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1Four years after writing for the AlternateHistory Literature/ChaosTimeline ended, another [[@/DrNodelescu German reader]] from Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom came to abuse its world as a playground to poach around in it as he found it easier and more exciting than [[SelfDeprecation writing a timeline on his own]]. It ended as a 30-pager with the title "Samowar In Atlantis" which in the meantime has extended beyond its initial scope.
2
3Ten years after the GrandFinale, Björn, some guy from European Germany recollects his memories [[WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell from said ten years and further back]] as he's talking to another freshman at a pub tour at the very beginning of his second studies.
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5If you want to [[http://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showthread.php?t=191348 read the story]] in total at Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom, you have to be logged in at the forum as a registered member. [[EarnYourHappyEnding Don't blame us, blame the board!]]
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7Now has [[Characters/SamowarInAtlantis its own character sheet]].
8
9----
10!! ''Samowar in Atlantis'' contains examples of the following tropes:
11Just like the mothership Literature/ChaosTimeline, the trope list of ''Samowar in Atlantis'' is foldered into thematic categories too.
12
13[[labelnote:General]]'''General Tropes''' are everything that wouldn't fit anywhere else.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:Insane]]'''Insanity Tropes''' deal with tropes denoting things that certain populaces might prefer not to know about.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:Character]]'''Character Tropes''' are just that.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:Love]]You can't deny that the story mostly deals with undeniably sexually active young people, so don't be too surprised that '''Love and Sexual Tropes''' get an own folder here.[[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:Shout]]'''Shout Outs''' are just that.[[/labelnote]]
14
15[[foldercontrol]]
16
17[[folder:General Tropes]]
18* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: Nipponese pirates are refered to as "chin-chin choppers", even outside the relatively small Anglosphere in this world.
19* AllohistoricalAllusion: In this world, ''Yom haShoah'' stands for the day when TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt nearly happened and was combated (i.e. the ''Streich''). And Judeans mark it in the same way as real Israelis do it, a minute of standstill with loud sirenes to commemorate the horror and the salvation from said obstacle.
20* AnachronicOrder: The initial 30-pager played on a day in 2003. The subsequent stories jump back and forth between 1989 and 2010.
21* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: Author and mentor had at least one or another word with each other about a "basic income guarantee". Note that the end of the timeline belongs to the category "post-scarcity economics".
22* AuthorAvatar: Split between Saskia and Björn.
23* AuthorFilibuster: Lots of it. Where do we get started?
24** Greece is not considered to be any an important part of the Socialist Block. Guess what the author thinks about Greece in the Eurozone!
25** German has an own short acronym for a bunch of guys sharing a flat, they call it a "WG" or [[GratuitousGerman Wohngemeinschaft]], an issue especially for poor students. While searching for shelter, he used some short-lived shelter of this kind to do so that was rather organized like a firm rather than a [[Film/TheSpanishApartment commune]] because its head (Saskia) dislikes affecting her "business" with all too many unproductive quarrels. And [[AuthorAvatar Björn]] loves it that way.
26** Effects of local world-shattering events on the [[WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell aftermath]]. You see, here were [[WriterOnBoard Germans on board]].
27** Teltow airport is kind of an AllohistoricalAllusion that eventually got HarsherInHindsight. Think about the clusterfuck that's the Berlin Brandenburg International Airport.
28* BlessedWithSuck: Parodied with the "downfall" of nightlife after the Streich in Dresden, the former capital of European Germany.
29* ButWeUsedACondom: They talk a lot about condoms to keep unwanted "souvenirs" away from you. But this special trope is conversed when it's about a [[AnAesop core philosophy]] of this timeline's [[InterfaithSmoothie "Anti-Buddhist" religion]], that everything can serve both good and bad purposes. Here the proposed use of condoms is contrasted to their misuse for illegal drug trafficking and the even worse consequences [[CruelAndUnusualDeath of a leak in said condom for that matter]].
30* CallARabbitASmeerp: Alternative names for the ''[[VelvetRevolution Streich]]'' have shown up. He coined the term ''Numeric Mutiny'' [[note]]''numeric'' meaning "digital"[[/note]] and proposed ''Yom haShoah'' [[note]]Holocaust Remembrance Day in our world[[/note]] for Hebrew.
31* CassandraTruth: Björn says that, at the beginning of their engagement, he didn't really believe Natascha about the part with her parents hiking in the Golan and dismissed it as a lousy excuse to ensure him that they could go banging in their house without getting caught in the act. In turned out to be true after all and Björn started to believe her at least before their [[PreClimaxClimax apocalyptic lovegame]] and while he spent ten days with Natascha and got to know part of her extended family, her parents just weren't there.
32* ComingOfAgeStory: Deconstructed at least for Björn. The childhood part is lacking altogether. SexAsRiteOfPassage is subverted to hell and back. 1993 Judea are only a pre-course to his subsequent encounters in Europe, let alone his studies in Atlantis a couple of years later. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And it stretches a whole decade]]. Also see OvershadowedByAwesome.
33* ConvenientEclipse: The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_11,_1999 total eclipse of 1999]] was a welcome reason for Björn to get back to Europe. And to meet Natascha again. And Tatjana. And Topper. And whoever else there may have been. And to [[OverlyLongGag bitch about the W-Tech, Ignaz Schuhmann]] and anything else.
34* CoolestClubEver: The [[MeaningfulName Peklo]] [[note]]Czech for "hell"[[/note]] in this timeline's Tel Aviv. It's implied that at least the beer was as Czech as the name implies.
35* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: A major critique of the mentor towards the author. Others include RippedFromTheHeadlines and BrainBleach.
36* DolledUpInstallment: At the beginning, ''Samowar In Atlantis'' wasn't supposed to get a title at all, and the "samovar" was only intentioned to be a part of the Russian proverb "bringing your samovar (or your coal) to Tula (or Newcastle)" to imply, among others, the influence of GratuitousRussian on the GratuitousGerman in this world. But the wish to smoothly integrate this issue led to the samovar becoming Björn's nickname... and then he went to [[TitleDrop Atlantis]].
37* DoubleEntendre: "chin-chin" refers both to the Italian way to say cheers and to the [[UnusualEuphemism little emperor in the pants of Chinese]] that get regularly chopped off after they were killed by [[RuthlessModernPirates Nipponese pirates]].
38* ElectronicTelepathy: If Tatjana orders some nice Budvar (especially for other people) at the Peklo in Tel Aviv, she doesn't say a word, but applies this to the club owner and he knows exactly what she wants.
39* EverythingIsBigInTexas: Subverted. When Simon asks Björn if dishes in Atlantis were bigger than in Europe, Björn negates and said that "Atlantis also ceased to be what it used to be" and that Argentina were the better destination to go for that.
40* {{Expospeak}}: This story necessarily runs on this because it contains little more than extensive dialogue.
41* {{Expy}}: Björn's [[FemmeFatale picker]] in Judea, [[FieryRedhead Natascha]], [[spoiler:cousin of Tatjana,]] is meant to be a crossbreed of two better-known celebrity redheads described at the Shout-Out section, one of them that's also been labeled by a lover as...
42---> '''Björn:''' "''[...] very, very good and surprisingly experienced, extremely flexible and adventurous [...]"''
43* FairForItsDay: In-universe. Germany's late semi-authoritarian, rather socially conservative technocratic regime is at least depicted as curtailing HolierThanThou excesses by lower-level authorities against whatever little exists in open gay culture. Real technocrats think in TheStoic terms and therefore dislike HolierThanThou excesses.
44* FootnoteFever
45* ForeignQueasine: Simon talks about cuisine experience with whale meat. Björn is divided on the issue.
46* GallowsHumour: Actually a shout-out to the Chile entry of the ''Literature/NineteenEightyThreeDoomsday'' timeline at Wikia.
47-->'''Björn:''' "''You know, the attack on the Summer Palace was the best thing that ever happened to Mecklenburg.''"
48%% * GratuitousGerman: Duh, we're in Germany in case you forgot.
49* GroinAttack: Nipponese pirates, hoo boy! Thankfully it's just a written story and lacks the need for a GoryDiscretionShot.
50* HitSoHardTheCalendarFeltIt: Subverted. The conventional time reckoning of this timeline remained unchanged [[VelvetRevolution after the Streich]], but this didn't keep the author from opening almost every story with telling you how many days have exactly passed since that event at said dates. In German, of course.
51* InVinoVeritas: Irish-Catholic missionary Patricia is this trope after a mere four or five beers at the Peklo in Tel Aviv. Only that way we hear what she really thinks [[{{Oireland}} about her motherlanders]] and that they're at least good [[SeeminglyWholesome50sGirl for boozing and knocking boots]]. And she also won't consider herself too good to [[CatGirl meow, purr and get her non-existent fur ruffled by Tatjana]] as long as she isn't sober.
52* LondonEnglandSyndrome: Unavoidable in a [[AlternateHistoryWank three-continental Germany]].
53** Bjorn openly admits that a "Battle of Monaco" could have taken place either at the French Riviera or at one of the two German Munichs, one [[LateArrivalSpoiler in Bavaria]] and one in our timeline's Iowa.
54** Paulskirchen in Argentina (at our Sao Paolo) finally became St. Pauli ([[BlatantLies not all related to]] [[RedLightDistrict the Hamburg neighborhood]]) to distinguish it handily from the original Paulskirchen in Atlantis (at Minneapolis/St. Paul).
55** There's also mention of a city of "Nagold/Innernakota" and a town of "Freudenstadt/Südnakota", both in our Dakotas. The originals are actually at the Black Forest in Southwestern Germany.
56* MacGuffin: The item called "samovar", a Russian and Southwest Asian tea cooking device.
57* MissingStepsPlan: Oh Björn, we know that the place is full of {{hipster}}s and scenesters (or ''[[GratuitousGerman Szenevolk]]'') and that you could potentially exploit their solvency. But what do you want to sell?
58* MixAndMatchCritters: A French-Canadian gets tricked into chasing a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahu dahu]].
59* MotherNatureFatherScience: A mild example with Rosi studying biology as a typical female discipline and specializing into marine biology, heading to Franzensburg (our San Francisco).
60* MyBiologicalClockIsTicking: Someone has drafted a bill calling for mandatory gamete freezing to combat problems of too many people carelessly missing their twelth hour, in order to prepare for a theoretical SterilityPlague.
61* NewYearHasCome: and been celebrated in [[TheMall Dominikaner-Arkaden]] of [[UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} Wildenhartburg]].
62* NostalgiaFilter: The implied UnreliableNarrator sees pre-Streich Dresden through very rose-tinted glasses.
63* OneDegreeOfSeparation
64* OverreactingAirportSecurity: One needs to wonder how low-brow the security personell at Teltow Airpot has to be if the silhouette of an oriental tea cooker makes them nearly run havoc, though it's not like [[SarcasmMode they had to be prepared for living through one coup after another]].
65* OvershadowedByAwesome: Björn explicitly states that his really first sex some one or two years before didn't qualify as much as SexAsRiteOfPassage as his affair in Judea. And said affair with Natascha had lesser long-term effects than his encounter with Tatjana.
66* PlanetOfHats: Judea to some extent. It's treated like a crossover of PleasurePlanet and clichés you'd find in Creator/EphraimKishon works, especially JewishComplaining.
67* PoorMansSubstitute: After the author mentioned the brothel "[[DirtyCommunists Rote]] [[GratuitousGerman Fahne]]" from the mentor's GURPS adventure sources, the mentor revealed its hookers to be an in-universe example of this trope. While there would indeed be hookers of English, French, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian mother tongue, they were actually supposed to be from Atlantis or just anywhere outside the Socialist Block. As the chapter straddling this issue takes place several years after this timeline's VelvetRevolution, things may have actually changed in the meantime though.
68* {{Pun}}: The "wild-hardness" of Wildenhartburg.
69* RealitySubtext: Björn is said to remember the 1998 W-Tech so well because that's "how he saw things survive that otherwise got lost", the lifesaver being the transatlantic tunnel feeding in European guests. That's a hint to the former Love Parade that struggled to take place in most of the 2000s and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Parade_stampede found its final blow after the third event in the Ruhr]].
70* RealLifeWritesThePlot: The chapter "Coincidence" describes a [[http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/offtopic/double_blind_what_if "double-blind what-if"]] scenario wherein an actual author-mentor experience was detailed: The author of the original timeline (called the mentor here) introduced [[AuthorAppeal an at least once admired, but otherwise obscure singer]] as a #1 star in his timeline that actually existed in reality among otherwise perfectly fictional characters. The author of the fanfic, when writing his fanfic, found a record of said singer at a peddler's market, right in the city where said singer comes from.
71* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: A transatlantic tunnel in four years? Yes, really!
72* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Some parts of the story seem to borrow a bit too heavily from RealLife German issues. What about a BuryYourGays-wannabe county marshal or the "swarm in the heads"?
73* ScrewTheWarWerePartying: The apocalyptic mood of the world up to 1993 has been explained to have resulted in this trope, and it's heavily implied that at least those in the vague know of events of WorldWarIII and not being actual Logos followed Isaiah 22:13 to a tittle. Becomes an InvertedTrope for at least some places [[BlessedWithSuck where the party ends once the peace is secured]].
74* ShoutOut: Got its own folder.
75* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: Björn likes to describe his big after-lay nap with Natascha after their MustNotDieAVirgin moment that way. Maybe he really felt that way, but maybe he [[UnreliableExpositor exaggerated a bit]] to put a little more drama to the story. Oh, did we mention that apocalypse was avoided?
76* SlidingScaleOfGenderInequality: Somewhere between levels 5 and 6. Björn got hooked up in Judea by a three years older girl[[spoiler:, being nobody else than the cousin of the female mutinist number 1,]] and loved it. Björn's first host in Atlantis also was a girl and would later provide him with crucial information. And his girlfriend Rosi beats the crap out of her father whenever she deems it necessary. The girls in this world seem pretty dangerous and no longer in need of such a thing as role models.
77* TheyKilledKennyAgain: Discussed and inverted. Björn explains that some Kenny at least temporarily killed his favorite band (Kerrygold[[note]]like a German brand of Irish butter[[/note]]) by his exit. Because in the promised land of Irish Australia, Kenny kills you!
78* TitleDrop: Tried and failed. Essentially it became a string of AuthorFilibuster and BrainBleach and NaughtyByNight and YouAreNumberSix.
79* ToiletHumor: To the point that BrainBleach entered the storyline as a form of SelfDeprecation.
80* VivaLasVegas: Björn regarding the assence of his affair with Natascha in 1993 Judea, aka "What happens in X stays in X". Though that doesn't keep Björn from deliberately seeing Tascha again.
81* YouAreNumberSix: As a legacy of the technocracy, everybody living in Germany has a national personal identity number. Unlike the actual German social security number whose ''format'' this fictional system is pretty much based on, its ''usage'' is much more versatile and pretty much like the system in Sweden where you're essentially screwed without it, even more so than without an SSN in the United States. For people like Saskia who needs to keep track of many former tenants (for deposits and the like), requiring someone to tell their identity number alongside their name is a common practice to fub off imposers.
82[[/folder]]
83
84[[folder: (In-)Sanity Tropes]]
85* BrainBleach:
86** Björn lies about "no longer knowing what title the book was" that he read. Actually it's a form of justified ExecutiveMeddling because the book is NauseaFuel and it's still implied. [[note]]In one version of the script, the book was supposed to be named ''Meadows Of Swampland'' by Karolin Roscher, which is a lot like its RealLife counterpart ''Wetlands'' by Charlotte Roche. [[{{Squick}} Nuff said.]][[/note]]
87** This is later subverted with the Nipponese intestinal cancer patient in Fort Knox whose [[RuthlessModernPirates personal context]] provides a [[ShellShockedVeteran literal understanding]] of its metaphor as he was a [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal chin-chin]] [[GroinAttack chopper]].
88* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: When Björn employs his [[OneDegreeOfSeparation short link]] to his Judean [[PlayfulHacker Logo friend]] to find out more about [[FormerRegimePersonnel Ignaz Schuhmann]] and gets serious results, he developes a clue of how [[YouKilledMyFather Fynstr]] screwed things up in the military networks due to throwing together [[MistakenIdentity one Schu(h)mann with another]] and nearly [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom made things]] [[ATragedyOfImpulsiveness escalate to]] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt apocalyptic levels]]. Björn doesn't GoMadFromTheRevelation, but he's tactful enough to not confront the Schu'''[[SpellMyNameWithAnS h]]'''mann guy with the awful truth.
89* TooMuchInformation: Natascha? Did you really have to tell Björn how fertile you were in the night of the looming apocalypse? On the other hand, [[SarcasmMode apocalypse doesn't happen every day]], you know.
90[[/folder]]
91
92[[folder:Character Tropes]]
93* ButForMeItWasTuesday: You probably won't remember whose brother you caught on that one shift in Switzerland, Herr Ignaz Schuhmann, no? Björn thought so too and that's why he didn't confront the Schuhmann family with that discovery he made.
94* CatGirl: Played with. The mentor told the author that "Cat" Tatjana is based on a real woman with that name. The author likes cats as well. Thus he makes several characters play cat sometimes.
95* JustTheFirstCitizen: Lampshaded with Björn explaining the titles of all Socialist national leaders and some others.
96* RedOniBlueOni: The Finster brothers have been displayed like this with a twist. Before his incarceration, big brother Ruedi was the red oni to the blue oni of Magnus. Twelve years later, a very active Magnus brings the broken shell of a man that his brother meanwhile became back home.
97* TattooedCrook: Ruedi Finster got twelve bulbous spires tattoed on his back for every year he's been in jail out in Argentinien, even though he's never been part of TheMafiya but rather the complete opposite.
98* ThoseTwoGuys: Patricia and Sean, two Irish-Catholic missionaries hanging out in Judea ten years after the Streich, in what could be considered a BusmansHoliday shortly before getting to Africa as election watchdogs.
99* VodkaDrunkenski: Alcohol was completely banned from all trains and train stations in Atlantis or heading to it for the duration of the W-Tech festival in 1998. That's because the transatlantic maglev tunnel just went online at Christmas before and because new European guests in the million-margin [[GenreSavvy just smell like trouble]], especially as you can expect guests like Oleg from Kiev among them.
100[[/folder]]
101
102[[folder: Love & Sexual Tropes]]
103* DisposableLoveInterest: The mutual disposability of Björn and Natascha gets discussed as a major reason why said love interest ever got pursued in the first place. Because ''"[[MemeticMutation what you do on vacation, stays on vacation!]]"''
104* EveryoneLooksSexierIfFrench: Defied. Björn says that sexualizing whole nations only puts said nationals under unnecessary strain.
105* GladToBeAliveSex: Natascha gets to know firsthand [[spoiler:by her own cousin via ElectronicTelepathy]] that the apocalypse was called off and awaits her affair Björn for breakfast where he says that his instinct was to just deliberately impregnate her at the kitchen table. Natascha on the other hand [[spoiler:would not have minded if he'd had that idea just some hours before when she was lolling in her sleep for offering him her birth-control-free loins to give it to her bareback as consequences wouldn't have mattered in the expected event of becoming GreyGoo anyway.]] And that she's been in her fertile days anyway. Both of them were quite shocked about their own colors. As a consequence, Natascha gets herself an IUD for that matter after all that.
106* NerdsAreVirgins: A lot of freshmen at the Chemnitz Polytechnic are implied to be exactly this.
107* NoGuyWantsToBeChased: Averted with Björn regarding Natascha, he loved it. Reconstructed in the end as Björn states that being a literal ChickMagnet also is something he needn't have had.
108* PreClimaxClimax: One of the sub-chapters has been dubbed "Riding Through The Apocalypse" for a reason.
109* SexTourism: Many a character makes the impression that their entire quests through the world were little more than this. Most notably Patricia Ó Domnhall.
110[[/folder]]
111
112[[folder: Shout Outs]]
113* ''"When it comes to bowel cancer, fun stops with me. I head to prophylaxy!"''\
114The plot with the gastroentorologist medical praxis featuring a retired and sick Nipponese pirate and a man who's coming to prevent related diseases is a reference to series of German TV ads featuring comedians calling for bowel cancer awareness under the mentioned motto.
115* And yes, it's hard to hook somebody up, even if you're a girl. On the other hand, not every girl is a [[Series/JerseyShore gremlin like Snooki]], you know?
116* Björn admits that it's a shame to not really remember the first time you did "das gute A". The "good A" (two sockpuppets humping each other) is the classical ending of ''[[SubvertedKidsShow Das Alphabet mit Bimmel und Bommel]]'', a ShowWithinTheShow of the legendary late night talk show ''Die Harald Schmidt Show''.\
117And like the passive part of the sockpuppets therein, Björn admits that the good A is his ''[[LampshadeHanging absolute favorite letter]]''!
118* Björn also has a college classmate whose name is [[Music/AceOfBase Ulf Ekberg]].
119* Björn also sings the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=526ljyfB3IA "Brandenburg" song by Rainald Grebe]], taking FlyoverCountry up to eleven.
120* Björn explains his choice for university to study BA with the desire to have a "bill to clean his dirty coat with". Such a bill, a so-called ''Persilschein'' [[note]]"Persil" is Germany's biggest laundry detergent[[/note]], was a literal carte blanche in the denazification process in Germany after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII proving you didn't play an active role in the atrocities of ThoseWackyNazis.
121* Björn goes completely [[UsefulNotes/ToGetRichIsGlorious Deng Xiaoping]] when he states that it didn't matter if the cat were black or white, so long it catches mice. In fact, it's a centuries-old proverb from the Chinese Sichuan province where Deng hailed from.
122* Björn rants about someone destroying his favorite band by leaving it on [[Music/TakeThatBand July 17th, 1995]].
123* "Fearless traveler" Filip Desastre in a book called [[{{Ruritania}} "Molwîstan"]] is a reference to Philippe Miseree from the book ''[[Literature/JetlagTravelGuides Molvanîa: A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry]]''.
124* It was 1993, Björn was caught somewhere between boy and man, she was seventeen and far from in-between, it was summer time in... nope, [[Music/KidRock not Northern Michigan]], but Tel Aviv will do as well.
125* Nightclub "Peklo" in this world's Tel Aviv is a reference to the [[http://www.mecca.cz/en/ Mecca nightclub in Prague, Czech Republic]].
126* People having it so good that they get bored and start to protest. Sounds much like [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Janet Reno dealing with Romanian quintuplets]].
127* Rosi finally gets to Franzensburg to work in marine biology. Well, Frisco and whales, [[Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome where did we have this once again?]]
128* Simon tells Björn that Kathi from Kattowitz is a cow that he should forget and that they'd better go for a drink. RightSaidFred, anyone?
129* The end is near? Do it [[KnockedUp extra long and unprotected]]! This very last time...
130* The multiple hints to a Lithuanian family name [[note]]Wowereit" as in long-time Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit[[/note]] meaning "squirrel" or "the squirrel-like" appear to become a RunningGag.
131* There's also a reference to a German ''Series/BigBrother'' season back in late 2000, by Mike Krüger in ''7 Tage - 7 Köpfe'':
132-->'''Simon:''' ''"[...] But you know, those who bring cans to the container get pledge!"''
133* Ulf had a problem with his sat nav that Björn solved with a slightly different pronunciation of the target address. That's a hint to the role of Ottfried Fischer in ''Pfarrer Braun'' [[note]]This German series adaption of [[Literature/FatherBrown Father Brown]] has been produced since 2003 and will have its production ended in 2013 due to the worsening of Fischer's Parkinson disease.[[/note]] in the episode "Kein Sterbenswörtchen" (lit. "not the death of a word") where the seemingly difficult word to pronounce for the sat nav was that of the Saxon town of Liebwitz.
134[[/folder]]

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