Rivers

“Stadt, Land, Fluss” -- or "City, Country, River," -- is the name of a popular game here in Germany. To play it, you take a piece of paper and at the top write five or six categories. The categories are divided from each other by vertical lines. The first three categories must always be “City,” “Country” and “River” -- hence the name of the game. The other categories can be decided upon, but players usually go with, “Animals,” “Colors,” “Famous People” and "Professions."

After you have written out the categories, one player says the first letter of the alphabet out loud and then continues on saying the rest of the alphabet to himself. Another player then says, “stop” at the moment of his choosing and when he does, the player who had been saying the alphabet to himself tells the players which letter he was up to.

So, for example, if the player who had been saying the alphabet to himself  says he was up to the letter “S” when his opponent said "stop," all the players would then have to fill in each of their categories columns with a noun that starts with "S." For each entry you get correct, you get points.

Pretty simple game, huh?

Yeah, except there’s just one catch. The rivers. The rivers always snag people. People can think of a few rivers, but really not that many. Knowledge of rivers is gold in this game.

So why am I writing all of this? Well, I have a student who loves to play “Stadt, Land, Fluss” with me. Every time we play it, it’s like she’s playing the game for the first time; it’s all brand new, and I love that, find it very encouraging. The problem is, though, both she and I always get snagged at the rivers. It's hard to name rivers!

Well, last time before we started to play, a light bulb went off. I said to her, "Why don’t we memorize a river for every letter of the alphabet?  Well, we did that and the list we came up with is below. I hope to learn all 26 rivers and then be a champ at this game. I mean, the "Zam River"? Who's going to know a river starting with the letter "Z," let alone the Zam River (which is in Romania, by the way)?

The Amazon
The Biber
The Colorado
The Don
The Elbe
The Fish River, Alaska
The Ganges
The Harlem River
The Inn
The Jade River, Germany
The Kuban River, Russia
The Lena River, Russia
The Mississippi
The Nile
The Ob, Russia
The Peace River, British Columbia
The Queen River, Rhode Island
The Rhein River
The Seine
The Tigris
The Ural River, Russia
The Volga
The Weser, Germany
The Xin River, China
The Yellow River, China
The Zam River, Romania