September 21st, 2012

In vollen Zügen genießen

One of my friends bought me a souvenir one one of his trips to Germany. It is a beer mug from Bayerischer Bahnhof, a restaurant and brewery at the Leipzig Bayerischer Bahnhof. The mug carries the brewery’s slogan In vollen Zügen genießen, which is a German idiom meaning “to enjoy to the fullest.” Literally, “Das Leben in vollen Zügen genießen” means “to enjoy life in full gulps”, the idea being that instead of sipping your way through life, you’re taking huge gulps of it. The slogan is a pun, though, for the Bayerischer Bahnhof, because the word Zug also means train. They come from the root ziehen which means “to pull”. (Compare the English word draught, which has a similar duality.) Therefore, the saying “Das Leben in vollen Zügen genießen” could also be interpreted as saying “Enjoy life in crowded trains.”

Which is why it’s the slogan of a brewery in a train station.

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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