Jose Rizal's Cartoon and Potato Humor

 




In his letter to his family, dated 6. February 1886 from Heidelberg, Germany, Jose Rizal describes German life to his family rather candidly:


"La vida alemana no es desagradable, solo que está llena de patatas. A cualquier cosa, patatas: por la mañana y por la noche. A la noche se toma té con patatas y carne fría..

Translation: "German life is not unpleasant, it is just full of potatoes. To anything, potatoes: in the morning and at the night. At night tea is taken with potatoes and cold meat."

Incidentally, there is one cartoon drawn by Rizal when he was in Germany describing the consequences of an early morning farting of a man named Alfred. Incredibly our national hero used the German term "Bombardierung"(Bombardment) to put the utmost humor into the cartoon where the scene was of funny chaos. Perhaps the result of too many potatoes?

By the way, the German word for potato is "Kartoffel". In Swiss-German it is much more fanciful, they call it "Erdapfel' (in some regions Härdöpfu) -- Close scrutiny of the word reveals that it also translates to "earth apple" or apple from the ground. I prefer the Swiss term.




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