20 December 2022
Sorry to hear that poor Sophie is sick. I hope she’s getting better. You asked me about the difference between sickness and illness. Basically illness is more serious. Colds and flus are just sicknesses. Illness is a word too that is used by companies and HR departments in their presentations and documentation to really describe any kind of health issues that employees have that prevent them coming to work. Germany has very generous conditions for absence due to illness. Health insurance companies never pay compensation to employees who suffer a loss in income due to illness. If you are ill in the long term, you need to have your own wealth or savings that you can fall back on if you are no longer able to work. Employers are also not obliged by law to continue to employ someone who is absent from work for a long time due to illness. It is no wonder our country is full of multi-national investment! Employers pay no contribution to health insurance either. That is seen as a private matter. There is also no law obliging citizens to have any kind of health insurance. Doctors aren’t worried about that either because no matter what, you have to pay for your medical services before you leave a doctor’s practice, so they are not bothered whether or not you are insured.
On the other hand, as we discussed, Ireland has some very good social laws when it comes to the socially vulnerable. For example, the over 66’s get a medical card which allows them to free healthcare. They also get a free travel pass for the Intercity trains and city transport networks in the whole country as well as in Northern Ireland. British citizens living in Northern Ireland who are over 66 also travel for free. Not too bad, eh?
There is a new political party on the rise in Ireland called Sinn Fein that wants to change the whole system and oblige companies to make contributions toward their employees health insurance. They also want to found a new national health insurance system which will compete with the private health insurance providers. At the moment, about 80% of the Irish are privately health insured. But no insurance is available in Ireland for dental. No matter who you are, you have to pay the dentist out of your own pocket! (Unless you are over 66! In which case you probably have no teeth left!)
You mentioned that your mom is travelling down to Munich this week to spend Christmas with you and that she has to change trains three times on the way. She has a car but a long journey like the one down to Munich would be too much for her. I can understand. You said the train journey will take 7 hours and you are going to pick her up at the station. You also spoke about how hard it is for retired people to actually be retired and go from a position of responsibility (like in the case of Melanie’s dad) to suddenly not having much responsibility at all, and an empty nest at home when all the kids have grown up and gone away! Elderly people can suddenly become quite insecure and tend to worry about things. I know that to be true too with regard to my parents and Mira’s dad. Things like the war and the energy crisis worry them a lot more than us. I think we don’t have time to be worried. What do you think?
You mentioned too that Sophie is coming to the age where there is increasing peer pressure in relation to the whole thing of mobile phones and social media. I was telling you about how I consider Tik Tok to be one of the greatest distractions of the century! In an age where we are all trying to help our kids to become studious and learn how to focus, we have things like that which train them almost to have a shorter span of attention. Our two have come out the other side very much whereby both of them now say their mobile phones are only a distraction and they even voluntarily shut them off and put them away from time to time just to have a bit of peace.
What is really challenging is that their gymnasium is totally digital which means that no kids have books anymore and the state of SH pays for the tablets. It really takes quite a while for the kids to learn how to discipline themselves into focusing on what they have to do and not using the tablet for any kind of entertainment, but when they crack it, it is cracked. When I look at how fast they do their homework on the tablets, it is amazing. It is also handy because when they are reading a Spanish text, they only have to put their finger on a word that they don’t understand and the word appears translated into English. So it’s actually a great tool of course when it is used properly. As you quite rightly mentioned, the change to secondary school is a huge culture change which takes a bit of adaptation. I hope Sophie enjoys the book. Listening and reading at the same time is great.
Have a great Christmas you guys and see you on the 28th at 4pm!
12 December 2022
Today you told me about the challenges you have before going into a new year which so far looks like it will present a lot more uncertainty. You have started to review your hourly and daily rates for your clients and you are reviewing your approach to negotiation under the guidance of your internal negotiation specialists. Your goal, provided I understood it right, is to bring your client into a dialogue so as to pinpoint and present opportunities.
My question to you was if your teams have the tendency to shy away from negotiation. I asked this because most people do, the reason being that it only represents stress for most people. Entering into negotiation normally means leaving comfort zones.
I also asked you if the teams are good at building relationships. You said that they are, but the clients change the counterparts every three years making it difficult to establish a long-term successful relationship. The clients do this in order to prevent favouritism. I asked you then if this means that you constantly have to re-establish trust. You said that you are constantly monitored for sure and there is relatively little room for slip-ups.
My final question to you today was if the teams find themselves constantly trying to persuade the clients of the merit of your company’s work in order to secure contracts and extend existing ones. The reason being that many of us tend us get sidetracked promoting something rather than focusing on finding out what the client needs. In fact, this is one of the reasons why we all hate salespeople. They tend to talk at us and tell us things (at length) that we don’t want or need to know, rather than just asking us if there is something specific we need.
Negotiations often break down as well when people get too hung up on price. Most companies who ask for a lower price are actually just looking for more value. Clients may be interested in finding out about how they can receive more value for the same price i.e. a service or product model that is better suited to their needs. Creative service providers may even be able to find ways of offering their clients more value at no extra cost to themselves. The master negotiators are therefore the creative thinkers who can come up with solutions that offer a win-win deal that nobody else would normally think of.
Most negotiations that lead to nothing do so because the negotiators only know how to intimidate or put their counterparts under pressure and don’t see it as their job to come up with good ideas or suggestions. This leads to both parties adopting hard positions, no one wants to give in and the stress leads to either conflict or a walkaway situation where everyone loses.
Have a great Monday Thomas and looking forward to seeing you again then next week!
6 December 2022
You spent the weekend up in the attic with your father-in-law putting up a curtain to divide off a part of the room for Melanie’s home office. You said that now you need to insulate to stop the draught getting in through the gap between the top of the curtain and the roof. Melanie made the curtain herself with a sewing machine. You said that the cold doesn’t bother you too much.
At the weekend you guys were at a Christmas market where you had to queue for a long time to get a sausage, and by the time you got to the top of the queue they didn’t have any bread left. But you did get some handmade soap that you want to give your aunt for Christmas. You guys are planning your skiing holidays in Austria which sounds really exciting I have to say. Judging by the weather forecast for next week, I reckon you have a good chance of getting enough snow down there. If it snows at all up here, you normally get a lot more down there. Your mom is coming down to you on the 23rd of December. Sounds like a nice family get-together.
I told you about an accident Rebecca had two years ago where she was knocked off her bike. She was lucky that she wasn’t more seriously injured. There is a blind spot at the entry to the roundabout down the road which is very dangerous. I have to write to your friend the mayor! To make matters worse, the court made her come in an testify in an effort to prosecute the driver, a stressful thing for a kid to have to do! There’s no getting out of it though.
If you make it up to Garmisch Partenkirchen this weekend, I hope you all have a great day of skiing. It’s such a great place there. All the best and see you next Monday!
2 December 2022
We briefly discussed the educational performance and future ambitions of our children initially today. I’d been saying to you that mine are starting to talk about college a lot now because there’s only a year left for Gwyneth. Finding a college and accommodation to go with it might be a challenge. You said that Sophie has made a good start at grammar school, so your concern is more about Johannes. But you’ve both managed to get the time off to go to Norway next year by camper. I have to say, that sounds like a brilliant adventure. I often pass campers on the motorway and think to myself how adventurous that must be. You had a great metaphor about how going on holidays is like shaking dirt off your feet. It’s very true. Ultimately we all treasure those memories. I love looking back on trips. Some years, I made photo books of the holidays and it’s great to pull them down off the shelf from time to time and look at the pictures.
Germany is out of the World Cup unfortunately. I don’t know who to follow now! But it’s a World Cup like no other anyway, isn’t it? Still though! It would have been great if the German team had come further though, wouldn’t it? Like we said, it took Jogi’s team three attempts to win, so who knows? Maybe this team is just getting warmed up. As you quite rightly said, we don’t have to wait too long really because the Euro’s are coming to Germany in two years. It would be great if Ireland qualified, but it’s relatively unlikely. Waiting for Ireland to qualify for the Euro’s or for the World Cup Finals is about as hopeless as waiting for the HSV to make its way back into the Bundesliga! I had better not mention that to my in-laws! They are loyal and dedicated HSV fans. Maybe the next time you meet your new colleague from the UK, he might tell you the truth about his British football loyalties. I reckon he’s a Man City fan and doesn’t want to admit it. But hey – so is Micheal O’ Leary!
We made a plan for your next trip to Hamburg; 544 steps and 123 metres to the top of St Peter’s Church and then a well earned pint of Guinness in the Fleetenkieker Irish Pub only a stone’s throw away from there. Good luck with the contracts for hiring your new partners and have a great weekend! See you Tuesday at 7.45.
22 November 2022
In today’s session we discussed the outlook for the coming 12 months and how your company has adjusted its growth forecast downward in anticipation of decreased demand in the building construction sector. As you showed me in your presentation, this is mainly due to the surge in inflation in the sector along with a surge in interest rates. The decline in interest rates between the financial crisis in 2011 and 2020 was gradual and designed generally to stimulate the EU economies that were particularly hardest hit by that crisis i.e. Greece and southern Europe. It would be fair to say that in this respect the ECB’s financial strategy worked well. It meant that credit was cheap in the stronger economies like Germany so the demand for mortgages surged causing the value of existing property to double during the decade. Now buyers are faced with the old interest rate of between 4 and 5% which means the cost of an average mortgage rises by hundreds of Euro per month in an environment where salary increases have lagged far behind the hyperinflation, even in the north of Europe.
For that reason, you mentioned that you are being careful about replacing staff who are currently leaving the company. In many cases, you are only replacing staff at a rate of 50% until you have a clearer picture of the coming 12-month period. It is indeed no harm to be cautious. If there is a shortage of affordable properties and therefore a decrease in the demand for mortgages, there may be an increase in the number of tenants seeking to rent private residential properties in 2023 meaning a general rise in the rental cost of a residential property. I mentioned to you how I saw the same thing happened in Ireland 20 years ago. The result was that the building sector managed to maintain profit margins by just building cheaper houses. The reduction in value for the buyer came about by building with timber-interiors and cheaper heating systems. This protected the building sector’s profit and at the same time gave the buyer an affordable property that could be purchased at up to 6%. The buyers interest was just ownership. Quality was second priority. Many owners continued to save after buying and brought the houses up to a higher standard 10 years later by financing private re-construction. You mentioned that fire safety-standard regulations in Germany might get in the way of buildings that have timber ceilings and interior walls. So I guess its a good time for companies to be creative and find ways to get around inflation and high interest rates and create new concepts in order to break into new customer target-groups.
16 November 2022
In today’s lesson we talked about the “Commitment Days” and the company’s growth/expansion plan for the coming years. We talked about some of the details regarding fluctuation and noticed that the rate of fluctuation is very low in Baden-Württemburg. You explained this by saying that it is because of the fact that that German state is the one where the head-office is located and generally the people who work there make a more long-term commitment to the company. We also discussed the 30m investment plan and how the company wants to increasingly focus on sustainable projects and materials going forward. One particular project is the Convivo one, which involves the construction of apartment concepts for retired people. The demand for retirement concepts is thought to increase considerably over the coming years. Pensioners live independently inside these buildings but they receive support with regard to health and care as needed. Convivo is not only going to be the manager of the concept but is also the owner of the site and building. For you though, some question marks remain over the project in terms of how much risk will be involved in the venture.
We also talked about other areas of investment such as IT / Digital and I told you about how many companies I worked in decided to budget on IT costs only to be met years later by massive catch-up costs and sometimes production failure due to outdated systems, badly maintained hardware and poor software. You also showed me your knowledge base which I have to say I found totally impressive. So many companies fail to recognise the importance of knowledge management and education. The development of media based automated learning and education feeds a well-stocked knowledge base and gives employees an incentive to learn. An in-company academy creates value for employees and supports the value of “never stop learning”.
9 November 2022
We started our session today by discussing resignations. A key person in your international business development team resigned during the week to your disappointment. You mentioned that you hadn’t expected it. I can understand how disappointing it is when good people resign. You mentioned that ou hadn’t particularly noticed that he had been unhappy or had gone particularly quiet. But there was definite tension between him and his colleague. You mentioned that it might have been a case of a conflict of cultures. I thought that was an interesting thing to hear because we have a lot of training projects coming up in 2023 in international companies to educate managers how to build successful teams inside multicultural companies. You mentioned that you will be faced with that issue again when you merge with the British company.
You also mentioned today that you were at a football match with a client who works for an space satellite company in Bremen. Bremen managed to only lose by 7 goals, so the Bremen fans must have gone home happy! My question to you was – Why did Musk buy Twitter when he could have bought a German space satellite maker? You told me that you believe he wants to be able to control politics in relation to his expansion plans. You mentioned that he moved the headquarters of Tesla to Texas in an effort to avoid environmental protection laws in California. My opinion is that he damaged his reputation enormously and it may not be forgotten. Entrepreneurs who show complete disregard for CSR rarely build sustainable consumer industries and tend to have to stick to the B2B sector. Suppose that’s ok too, isn’t it? If you are worth 200bn! You mentioned that your client was driving a Tesla and you were telling me how little tax he has to pay in comparison with a diesel company car.
We also talked about inflation and how cost-push inflation came about in February. This in turn was fuelled by demand-pull
1 November 2022
Today we discussed upcoming mergers and takeovers. I mentioned my partnership with the consulting company in Hamburg for training and you mentioned how your company is taking over an established project management company in Austria. You said that you have a one-brand strategy so you are going to rename the company after a certain period of ownership. The founder of the company is in his late 50’s and you have made him and his partners a generous offer. The company has a particularly good profit margin of 30% of turnover owing to a streamlined cost base. The have really great IT which for instance, powers their job-applications system very efficiently. You are hoping to be able to adopt some of that in order to streamline some of the administration costs throughout the company. Your company is looking to double turnover there. Austria is somewhat different in that companies work together in groups and you are hopeful that this will not come in the way of your takeover. It can be tough for foreign companies there and the main competition in the field of construction management is a company called Delta. You also mentioned that your merger with AA venture in the UK will be finalized next year when you buy out the remaining 60% of the company. You said that this step will be linked to the successful performance of the company.
Regarding Ukraine and the very long-term prospect of its rebuilding and re-development that really no one has even begun to mention, you said that your strategy in the past has always been to support your German clients on international development projects they take on in countries like that. You mentioned how Daimler hired you to successfully extend one of their plants in Hungary. The risk associated with payment in some Middle-Eastern markets can be high and securing advance payment is not an option in many foreign markets. One example you gave was that of Saudi where you closed the office after three years due to failure to secure payment. Even the office in Shanghai is really aimed at attracting Chinese investment into Germany rather than winning contracts in China with Chinese clients.
We briefly discussed Ukraine and even if a Coup D’Etat is attempted there, it would be unlikely to be successful. So it really is anyone’s guess what will happen there.
Finally, today we discussed how Hamburg may face an ongoing challenge from Rotterdam and Amsterdam going forward. Holland also has the advantage of free Sunday road haulage permits and liberal labour law. The rapid growth of online retail means a future change in city centres too. It is unlikely that retail property owners will be unable to find tenants. It will just mean that the tenants will be different. Perhaps e-car or alternative mobility showrooms and other showroom stores. I mentioned how successful Primark is with its offline-only business model forcing customers to travel to its enormous stores. Either way, the important thing is that the spin-off construction companies that depend on retail have a sustainable future. You mentioned Dieter Schwarz and how his foundation funds youth education and science projects in Germany. I have to say. That is really interesting. I have been reading a bit about it since.
Have a nice time in Bayreuth, enjoy the free time and see you at 12 noon on the 9th of November.
(Other important words not in the summary that we had today: ratio (Verhältnis) E.g. 20:1 / Good value (gunstig) )
25 October 2022: You mentioned that the audio summary is a good way to revise vocabulary and previous sessions, and you showed me some morning business newspaper headlines showing that the clouds are darkening because the building sector is forecast to shrink by 5% in the coming 12 month period. Hopefully that climate of fear will make competitors recoil into a defensive strategy of only protecting their existing market share. It may ultimately mean that going forward, the successful will be the most dynamic strategists and creative thinkers. You gave the very good example of the Porsche brand who managed to add three times more value to their profit margin than VW does with the Passat! You also mentioned that in the past, you had some people in your organisation working in innovation but there was some duplication as they were working independently of each other. Now you said you have invested in really great assessment capability by hiring in new people from some of the best companies who are setting up a structure whereby accurate and relevant studies and surveys can be carried out and the best ideas can be really put to the test. You also provide an incentive for your employees to put ideas forward via the company’s Intranet. I was telling you about my previous company in Dublin and that ultimately even the successful ideas have people who both shoot them down or make fun of them in their early stages. Innovators really have to have thick skin. You said that your company is on the look out for sound investment opportunities with start-ups or possible takeovers. We also discussed how some companies even as big as Facebook had to go out and buy over an idea to sustain their growth as nobody inside the company came up with an idea like whatsapp. You told me that your company’s aim is to not necessarily to become revolutionaries or disruptors , but definitely to get a name for yourself as an innovator among your clients and potential clients in order to justify the price you charge. The old expression “once bitten, twice shy” applies because you told me about how you have already lost a significant sum of investment money on a pretty big failed venture in the past three years mainly due to the fact that the idea wasn’t tested rigorously enough on the external market. As an investor, you have been very successful all in all, in that only a minor percentage of the companies you bought over in recent years were not as successful as you expected. While too many passengers creates a company that is complacent and fails to innovate, almost more like a government company, a firm with too many drivers tends to have a destructive culture of internal competition with too many chiefs and not enough indians. Even the best ideas in that kind of environment get shot down by colleagues only because it wasn’t theirs. A conflict of egos in many ways. The result of that is equally if not more ineffective for the company as a whole, as good people tend to get fed up and leave to join companies where there is more openness and willingness to take a risk. In the end of the day, maybe Tim Ferris in his book “The 4-hour Working Week“, has a point that now working smart is the new working hard. My father had a point too in his belief that the foxhounds often didn’t hunt well purely because they were well fed! All the things you mentioned that you are doing to foster innovation and generally to drive growth and expansion, I have to say, sound very well thought-out and will undoubtedly lead you to greater long-term success.
20 October 2022: Today we discussed the selection and appointment of new partners. You mentioned there will be a net addition of one partner after taking into account those who are retiring and the one who has resigned. You said that you put forward two candidates and that most partners are sourced and promoted inside the company. Some of those selected as candidates are more controversial than others. But there is less risk involved for the company as you have seen the track record of the candidate’s performance during the years of employment at the company. For new ventures however, you often have to search for and hire somebody from another company. You have a detailed assessment model to assess suitability and select these candidates and you are of the opinion that at least seven out of ten of those, come to the position with complete confidence in their own success. Partners are hired on a three-year contract and the renewal of this depends of their performance. In my experience, the success of the new ventures I have seen relied most on network and management, network (and the ability to build on it) being the most valuable asset that you can buy when hiring a key business development professional. You mentioned that you have a system whereby everyone, including junior employees can put forward ideas for ventures, which the company can then potentially invest in. People whose ideas become successful of course, move into those areas. You also talked about one colleague, who as a civil engineer from Munich TU, left a good solid project management position at the company to start a really successful online recruitment business. You saw the move as courageous. One or two of those who have left the company have also started businesses as competitors.
10 October 2022: Today you talked about the event and how you met the mayor of Norderstedt. Small word, isn’t it? I was saying that Mira met her too due to Helena’s school issue and is connected with her. Judith Rakers hosted the event and you liked her sense of humour, particularly regarding the font size of what she had to read. You were not sure if you maybe might have caught some kind of illness at the event because you said you had a headache and had to drive home.
We also talked about your employee survey, which sounds to me like a great idea. Your aim is to be one of the best employers in your industry. The attitude of the company is that mutual respect has to be promoted between employer and employee and that employee potential can’t be developed when the structure of supervision is too close. You mentioned that you are actually reporting to two superiors at the moment.
The question is where does the company want to go in the future? Why? And how? We talked about capability and readiness to embrace change. In English we say “a rolling stone gathers no moss“. This means that organisations have to be in a process of constant evolution and continuous learning.
7 October 2022: “A cold” = Eine Erkältung / A thermometer measures fever / My ears hurt / The mayor of Norderstedt is down to earth. She is popular (beliebt)/ mobility / the city “rezoned” land for development (to build apartments) / profit margin = Gewinn / for sure = sicherlich / Even worse = noch schlimmer / The face on Liz Truss would stop a clock / Cost-push inflation / Demand-pull inflation / Overheating in the economy / liable for prosecution / we had to “wind up” (teminate) operations in Russia / We had a huge loss of assets in Russia / The Russians imposed a ban on foreign money transfers / We had to write off a lot of capital
30 September 2022: Johannes is going to have a treasure hunt today for his birthday party / There is a lot of talk about how it will be difficult to pay for heating bills in winter / People are saying that it will be miserable / But surely people can just get heavier bedclothes! / Or take a hot-water bottle to bed! / Power might be cut off during the winter / There is a lot of destruction in Ukraine / But the Ukrainians have been winning recently / The most likely thing (am wahrscheinlichsten) that will happen is that there will be a peace agreement which will involve giving up territory.
21 September 2022: Going to Berlin between the 4th and 6th of October to meet Frau Guywitz. / I have been selected to represent the company / It is very disappointing when people we invited to the Bierfest cancelled / It is much better to meet partners and clients face-to-face / There is a lot of uncertainty at the moment due to the political and economic climate / When we are hiring new employees, we also notice that people are asking for extremely high salaries.
14 September 2022: The hungry 80’s (1980’s) / The services sector (also referred to as the “tertiary sector” in economics) / The other economic sectors are the raw material sector (primary sector) and the manufacturing sector (secondary sector)./ There are quite a number of newcomers to the industry / There are enough foreign companies in the sector / It has reached saturation point / The EU has now imposed a minimum corporate tax of 15%.
5 September 2022: water (in a river) “flows” / The most classic type of swim is the “breaststroke” (where you dip your head completely under the water after every stroke) or the front crawl (where your head in constantly down in the water but you lift it to one side to take a breath after every stroke). The “backstroke” is the classic back-swim / They closed the pool at the camp site one hour earlier because it was the 1st of September and that is the first day of the “off-peak” season. / The amount of moisture in the air is “air humidity” – so the Mediterranean has higher humidity than the Atlantic. / mosquitos “bite” and wasps “sting”. / Something you are not supposed to tell anyone is a “secret”. / A little wooden house that camp sites rent out to families is normally called a “chalet”. / A “car park” is any kind of place where people are allowed to park their cars (usually in the form of a grid) – either an underground car park or a multi-storey car park / “quiet” = not noisy and “quite” means relatively. So you might say “the office is quite quiet today because a lot of people are working from home.” / People “catch” illnesses like colds and flu. / Ireland definitely has not got a wealth problem, but it does have a wealth “distribution” problem. / There is “huge growth potential” for our company in the UK and other foreign markets. / We have to “analyse” our competition ( competitor companies) / It’s important that our partner in the merger has a good “foothold” in the market. / purchase = buy (kaufen) / sell (verkaufen) / We are investing a “significant percentage” of our profit in the venture. / The priority of course is to maintain growth in the foreign company so as to protect our investment. / If their profit growth remains stable over the coming years, it will of course add to our share value. / recognise (erkennen) / The partner company shouldn’t feel like outsiders. / It is important to be well-prepared.
31 August 2022: I have to “train” my colleagues not to contact me when I am on holiday / If they know you are not “reachable”, they won’t try to contact you / It’s not worth it (Es lohnt sich nicht) / wear (tragen) clothes / carry (tragen) a bag / accusation (Vorwurf) / I don’t want my colleagues to feel like I am “making accusations” / A leap year is a year with one extra day (every 4 years) i.e. 29th of February / We are going to have to add a bit on to Melanie’s party to make up for the bit we left off of mine / My company managed a project for a “psychiatric care-home” / It’s a place when people go who need long-term psychiatric care/support / I had to pay for my Covid test / The manger of the care-home told me that she “could have written” a letter for me to enable me to get the test for free / Kids sometimes get “head lice” when they go back to school in September / My kids are lucky that they are growing up privileged / I hope they “appreciate” that / Many parents unfortunately split up / It is difficult for kids to come out of the “poverty trap” when their parents don’t help them to excel in education / German “reunification” was in 1990 / Grammar school (Gymnasium) / after-school care programme (Hort) / self-confidence (selbstbewusstsein) / argue (diskutieren) / stubborn headed (Sturkopf) / balanced (ausgeglichen) / The school brushes some things under the carpet / What do you want to be ( Was willst du werden?)/ Standing on your own two feet (unabhängig sein) / in touch with reality.
30 August 2022: Pope John Paul (the 2nd) / poverty / solidarity / The power of his office / The iron curtain / life support / the attack on the pope / Child “abuse” (=Misbrauch) was an “excuse” for many people to leave the church / They argue (streiten) about the issue (Thema) / opportunism / contribution (Beitrag) / public or private health insurance (or health “cover”) / I want to give something back to society by paying church tax / hospice = nursing home for the dying / there were so many “exhibits” in the Louvre that they extended the museum into the nearby station / Melanie wanted to see the Egyptian art / There was a long queue (Schlange) (“line” in US English) / Some artists outside the Sacre Coeur de Monmatre do pencil portraits / We managed to “reach” Paris at 12 noon. It was “worth it” (Es Lohnte sich) / Our hotel didn’t have a “car park” so I rented a “parking space” in a nearby car park. It wasn’t too expensive / We want to see as many capital cities as possible in the coming years. / Wheelchair accessible = “Barrierefrei” / tuition = “Nachhilfe” / half an hour (eine Halbe Stunde) / one and a half hours / grade = the % you get when you do an exam / Klausur = exam / Weather forecast = “Wettervorhersage”/ Of course = “Naturlich” / booked out = “ausgebucht” / Campsite / we have been able to “relax” after the time in the city.
17 August 2022: Dodgy = Merkwurdig / Nasty = böse / Paris is a city steeped in culture / penalty = Straffe / They would cut off the thief’s hand for stealing!! / annoyed = genervt / immature = unreif / letter = Brief (post) / court = Gericht / Shutters = Aussenjalosinen / The shutters don’t work on the building we built. / The owner has taken a legal case against the construction company. / The matter is still unsettled.
10 August 2022: couple (Ehepaar) / Some good advice ( Gute Beratung) / demolish = tear down / iconic pillars / Romans / student residence / sunrise (Sonnenaufgang) / no traffic jams (Stau) / no traffic cameras (Blitzer) / cruise control (Tempomat) / lane (spur) assistant / steering wheel (lenkrad) / more relaxed / automatic braking system / Automatic acceleration / Nod off = fall asleep without wanting to (while sitting on a train etc.) / get “drowsy” while driving / Mediterranean / “reach” Stuttgart ” / company car (Firmenwagen)
3 August 2022: competition (Wettbewerb) / “stiff” competition = rigorous competition / habit (Gewohnheit) / contribution = Beitrag / the connection is breaking up!! / council (Rat) / reserve tank (Speicher) / threats (Bedrohungen) / The plan backfired ( ist schief gelaufen) / foreign politics / misfortune (Pech) / one-sided / malnutrition / road construction / social vulnerability / behaviour (Verhalten) / balanced (ausgewogen) / You look after it (Du kummerst dich darum) / more refined (zugespitzt) / It won’t start a war! / It is none of our business (Es geht uns nicht an) / It’s interference (Einmischung) / voters (Wähler) / fragmentation / I wouldn’t swap with him (Ich wurde mit ihm nicht tauschen / eye specialist (Augenarzt)
25 July 2022: Medicine is a “tough course of study” / He is going to be 60 this year (Er wird 60) / Savings bank (Sparkasse) / They offered him early retirement (Frührente) / I have relations (Verwante) in the USA / on foot (zu füss) / co-incidence (Zufall) / look after = pflegen / immortal (Unsterblich) / hailstones (Hagel) / toast (Anstoßen) / secondary school (Gymnasium) / study (lernen) / study hall / accompany (begleiten) / comparison (vergleich) / Sophie “will rise to the challenge”!
19 July 2022: They “flew” from Munich (fly-flew-flown) / supply = Angebot / demand = Nachfrage / shortage = not enough of a product available / surplus = too much of a product available / engine’s that burn fuel = combustion engines / Mediterranean Sea / road toll = Maut / shorter = kurzer / consumption = Verbrauch / consumers = Verbraucher / harbour = Hafen / turn = drehen / The wind turns a turbine which generates electricity / You “plug” a plug into an electrical “socket” / ROI = Return on Investment / landlord (or landlady) = Vermieter / layer = Schicht / They have to “drill” (boren) down into the earth to get to the layer of hot water / Getting access to that layer depends on where you are and the composition of the earth under you. / Geo-thermal heat generator / 100% renewable energy which is permanently available (unlike wind and sun) / A remote heating system (where heat is transferred to your home from a remote heat generator, rather than being generated inside your home / pollution = Verschmutzung / presentation = Vortrag / electricity = Strom / Hydrogen-fuelled train engine / Hydrogen is difficult to store (lagern) / “radar” sounds like “Ray-da” / the sun “shines” / You have to split hydrogen from oxygen / smart = schlau / dormant = not active / You can put the cost of the cleaning against your income tax when you make your annual tax returns to the revenue office / The kids are in “after-school” care / They have study supervisors that help them with their homework / When one side of the brain is at work, the other side recovers (erholt sich)
14 July 2022: medical school / university clinic / the student-teacher ratio is 1 to 10 (1:10) / commute = pendeln / satellite city / frugal = someone who goes to extreme lengths to save money / “stingy” is slang for “frugal” / Everyone is on tenterhooks = everyone is nervous about what is going to happen / prejudice = vorurteil / He is “the best of a bad lot” / If you have backbone, you have character, courage and strength / “spineless” is the opposite of having backbone / wishful thinking / cool-headed people (don’t panic) / I don’t know about that subject “in depth” / Ireland is an EU defensive weak point / A “sitting duck” is a person who is vulnerable to physical attack / The IRA decommissioned its weapons / If something is “looming”, it means that something negative is nearby and is coming in our direction slowly / The “socially vulnerable” in Ireland get free state-funded medical care / Ireland might see re-unification in my lifetime / Lots of people in the south ( in the Republic) wonder if “it is worth it” / The country could “re-unify” more easily if the social politics of the south was stronger – The Republic has a weak welfare state – i.e. when you are unemployed you don’t get much money.
6 July 2022: worry = Sorgen / TÜV “Requirements” / snags = imperfections in a building project (things that are not up to standard) / The floor might be 2 degrees “unlevel” / the fire service = Feuerwehr / They would have to rescue people from the building in the event of a fire / balcony = Balkon / external stairways / No smoke (kein Rauch) / The high air pressure in the stairway “repels” (pushes away) the smoke / You need a “fire permit” to allow the public access to the building / Journalists would “find fault” with it, no matter what / The architect underestimated the costs and sold himself short / to have mutual respect = auf eine Augenhöhe zu sein / they want to “temporarily” outsource their real estate department / VW (“Vee-double you) / To be less labour intensive = too have the same productivity with fewer employees. / To take your performance “for granted” / We’re not beyond failure / relationship = Verhältnis / trustworthy = someone who you feel you can trust / sloppy = careless (someone who doesn’t pay attention to standards) / We don’t pretend (so tun als ob) not to make mistakes / challenge = Herausforderung