How To Address A Norwegian Letter

♫ sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, ♫ four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. ♫ when the pie was opened the birds began to sing: ♫ now wasn’t that a dainty dishto set before the king? [applause]

How To Address A Norwegian Letter, that’s an old english nursery rhyme, and it includes a referenceto four-and-twenty blackbirds. that’s the eurasian blackbird, not any of the species of new world blackbird.

this is how we used to count in english: one-and-twenty, two-and-twenty, three-and-twenty,four-and-twenty, five-and-twenty... it’s different in modern english,but in german it is still done that way: einundzwanzig, zweiundzwanzig, dreiundzwanzig,vierundzwanzig, fã¼nfundzwanzig... you get the general idea. this can be a bit confusing when people dictate,for example, telephone numbers at you: vierunddreiãÿig, siebenundachtzig, neunundzwanzig. even germans find this a little bit trickyfrom time to time, which may or may not explain why,about a week ago,

a police operation to evacuate a plane didn’t go quite according to plan. to be fair, i should say at this point that nothing terrible happened,and nobody was hurt. although quite a few peoplewere inconvenienced. hamburg airport received an e-mailsaying that there was a bomb on board a norwegian airlines flightdue to take off for tenerife, and that it would explode over hamburg. that’s the kind of threat thatyou want to take very seriously indeed,

and so the german federal police were called. and the federal police sprang into actionand evacuated flight d8 5601. all the passengers were taken off the planeand led to safety, and the police searched it for explosivesfor two and a half hours. you can’t be too careful. the problem was spottednot by the federal police, but by the hamburg state criminal police office. flight d8 5601 doesn’t go to tenerife. it goes to barcelona.

the flight they should have stopped was d8 6501, and that flight had already taken off. oops. flight d8 6501 madean emergency landing at madrid, and you’ll be relieved to knowthat no explosives were found on board. so for all of you out there struggling withgerman numbers, just remember: the worst that can happen to you isthat you phone the wrong person. somebody else is having a much worse day. thanks for watching. if you enjoyed the video,why not send me a postcard? here’s the address.

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