German Whitewater- need some info

[mgood]

Ok guys, this might be a long shot. I'll be in Germany for three weeks for an independant school study, and I'm looking to paddling some III/IV when I'm there (because who could resist paddling on a different continent?). The problem is- my german is nonexistant. So finding whitewater via the internet has been impossible.

So, does anyone either 1) know of any German whitewater runs, or 2) speak German well enough to shoot me in the right direction?

There's got to be someone out there with a German great-aunt. Thanks.

[Jim Krueger]

mgood,

I lived near Stuttgart, Gr. for three years when I was a kid. Recently, about three years ago, Marlo and I traveled back to Germany to visit several relatives who live from Northern Gr. all the way to Southern most Gr.
From my experience/observations, the Southern part of Germany has the most WW-looking streams, especially the closer you get to the German Alps and the Bavarian section of Germany.
Although Marlo and I didn't do any paddling during our last two weeks or so there, I sure saw several streams we crossed that had small groups of yakers running them. One stream in particular I liked for it's scenic beauty was the Isar R. at Bad Tolz, Gr.
Just out of curiosity, where are you going for your classes there? While I took two years worth of German in college, you can get along fine if you will learn a few phrases and greetings, be polite and make the effort to greet people in German, they will go out of their way to reciprocate , many of them speak English. I would highly recommend you get a copy of the
Landenscheidt 'New College Dictionary-German', it's English-German/German-Engligh and has many useful phrases as well as being organized by various situations which makes it easier to navigate just what you may need in a particular instance.
I just love German beer and never asked for any particular brand, just request "Ein Grosse Beir, Bitte" (a large beer, please) and you can't go wrong


Best Regards
Jim Moose

[Tmuse]

You should post this on boatertalk, lots of folks with info prob.

[Jim Krueger]

mgood,

I forgot to mention one person here on our very message board who probably could be of the most help; James Fleming, he is a twenty something
young man who lives in Scotland. James has posted several videos on our board in the past several years, mostly of streams he and his buds run in Scotland and the greater U.K. but at least one or two of this posts/videos are from his river-running in Germany and Italy. James looks to me to probably be a classV paddler, and if you PMed him, I'll bet he would help you.


Jim

[iYak]

You're in luck. Google will translate any web page, just copy and paste the web link (url), or you can copy and paste text: http://translate.google.com/#" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you email someone or write a text doc and need it translated, copy the text to the box then press translate. Then paste the text back into your email or doc...

[Jim Krueger]

Iyak.

Marlo and I have used these translation services and others on the net and don't have very good results with them. Even when translating fairly simple text or constructing simple sentences free of any slang or idioms that might be confusing, they just don't seem to work well. We regularly exchange letters with some of our German relatives and while Marlo writes in English, she has tried also to include a 'translated copy' in the same letter to ask what their opinion of the translation is. You would think translations would work well, especially with the ease and speed of composing them on the computer, but our Germans say they are puzzling and confusing, they would prefer our letters in English.
I visited with my college German teacher several years ago about translation services and she shook her head, they just don't have it perfected very well at all. Better to learn to read, write, and speak a language than the services currently out there.
On the face of it, a translation of word for word seems fairly straight forward, but a main problem lays in word order. We here in America don't construct our sentences or speak in the same word order, as an example, we don't say " the pen of my aunt is on the bureau of my uncle". Another problem is while we might represent a statement with a sentence of several words, the Germans in many cases have a single word for the same meaning as that whole sentence in English... Pretty important when viewing a warning sign in Germany sometimes :shock:

Best Regards
Jim

[Roger]

What Tim said. There's a guy on there by the name, Wilko, who lives in Germany and posts on there ocassionaly. Bet he can help.

[mgood]

Thanks guys. I'll see what boatertalk can do, and I'll contact James- I saw some footage of his from norway i think. I appreciate it

[iYak]

Jim

Google Translate doesn't translate just word for word, so it works pretty well. It's not perfect, but if you are on a German website and translate it using Google you can read the web page. You may see some grammatical errors here and there, but it's much quicker than trying to learn German.

[iYak]

Check out this German canoeing page, it's the German ACC that's been tranlated: http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... l=de&tl=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here is the same page not translated: http://www.alster-canoe-club.de/de/index.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Jim Krueger]

That's a good looking site IYak! (ACC indeed!) I'm still interested in mgood's destination for studies in Germany as it will have some bearing on where there will be time to travel and float with all the other requirements on time. From what I've seen it will be a case of so many opportunities, so little time. Still it's all good.
I would only add that transportation in Germany is good whether renting a vehicle or public transportation. For the hassel involved with driving, I really recommend the German National Railroad (DB BAHN) in many cases as they are super efficient and take the worry out of getting to most destinations within the country.

Best Regards
Jim

[Fish]

Yah, yah. Paddlzenschizenfauden das dragon-boot.

- Fisch