This is a photo of part of Nuremberg city wall, for those who don’t know it.

It’s close to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. They had an exhibition on castles (there’s a parallel one in Berlin) so I went and had a look.

Scarcely had I entered the first room when I was overcome by a sense of information overload. I don’t like these audio guides, as they are so long-winded. Looking at the explanatory texts by the exhibits was also difficult with bifocals. I looked at a couple of castle models and some Playmobil knights’ castles, but I wasn’t in the mood for it.

This Püsterich appealed to me. I sneakily photographed it in the guide (photography not allowed in exhibitions). It is made of ceramics or metal, is filled with water and put in the fireplace, and when it is heated it starts blowing out steam through its mouth. No-one knows why. It may have been to increase the flames, but water is not usually good for that. This is the most famous one and is probably from the 13th century.

In fact it is on the Web too. It is usually at Sondershausen Museum. Google image search reveals a couple of other Püsteriches too. And Sondershausen has a mining museum and an underground marathon (Untertage-Marathon). You have to wear a helmet.

To make up for the lack of posting, here are some miscellaneous links of things I’ve noticed on the Internet.

1. Suppenfuß, from Feetart by Stoecker Fotografie – many more photos on site.

This one recalls Suppengrün (soup vegetables) and also pigs’ trotters, which I think are a similar price per kilo.

2. This has been widely linked – Tracy Goodwin is an American coach who teaches people to speak with what she believes is a British accent (she refers to the ‘British dialect’). One link is on The English Blog. Jeffrey Hill says:

Tracy may be an expert in some things but definitely not in speaking with a British accent. Hers is all over the place—sort of a cross between Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney chimney sweep in Mary Poppins and the Queen.

On YouTube you can see How to Speak with an American Accent. A Parody of the Tracy Goodwin videoby ELIPTIS (note picture on wall in the two videos). Heavy emphasis on the fact that this is not meant seriously did not get through to all the commenters.

That is so far from ANY American accent I have ever heard in any state. The U.S. spans an entire continent from east to west. There are numerous ways of pronouncing words in the U.S. I am American and often I could not understand what you were saying either when you were speaking with a British accent or ATTEMPTING to sound like an American. Perhaps you would find it good to practice a lot more before you make your next video about American English.

ELIPTIS replies:

Its a Parody you fool. Parody = ” A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.” I was taking off, which means copying Tracy Goodwins video of an English Accent….

3. BBC News reports that Tokyo’s oldest man had been dead in bed for thirty years.

Mr Kato’s relatives told police that he had “confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha,” according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000) in widower’s pension payments via Mr Kato’s bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

4. Tips for Translators has a short list of free online periodicals for translators.

5. In the latest edition of Translation Journal, among other interesting entries, there is an article by Michael Wilkinson on using the Web as corpus. The main emphasis is on how to use Bill Fletcher’s Web as Corpus website if you (like me) have not got round to creating your own corpus. I found the site promising when I tried it out for legal English.

Apparently really thin and elegant women in the USA and perhaps UK too have now made the Bad Wörishofer sandals a fashion item. They follow Birkenstocks.

The name comes from the spa town Bad Wörishofen. As far as I can tell, the special feature is the insole (Fußbett).

I first read about this trend in The Independent yesterday. It claimed that the shoes could cure bunions. I would wear them immediately if I thought that. Can a shoe cure a bunion?

The clip-clop of new footwear trends usually heard marching on the high street as the autumn season approaches is being drowned out by the sturdy shuffle of a shoe designed not to turn heads but to cure bunions.

Here or elsewhere, I am sure I spotted the wandering umlaut problem (Worishöfer), but it will have been corrected on the internet.

The Daily Mail had an article yesterday (with photos).

Named after the Bavarian spa town where it is made (Bad Wörishofen), the cork-soled saviour to the aching feet of ladies of a certain age is enjoying an unlikely surge in popularity.

Celebrities such as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst have been spotted wearing Wörishofers – which come in several designs and colours but never sway from their comfort-comes-first approach.

The Guardian took it up today.

It’s been widely reported, even in English-language papers, that a vault containing Franz Kafka’s papers was opened in Zurich yesterday, I believe in the presence of several people including one Germanist.

The Independent:

Just why it has taken so long for the hidden manuscripts to see the light of day is a story of Kafkaesque proportions in itself. Born in Prague in 1883, Franz Kafka – whose surname means “magpie” in Czech – was a little-known Jewish writer with a handful of published German stories to his name when he died.

I don’t know why we need to be told that Kafka means magpie in Czech – especially since it doesn’t, it means jackdaw. Not that I know any Czech, but Google thinks magpie might be straka.

LATER NOTE (August 2010): here is a photo of a jackdaw on Fürther Freiheit:

It rained a bit yesterday. I wouldn’t mind if it rained a bit today too. (Stadtparkcafé cat)