This week’s German Word of the Week provides an insight into the German health care system. From a certain age on, it is not uncommon for people to be prescribed a stay at a health resort to treat all sorts of ailments from back pain to respiratory difficulties. For the patient this generally means a 2-3 week stay with a tightly packed schedule from morning to evening to promote physical and spiritual well-being. While the partners, wives and husbands at home certainly hope that this stay at the health resort cures whatever ailment their partners are suffering from, they are also gripped by one fear: Kurschatten (literally: health resort shadow). This is not some inverse form of sunburn or a change in the form of the shadow cast by a person. Kurschatten describes another person at a health resort whose acquaintance leads to a romance/affair. Schatten (shadow) also means permanent company – a characteristic of a shadow when the sun is out. So German does have a specific word for a romantic partner met at a health resort! It is often used jokingly, but nonetheless a phenomenon that is well-known and “documented”!