adastra

30 July 2013

Two and Forty: How German numerals screw with my head

The German language has a very odd way of expressing numerals higher than 20. Probably not as odd as French, but definitely odd enough to screw up my brain for the rest of my life. In German, we call the number 42 “zweiundvierzig”, which literally means “two and forty”, whereas English uses the much more logical combination “forty-two”. However, if you look at the numerals between 11 and 19, you might notice that English and German use the same system: “thirteen” and “dreizehn” are identical – a result of tradition. But why exactly do Germans not use “vierzig-zwei”? This is […]

27 June 2013

The Handmaid’s Tale: Feminist Dystopia

In my recent post on apocalyptic fiction, I promised you a post on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – and here it is! The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985 and is therefore the most recent of my reviewed books of Atwood (I have previously written reviews on The Edible Woman and Surfacing). However, it is actually the first book I read by Atwood – I read The Handmaid’s Tale about a year and a half ago for the first time because it kept appearing in connection with science fiction and dystopian literature. That sparked my interested and I was […]

17 June 2013

Only the End of the World again: Jericho vs. Revolution

Do Americans have a (sub)conscious desire to eliminate their society? This is a question you could ask yourself when you look at the vast amount of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction out there, seemingly all of which seems to take place on the North American Continent. The Walking Dead, I Am Legend and Falling Skies depict the US as overrun by zombies/vampires/aliens, The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a totalitarian theocracy, Jericho shows us the immediate aftermath of nuclear annihilation and Revolution shows us a world without electricity. [This is probably a good time to warn you about the massive spoilers in this […]

13 June 2013

Vikings: Raiding your TV

The History Channel wants to ride the wave of success many American TV channels are currently experiencing with their serial productions. They have attempted this by creating a fictionalized TV show about the Vikings, the people who lived in Scandinavia in the middle ages and who are probably most famous as seafarers. Fun side note: 99% of vikings were farmers. The TV show was brought to life by none other than Michael Hirst, most famous for the two Elizabeth films with Cate Blanchett in the lead, as well as for the TV show The Tudors, about which I blogged a […]

11 June 2013

16.145 kilometers: Australia

Three weeks from now, I will be on a plane. That plane will take me to the other end of the world, 16.145 kilometers away from where I’m sitting now: Brisbane, Australia. There, I will attend The University of Queensland for one semester as a Study Abroad guest student. I have chosen this university because it’s one of the five best universities in Australia. Naturally, I have also chosen it because of its location: I wanted to go to Australia because a stay of several months is the best possible opportunity to get to know this country. Since it takes […]

8 June 2013

Surfacing: Identity

Margaret Atwood’s second novel Surfacing (1972) follows in the footsteps of her debut novel The Edible Woman: it also portrays a woman who undergoes a transformation, albeit a strikingly different one. The Narrator of Surfacing has no name, which I think is deliberate: she has no identity, but she could also represent something bigger – all women, all Canadians. In the novel, the Narrator, together with her boyfriend Joe and her friends, married couple Anna and David, travel to the Narrator’s family cabin next to a lake in a remote area of Quebec. There, the Narrator wants to find her […]

5 June 2013

Düsseldorf in the Movies

For no particular reason, my home town of Düsseldorf appears to be a favorite among film producers in Hollywood. Maybe I only notice this because I live in Düsseldorf, but somehow I get the feeling that whenever a German town is mentioned in a Hollywood movie, it’s Düsseldorf. Naturally I always have to laugh when this is the case, sometimes more, sometimes less – depending on the degree and accuracy of what is mentioned. Düsseldorf is mentioned only once in Quentin Tarantino’s film Django Unchained (2012) – one of the main characters, Dr. King Schulz, is a former dentist and […]

2 June 2013

The Utopia Experiment

Where is Jessica Hyde? This is the central question of Channel 4’s unique, somewhat experimental six-part series Utopia. This series has attracted my attention by coincidence, but I’m glad it did – it’s been a long time since I have seen something to utterly weird and compelling. The central characters of the show are a group of comic book fans who know each other from an online chatroom. They are united in their obsession for a mysterious comic called “The Utopia Experiments”, which was written by a mad men in a psychiatric ward. When it is discovered that there may […]

27 May 2013

This is what it’s like to study at a German university

Since 2011 I have been studying English and Linguistics at the local university here in Düsseldorf, Germany. Unlike the universities in the anglophone world, universities in my local state of North-Rhine Westphalia do not require students to pay tuition (merely a small fee for the free train ticket every semester, which currently is about 280€). Education is supposed to be free for everyone in Germany. German universities also don’t have a strict selection process in their applications – there is merely a regulation by average grade (something like GPA). Based on the intake of students in a particular degree program […]