Daily News

As part of my daily routine in Germany I used to watch the news at 10:30PM at channel 1 (ARD) if I happened to be home (This channel is one of the channels you can receive for a small fee without having satellite or cable TV). I would use the time to do some sit-ups or other exercises or do my nails during this 30 min of structured compact information about what’s going on in nationwide and worldwide. So with this being my “normality” I switch on the TV while doing the first ironing sessions as a married woman and find a program that looks like a regular news show to me. At this point we don’t have cable or satellite TV and I am happy that depending on your antenna you can get many channels for free! So here I am looking forward to hearing what’s going on in the world – 60 min later I have to realize that the only new thing I learned was that this mission was harder to accomplish than I had expected. I was sort of disillusioned about the fact that within 60 min I had watched probably 10 min of actual news. The rest of the time was filled with commercials and teasers of the news to be reported and flash-backs of the news that just had been reported. The actual news had NOTHING to do with worldwide politics and not much with nationwide politics or anything I would have considered worth reporting. It was more like the random news show like the German show BRISANT (in case it’s still broadcasted). Stuff like “Chi-wa-wa in Beverly Hills mated with Rottweiler”. Okay, I made this one up because I can’t remember and stopped trying to watch the news on TV over 2 years ago. Bottom line is that after a few more attempts I had to find another solution to still my hunger for “real” news that also report outside of Los Angeles. We didn’t have the money for cable TV (still don’t) or T-bo so I couldn’t receive CNN, BBC or any German programs. Spending a lot of time at the computer I also didn’t feel like reading the news online (Many Americans seem to do that like my hubby and some friends). Although once in while it is nice to read something like the SPIEGEL news magazine online. Thank God I soon found out I could watch the very news program I used to watch in Germany online while doing my workout, yeah! Thanks to my hubby’s aunt I also got a weekly German language newspaper called the California Staatszeitung which on the first few pages give a good overview of what’s going on in the German word and matters of German-US relations. The only down part is that this way I don’t get very detailed American news but so far I’m okay with that.

Side note: Through my 2^nd cousin living in Australia I found out about an online TV recorder that lets me record and download German TV programs for a annual fee. That way I prepare for our future children by recording my favorite German children’s shows, and I get to watch German movies (in hope that one day my hubby’s German is good enough to watch with me).