I thought it would be fun to have a little feature in which I chose a fun German word every week!

Nashorn (n) – Rhinoceros

Fun fact : Nashorn is a lot easier to spell than Rhinocerous.

When walking around Dortmund, you’ll see these winged rhinoceroses everywhere, ( in Berlin you’ll see a similar thing but with bears!) normally decorated by a sponsor – this one is by Sanara Fachschule! According to http://www.do-rhino.de:

The winged rhino is the heraldic animal of Dortmund’s concert house, the Westphalian Philharmonic.

Due to its extraordinarily sensitive ear, the rhino is able to hear infrasonic sounds over long distances, whereas humans can only detect these sounds as vibrations. The rhino is able to move each of its ears independently thus catching sounds in a radius of 360º.

According to the website there are 100 artistically designed winged rhinoceroses in Dortmund – I’d love to have found them all before the year is up!  Contrary to popular belief, the winged rhino is not the official emblem of Dortmund (as the bear is in Berlin) – that’s the eagle – but it has become an unofficial emblem of sorts to the locals.