i understand, the play on words gets lost in translation anyway.

had a great trip, found Ausgang quite a useful one.
Thanks for all the suggestions.

My friend and I were excited to go to Berlin. We really wanted to improve our Hoch Deutsch after living so long among the Swiss.

Everyone we met in Berlin spoke better English than we could German. Es war sehr frustrierend.

>>Es war sehr frustrierend.<<

Can you imagine how frustrating it is for us Germans if we are in Switzerland and understand hardly anything?

I feel the same way in same places of Bavaria and Austria. Those dialects can be hard to decipher.

The most difficult Swiss dialect to understand is Walliser Deutsch.

Actually, I am quite often in Switzerland for business. I give my presentations in high German, but the discussion would be in Schwyzerdütsch.

If I concentrate hard I can understand about 80% of what they say. But I always think of Swiss from the French-speaking part who have learnt high German in school (or whereever). For them, it must be especially hard to understand Schwyzerdütsch.

Some 30 years ago, Schwyzerdütsch was regarded as a dialect for the non-educated. Today, everybody, including ministers, mayors, CEOs etc. speak Schwyzerdütsch, also in official situations. It seems to develop into a language of its own. What helps me is that some Swiss say that they have difficulty to understand the dialect which is spoken in another valley.

Hi T:

What's worse is people are now writing SMSes to each other in Schwyzerdüütsch. Our children are just barely learning how to write in high German. It's all going to come back and bite us in the füüdli.

Excited to be going back to Berlin in a couple of months! Pleasure not business and I found free German classes in Barcelona to get some practice in. Its that time of year! it's a birthday trip, in the coolest apartment we could find, at the Berlin Wall:

http://www.waytostay.com/Berlin-apar...n-222-2611.htm

I will do a report about grim German winters and Goethe...