Do you have a favorite German radio station?

May 5, 2009 6:17 AM

I'm going to Germany on 21 May. I've been told (by Germans) that my German is good, but I'd still like to do a bit of immersion before I go to get used to hearing it, etc. I'd particularly like to listen to some German radio. Any favorite stations?

I would prefer stations that play music. I think a university radio station would be ideal for me, but I'm open to anything other than talk-only radio--I've tried it before, and I got so bored! Also, do you have any other suggestions for refreshing my German quickly? I don't think language CDs are an option right now.

posted by bibliophibianj to travel & transportation (10 comments total)

Radio Fritz in Berlin might suit you - youth-oriented indie/rock/electronic & chat. They have a live stream
posted by dydecker at 6:42 AM on May 5

You can give Deutschlandfunk a try.
posted by donut at 7:04 AM on May 5

SWR3 (Südwest) and Radio Eins (Berlin) are run of the mill youth-oriented stations (um ok, maybe not THAT youth anymore since I listen to them, but pretty varied and not boring).
posted by ClarissaWAM at 8:24 AM on May 5

And let me add that some private German TV stations have streams of some of their programmes online - e.g. RTL and Sat1 (can't seem to find streams for ProSieben right now, maybe they don't offer it). You may find this more entertaining, also if you watch the docusoaps (often horrendous, but entertainingly so) you can get a feel for the different accents people have. (not 100% sure if these work in the US, but they do in the UK)
posted by ClarissaWAM at 8:32 AM on May 5

FM4 is pretty good, and community radios: 1 2
posted by dnial at 8:38 AM on May 5

Michel Thomas's German course comes in a variety of forms, but there is an advanced one which might be helpful.
posted by Augenblick at 9:06 AM on May 5

Try this Deutsche Welle site with news spoken slowly
posted by Gungho at 9:10 AM on May 5

You might find…the slowly spoken news…to be…a bit…slow. If you like news, both ARD and ZDF have video and audio podcasts of their news and analysis programs (tagesschau/tagesthemen and heute/heute-journal respectively).

As a bonus, if you watch the news for the next three weeks, you might be more able to have (or at least recognize) conversations about current events, and you're going to know what news Germans have been seeing lately.
posted by oaf at 3:09 PM on May 5

On this site you can even find community radios by region, if you want to get used to a specific regional slang. Radio orange (stream) is one of my favorites.
posted by dnial at 2:18 AM on May 6

Thanks for your thoughts. I'll try to listen to each station before I mark a best answer. I'm looking forward to hearing them!
posted by bibliophibianj at 8:44 AM on May 6