Is there a special story behind the word "Kurzschwanzschildkröte"?
I visited a few retail stores my first time in Germany, my favorite was the music store and the way they sorted music. They had all the regular categories rock, electronic, country, etc and then there was "black music." Anything no matter the genre was put into black music if the artist was black. I looked at my friend Andreas, the German guy who was putting up with me living at his house, and said. "Really?!? after the whole WW2 thing and?!?!" His VERY German response was, "well, they ARE all black."
Kurzschwanzschildkröte, came a pet store, we needed to get his cat some food so while he looked for that I wandered around the isles and ran into live animals and these cool looking tortoise babies. I had a friend who was very into turtles, tortoise and captive breeding/conservation efforts etc. So I wanted to know the name of the tortoise (I was hoping for Genus and Species), I got Kurzschwanzschildkröte, and another common name relating to a boys anatomy. I think my response was "WTF!?!" My friend then explained what it meant in English which did not really match our common name I guess - dunno I am not a turtle guy. Fortunately, it was enough and my friend already knew about them and the German captive breeding program.
While I am rambling I will mention my all time favorite thing Andreas said to me while I was there. We were discussing how to accomplish something, I can't remember what. His response to my conceptual shortcut was priceless, "ya, but this is not how we do things in Germany."
Too much caffeine, I gotta go solder and make some money.
-Tony
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