In Germany there is a law, which requires all male citizens of German conscripts as soon as they are 18 years old. This means you have military service. How long that will change again and again. Previously there were 18 months, now only half as long. If you on Friday or Sunday in Germany with the train leaves, we see many very young men in Tarnuniform. I think it is mostly an ugly and frightening picture, because one thinks immediately of war. The boys then sit peacefully in the train and go for the weekend back home to their families. On Monday, they must then learn to defend their country. There is also an alternative to military service, plus at the end of this episode more.

First, all military service ends three months in basic training. There, they learn, for example, to shoot and how to help others. After an examination it continues to be a specialization. You can Paratroop or go to the Navy. In the Army, you can make different courses, you can license for the trucks and the like. So some things you can do later in civilian life can need. There are also Bundeswehr universities for future officers.

You may also voluntarily undertake longer than nine months. Then, you remain on time as a soldier for several years in the Bundeswehr. That can be two years, it can also be twelve years or more. Many men do this to assist in the Bundeswehr is an expensive education to be able to make and later in civilian life in a new profession to work. Allegedly, the 85 percent of the time soldiers. But there is another possibility: one can in Germany, also a professional soldier, and thus being a soldier because of his profession.

The Army consists of three roughly speaking areas. There is the army, including the troops ashore. There is the Air Force, which as the name suggests, are the air care, and there's the navy, the sea continues. The chief of the military, the Federal Minister of Defense. He is incidentally not a military but a civilian - and the military may still giving orders. If war again or Germany would somehow have to defend, would be the top boss, however, the Chancellor.

How many soldiers are in Germany, there will always re-established. During the Cold War, there were nearly half a million men. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, there were 370,000. By next year there will be 250,000. Incidentally, there are also women since 2001 in the Army, they must not, however, military service, but purely voluntarily go Bundeswehr. Approximately 15 percent of German soldiers are women.

An effective military to have cost much money. 2009, in Germany 31 billion spent. There are many discussions in the country, whether this money is invested properly and if this is preferred in areas such as education should be spent.

How do you as a young man the Army? You need to so-called pattern. This is an investigation of a specific doctor. Here it is measured, weighed and interviewed. Then you must submit a urine sample, a sight and hearing test and then it will pulse and blood pressure measured. After further inspection the doctor decide whether the candidate is fit enough for the military. Two-thirds are usually classified as fit enough, the rest will be decommissioned and not for military service. Those who passed the physical examination has not yet to the military would like, you can refuse military service. This right is enshrined in the Constitution. It must be a written application in which you indicated that you are not of conscience on military service may participate. The reasoning is simply that you can not bear it, a weapon to use. If the application is approved, you can substitute a so-called civil service. In colloquial language it is simply called Civilian.

A community service finished, just volunteer, carries nine months in a social institution, so as long as his colleagues in the military. Zivis work, for example in health or elderly, they drive ambulances or help out in kindergartens. Often they care for handicapped people.

So that's now some information on the military and the civilian sector. Of course, this is again a topic on which much more could tell, for example, about the history of the military. But you can all read on the Internet.

Finally, once again German music, from the band the song BILK Phenomenal.

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Alessio has requested that I speak the irregular verbs. That I am doing in this episode. After the verb is always something to break, so that you can say. The list of verbs you can download as a PDF here.

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Some time ago I was in the Franz-Marc-Museum in Kochel. Because Sara has asked me to have to speak German art, I will do today. I'll tell you something from the Blaue Reiter.

Der Blaue Reiter was an artist district in Munich. It was established by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, the 1911th They wanted the stalled academic painting traditions of the free. With it were August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky and Kandinsky's companion Gabriele Münter. They are all up now famous artists whose works in many museums around the world to see. Together they brought out almanac and organized exhibitions.

The abstract, colorful and often graphic images acting by Wassily Kandinsky to the present day are on posters, postcards and all sorts of other objects to be seen. It's actually almost a pop-art artist, even though he obviously does not officially belong to the group. Franz Marc is famous for its ever-manipulated images of horses and other animals.

Particularly interesting is when you're in Bavaria after the footsteps of these artists studied. For example, they lived long in Schwabing, precisely in the Ainmillerstraße. Schwabing is a suburb of Munich, in the 20 years was famous for its artists' studios. Here in the pubs met famous writers and painters. If the artist had enough of the city, they went to the country. Franz Marc and Kandinsky in Murnau could be settled, at Kochelsee. It is beautiful there - one from Munich goes well an hour by car to the south and the Alps into it. And then there is the one known as the Russians house in which Kandinsky and Münter lived, and just modernized and expanded Franz Marc-Museum.

It is tragic that some of these interesting artist died so young. Franz Marc and August Macke fell in the First World War, Marc was just 36 years old. Kandinsky went back to Russia and later lived in Paris, where he died in 1944. Der Blaue Reiter did not exist anymore, and Munich was no longer an international art and culture.

If you come to Munich, then you absolutely need in the Lenbachhaus go. The Lenbachhaus is my favorite museum. It is a beautiful villa, which almost looks as if they are in Tuscany. It lies in the center of Munich, near the King center. Here are many pictures of the Blaue Reiter to see many of them were by Gabriele Münter gift the city of Munich. At the moment is a Kandinsky exhibition here, which later this year after weiterzieht and Paris to New York.

What the German art scene today is? She is still alive. There are some big names, but mainly it is men. For example, Joerg Immendorff and Georg Baselitz. I recommend you the works of Gerhard Richter, especially the older paintings from him.

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Ivan from Bulgaria is interested in German literature. It is difficult, as a topic in a single podcast consequence to pack - I will try nonetheless. As always, I tell you just what I personally like to read. A complete list of all German writers, is here in any case not be!

Of course, knows each child here in Germany, Schiller and Goethe. At school you learn a lot about the great German poet. I myself was in high school in the last two years of my training as a German Leistungskurs. That means: It looks for the last two years of school from two subjects, which have been concentrated. It spends more time with these two subjects. Of course, there are certain rules which the subjects can be. In my case it is English and German - and in the German-Leistungskurs we have learned a lot about Goethe. Many weeks we have only with "Faust" busy. We have read and discussed three different performances of "Faust" views. But I admit: For an English learner and for many Germans is the heavy meals so hard to understand. At that time, we are also with the whole class to Weimar driven - that's where Goethe lived a long time.

When it comes to old books, then stand on my shelf, however, not Schiller and Goethe, but Heinrich Heine. He was considered a revolutionary and very modern, and therefore he had many critics. I have many old books of him. On dear, but I like three thick volumes of his letters together. Heine has written wonderful letters! Such letters can be read out very well, what a man he probably was.

But we walk further into the future. Straight was a film in German cinemas called "Buddenbrooks". This is a famous book by Thomas Mann, in which a merchant's family. I think you can compare it a little with "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck. I read the book until this summer to read and found it good - but it is almost 700 pages thick.

Farther in the future! Bertolt Brecht and Erich Kästner skip me. But they are obviously very important! Next Station: Hermann Hesse. His books "Siddhartha" and "Der Steppenwolf" I very much liked. Always is really about the search for one's own ego and the meaning of life. Probably read why so many young Germans like Hesse. Especially, I have received from the Stefan Zweig's Chess novel read, a very thin book about a chess player on board a ship. I found it very interesting!

So, we are already in the present. Here I skip Günter Grass and Martin Walser, and dedicate myself to younger authors. Walter Moers writes wonderful books, like fairy tales for adults. Above all of course "The 13 ½ lives of Captain Blaubär. Andreas Eschbach and Frank Schätzing are bestsellers authors who write science fiction.

My good friend Richard likes to read German books himself, and he recommends you all "Herr Lehmann" by Sven Regener, "The Discovery of the Currywurst" by Uwe Timm - although I find this very demanding linguistically think, "Momo" by Michael Ende and some more. There are links on my page.

If I were you recommend a good German books, then I put you Patrick Süskind heart. His most famous book is "The Perfume", but I've just "The story of Mr Sommer" and it has stirred me. Especially nice to read are also glosses and columns of Germany's most famous columnist Max Goldt, Harald Stein Mart, Axel Hacke or Harry Rowohlt.

Have your book recommendations? Then write in the comment feature on slowgerman.com! I am sure I have half of my favorite books here forgotten. Then there's just sometime again a consequence about literature.

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