Tourismus

Tourism is a major industry and also a major topic for conversation for anyone learning German. Here's a list of topics that students are expected to talk about or discuss at AS level (exams taken by 17 or 18 year olds in England )

• different types of holidays and holiday activities
• what's important when choosing a holiday
• what can be stressful about holidays
• pros and cons of tourism e.g. impact on destinations,cultures, global environment and climate
• impact of tourism on the German economy

A useful starting point would be making lists of vocabulary that you might need under these topics and some useful phrases. For instance, for types of holidays and holiday activities you might list: Strand & Sonne - Wellness, Spa & Beaty - Aktivurlaub & Abenteur-Touren - Sportlich Aktiv - Radreisen - Wanderreisen - Kanu/Kajak. But you also need to note what are the attractions of these types of holiday and to whom they are likely to appeal. If you are looking for entspannen und wohlfühlen then perhaps that would suggest lounging on the beach. However, vigorous activity helps some people relax and feel good.

As ever, a good source of general information is Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourismus and this quite lengthy entry will tell you about Gesellschaftlich Bedeutung - Kulturelle Auswirkungen - Auswirkungen auf Umwelt und Natur - Wirtschaftliche Bedeutung. I found it particularly interesting that they also handle sustainable tourism, fair trade and problems likely to arise in the future - Sanfter und nachhaltiger Tourismus - Fairer Handel im Tourismus - Zukunftsprobleme.

When it comes to the impact of tourism on the Germany economy I have two suggestions beyond Wikipedia. The first is a report from Deutsche Welle earlier this week Traumziel Berlin: Touristen bringen Aufschwung in die Hauptstadt which is accompanied by a brief video to watch online or download as an MP4 file. The second appears to be someone's dissertation (Diplomarbeit) presented as website http://www.tourismus-dahme-seengebiet.de/  This is not as specialist as it sounds and you can easily pick out sections that interest you - for instance, Bedeutung und Trends des Tourismus in Deutschland. You can see some of the section headings in the image of part of the site navigation.

When you work with websites like this, make sure you pick out key vocabulary and highlight a few facts and opinions that you think might be useful. You might also consider the consequences of the world economic situation on tourism in Germany. A couple of short articles might help with this - Deutschland wird wieder entdeckt and Deutschland ist der beste Verlierer And here are a couple of questions for you: Ist der Kurztrip im eigenen Land die Antwort der Deutschen auf die schwerste Wirtschaftskrise der Nachkriegszeit? Warum ist Deutschland als beste Verlierer genannt?



I'll leave it to you to do some research on what can be stressful about holidays. The key word to search for is Urlaubstress but you might try combining several in one search. Pick  any of the following Panne, Flughafen, Auto, Krise to include with Urlaub and/or Stress.

Copenhagen Hangover

I've just been reading a Spiegel Online article Kopenhagen-Kater trübt Bonner Klimakonferenz but it's more than a bad headache we'll get if action isn't taken to keep the global average temperature to no more than 2 degrees. The reductions agreed may lead to increases of up to 4 degrees.

Umweltschützer kritisierten, dies reiche bei weitem nicht für das Zwei-Grad-Ziel. Nach Schätzung des scheidenden Chefs des Uno-Klimasekretariats, Yvo de Boer, laufen die angekündigten Minderungen auf einen Temperaturanstieg von 3,5 bis 4 Grad Celsius hinaus.

There have been attempts to discredit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but this really is a reliable and self correcting scientific resource which has involved many hundreds of scientists. There are some strong sceptical voices which tend to present the IPCC evidence as political propaganda but that suggests ignorance of the IPCC process and the IPCC reports and the evidence they contain. Occasionally a mistake can be found in their reporting - Himalayan glaciers and how far parts of the Netherlands are below sea level - but such errors are few in a report of 3000 pages and readily corrected. Science always has to be open to correction and these do not affect the core conclusions that human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels, are warming the planet.


Weather events at the beginning of this year had many people confusing local weather with global climate. Regional data has more variability than global averages and so it is not hard to find places where temperatures have not risen (continental USA) and a few glaciers (New Zealand) which are growing not receding. It is also possible to select data over limited periods that appear not to agree with that for much longer periods. A decade is too short a period to establish a long term trend. The IPCC has rigorously analysed data over long time scales and on continental and global space scales to identify the significant trends and their likely causes.

There may be some attitude problems to overcome if the public are to accept the science. People sometimes don’t want to believe predictions that challenge consumption levels and lifestyles that are now regarded as normal in the developed world.
 
If you have opinions on climate change then please express them by leaving a comment or contribute to the Forum on Spiegel Online Umwelt - ist die Angst vor der globalen Erwärmung übertrieben?
 
For balanced briefings on climate change in English, take a look at Sir John Houghton's contributions available from the John Ray Initiative. I cannot give a recommendation for a German language source because I don't know whose views would carry the same weight as Sir John's.

VLC Media Player and 3Sat Mediathek

I use VLC Media Player to watch videos and listen to audio podcasts. It will play just about anything you throw at it, including HD, and the great thing is it is a free download.
A neat trick I recently discovered is that if you have a link to a video stream on your clipboard you can get VLC to play it either from the Media menu >Open location from clipboard or by using the Ctrl-V combination when VLC has the focus. I find this particularly useful when looking at the 3Sat media offerings.

I take an RSS feed from 3Sat http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/rss/mediathek.xml which offers more than I can possibly view. Some of the videos are very short trailers, less than a minute, so they offer a brief taster of German language without you needing to get too serious. Then there are full programmes.

My favourite is nano and I've just watched yesterday's broadcast. The link to put on your clip board is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/100217_sendung_nano.mov If your internet connection cannot handle this stream go http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/?obj=16974 and you can then choose a lower connection speed - sellect Einstellungen towards the bottom right of the window and change the settings.

Another programme I watched recently was  hitec: Die Wettermacher - Lässt sich unser Klima kontrollieren? with spectacular images like the picture above. Highly recommended. The link for your clipboard is http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/090713_wettermacher_hitec.mov Strangely this is billed as the complete programme from 21.02.2010 - We do time travel on this blog.

Climate Change Challenged

There seems to be a growing trend of scepticism. The IPCC (International Panel for Climate Change - der Weltklimarat auf Deutsch) has acknowledged that their own warnings about the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas has insufficient scientific basis. Weltklimarat muss umstrittene Prognose zurückziehen is the headline in tagesshau.de
It's good that the IPCC are open to correction and acknowledge things that don't meet their own standards. What is more worrying is the way corrections are seized on as though they were absolute proof that climate change is nothing but hysteria. Yes we need corrections but we also need prompt action to try to reduce the human contribution to global warming. Even if the climate change models were much better developed the sceptics would still be in denial.
I was also interested to see that Michael Fish commented on Monday that long term forecasting is a science in its infancy - guardian.co.uk Comment is free Climate change sceptism
Wie denken Sie über die Sache?  Wie finden Sie die Umweltpolitik Ihres Landes?

Climate Change - Klimawandel

Can we forget climate change now?

I’m sure a lot of people are wondering whether we can still speak about global warming given the cold weather in Britain and Germany. We’ve been freezing but Winters are supposed to get milder. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious when I say climate is not the same as weather but some people just don’t get it. A few weeks when the weather is colder than average will not change the 30 year average much. Climate is about statistics and not about short-term weather events.

Here’s the start of an article by Dr. Tim Steiger which appears on the ARD website.

War‘s das jetzt mit dem Klimawandel?



Wie passt der bisher recht kalte Winter ins Bild einer globalen Erwärmung?
Deutschland friert und trotzdem sollen vor allem die Winter hierzulande immer milder werden? Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch, der dieser Tage wieder leise Zweifel an der globalen Erwärmung hochkommen lässt. Jedoch vollzieht sich der Klimawandel einerseits innerhalb von Jahrzehnten und andererseits nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern weltweit.
 
full article
glossary of weather terms
more environmental issues vocabulary and links to German Umwelt lexicons

What are your views on global warming? Perhaps you could add a comment and express your opinion in German.