Hitherto

So there are days in my American Literature and Culture class that I get bored and stare out the window and this is what I see. While on the one hand they are only typical townhouses/apartments that are for the boring people that just want to look like everyone else, there is nonetheless something beautiful in their uniformity. The many layers of repeating architecture, straight lines, and perspective. There was even one day when I saw sunlight splashing across all of this. I shouldn't say splashing because it was so neat and uniforms that it was more as if the sunlight had painted geometric shapes on the city landscape. It was in Osnabrück though and I don't ever expect to see that sun again though so we've settled with this picture.

On another note, we learned something intriguing about the German language today that I found amusing. We have the word "Gentleman" which is "Herr" in German. Make it into anadjective you have "Herrlich" which means "glorious, superb, magnificent." All well and good. Well there is a flip side. "Lady" is "Dame" (where we get the word 'dame'), but when you make that into an adjective you get "dämlich." "Dämlich" is best translated into English as "dopey, dimwitted, goofy, daft." Just to be clear, I don't think women are so, in fact I might even consider women to be "herrlich" but nonetheless I couldn't help but find it amusing. Also the Germans use the phrase "hitherto" relatively frequently and I would like to start using it in English. We'll see what happens.