Coffee Break German

Four mystery cities. Four cryptic clues. One week to work out where we're going.

The Great Coffee Break Treasure Hunt is back for 2026, and everything happens here: https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/treasurehunt

Each clue is a short poem describing a European city without ever naming it. Every clue is written from scratch in French, Italian, German and Spanish by the team who teach it, so it rhymes and reads properly in each one. Watch in whichever language you're learning.

WHEN THE CLUES GO LIVE (all 1pm UK)
Clue 1: Monday 24 August
Clue 2: Wednesday 26 August
Clue 3: Friday 28 August
Clue 4: Sunday 30 August

HOW TO ENTER
The entry form opens on the Treasure Hunt website on Sunday 30 August, alongside the final clue, and closes at 11:59pm UK on Monday 31 August.

WHAT YOU CAN WIN
Get all four right and you win a free month on Coffee Break TV, our on-demand video platform, in whichever language you're learning. You also go into a prize draw. One name comes out of the hat for each language, and that person takes the whole collection of Coffee Break courses in their language.

THE BONUS CLUE
Sign up for the Treasure Hunt emails and we'll send you an extra clue with every city: roughly how far it is from the last one, and in which direction. That one only goes out by email. You can sign up on the landing page.

THE REVEAL
Mark names all four cities, and the hidden spot the final clue points to, on Tuesday 1 September at 4pm UK. A second video on Wednesday 2 September goes back through every clue line by line and explains how each one worked. It's free, it's open to everyone, and there's no travel involved.

https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/treasurehunt
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You probably learned 'stehen' as the German verb for "standing". In this episode, Thomas explains the range of other meanings it carries in everyday German, including expressions like 'auf jemanden stehen', where the English translation is nothing to do with standing at all. Small verb, surprisingly wide reach.

➡️ Click here to watch the video version of this episode.

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Thomas explains how German handles continuous actions, something that doesn't come with its own dedicated tense the way English '-ing' forms do. He also introduces the increasingly popular am-progressive: 'Wir sind gerade am Entspannen', 'Gestern waren wir am Wandern'. It's a handy shortcut that also means one less set of conjugation rules to worry about.

➡️ Click here to watch the video version of this episode.

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One English word, three German ones. In this episode, Thomas explains why "feel" splits into "fühlen", "sich fühlen" and "sich anfühlen" in German, and how to know which one you need. In this episode we provide a short summary of the three, alongside a mention of the exercises on the YouTube video.

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I bet you've done at least one of these. In this episode I walk through five mistakes German learners make all the time, from getting the construction behind "recht haben" right, to knowing when to use "wenn" and when to use "als", to the little contrast between "ich bin ..." and "mir ist ..." when you talk about how you feel. We'll also sort out "machen" versus "nehmen" and why fun "macht Spaß" rather than "ist Spaß". None of these are hard once you see what's going on, and fixing them makes a real difference to how natural your German sounds.

➡️ Click here to watch the video version of this episode.

➡️ Get free mini-lessons and language tips every week by signing up to our newsletter: https://coffeebreaklanguages.kit.com/newsletter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.