A song called 99 Luftballoons (“99 Balloons” in English) was popular in the US (and elsewhere) back in the 1980s, sung by the German sung by Nena, a German pop singer. It was played on U.S. radio stations at the time in the original German, although later someone wrote a set of English lyrics, which were not a translation of the German, but a different set of lyrics entirely, and I believe that was later recorded by Nena and others.

I have joked that I’m learning German just to learn what the orginal German lyrics to that song mean, as I’ve always liked that song, but can’t sing along beyond with it beyond the initial  refrain “neunundneunzig Luftballoons”, which simply means “99 Luftballons”.

Some links about this song:

• Original German lyrics
• English translation of the orignal German lyrics
• Lyrics from the separate English song 99 Red Ballons, which is sung to the same tune
• Link to a YouTube clip of the German version sung by Nena – this is the one that runs through my head

I bring this up because while walking around Tübingen earlier this month, we climbed to the top of the hill in the middle of town.  From that vantage point, far off in the distance, we could see a couple of highly picturesque hot air balloons.

2 Hot Air Ballons flying near Tübingen

In German, those are called  Heißluftballoon; the Luftballoons of the song are regular ballons.  And there aren’t 99 of them in the picture, either, just two. But still, the song came to mind when I saw at the ballons in the air.

BTW, just now I took a quick look at the German lyrics, and I’m happy to report that I can now almost understand the first verse in German (with just a couple of missing vocabulary items that I had to look up). Not bad. Of course, I can still only follow the first line of the refrain in German. But after 5 weeks of German class, I guess that’s a start, eh? 😉