After a gorgeous, wonderful weekend, we have started the week off with another cold front and rainy spell. It suits me fine, though, to have it rain during the week when we are all busy. I much prefer the beautiful weekends. This past weekend, we got to hike over to our new favorite place in town: Engelhalde Park. It is a wonderful park filled with fields and playgrounds for all ages, a pond with a nesting pair of swans who are expecting a little ugly duckling of their own, a small herd of sheep, and all the dandelions you could want. Next to the pond is a lovely little cafe and refreshment spot. The fields in the park, and everywhere else, these days are ablaze with yellow dandelion blooms (Germans call this flower Löwenzahn - or lion's tooth). I was mentioning to a good friend from BHES that I really struggle between wanting to kill the weed and marvelling at the beauty of the fields. Saturday, we went to see friends also from America and spent a nice evening with a good pot of chili and their family, and then on Sunday, we took the boys to the local tennis club for a fun, free day of tennis. Both boys are now signed up for the summer to take Saturday lessons. I know they will enjoy it.
My question on Friday is about the commercials we see on TV. I never really thought about it until we were in Scotland. There, we got to see the debut of the new Honda commercial that was only being shown selectively in Europe - and Germany is not one of those locations. But it had a wonderful remake of a well-known song called "This Little Light of Mine." From my singing days, I instantly was drawn to the commercial in hopes that some day I could get the sheet music to do this song in church with a women's choir. It would be really special. (To see and hear the commercial, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyknI5_Wcqs if you have permission from your teacher. This is an external You Tube site that the Honda website will point you towards to see their European commercial.) Another commercial I am not sure you get to see is a funny one by the Axe company, owned by Unilever, that has body sprays and deoderants/antiperspirants mainly targeted at men. This is a Anglo-Dutch company, so here in Europe, the product is very popular, but I know their products are also available in the US. The commercial, though, is very funny, done in a documentary style about a man who has a serious problem with sweating, so much so, that water pours out from under the man's arms whenever he lifts them.
I know that the topic of the last commercial was a bit gross, but it got me to really thinking about the differences in commercials here versus in the US. It also made me wonder, again, if a commercial is universal when the product is? Commercials here are, of course, in German. if they were originally done in English, they are dubbed over. The majority concentrate mostly on German products, but international products are also presented. Along with food (yogurt and Nutella are repeated often), drinks, telephone/Internet services, automobiles, and the usual, they have many more commercials about vacation spots. Germans are one of the biggest travelers when it comes to vacationing. Small countries can benefit a lot from the money Germans bring to their country. But surprisingly, it is not exotic spots that we think of (like Hawaii) for vacations, but many Asian or African countries, eastern European countries, and the Middle East that advertise the most here. All the places that we have seen are so contradictory to what my images are of these places: Croatia, Algeria, Montenegro, Ethiopia, etc. that it makes me really question what are these places really like? Honestly, before living here, you could not have paid me to go to these places. Now, I would at least consider it.
What is not on commercials here that we really appreciate is the over abundance of different drug products that only you and your doctor know if it is right for you. We particularly don't miss the two minute long disclaimers of all the ways the drug can hurt you instead of help you. Also missing are the "as seen on TV" adds. No infomercials and no yelling pitch man. That is very nice.
Another very different part of commercials here is how they are run. Movies will air without commercials for sometimes an hour or more (better not need a potty break). Then, when the commercial break happens, it is about 25 minutes long or so. (We were able to do dishes and make a dessert during one channel's break!) For shorter shows that were originally aired in the US, the spot where the commercial should fall becomes very obvious to us - that telltale sign with the bit of suspense music or theme show music and then the fade out. But here, it is immediately faded back in and just keeps going. I mentioned this to a German friend of mine one time, and she laughed. She just thought it was a camera angle change.
This past week, they have been showing a Star Trek marathon of sorts with movies and episodes of the first series from the 60s in preparation for the German release of the new movie. The marathon will continue all month. Again, the movies play for an extended time and then take these long breaks, but with the shorter series shows, they move from one right into another without even showing credits. It has been a little disorienting, since we don't fully understand the language yet (all shows are dubbed over in German, so we can't always tell what's happening in a show), and don't know if the previous show has ended. Some shows I have seen many times before, so I know how they end, and for those, I have also noticed that the showing here will often just cut short of the ending and go right into a new show or these long commercial breaks before a new show. For me, this is very disturbing because they didn't resolve the story completely. It really makes me wonder what the German people must think of our shows since they wouldn't necessarily know that the end was never shown.
In all, though, I have noticed that humor and lightness is much more a part of commercials here - not just pitches. I must admit, I don't hate commercials as much as I used to. Perhaps this trend is coming to America, too. One can hope.
I keep a file of the topics I have covered and possible ideas of future topics. I got lazy and quit looking at the file regularly through March and April and saw that I missed some topics based on important anniversaries. Given the remaining 18 blogs I have left for this school year, if I cover them all, many blogs will bounce from serious to light without a lot of interconnectedness. I'll go ahead and apologize now for the jumpiness, but I want to take the time to ask that if there is something you really want to see covered in this blog, please post a comment before time runs out. Although I will still continue to blog after May 29th, the format will likely change rather considerably, so now's your chance.
The word for today is commercial: der Werbespot (vair beh shpote) or die Reklame (ray klah meh).
The question for today is "Which important anniversary was celebrated on April 30th and how did the German people react?"
auf Weidersehen,
Frau Spitzer
