eine Zauberfamillie

"Young children look at the world differently than adults do", wrote Crétien van Campen (2009). They "perceive their environment as a magical world where puppets and castles come alive." This fact was amusingly proven by our three year-old, who told his Kindergarten teacher full of proud: "my daddy is a wizard!" Although his father honestly admitted that the magically dissapearing and reappearing of the pencil by every family member, and even the great dissapearing-illusion of their au-pair mädchen, was just a trick we succesfully played on him, he preferred the "most understandable" explanaition: "Look, pappa can do magic!" :)
Reason for this fun was the CD I found this week in their collection: Herman van Veens' childrens songs! Auf Deutsch!! I didn't even know our beloved singer was know here.. from o.a. Alfred J. Kwak ("Warum bin ich so fröhlich, so fröhlich, so fröhlich.."), Dikkertje Dap ("Pummelchen Pum", noujaa..) en "Als hij kon toveren" (If he was a wizard).. Such a nostalgic joy to hear again! Yet another surprise was the discovery of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" and Saint-Saëns' "Karnaval der Tiere" on one of their CDs. Another indespensible sound in a childs lifetime! And Gunnar liked it already. Therefore, we build the Peter story:

Another 'Peter-story' did I hear on a CD, with a sort of children's Schlagers: "Osterhäschen Peter, du bist noch zu klein. Nein, nein, NEIN, LASS DAS SEIN!!" How sweet, the German baby songs.. :P
Some of those Gunnar does like however, are the ones I learned at every gathering of freshly produced humanness. "Hoch am himmel, tief am Erde, überal ist Sonnenschein..", "Wir fahren fahren fahren fahren faaaahren, wir fahren in die grosse weite Welt.. " or "Alle leute, alle leute, gehen jetzt nach Hause." And, of course my favorite: "Grün, grün, grün sind alle meine Kleider, grün, grün, grün ist alles was ich hab'.. Warum lieb ich alles was so grün ist? Weil mein Schatz ein Jäger ist!" Obviously, I'd rather put instead of this "Jäger" a "Grüne" (green one) LOL, and preferes Malte to avoid the R like a Chinese and sing "Klün, klün, klün.." :D
However, the song Gunnar adores the most is still a classic Dutch one (of course, hehe). Or maybe he just likes to make fun of people.. But totally unexpectedly he's able to burst out with "Hihihi, hahaha..!" on the melody of "Zag twee beren broodjes smeren". Second place winner is "In de manenschijn" which I absolutely have to sing before he'll fall asleep. "Maantje tuurt, maantje gluurt" and "Hoedje van papier" are also part of his Dutch Top40. And there is a French song I particulary like to sing for him (but happily most times don't need to).. Bénabars Berceuse! ^^ See here a piece of this brilliant Wiegenlied translated:

"Das, was du dich lachend anschaust, dass du für Fallschirme nimmst,
das sind meine Augenlider, mein Kind,
Es ist hart, ein Erwachsener zu sein.
Komm, wir spielen offenes Spiel, wir liegen die Karte auf den Tisch,
wenn du dich einschläft kaufe ich dich ein Handy, eine Ponyherde, ein Dynamit...
ich füge dazu ein Känguru, wenn du dich jetzt gerade einschläfst.
Warum willst du nicht schlafen warum schläfst du nicht?!
Ich möchte dir gern ein Schlafmittel geben,
aber wir haben kein mehr,
frag mal dein Mutter.. "

Bloopers & bizarre

Two international evenings in the week are not the only moments I learn more about the blue-white German language.. at home, I have to speak it all the time and happily they correct me when I say something not entirely correct or simply impossible. And so I learned, for example, that:
* something is not "peinlich" (painfull) when it hurts
* something is not "dreckig" (dirty) when it tastes bad
* someone is not "gehe etwas machen" when one is going to do something (he simply will: one "macht etwas"!)
* someone is not going to "lecker schlafen" / be "lecker warm" / have a "lecker Wochenende" (like the Dutch say - the Germans only use "lecker" for food !)
Anyways, the starter errors, that lead to a lot of giggles from the Merkels ("let's make a book, The Mistakes of Silvia")..

Then you also have words, that for a Dutchie are easy to confuse. Some more prove that German and Dutch is more different than you think:
* "knapp" is not "knap" (clever/handsome), it means near/narrow,
* "schlimm" is not "slim" (smart), it means worrying/grave,
* "mogen" is not "mogen" (be allowed to) but means to like,
* "durfen" is not "durfen" (have the courage to) but means be allowed to in German..

Something that made me laugh however, was that Malte bothered in Kindergarten every parent with "how to count in Dutch", that in Germany warning signs don't softly say "verboten" but "VERBOTEN!", that the newspaper Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung reports about all the historic documents being lost after the collapse of Köln's city artchive, while Bild only worries about the possible death of 9 persons due to the "earth trembling" crash which it compares with 11 September, and that Gunnar has the same toy box (but -as a German- more "grundlichkeit"!) than this clever guy: