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Better German Podcast with Susi

Susanne Schilk-Blümel
Since 09/2023 69 episodes

68 Entertainment Activities in German

2026-04-30 17 min

Description & Show Notes

What would you do for fun in a German-speaking country?
 
In this episode, you’ll learn the most useful German words for entertainment — from concerts and opera to cafés, markets, and more — so you can understand what’s happening around you and actually take part in it. 
Whether you’re visiting, living there, or planning to move, these are the words you’ll see everywhere.

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🔑 What You'll Learn in this Episode 
  • How to say common entertainment activities in German
  • The difference between opera (Oper), operetta (Operette), and musicals (Musical)
  • How German and Austrian cities structure their entertainment culture
  • What to expect when attending events like opera or musicals (including subtitles)
  • The difference between everyday places (cinema, café, market) and cultural venues (theater, opera)
  • How to recognize and talk about local spots like markets, coffee houses, and parks
  • Subtle cultural tips (like when to avoid tourist-heavy cafés and what locals actually do)

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Transcript

Hello! In this episode we're going to cover, something that could be very interesting for you if you're traveling to Austria, or any German-speaking area, or even if you moved here or you want to move here, and this is the words for different entertainment activities. So you want to go out, and have some fun or do something interesting, so what are the words to look for? So let's go into those. Alright, so let's go into the first one. Let's say you are in Vienna. Vienna is a city that actually has musicals. So, what is a musical? That's not a very hard word actually. It's called "das Musical." Maybe you don't know that, but in many German and Austrian cities, you get very cool musicals. So Vienna has two big musical venues which are played throughout the year. I think at this point in time, I don't know what the second one is. We have one that is called Maria Theresia. So that is a musical about, Maria Theresia who was, an empress. I mean, technically she was not an empress, maybe I should do an episode about her, but anyway, of the Holy Roman empire that included Austria. So maybe you want to do something else, you want to go to a concert. So "the concert," "das Konzert." It's actually very interesting that most of these words are very similar, so that's good news, maybe. Then we have opera. Vienna is an opera city. Many people consider Vienna as one of the capitals of classical music. So one of those things that are typical for classical music is the opera, and I would highly suggest for you to give it a try. Maybe you are an opera fan anyway, then, yes, of course. But maybe you are not, then maybe you should give it a try. It could be surprising. It is a very different experience, than a pop concert or a rock concert, but it is quite unique and it can be very, very nice. So anyway, "opera," "die Oper" And "die Oper" can refer both to the building. I'm going to link you a picture, so you should be able to see that. Depending on where you listen to the podcast, you should be able to see it when you check the chapter marks. But we also have two more operas. So the Vienna State Opera is like, probably the most famous one, but we also have the Volksoper, that's the People's Opera House, I suppose. The Volksoper and there they play actually opera and musical, and something called "die Operette." So an "Operette" is actually something, that is kind of like, I would say an early version of a musical or the European original, like when it developed. The musical started to develop a little more than a hundred years ago, I would say. I'm not 100% fit on the history of musical in the US and, around the same time or even earlier in Europe, we started to have something called "Operette," and these operas are usually, or many of them, more serious and not necessarily very comedic. There is exceptions, and "Operette" are usually kind of fun and entertaining, and the music is somewhat more playful in many cases. You have also an "Operette," kind of like you can have in a musical. There could be spoken lines, whereas in an opera, usually there are no spoken lines. By the way, if you go to the Vienna State Opera, you will have subtitles every seat in the opera house. You can choose subtitles. I know that there's English ones available all the time. Many operas are, originally in Italian. That is the kind of like the opera language, but there is also operas in German and there is a few in French. Honestly, I'm sure there is a few in English too, but I'm pretty sure that these are not going to be what is mainly played in Austria and Vienna. However, if you choose to go there, you do not have to be afraid that you will not understand, anything because you will have subtitles. However, an opera works a little differently. It's kind of like you buy a program, anyway, that's how I always did, and you, read like, okay, what's the story, and then you see and hear the music and it's acting out the story, but it's, even for us, we were used to not understanding what's going on in an opera. Now we have subtitles, so there is, they're available in German or English, and, I think a few of the other major languages, but I'm not 100% sure on which one's there. And if you go to one of the big musical venues, it's a very nice, it's a historic theater also. It's called the Ronacher. I'm also going to link a picture for that. So the Ronacher also have subtitles, but not in front. Like in the opera, you have them in front of every seat. In the Ronacher you have subtitles, next to the stage, you have a big thing with English subtitles because the musicals that are played there, usually the language is German. Good! But here you are, you want to learn German, so that's perfect. You can learn, you can listen to German and see subtitles. But I have to admit, this is more like a cultural thing. I don't think you will have a big, language improvement by doing that, but you will understand it so you can enjoy it. Good! So maybe you feel like something else. You want to go to the movies or to the cinema. The cinema is "das Kino" " das Kino." So maybe it is a little weird to go to the movies in Austria, but if you have a longer holiday or you have actually moved here or you want to move here, then you absolutely could, and there is several movie theaters in Vienna that are dedicated only to English, like the original language. The oldest one of those is probably the Burg Kino. "Burg" is a castle and it's called "Burg Kino" just because, I think it's more because of the name of the street where it's at, and it very, very, very often plays almost all the time, among other things, The Third Man. So if you don't know that movie, The Third Man, this is a very old movie and it's very interesting, I think. It was filmed in Vienna in the late forties, so right after the Second World War. It's very interesting for us to see, because you see Vienna as it looked after the Second World War bombed a lot of damage, but still definitely Vienna. And it is actually a thriller. It's a really interesting story. It's interesting for us to see, it's not necessarily something about learning German because it is an American movie, so the language of the movie is English but there is a few, Austrian actors that we know, probably young people don't know, but if you have watched Austrian or if you're interested in Austrian movie history a little bit, then you would know them. So it's a very interesting movie and in there they're playing it almost always. So anyway, that's "das Kino." So what else? You could go to the theater. "The theater" is, "das Theatre" That could be steep, but if maybe once you're more advanced you can definitely go. We have very famous theaters. Vienna is definitely one of the main theater cities in the German-speaking area. We have many theaters, so from very serious acting, but also very comedic, small theaters that play comedy. So "das Theatre." We also have an English theater. Good! And then maybe you want to watch an exhibition, so that's "die Austelung" "die Austelung" and an exhibition could be happening in a gallery, which would be "die Gallerie," or it could of course be happening in a museum, "das Museum." So I think I still owe you, I think I promised that already earlier. I'm going to make an episode about the main museums in Vienna. We have a lot of museums, very different. Some more of the serious art museum type, but there's a lot of different museums in Austria, by the way. Good! So, but maybe you, don't like that kind of entertainment. Obviously in Vienna, if you want some entertainment, you should go to a coffee house, a cafe. So that could be "das Cafe" you could say that, but probably the most typical word would be "das Kaffeehaus," "a coffee house." We have some very famous coffee houses and unfortunately, some of the most famous ones are now very touristy, and it's like long lines and they're very beautiful. So die Cafe Sacher or die Cafe, Central. These are historically valuable and they're beautiful, and you get good coffee and good cakes in there. I suggest you, however, to check out some others. There is a lot. You just have to walk through the city and just see what there is. There is many of them, and I personally would avoid those with the long lines. However, if you really want to go to Cafe Sacher or Cafe Central, I would suggest, maybe a weekday in the morning, like 10 o'clock or something like that, that could be a better time to do something like that. And then of course we also have clubs. So a club, we used to call them "disco," "die Disko," but as in English, this term is not really used anymore. So it's more, a "club" now. And maybe another thing that you have to add, particularly, in many of those areas, is a market. "der Markt" is "a market." So there are markets that are like farmers' markets, and "the farmer market" would be, "der Bauernmarkt," "der Bauernmarkt," Or of course there is one very famous one in Vienna, but there's several that is "a flea market" and it's called, "der Flohmarkt." "der Flohmarkt" that's happening every Saturday. There is more kind of like, not necessarily famous ones, but there is one famous one that is happening every Saturday and that's " der Flomacht am Naschmakt." So Naschmakt is the name of the place and it's also the name of a street, but it's also the name of the market. So "naschen" in German means "to snack," I would say. So der Naschmakt and right there is also the Flomacht Okay, good! So that's that, and then one last is "der Pack." Now an interesting thing, this is not so much a national park, but something smaller within the city limits that probably would be called a garden in many areas. We have a lot of them. They're not as big as, I don't know, central Park or something like that. They're smaller, but they're spread out through the city. Some of them are historic parks, and they're very beautiful and you should definitely check them out and go and relax. and do that. So this gives you a little bit of an idea of what can I do when you are on holidays or if you moved somewhere for entertainment. Let me know if there is any specific words you're missing in here. I realized that this became a little bit more of a classical music thing than I planned to. There is one thing that we have missed here for sure. Depending on where you're from, you may or may not know that it's a European thing. There is something called the song contest, and we call it in German "song contest," which is the English words pronounced a little bit more German. It's been there for like, I think. probably around 75 years now, and it has a long title and honestly, I don't get it right now, but anyway, it is basically European countries each sending one song and then there's a big show where they're all performed. Actually, it's three shows because it's too many for one evening. So three shows, two sort of semi-finales and one finale, and in the end there is a winner and it's actually a mixture between a public vote from the people of all the different countries. So you cannot vote for your own country, you can vote for all the others, and as jury. It is happening once a year and every year the winner is actually hosting the next year's contest. So last year Austria won, by the way, with a crossover song, a classical and modern crossover. we won, and so this year we're hosting, the song contest. So, I guess you could call this a festival. There is a lot of festivals and we call them festival or song contests. So I think that this is enough for entertainment for now. But do let me know, if there is any specific ones you are interested in. Talk to you soon. Bye bye!

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