Welcome to the new Two to TÜ blog! Chris and I are now officially in the city of Tübingen (also spelled Tuebingen). It’s a small city in Southern Germany (population less than 90,000), that is located less than an hour south of Stuttgart (by train), and 2 hours east of Strausbourg, France. We arrived on September 1st, but our internet access at our temporary “vacation apartment” has been unreliable, to say the least. So today is the official start of this new blog, which will chronicle our life here. 

For today I at least wanted to get one photo posted and this blog officially launched.The secretary in Chris’ new department commented the other day that the “postcard” view of Tübingen is the following shot looking down the Neckar River, where you can see a few of the colorful medieval buildings that populate the historic city center:

Neckar River, Tübingen, Germany

What you can’t see behind the buildings is that the city is not flat. I always described Bolzano as a city nestled at the foot of the Dolomites, that steep, spiky mountain range that is part of the Alps. What I never specifically spelled out was that Bolzano itself was fairly flat, nestled down in that valley at the foot of the mountains.

Tuebingen, on the other hand, is anything but flat. Think San Francisco-sized hills.  OK, well, there are fewer hills here, too be sure, and the hills in the downtown are not quite as high. But still – it’s hilly. Pretty, but definitely walking around the city center requires a little more stamina than strolling through the streets of Bolzano.

Anyway, since I’ll be blogging about our life here in Tuebingen I have decided to start a new blog for all my stories, and the blog of course has  a new title, Two to TÜ. The abbreviation TÜ is used on the license plates here to indicate that a car is registered in this city. Note that the full city name, as well as the abbreviation, is property spelled with an umlaut (¨) above the u: Tübingen. On a German keyboard, the “ü” is a separate key, since it is a separate letter in the German alphabet. So it’s easy to type on a German keyboard.

However, there is an alternate spelling, Tuebingen, where the “ue” combination replaces the “ü”. That spelling is much easier to type on a English keyboard, IMHO.  The blog URL uses the “tue” form of the abbrevation to make life a little easier for non-German keyboard users (like me!) to type in:

http://22tue.wordrpess.com

And now, to the big question I’m getting asked a lot: how the heck do you pronounce that name, anyway?

OK, let’s break it down. The city name has three syllables:

tü (or tue):  the ü/ue sounds like the sound in the English word for what you say when you don’t like something: “ewwww!”
bing:  pronounced like the type of cherry, “bing”
en: pronounced like the English word “in”

(Chris also suggested that another way to think of the last 2 syllables is that together they rhyme with “singin'”)

String all the pieces together,  with the stress on the first syllable and you get:

‘tewwww bing in

There you go  – our first German lesson here on Two to TÜ.

Trust me, it won’t be the last. 😉

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Quick pause for a few bits of  housekeeping:

1. The old Two to BZ blog will remain available in case you want to revisit moments from life in Bolzano.

2. About Commentting on the posts: Please DO! Any and all comments, suggestions, questions, etc. are always more than welcome at any time. The more the better!

3. About Sharing a direct link to this blog on Facebook:  Please DON’T! It would lead to tons of spam messages that would need to be managed and monitored. It’s extremely flattering when people want to do this, and I’m more than happy to share the materials in some way. Just let me know and I’ll provide you the material (blog post, photos, etc.) to share in a way that doesn’t link directly to the blog from Facebook.

You can send an email to anyone you want with the blog address; the restriction is just for sharing the links on Facebook. Thanks!