Visiting Column #39 -- Danke Sehr!

February, which ends this weekend, is a peculiar month.

It is, as you are well aware, the shortest month, even in leap years like this one.  It's cold, at least above the tropics in the northern hemisphere.  It isn't so cold here, where golf courses and swimming pools are generally open year-round, but it's still short.

And one of the places where it is indeed cold in February is Germany.

Yes, Germany.  I do speak enough German to have once bought a cuckoo clock in Kaiserslautern without a word of English spoken, enough to know that President Kennedy once said to a crowd in Berlin, in German, that "I am a jelly doughnut."  Presumably he fired his speechwriters thereafter, or at least instructed them to research the use of the indefinite article.

But the cold ... it is the only explanation for why February, 2020, has had a remarkable spike in readership of this column ... in Germany, of all places.  Not only has there been a spike, but for the month of February, and unless American-based readers can catch up in the last couple days, German readers will have taken the lead as the dominant source of readership of the column.

Now I should say "thank you", or "danke sehr", I guess, and I will.  I'm extremely grateful that the thousand-plus-a-few-dozen columns here are of sufficient interest for readers anywhere, let alone in Germany.  Please keep reading.

But I have to wonder as to whether the bulk of that readership consists of actual Germans named Schultz and Müller and Langerhans, or perhaps American expats -- or on military tours over there.  Certainly I haven't written about Germany but once or twice; the word "German" has only appeared in a dozen columns, many of which were about baseball, of all things.

Curiosity has not killed our cat, who is 16 as I write this, but it certainly is taking up shop in my geriatric brain.

If you have become a recent reader of the column, and are based in Germany, I encourage you to send me a tweet and let me know how you found this column.  I am extremely grateful for the readership of this site, and would like to know about you.

I appreciate your interest.

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton