Last days in Germany...

Wow. This month has FLOWN by.  As excited as I am to go to Wien, I’m really going to miss Schwäbisch Hall!  I’ve learned SO much German (or maybe just remembered a lot), met incredible people, and had tons of exciting adventures.

I haven’t written for a while, so here’s a quick summary of my time in Germany since my last update:

German beer

Really good.  Really cheap.  And I’m legal.  Although I guess I’ll be legal in the States in 3 days.  Still.  As my Goethe teacher says, “In Germany, beer is like water.” So true.  Although I’m proud to say I definitely drink more water than beer.

[Side note: although Germany is apparently very green, everyone still drinks out of plastic water bottles.  I, on the other hand, carry my dented, scratched-up metal Calvin water bottle everywhere, and then try to sneak a few sips during meals so I don’t have to pay for water.  I don’t know if that’s kosher, but I refuse to pay for water!!!]

Trips

Comburg: This is about a 30 minute walk from the Goethe Institute.  I saw it one day while I was running and then some friends and I walked around it for an hour a so.  It’s basically an old church...but it looks like a CASTLE!  Absolutely beautiful.  I felt like I was in a fairytale. 

Frankfurt:  I saw the Goethe-Haus!  Definitely the highlight.  I know Frankfurt’s a big, financial center, but seeing Goethe’s childhood home was my favorite part of that trip!  I even got to see one of the early versions of Faust!

Ulm:  Probably my favorite trip.  It was REALLY cold, and I was sick, but the trip was definitely worth it.  I climbed the steeple Ulmer Münster, which is the highest steeple in the world! 768 steps!  I also received lots of propaganda from various German political parties.  The other neat thing about Ulm is that some of it is on the river (the Donau).  The river just flows right under buildings and houses etc.  It kind of reminded me of what I imagine Venice is like. 

Tübingen:  If I hadn’t been so cold and sick and we hadn’t traveled 6 hours for a grand total of 3 hours to stay in the city, I would have enjoyed this trip more.  We went for Allemanischer Faschings, which is basically this big parade of people in costumes.  The point is to scare away evil spirits.  If I was evil, I guess it worked.  I went into a café and drank coffee and tea until it was time to leave.  During this time, I met two women from Colorado whose husbands were in the military.  I got up to blow my nose for what seemed like the 100^th time that day, and when I went to the door of the bathroom, one of the woman was there too.  She said, “H and D (the letters printed on the doors)...H stands for Herren und D stands for Damen.  Damen is women, right?”  Yes.  She was right.  But really?  She had lived in Germany TWO YEARS and she did not even know something as practical as which bathroom to enter!  I mean, I could understand if she’d been there a few months.  But TWO YEARS!  If I ever live in another country that long, I really hope I am at least relatively proficient...at least proficient enough to tell which bathroom I should use!  I don’t know.  I feel like if you’re living in someone else’s culture, you owe it to those people to learn a bit of their language.  They’re showing you hospitality and you should return the favor.

                                                

Classes 

There were 8 people in my class (I think) from countries including Indonesia, Korea, the U.S., Turkey, and Romania.  Our teacher was German (like all Goethe teachers).  We took tests when we first arrived that determined which course we were in.  I think my class was a perfect fit for me at first, but then all my German started coming back to me and I think a higher class would have been a little better.  Still, I learned a lot and had fun (even though 8:15 is a little early for me to start class!).  It was really great to just focus on German and nothing else!!!  In the past, I’ve never really enjoyed my language classes, I think because they were always my “blow-off” classes.  The teachers/professors didn’t expect much and I didn’t have time to put much effort into a class that I could get an easy A in.  True, it didn’t matter at all how well I did in this class.  We had tests, but they didn’t really count for anything.  But since that was the only academic commitment I had, I worked fairly hard!  And my classroom learning was reinforced all day, everyday at lunch, walking through the town, visiting bookstores, etc.  Sometimes I would learn a word in class and then hear it later that day.  It was such EASY and FUN learning! 

I also went to some optional classes: phonetics, listening comprehension, and humanities terminology.  My favorite was definitely the last of these.  It was really hard and kind of overwhelming, but really useful.  The professor was really old, and even though I generally knew what he was talking about, all of the students (all 3 of us) had a hard time understanding how to do the exercises.  It was kind of embarrassing at first, but we got better and learned a lot of new words.  I even got to read some Heidegger in German!

Friends

I LOVE the people I met here.  It was so fun to hang out with people from all around the world. The students going to Vienna with me are GREAT.  I’m really eager to get to know them better.

Language

It was so neat that German was the “lingua franca” for the most part.  Some people did speak pretty good English, but we would always go to German first.  It doesn’t feel so uncomfortable to speak anymore.  In fact, it feels ALMOST as natural as English in some situations.  I’m definitely able to navigate daily situations in German, and lots of native speakers have complimented me which is really encouraging!  I already commented above about those women and the bathrooms, but I had another thought about language and hospitality etc.  When we were climbing the Ulmer Münster, an American said, “Excuse me” as he passed by because the passage was very narrow and he couldn’t help but bump into me.  I don’t think he knew I was American because I hadn’t been speaking.  It struck me as kind of ridiculous when I heard those English words.  Really, “Entschuldigung” is not that hard to say.  I made a decision as I was climbing down the stairs: in my travels, I am going to make an effort to learn the basic phrases in the language of the country I’m visiting.  It just seems like the right thing to do.  It’s an act of respect.  Maybe I’m being pretentious or something, but that’s what I’ve decided for now.

Well, that was really long so I’ll stop now and update again once I’m in Wien!  Thanks for reading!