One of the first things you learn in the German language class is to be descriptive: small, large, short, long, narrow, wide. I remember that I was always fascinated by how the German language describe a beautiful, sunny day, where the clouds are more lenient with letting the light through. I can think of many words to describe this kind of day, but even when I am depressed, hell is not one of these words.

I thought about it the other day when I drove near Alexanderplatz and saw the beautiful poster that Nike spread on one of the buildings. It has a picture of Dirk Nowitzki from his back, his right hand, with the fingers closed, in a celebration motion over his shoulder, and with the slogan above: “all dreams sound crazy, until they become true.”

It is a very touching poster, but only when I arrived home and looked on the pictures I took, I realized that in German, dream is a traume.