shelf.
He stated that Germany was far more advanced, since in the US millions of dollars were still spent on quark research, but in Germany you could already buy it :)
So a Topf'n😁
no, it's hillarious! iwahaupt ka topfm.
We also have a TV science show called Quarks, but interestingly they never talk about quantum physics
The Quark must have been right next to the Dick-Milch =)
A Muster Mark just ordered three of those.
As a Mandarin speaker in Taiwan I can't think of an idiomatic expression for a faraway place (chances are that we *are* the faraway place in somebody else's language), but for an unpopulated place we say "a place where birds don't lay eggs and dogs don't poop".
"Hier will man nicht tot über'm Zaun hängen" is quite beautiful too
"wouldn't (even) like to hang dead on the fence here."
The "even" can be tonally implied by stressing the word "Zaun"
It's used for sketchy or spooky and or abandoned feeling places as well as boring towns an villages (stressed "Zaun")
But a deadpan delivery can basically mean both, so that's that.
At least that's how I use it.
😁👍🏾😎
"Da ist die Katz gebleut"
I had to translate for my husband. In US English you can express that sentiment with stating that you wouldn’t want to be found dead somewhere.
So in this case you wouldn’t want to be found dead and draped over the fence there.
@@RealPumpkinJay I think Wodehouse's famous Charakter Bertie Wooster talked about "not wanted to be found dead in a ditch".
In my childhood, Honolulu and Buxtehude were the two mythical places far far away where no human being had ever been. I was quite surprised when I found out that both places actually exist.
And on the flip side, I, who lives somewhat close to Buxtehude, have just learnt that it has this kind of status in the south.
To me, it's just a small place like any other.
What I couldn't get my head around is that Dieterich Buxtehude was not from Buxtehude and he was not german. I always assumed he was. But he was danish and not even his father was from Buxtehude.@@Yotanido
@@Yotanido I'm from near Meppen and have also only just found out that Meppen is used like that!
When travelling throughout Germany I've been surprised at how many people seem to have heard of Meppen, but I always just thought it had to do with the SV Meppen football club that was mildly famous in the 90's
@@namewarvergebenDeniz Undav (currently VfB Stuttgart) has played for SV Meppen and he's seen as a potential candidate for the national team rn, so even these days it's known amongst football fans.
@@stevensiegert ohh, I wasn't aware of that, thanks!
In hebrew there's an old expression - "Go to Honolulu" (לך להונולולו - more familiar with ages 50+), as in go and banish yourself at the most faraway place there is. Funny thing, my mother once backpacked to Hawaii and called her mother, saying: "Mom, I'm actually in Honolulu" and she didn't believe her lol
that's cute 😊
what's less cute is that you lot write the vowels only in the words i already _know_ how to vocalise. i *know* which vowels go in _h-n-l-l,_ i need the ones for _l-k_ for duck's sake! 😭
@@fariesz6786 לך LEKH, is Go in hebrew (referred to a male). LEKHY is spoken to a female.
Lekh is pronounced like the Polish former persident Lech Valenza's first name.
There is also the expression 'there the sidewalks are folded up in the evening' (da werden die Bürgersteige abends hochgeklappt) for a place where people live but there is no nightlife, nor anything that could be done in the evening.
A long time I was wondering how that would work practically to fold up sidewalks.
Tote Hose.
Not to be confused with "Die Toten Hosen", which is a punk band.
Bürgersteige hochklappen, Laternen auspusten und Mond mit der Stange weiterschieben
Can be extended by "und drei Mann ziehen den Mond hoch" (and three men pull up the moon)
@@m0llux I remember a cartoon with a town sign of Totaltotehose, Landkreis Nixlos.
Only a german can wonder like this, because they are no Blitzgneissers.
Die Berliner nennen ihren Ortsteil "Schöneweide" oft und gern mal "Schweineöde". Find ich immer noch witzig.
Gets even better with Oberschöneweide > Oberschweineöde
The thing with Meppen possibly goes back to the time when SV Meppen played in the 2nd Bundesliga (70s). At that time, Meppen was considered the epitome of an insignificant small town in the middle of nowhere.
„Ich spiel‘ doch nicht in Meppen!“
Toni Schumacher
In Quebec many small villages are named after their parish church’s patron, so Saint(e)-X-de-Y, and dairy is an important part of our agricultural sector. When we want to talk about a faraway area, we’ll talk onomatopoetically about Saint-Clinclin-des-meuh-meuh.
I use "Saint-Sorti-D'la-Carte" (Saint-Off-The-Map).
Faut pas oublier les Îles Mouk-Mouk 😂
That's right across the border from East Overshoe, Vermont?
So "Saint ding-dong mooh-mooh"?
@@martinc.720I laughed out loud for that one. Thank you!
I also know a place to live: "Hinterm Mond leben" - "live behind the moon". But this refers to a person, who didn't get some fundamental knowledge. There is also the expression "Hinterwäldler", which refers to a person, that lives in a forest area, which also didn't get the latest news so often. Today it's also a term to describe very conservative traditional people.
You would be much further away if you lived on Europa - note the word "on". Europa is one of Jupiter's moons. Distance from Earth: between 3,9 AU (astronomical units) = 585 million km and 6,5 AU = 975 million km
Europa is covered by an ocean which is about 100km deep and is, below some miles of ice, fluid. There have been speculations of simple forms of live on the bottom of this ocean. I remember one by Arthur C. Clarke, in "2010".
If it does not need to be Europa, choose one of Pluto's moons, like Charon: maximum distance from earth is 50,3AU = 7,55 billion km.
Temperature: around -240°C. You can preserve a stock of fresh air as a frozen block on the shelf for future use there.
Gravity: about 0,07g - tie yourself to the gound or feel free to float.
On Charon, a 400W solar panel will provide about 165mW, so you don't need one living there.
But the moon itself ... consider going there on a trip, 200 years in the future. Will it be strewn with beer cans and McDonalds garbage as the roads today? Probably ....
Parking fees, cinema tickets, and restaurant prices will of course be astronomical on the moon :)
The English equivalent of 'hinterm Mond' would be 'under a rock' by the way.
I believe, Hinterwäldler is roughly the equivalent of a Hillbilly
@@Todesnusswe also use this one but maybe it's imported from English (or the other way around)
Actually there is a link to Wallachei for this Hintermwald/Hinterwäldler.Siebenbürgen, another German-speaking region of modern day Romania and close to Wallachia, is known in English as Transsylvania , meaning beyond the forests/woods. Many centuries ago, Germans were sent there to, amongst other things, populate the area as a bulwark against invaders from the east. Thus to go to Wallachia or to “beyond the woods” was almost the same thing. Later generations were then considered yokels, hailing from a place so far from the centres of culture as to even be called “beyond the woods”. It is not completely clear whether the pejorative expression or the geographical name developed first - or both in parallel. Either way, it is a beautiful part of the world and rich in culture, a long long way from being Hinterwaldig!
Meanwhile, where I live now, we say “back o’ Bourke” as the most remote location.
I think everyone living in Berlin can relate to the feeling of jwd. It’s somewhere close to the vast and empty ocean of Brandenburg.
Hm... Bei dem vielen märkischen Sand, wäre es da nicht sinnvoller von Wüste zu sprechen...?
it is about relative "too big to be comfortably nearby" distance, eg for someone from the inner city, Spandau is already jwd, just like people from Spandau still say "going to the town" or "going to Berlin" (1920 lots of surrounding little towns and villages including Spandau were united to create "Groß-Berlin, Greater Berlin", and most of them can still be seen, having around 100 "town centers" nowadays with eg a ring road around their central church).
btw: and no, jwd is no tongue twister, but simply said as separate letters j.w.d. ("Jot Weh Deh").
Why does the Berliner 'janz' sound like Niederrheinisch?
@@Anson_AKB wat issn een Spandau? Kann Ik det essen?
i live just a bit outside Zehlendorf in the provincial nothingness of Potsdam-Mittelmark... yeah, can relate 😂 even though honestly i'm still fairly comfortable living there
I always thought the fox and the hare are saying goodnight to each other because the place is so incredibly peaceful and idyllic. Friedrich Merz even used it in a political spot way back when he ran in the Sour-Land, so I think it has a posititve connotation. In contrast to "Am Arsch der Welt".
I think with Buxtehude and especially Meppen a part of the Saying is the factor that they are phoneticly interesting/weird/funny
In Sweden we also use the phrase to go where the pepper grows. But sometimes we say "Dra till Otaheiti", go to Otaheiti ,,Geh nach Otaheiti ".
It is not unusual to say that you are in Långtbortistan (Far-away-istan) a fictional place made up by the translators of Donald Duck into Swedish.
In German they named it Weit-fort-istan, which means the same thing
@@ansgarhugle2471... or Weit-weg-istan meaning the same thing -- I grew up with this one.
Except that I always interpreted "Dra dit pepparn växer!" as just a less crude way of saying "Go to hell!" After all, it's also a very warm place...
It's interesting how these translators influence our languages; in Germany, it also was a Donald Duck translator, Dr. Erika Fuchs, who left a permanent impression. The conjugated from created by stripping the "-en" from the infinitive of a verb to (kind of) make it an exclamation is called "Erikativ" in her honor.
@@ansgarhugle2471Dutch has ‘Verweggistan’ from DD too
I'd also add "Hinterm/Übern Berg/Berge/Berch" to that list of places. It's very commonly used in my area since there are long hills seperating long valleys. Villages behind these hills are harder to reach and have little social contact to the other side. In social terms the valley is the regular boundary and the next valley over is mostly terra incognita.
Thanks Gordon ❤
A variation of that is "hinterm Wald" ie. behind/beyond the woods.
However much more common is calling someone a "Hinterwäldler" ie. a person living behind/beyond the woods meaning someone who's quite uninformed about things going on in the world.
@@michaelburggraf2822 Der Hinterwäldler "lebt wohl hinterm Mond" (hinterm, hinter'm, hinter dem)
And if someone ran away and has a reasonable margin over his chasers he even is already "über alle Berge".
Für mich bisse nur übern Berch, wenne noch krank bis aba nich mehr am abnibbeln, woll?!
In the Netherlands, we have "van hier tot aan de Duitse grens" and "van hier tot Tokyo". They literally mean "from here to the German border" and "from here to Tokyo" and I think means exactly the same as "bis nach Meppen". For example "die man had een buik van hier tot aan de Duits grens" ("that man had a belly from here to the German border") to describe someone very fat.
I live relatively close to the German border, I don't know if this expression is used in the west of the country.
Further we have "Verweggistan" ("far-away-istan") for a place very far away.
We Germans use that belly phrase, too. But we tend to insert the names of settlements of various sizes or distances away. :D
In the Netherlands you also have an entire region called the "Achterhoek", which I find both amusing and endearing. I've never heard any Dutch people use it proverbially, I guess it's just literally called "the rear corner" :D
There used to be a bus from Emmen to Meppen until a year ago. The only public transport available now will only take you to the German border
As the Netherlands being a relatively small country, the phrase "van hier tot aan de Duitse grens" reminds me of Ephraim Kishon who wrote about Israel:
"most people here know their country like their vest's pocket. But, to be frankly, how large is even the largest pocket?"
"From here to Tokyo" ... hmmm ... Amsterdam ist at 52.4 degrees north and 5 degrees east.
Farthest point on earth from Amsterdam would be 52.4 degrees south and 175 degrees west. That's in the southern ocean, 1254 km southeast of Dunedin, New Zealand.
"From here to Christchurch" would match much better (Christchurch is in New Zealand as well).
Coming from Haarlem (extreme west of the Netherlands, far from the German border) I don't know that expression.
my Grandmother was from Silesia when it was German. She often said „ich bin bis nach Pusemuckl gelaufen“ to express she had to go a long way to get something. Pusemuckl or Posemuckel is now Polish and called Podmokle.
Auch keine Verbesserung...
In Dutch, there is also an expression in which Timbuktu is used: "van hier tot Timboektoe," describing a faraway place. However, "van hier tot Tokio" is more popular, possibly due to trade with Japan. Lutjebroek, a small village in North Holland, has the illustrious honour of describing a very small rural place where nothing ever happens. In Amsterdam, they use "uit de provincie" or "from the province" to describe anyone who isn't from Amsterdam.
The last one is so French. :D
@@Herr_Damit Hence Danny Boon's Welcome to the Sticks. 😉😊
Aus der Provinz, von hier bis Timbuktu
"Tietjerksteradeel" is also a place that is often used in that context.
Ughh, in Denmark Copenhageners will also say "the province" for everything outside Copenhagen. As as dismissive wave of a hand and "That random stuff, whatever, that is not this glorious capital"
In the Balkans, we have a very nice word for remote places: vukojebina. Literal translation: where wolves go to f*
😂😂😂😂
Gotta love Slavic humor.
Ein paar Klassiker fehlen noch:
Irgendwo im Nirgendwo.
Hinterm Berg.
Da, wo die Shoshonen schön wohnen.
there's a pretty funny way to say it in Chinese - 鸟不拉屎的地方 (places where birds don't even defecate in) referring to somewhere so remote and so small that not even birds can bothered to do their business 😂
I love this expression!
I know primarely the place called "Hinterposemuckel". And recently I learned that it refers to a real place in Poland but I forgot the Polish name of the town.
Podmokle Wielkie and Podmokle Małe according to the Wiki
Nicht zu vergessen, "am Arsch der Welt" hat noch zwei Abstufungen (nach oben und nach unten):
"Nicht wirklich am Arsch der Welt, aber man kann ihn von hier aus sehen..." / "Not really at the arse of the world, but you can see it from here..."
"Nicht am Arsch der Welt, sondern mittendrin!" / "Not at the arse of the world, but in the middle of it!"
😉
lol... And here comes Uranus...
One of my favourite expressions for an undesirable place (though it serves double purpose: far away and lonely as well as a bad neighbourhood an a city) is: „Da möcht‘ ich auch nicht tot über‘n Gartenzaun hängen.“ (I wouldn’t want to hang dead over the garden fence there.)
A variant is to put it in the second person or the neutral: „Da möchtest du…/Da möchtet ihr…/Da möchte man…“ (You wouldn’t…/One wouldn‘t…)
I don‘t exactly know how wide spread this expression is, it _could_ very well be extremely local (like many figures of speech are in Bavaria), but I find it sufficiently expressive.
I actually grew up just a few kilometers from Buxtehude. For some reason, sending someone to Buxtehude wasn't a thing for us, as they would have been back within a few hours, even if walking on crutches. We were, however, very proud of being the neighbours of a town that effectively fought off an attempted Viking invasion (yupp, Buxtehude), or so the local tale goes about a mass grave from an appropriate time in history.
Very cool story!🤩
In Wales, the middle of nowhere is often called 'Cwmtwt'.
How is that pronounced, without any vowels? That looks worse than Angstschweiß. 😉
@@miracula2226 ‘w’ in Welsh is a vowel. Pronounced like ‘oo’ in English or the ‘u’ in ‘Hut’ in German.
This "Meppen" thing is very popular even in East Frisia and this is not far away 😀 My family also use the phrase "Kurz vor Plumps" I don't know how to translate this, phrase properly but "Plums" is the sound when someone is falling down "Just before Plumps" - just before someone is fallen from the end of the map.
Really? Must bé relatively new. Never heard it in m'y time in Ostfriesland. Which ended in the "Nullers" though.
We live behind the woods. (Wir leben hinterm Wald=we are Hinterwäldler)
Ballygobackwards is one that really only works in Ireland. It's clearly a small village suspicious of outsiders and of anything modern. It works because many Irish place names begin with "bally", an anglicisation of the Irish baile, "town".
Isn't that in Co. Leitrim near the second oak tree on the left after the green teachín?
@NedNew I'm not at all sure that this "Leitrim" you mention actually exists.
A couple Norwegian examples from the top of my head:
- We also have "der pepperen gror", lit. "where the pepper grows", as in "å dra dit pepperen gror" - "to go where the pepper grows"
- "Gokk" means a nothing-place, a bit like "the middle of nowhere": "langt uti Gokk" - "way out in the middle of nowhere"
- "Huttiheita" means roughly the same thing as "Gokk", but is more fun to say
- "Langtvekkistan", lit. "Far-away-istan", means somewhere extremely far away
- Not really along the same lines but I feel like I have to mention it: "Heller en dram i timen enn en time i Drammen" - "Rather have a shot (of alcohol) an hour than spend an hour in Drammen", a play on words that demonstrates how truly hated the city of Drammen is
Will edit with more examples if I think of them
"Heller en dram i timen enn en time i Drammen" - "Rather have a shot (of alcohol) an hour than spend an hour in Drammen"
I learned in the 1980es from a Skien (or was it Hønefoss?) teacher that this was because of automobilists trying to reach Oslo from the West/South-West being caught in traffic for hours, rather preferring to be drinking instead.
There are of course lots of expressions in the different dialects. In Swiss German for example, you can say "im Gjätt usse". Gjätt is a kind of false nominative of the verb "jäten" (weeding). So it can be translated as "out in a place that needs weeding".
That's a bit similar to an expression in Upper Swabia (between Ulm and Lake Constance): "im/em oongrachta"
which means "im Ungerechten" and should be translated as "in the unraked (area/region)". Often a rake is used to weed out an area of soil to improve growth of other plants or to prepare that area for growing other plants.
Regarding the Hintertupfing one, I never thought about it as fictional in bare ignorance. As beeing from the north of Germany, Kleinkleckersdorf comes far more natural to me.
It's all regional differences. I never even knew about the Buxtehude one, as I would be easily able to go there by train.
Kleinkleckersdorf sounds like something that might be close to where Andrew lives.
I live in the English Midlands - I'm in Walsall - and one of the sayings we say for going the long way around, or on a circuitous journey is 'around the Wrekin', a big hill in Shropshire which is visible from quite a distance, but is still far enough away to be considered going out of your way - unless you're actually going there.
Since wrecking is more the destruction of a ship, I would have thought on a completly different meaning. Like "avoid the death".
@@holger_p It's nothing to do with wrecking. Wrekin is pronounced reekin. It's from the ancient Byrtthonic (Celtic) name Wrikon. I'm from Shropshire btw.
@@simonh6371 ...I said what a non-celtic speaker would guess. I'm aware it's wrong.
I had to google where shropshire is, close to wales explains the language.
@@holger_p It's a little known quiet county but in fact it's where the Industrial revolution started.
Being from Meppen, it took into my twenties until I ever heard the expression "Bis nach Meppen". Though Buxtehude on the other hand was this type of mythical place from fairy tales. You can't imagine the dissapointment that it's just some town on the outskirts of Hamburg.
Same here:
That’s exactly where my town is: „am Arsch der Heide.“ I have never heard that term before.
But on Sundays most bakeries are closed. Da rennst du bis nach Meppen am Sonntag früh, um Brötchen zu kriegen!🌸
In Austria (at least in the east) "Gigritzpatschen" is a place similar to Hintertupfingen. "Stixneusiedl-Palermo" (as if it where one location, both locations exist, one near vienna, one in Italy obviously) is also to describe a village far away or somewhere undefined. From the very well known austrian Kabarettist/comedian Lukas Resetarits I learned "Schaas-Klappersdorf an der Leitha" which surely does not exist (but the river Leitha does) and would roughly translate to "Fart-rattle-village" :-)
Kennst Du auch "Tripsdrill, wo die grünen Arschlöcher wachsen"? Grüsse aus der Steiermark!
As a Lancashire born woman (thats in northern England - big town is Manchester) we use the phrase 'Back of beyond'
Have heard that at the the other side of the Pennines too. Also "back end of nowhere", but since that's also termed "ar*e end of nowhere", it's a different use of "back". But it does tie in with the the NSFW entry that starts at 5:30.
I´m from Cologne and asspecially my mom drops the phrase "Poll - Porz über Bethlehem" (in engl. "Poll - Porz via Bethlehem"). Because Poll and Porz are neighboring districts of Cologne a detour to Bethlehem would make no sense, this phrase blames about a bad idea.
Talking of phrases: if you're from Cologne, you may know "Sodom und Gomorrha und Castrop-Rauxel" 😂😂
Sounds like public transport in even slightly rural areas.
I live near Hamm. Getting to the spa in Bad Sassendorf takes me ~40min by car one way. Public transport easily doubles that at best, under the assumption there are no strikes in place, I can make all the numerous foot travels in time, and also all the trains and busses are on time. Hardly a relaxing experience then. Pure travesty this time and age.
Interesting! For unnecessary detours I only know the expression "über Paris nach Rom" / "via Paris to Rome".
My aunt really lives in the middle of nowhere, Saxony-Anhalt. When I was little, we used to joke that she lives "behind the Moon" (hinterm Mond).
"Scarberia", to describe Scarborough, a large suburb of Toronto, which I can remember being quite rural back in the day. It was so far from the main city centre, it was considered equivalent to going to/living in Siberia
I heard that for the first time a few years ago while I was staying at UTSC for a week. I could see why people were not huge fans of the area.
Besides the often heard meaning (a far away place like India) it has a quite dark meaning: Pepper was also planted in French Guiana - which was a penal colony back in the 18th century. Due to its climate, you rarely came back alive, so wishing someone to "where the pepper is grown" you - more or less wished him to die...
In Australia, if you're talking about a remote area, usually in the countryside, you can say it's "out woop woop". I used it myself to refer to the farm I spent my Schoolies trip at (Schoolies is a holiday just after final exams finish and you graduate high school). It's used as in the phrase "My uncle owns a farm out woop woop." Or "Oh yeah, it's ages away, out woop woop."
Beyond the blackstump used to be common
We also say 'hinterland'.
I also heard "500 miles from woop woop".
@@Voyagerch75 ig that's even further away lol. Not come across that one in NSW, where've you heard it?
@@glowstoneunknown From a relative in Western Australia.
I am German and till you explained it I never questioned why we say "Wo sich Fuchs und Hase gute Nacht sagen" and... I love that logic behind it!
"Wo der Pfeffer wächst" is of course also the name of a song (and the album it's on) by the Wise Guys, and I've heard their songs are often played by German teachers in their classes. Guess that's another way to learn about German phrases
Today I finally made sense of part of the lyrics of that song! I had heard it through a German and didn't realise those were real expressions.
Another important far away place is: Panama, the promised land.
And a great and kind expression for "Piss off" is: "fahr doch in den Harz" (take a trip to the Harz-Mountains)
If someone takes an unneccessary complicated route to get somewhere we say "Pattensen, Peine, Paris"
da liegt der hund begraben (that's where the dog is burried) is a phrase often used when describing a boring place where nothing ever happens (and therefore is usually rural but doesn't nececerially have to be. like a quiet boring suburban area could also be described like that)
Know also one additional.
"Er Lebt kurz vorm Bretterzaun" - means something like "He lives not far away from the wooden fence"
Tjeres a song where there's a wooden fence at the end of the world. The name perhaps refers this notion.
Wir wollten mal auf Großfahrt geh'n bis an das End' der Welt...
My favourite German expression (North German?) for small towns where nothing ever happens: "da klappen sie nachts die Bürgersteige hoch" (they fold up the pavements at night). In other words, no nightlife.
In the US we say "They roll up the sidewalks in the evening."
@@xrysoryba Same principle, thanks, I'd never heard it in English. Or American I suppose.
In Cologne, there is (or used to be - like many local expressions it seems to be dying out with older generations) a rhyming form of "am Arsch der Welt" used by people who live either centrally or in more prestigious areas: "Am Aasch dä Welt, in Iehrefeld" (referring in dialect to Ehrenfeld, one of the outer districts of the city that tends to have a bad reputation).
I find it interesting that this expression refers to the undesirability of the location but doesn't imply remoteness (since it's still solidly *within* the urban area)
Buxtehude originated kind of the same way as 'jwd', but for Hamburg. It was kind of a rival to Hamburg in medieval times - as it's located in the 'Altem Land', close to Hamburg, but ruled by the bishop of Bremen.
That "The Hare and the Hedgehog" race was located by the Grim Brothers books in Buxtehude.
It being beloved in the south comes in part as that name sounds quite alien :)
I'm American, and I've actually been to both Buxtehude and Meppen!! Once, when I was visiting Hamburg, I happened to drive through Buxtehude. I thought the name had a Scandanavian ring to it.
But, I've actually spent a good bit of time in Meppen. Some German friends live there (actually in a tiny suburb called Rühle). I've even visited the German Army's Meppen Proving Ground.
Now, do I feel special!
Super neat video! Was very fun to watch as a German.
While not a place, but a (nonexistant) time, this came to remind me of "Sankt Nimmerleinstag" for a day that will never come or is so far away that its basically never.
I guess the fact this reminded me actually matches with how we often speak of time and space through very similar language and words, for example "long" could be the attribute for both a distance or a timespan.
"Da willst du nicht tot überm Zaun hängen" for a place which is not just in the "Pampa" but really destitute.( where you do not want to hang dead on a fence)
I moved to Meppen 15 years ago. You're welcome to visit us here and I'll show you the important spots of this lovely town. 🙂
Tourist route to the unknown from Buxtehude via Bielefled to Meppen. No kidding: I made this tour due to some business requests in 2005, finished in Krefeld.
That’s really quite cool. I think I will use „geh doch nach Buxtehude“ when telling somebody that they need to take a break or need some fresh air in the countryside. I think it’s also actually a very pretty name to say in German.
"Dann geh doch zu Netto!!!" albeit more of an explantion you throw at someone who is about to leave or going anywhere else, is a common phrase in my social environment.
Thanks to, well... Netto.
This is a slogan from an old advert for the supermarket chain store NETTO. You can certainly find here on yt.
To get to some of the places mentioned in this video, you might take the train with the direction Paris - Palermo - Pelkum...
Living somewhat near Buxtehude, I was not aware that it has such an association with being far away or even not a real place in other parts of Germany untill I went to serve my term in the Bundeswehr. When by some coincidence my comrades found out that I live near Buxtehude they didn't want to beleave me that it truely excisted.
In Denmark "hvor peberet gror", where the pepper grows, is a place you wish people you don't like would go. The sparsely populated countryside can be "langt uden for lands lov og ret", far outside the country's law and justice. Or it can be "hvor kragerne vender", where the crows turn back. I have never heard Timbuktu used for anything but the actual city.
In my region of the US, we call it "out in the sticks" for "in the middle of nowhere". The sticks being a figurative way of saying among the trees/woods.
- "Da möchte ich nicht tot übern Zaun hängen" (I don't want tohang dead over the fence there)
- "Posemuckel"
- "Hamudistan"
- "hinterm Wald/Berg etc" (behind the forest/mountain etc)
- "südlich des Weißwurstäquators" (south of the veal sausage equator)
Wasn’t the pepper location South America? The French Jail where Papillon movie took place and the pepper was more the chili pepper. But I could be wrong and it was another urban legend connection.
Cayenne, French Guyana
I once visited NZ and was at the very south of the South Island and heard someone saying "Invercargill is the arse of the world -- and Bluff is 10 miles off." So it could be even more remote than a.o.t.w. ... (no offence to the inhabitants of those two towns from my side!)
To really get somewhere remote, take the ferry from Bluff or the plane from Invercargill to Oban, Stewart Island.
The have a 6 hole golf range, and I could see a kiwi (the bird) in the wild.
Telling somebody to go "wo der Pfeffer wächst" is often used as a way to tell a person to go away. It is often meant aggressively in that you don't want anything to do with them and they should "leave for the far away lands where pepper grows so that you won't be bothered by them"
Where I live, our Meppen is Pfannenberge (translates to "stack of fryingpans"). It does exist and if something quite unpleasant happens (like a loud bang or a bad odour is around or whatever), the magnitude of the mishap is best described by the phrase "you can even smell (or hear or generally sense) it all the way up to Pfannenberge". Das stinkt ja bis nach Pfannenberge. You can even escalate: Bis hinter Pfannenberge ("... even past Pfannenberge"). And so I've given this plot of land the minute of fame it deserves.
As I'm living pretty much on the other side of Hamburg from Buxtehude, using Buxtehude for some place in the middle of nowhere is really funny. Buxtehude has about 40,000 citizens and lies directly outside of Hamburg. The local and regional public transportation is part of Hamburgs transport association. Even one of the S-Bahn (a suburban rail system that goes a little further out than the metro) lines starts/ends there. Nobody living around Hamburg would be able to associate Buxtehude with remote a place. It is not even j.w.d. 😅
Buxtehude ist der Ort, wo Hunde mit dem Schwanz bellen :-)
That S-Bahn line even goes further into the wilderness, up to Stade, where I grew up: imagine, a town even further from civilization than Buxtehude! At least we had a nuclear reactor. 😋
middle of nowhere, arsehole of the world, and the fox/hare are also used in French (quite rare for that last one)
I'm from the Oberpfalz, near Regensburg and wie usually say Pampas, not Pampa. Our version of Hinterhupfing(en) is Hinterhugldapfing. And "geh doch dahin wo der Pfeffer wächst" is not really a description for a place. It just means that the one you're saying it to should leave you alone, now, and never bring the topic up again or show the unwanted behavior and so on. Really like your videos. Keep up the good work and all the best to you and your loved ones.
In Hintertupfingen is of cause the "hinter" (behind) wich shows that it is in the shadow of a better place and the word "Tupfingen" comes from "Tupf" wich is a little spot. Kleinkleckersdorf has the same meaning (klein = small, and Kleckern = to spill).
"On the devil's horns" or similarly, "at devil's assarting*". My favorite though - "in beyond-ass"
* part of the forest cleared by fire, in original proverb a not commonly used word stands too
Im from near Meppen and we often use Buxtehude in this context even tho ill get there within 3 hours, but i only learned about the Meppen expression a few weeks back
I live around 40 minutes away from Meppen and I can confirm, it is very common to say "bis nach Meppen"
Buxtehude resident here.
I moved to Buxtehude with my parents in 2015. When I told my best friend, his parents didnt believe me and said that my dad was basically pranking me (which they knew he would do sometimes). When my dad came to pick me up he had to literally show pictures of Buxtehude to make them believe us.
Hahaha great topic !!! 😂 "Bei Hempel's unterm Sofa " also ist a fun Expression 😂🎉 thanks for the Video! 👍🏼😎🎉
Describes my apartment pretty well! 😂
(It describes a really untidy place - like my apartment, which I haven't really cleaned in a week and it has some cardboard boxes, dirty clothes and used dishes that I still need to put away.
Tomorrow...)
Nice to hear the explanations for some phrases i use everytime and i learn some new one too. Good work. Some outdated sometimes still uses phrase is "Geh doch nach drüben", in the meaning of: If you dont like it here (wherever "here is" go somewhere different) Normally the reason for not likeing arent geographical but something else, (sozial, economical, political). The phrase originated from the time, where germany was devided. It was used on the west-side as an argument, if you you dont like the decisions made, you should go to east side and live where other decisions was made and how bad that wents.
About peppers. It's used by us French people bordering Germany as in "Nach Cayenne, da wo der Pfeffer wächst". Cayenne is in Südamerika, next to Brasil and are a part of French overseas territories. In the past, you could get sentenced to do some penal colony time there, and you'd rately come back from that place.
In Spanish (in Costa Rica, at least) we have the expression "en el culo del mundo," which incidentally also means "at the ass of the world."
Besides that, I have heard "donde el diablo perdió la chaqueta" ("where the devil lost his jacket.")
I'm sure I have heard more, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.
1. When I was doing my national forces places that were far away from urban civilisation were simply nicknamed as "viel Gegend"- meaning lots of area/region/open range... 2. The most remote and unimportant village is often referred to as "Kleinkleckersdorf"-meaning something like "Littlespotvillage". 3. Walachei: There is evidence that neither soldiers nor civil servants really wanted to be posted in that area and being sent there meant that something had happened that had ruined their career; a relation to some married woman, a duel, a case of corruption...
Description of a rural area that is do dull you don’t want to be there: „Da möchtest Du nicht tot übern Zaun hängen“ - „You don’t even want to hang there over a fence, dead“.
Here we have the phrase "Ketsch, Brühl, Antwerpen" to express a rather lengthy and unnecessary detour, or when used as a question, to 'suggest' a reason why someone is late. The first two towns are local but a bit out of the way; the latter is a teensy bit somewhere else altogether.
I'm not aware of similar phrases used elsewhere---have I just never heard them or are they not a thing?
"Frühstück in Paris, Abendessen in New York, Gepäck in Tokyo" - when we describe mishaps during a travel vacation.
I am fond of "hinter den sieben Bergen, bei den sieben Zwergen" - "beyond the seven mountains, where the seven dwarves live" (from "Snow White", obviously).
Waldeck (7 Berge and children working in mines, hence Zwerge in Kellerwald) - Bonn (7 Berge in Siebengebirge) - Brussels (the HG Emperor's residence, where the Hessian princess went to be poisoned).
I found this to be quite informative! Where I am from (the United States), we are normally just acquainted with "Timbuktu" and "the middle of nowhere" (as well as "hinterland", which we borrowed from German); but now, I know that the German language has a wide variety of far-away places!
Thanks for the information!
Don’t you have Bumfuck? Somewhat nsfw though, I guess.
Timbuktu, is the town that seems to have a city partnership with Duckburg. At least there are signs pointing towards Timbuktu at some roads leaving Duckburg.
I don't know how often Donald Duck had to flee to that place by now...
Stuck between Hintertupfingen and Dingenskirchen - that's where the Bundeswehr sent me during Grundwehrdienst.
"Geh doch nach Timbuktu...." - niemals solch einen Kram gehört; aber "lange Haare, kurzer Verstand", das war mir stets geläufig.
I already commented this on the short, here in Austria, some place remote, which is complicated to reach and/or it's unsure how to get there, might be called Tripsdrill. It's often mentioned with a fools errand or a complicated trip that didn't bring the results one hoped for. Like "Da schickst Du uns nach Tripsdrill, und dann standen wir vor verschlossenen Türen".
I only found out a couple of years ago that that's an actual town in Baden-Württemberg. 😄
ETA: it is also known as "Tripsdrill, wo die grünen Arschlöcher wachsen" ("Tripsdrill, where the green arseholes grow"). 🙈
Wunderbar! Danke dafür. Ich lebe tatsächlich in einer Stadt, die sich als "Fusel im Nabel der Welt" bezeichnen lässt ;-)
I had a lot of fun and I learned something, eg. I didn't know that "jwd" means "janz weit draußen". The expression "Kaff" is also a pejorative synonym for a boring village.
In a stand-up comedy the final candidates were a priest, a teacher and a worker. They had to create a poem about "Timbuktu". Winner was the worker with:
When Tim and I to Brisbane went,. we met three ladies cheap to rent. They were three and we were two,. so me booked one and Tim booked two!
Many years ago, I lived in a place that a friend of mine described as "the third pine tree past nowhere". Locals called it Kapuskasing. :)
Not directly connected, but Diderich Hansen Buxtehude was an organist and composer who spent a fair chunk of his life in Luebeck (although he was born in either Denmark or Sweden, it's debatable).
My maternal grandparents lived in Shropshire, and the local 'dubious' locality was 'The Twitchen'. That was where the treacle mines were to be found.
whoever did the german localisation of Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom must have had a ton of fun. They named Eventide Island "Jotwerde" which sounds suspicously like JWD
A distant relative of mine was from Buxtehude and had the family name of Kuckuck as in "Zu Kuckuck!" He had problems whenever he signed some document.
In my childhood there was an other term: "Geht doch nach drüben". "Drüben" was East Germany behind the Iron Curtain. This was often used as a disrespectful sentence to give your a target to an area where nobody wants to live. I often heard this as an response from older people when we critizied something of our life (in the rebellion phase against parents :-) ).
As a Lower-Saxonian I knew Buxtehude and Meppen, but just as the real places. I had no idea they are being used in those phrases.
The pattern is allways the same: Find a funny townname which is far away from where you live and declare it als a mythical destination. Where I live, same region a Rewboss, Buxtehude and Hindertupfingen, Timuktu are common destinations never reachable. But I never heard about Meppen :-)
I live in the far North of Northrhine-Westphalia, near the border to Lower Saxony and never heard of that expression, too.
Since there are fictional places like Hintertupfing among the phrases, it took me while to learn, Buxtehude or the Walachei really exist.
My Grandma (born in 1923 in Aachen) used to say "Batavia Kuka" to refer to far away places.
Most Germans would pronounce Timbuktu differently than Rewboss does - with the stress being on the first syllable.
Es gibt auch den fiktiven Ort Krähwinkel als Inbegriff des Spießbürgertums, erstmals beschrieben von August von Kotzebue in seinem Lustspiel "Die deutschen Kleinstädter" von 1802.
Actually I would have put the stress on the second syllable.
@@__christopher__ You're probably right, second syllable a bit more than the first, but definitely not on the last syllable.
I think there is another version of Kleinkleckersdorf which is called Hinterpusemuckel maybe. Or is thr expression "hinter Pusemuckel" for a remote place?
"Out in the ulu" - brit Army slang brought back from Malaya where it is a native word for the [hostile] jungle interior.
Applied to any harsh environment far from home comforts.