Unbelievable.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-military-shot-down-party...
US military shot down party balloon near El Paso after drone suspicion, official says
Would be funny if they used some new fancy laser weapon to, let's say, discombobulate this imminent threat, as indicated by other reports.
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum ... well, El Paso as it turns out.
the English rewrite of course starts:
You and I in a little toyshop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'til one by one, they were gone...
In the end, a cataclysmic war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons and causes devastation on all sides without a victor, as indicated in the denouement of the song: "99 Jahre Krieg ließen keinen Platz für Sieger," which means "99 years of war left no room for victors." The anti-war song finishes with the singer walking through the devastated ruins of the world and finding a single balloon. The description of what happens in the final line of the piece is the same in German and English: "'Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen," or "Think of you and let it go."
I especially like the way she rhymes "Captain Kirk" with "Feuerwerk".
https://genius.com/Nena-99-luftballons-lyrics
In other news, Director Gabbard and Secretaries Noem, Hegseth, and Kennedy met with Secretary Leavitt for her big Gender Reveal Party in El Paso...
The real treat for German listeners is the first verse: ich, mich, dich, and neun-und-neunZIG (zig is pronounced like ich in the main German dialect).
With all of the 'neunundneunzig' (aka 99) repeated throughout the song, the ich/dich/mich/vielleicht rhymes is really a superior start over the English version.
It's a rhyming scheme that cannot be replicated in English at all.
(I can mostly understand spoken German. Have heard this song in German many times before. Never got the message. It's tricky!)
So just sing along. Every word, and understand as much as you can.
------
Once you know all the words, then the next step is to learn the grammar and learn how the words work together. If you give it a few months, full understanding will come!