the office, the office, and das büro

Even though we've been living in Germany all this time, the writer's strike in the States has really affected us, too! We have a few American TV shows we like that we, of course, can't watch here so we download them every week. So we went through a lot of withdraw when the writer's strike was going on and we rejoiced with the rest of America when it ended...and then waited and waited impatiently for our favorite shows to start up again. And the show I missed the most was The Office.

My brother introduced me to the original British Office a few years back. And for about a month there I watched all the episodes over and over pretty much non-stop. It was about a year later that the American Office premiered and my husband and I were pleasantly pleased with it. After we moved to Germany I would start bugging my husband every Friday morning to start downloading the previous night's episode. But when the writer's strike began...well, our home became mirthless and gloomy to say the least.

But then my wonderful, brilliant, and resourceful husband made a life-saving discovery: a German version of The Office!!

Once he found out that Germany had created their own version of the British masterpiece, he ordered the first three seasons of it on dvd and we had a new source of laughter, painful situations and uncomfortable silences!

But, actually, the German version isn't called The Office, or rather the German-translated das Büro. Instead it's named Stromberg after the main character, the "regional manager", Bernd Stromberg. And it takes place in an insurance company instead of a paper company. But all the important elements are still there!

The "talking heads":



The Tim/Jim, Gareth/Dwight, Dawn/Pam characters (Ulf, Berthold, and Tanja):



The copier:



And, of course, Stromberg, himself:





But however much fun it's been to hear Ricky Gervais' genius auf Deutsch, we're still very very happy that we can once again enjoy our American Office addiction!!