Life Style

While they're not representative, comments like these have been increasingly popping up on DW's social media accounts when the posts concern the United States: "Should we really be interested in what's happening in the US? (...) Please, DW, stop fixating on everything American," or "It might be worth mentioning that Europeans — and actually, the whole world — are currently suffering from 'America fatigue.'" Long seen as land of promise For decades, the US and the American Way of Life held a special promise for young people around the world. Take Germany as an example: After the end of World War II, people in West Germany quickly realized that their American occupiers not only handed out chewing gum, cigarettes and chocolate, but also brought their own culture with them. Rock 'n' roll, j...

Running a cozy little bookshop where readers can meet and connect over their favorite authors is a dream shared by many book nerds. But beyond the romanticized idea, the independent bookstore business is renowned for being risky, which is why most people never get to follow that dream. There is a creative and popular alternative, however: The Open Book, in the coastal town of Wigtown, Scotland, offers a "bookshop holiday" experience in which guests volunteer to run the bookstore during their one- to two-week stay at the apartment above the shop.  "I think what draws people here is the dream. The kind of 'what if' — 'what if I did this with my life,'" Jessica Fox, one of the founders of The Open Book, explains. "It feels like you're the main character in a movie." Fox herself turned her ...

Embellished with a gilded iguana and a bouquet of fruits topped with a pineapple, an ostentatious piece of queer history was sold on April 24 for €300,000 ($350,000) at the Berlin branch of Germany's Lempertz auction house. The just over 116-centimeter-tall porcelain vase is thought to have been made as a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, to his friend Prince Philipp of Eulenburg-Hertefeld. Little known about today, the relationship between the emperor and the prince was at the center of a scandal, the so-called Eulenburg Affair, that German historian Norman Domeier, said shook all of Europe to the core and transformed public opinion on the monarchy. Wilhelm II ascended to the German throne in 1888. As Kaiser, Wilhelm had a reputation as a feckless, insecure and e...

At the beginning of this year, a "nihilistic penguin" went viral. The short clip shows a penguin on the ice leaving its colony and waddling off alone into a seemingly endless frozen expanse — behavior that is highly atypical from a biological standpoint. The scene presents a tragicomic allegory open to multiple interpretations. The footage comes from a 2007 documentary by filmmaker Werner Herzog. Memes are now a permanent fixture of online culture that's here to stay. They also play a growing role in political discourse — shaping people's perceptions and even opinions. This trend is particularly visible in the US, where an ever-expanding flood of memes has influenced elections since at least 2016 and permeated everyday life.  This is an alarming development, says cultural scientist Wolfg...

Running a cozy little bookshop where readers can meet and connect over their favorite authors is a dream shared by many book nerds. But beyond the romanticized idea, the independent bookstore business is renowned for being risky, which is why most people never get to follow that dream. There is a creative and popular alternative, however: The Open Book, in the coastal town of Wigtown, Scotland, offers a "bookshop holiday" experience in which guests volunteer to run the bookstore during their one- to two-week stay at the apartment above the shop.  "I think what draws people here is the dream. The kind of 'what if' — 'what if I did this with my life,'" Jessica Fox, one of the founders of The Open Book, explains. "It feels like you're the main character in a movie." Fox herself turned her ...