German for beginners

Knusprig: Means "crunchy", "crispy". This is an inherent quality that all german foodstuff products must have. Breakfast cereals must be very knusprig. Snack bars (Twix, Kitkat etc.) must definitely be knusprig. Fruit & Vegetables must be very fresh and delightfully knusprig. The highest quality a fried potato can have is, you guessed it, knusprigness. Bread rolls are knusprig on sunday morning, as are the mozzerella sticks you get in the mexican restaurant. Oh and of course the duck from your local chinese restaurant must have the ultimate knusper effect.

Just look at the results in Google. The first 20 hits describe Frozen pizza, Duck (x2), Trout, Cornflakes, Lamb, Beef, Bread rolls, Hyperlinks, Crisps, Bread, Children's crackers; Salmon (Crunchy salmon ???), Goose & waffles...

Profi: Means "professional". This is also an ultimate goal of all germans - to be a Profi in some area of life or another. So you have football profis, bicycle profis (radprofi), internet profis, plumbing profis, sex profis etc. etc. In the case of a sporting profession, then the word is correct, but for the other areas it really means "they know their shit" (excuse the french). But that doesn't cut it ("er kennt sich gut aus"), they need to be a PROFI!

Once again Google sheds some light on the phenomenon: Reference profis, agriculture profis, profi guides, profi statistics, call centre profis, battery profis (!), model building profis (!!), you have profi search settings (only for profi internet users), stockmarket profis, tyre profis, sales profis, house building profis (with the tantalising promise of "you too can become a house building profi!" and my favourite Bus profis

Quereinsteiger: Means someone who has studied or worked at something and then goes on to work in a completely different area. I.e. you study medicine and go on to program computers, or you are a sailor and go on to become a management trainer. This is extremely alien to the german way of thinking (das geht nicht) and therefore a word had to be invented for this predominately foreign (germans just don't do it) concept. It is a word which is normally whispered at polite dinner parties: "This is Peter who now works with us" (turns to side and whispers "he is a quereinsteiger"), the others raise their eyebrows and treats Peter as if he had Leprosy.

Paying for two drinks with two bank notes: Especially common in student towns. Person goes to bar and orders two drinks. Barman says 4.80 Euros please. Drink buyer says "I want to pay for the coke with the 20 Euro note and the jasmine tea with the 50 Euro note please". Yes, you guessed it, the drinks are for different people who want to pay with their own money. The fact that that the other person is going to go and buy the same drinks again in 30 minutes is seemingly lost on them (please compare and make notes to the Irish / Anglo saxon "Round system").

Zusammen oder getrennt: (Together or seperately). Very closely linked to "Paying for two drinks with two bank notes" this is the question that poor german waiters have to ask guests when they want to pay the bill. The answer (in my experience) is normally 75% getrennt, which means that the waiter then has to ask all the guests what they had to eat / drink / smoke. We know this wouldn't work in most other countries, as people tend to forget if they had 7 or 9 beers. But the germans all sit patiently there (even of groups of 10+ people) and recite what they had. This habit is obviously derived from the german's non-belief in Karma. The fact that what goes around might just come around again is lost on them all.

Zug: "Draught". This has been commented upon in 45 million other books so I will not further enlighten you. Suffice to say that in Germany, a draught is somewhere between full body cancer and mass-murder in the ranks of evilness and non-desirability. Given the choice of sitting in a draughty room full of drugs and naked, sex hungry nymphomaniacs or having all limbs amputated and thrown to the crocodiles, your average german would of course go for the latter without a second's thought.

Kreislaufprobleme: "Circulation problems". See above.