Six weeks to go: Thoughts

Time has been serenely marching on, as it always does. It only hit me recently that I’ve got a mere six weeks left here until my contract officially is over. Due to the upcoming Easter holidays, which begin at the end of the week, this means a mere four weeks in school, before my year abroad comes to an end. Officially, at least.

How I feel about leaving is summed up in one word: Bittersweet.

Bitter-

• I’ve had such a great time here over the past, what is now, seven months. It’s flown by, really.
• So many friends made with various LAs – we’ve all gelled together very well as a group and enjoy each other’s company still.
• The staff at the school have been nothing but supportive, but also have given me a deserved (and needed) little nudge to get moving on certain aspects when needed.
• The pupils have been, for the most part, very friendly, enthusiastic, inquisitive and simply accepted me as being a source of help for them and, in a positive sense, exploited me as much as they could.
• I’ve really grown accustomed to hearing, seeing and breathing German all day and everyday, no matter where I am. On the street, in a shop, on a sign, in the paper, on the radio and TV, in official documents. I will miss that, certainly when back in the UK.
• The travel opportunities here have been nothing short of fantastic – just look at the amount of posts I’ve done detailing various places explored; around 60 or so. Added to the fact that you can go to other countries too, without having to fly. I’ve been to the Czech Republic more times than I can count since December, and I still like the journey even now. I like the idea that you can travel the length of Europe on trains, if you so desire – reasonably cheaply too, if you get the right deals.
• There’s still so much to see. I was sitting on a train the other day which had a map of Germany on the wall. I saw Thüringen right in the middle, how small it looked. There’s so, so many places, cities, Länder that I haven’t visited and that I want to, so badly. No doubt there will be time in the future though, be it for a holiday or something more permanent.
• The simple fact that it’s Germany. ’nuff said!

-sweet

• At the same time as all of the above though, I was only too aware that this was a visit that would, sooner rather than later, come to an end. Eight months, in the long-term, is a mere blip in the humdrum of normal life.
• Though I’m loving generally every minute of being here, it can be a little isolating at times. Though the job provides social contact on one level, it isn’t the same as having a close social network of friends as you do at ‘home’.
• I look to the future, and see myself with a 2:1, which enables me to get a decent job using my German, hopefully living happily in Berlin (or somewhere similar) in a few years’ time. For that to become true, sadly I need to head back over to Blighty to finish my degree.

All in all…
To sum up then, so far (there are still four working weeks to go, new places to see and things to experience), I’ve had a brilliant experience during my year abroad. From the places seen, people met and friendships made, to the situations successfully handled without problems, I’m very grateful to be able to do this.
I see this year abroad only as the start of a long love-affair with Germany. It’s strengthened my liking (which was already high) for a lovely country. I certainly hope that, one day, I can come back and settle here, one way or another.

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.
- Louisa May Alcott

Believe, I will.

British politeness vs. German directness

‘This is one thing you won’t learn at school usually: Subtleties of a culture – British politeness.’

So was the topic of today’s lesson with the tenth grade class. I was really looking forward to this lesson and I was not disappointed. The lesson covered as many vagaries of indirect speech as it could. While I knew all of this, of course, many of the kids (who had been to London, interestingly) didn’t.

A worksheet was duly presented with direct statements – how could they make these into more ‘softer’ and ‘polite’ versions of their brash former selves?
‘I think it’s awful’ – ‘Sorry, I don’t really like it’, was sort of getting there – but still not quite on the mark.
This went on and on, until one of the girls came out with a frustrated: ‘What the hell? All the British do is lie to each other with this!’
To which it was explained ‘No, no – it’s just a different way of doing things. That’s a very German way of looking at things, there’, and so it is.

After you’ve been here for a while, you notice that the little things that you would be given a ‘Thank you’ or ‘Cheers’ for in the UK, are just brushed aside here – holding a door open, letting someone else go first. They rarely give any acknowledgement, rather pretend as if you don’t exist most of the time. Pushing through crowds, at the Zwiebelmarkt I remember for example, is just done without any sort of hesitation – it’s just a case of getting your shoulders and elbows out, and going for it. Directness and honesty tends to live and thrive well in German culture – this can be a good thing though – it cuts down time and energy – but at the same time, still does sound a little odd to my quintessentially British brainbox.

While the directness is frustrating at times, this lesson also highlighted the fact that, at times, British politeness can be a little overcooked. We go to huge lengths to avoid giving anyone even the tiniest sliver of perceived slights and this, at times, can no doubt be long-winded and annoying.

What this lesson gave the kids though, was – hopefully – an insight into the British culture, a true one that bubbles gently underneath the surface but is there nonetheless, that stands them in good stead. It certainly was very interesting to see the students’ reactions, ranging from: ‘Hm. Let’s accept this’, to ‘This is ridiculous’.

Though various mutterings were heard throughout the lesson at how odd / weird / annoying and incomprehensible it all is, ultimately at the heart of this, I think there was a clear message: At times, politeness can go a long way, and still definitely has a place in my heart. Maybe German society should begin to realise that a little could do good – but not too much. A bit of directness is good at times, after all.

So, how to sum everything up that the students’ learnt about British culture today? Just take a look below.

My brain: On an intermittent language strike

As time slowly and serenely but nonetheless surely rumbles on and my thoughts are slowly turning to leaving here to head back to the UK, I’ve come to realise recently, that there is so much to this language that I still don’t know.

What I was hoping for when I came here, I’m not exactly sure – just to improve my language skills in general, I think. While that has definitely happened, at the same time, there’s a nagging feeling of me not knowing as much as I should do. Whatever that actually means though, is another question. Ultimately I’d like to be fluent, but I knew that that certainly wouldn’t happen in the eight months that I’ve been here.

There are days where I’m very on the ball with the language, more so than English at times or so it seems, and yet, there are days where I’m really not. Tiredness is a big factor with this, I think. While some things have become so ingrained in this little brain of mine that I don’t have to think about them anymore and just come out with it correctly, at times, I’m only too aware that it’s a foreign language.

What prompted this little musing off, was this article that someone posted from the Language Log, talking about language teaching and when you know you’re reasonably accomplished in a language. I had a look at some of the eye-drawing bits – the bits written in capitals, which are examples of what should be taught in a language lesson, in this guy’s opinion. Things like ‘come down from there’, ‘pick that up’, ‘put that down’ and the like.

What’s annoying, is I had to think about how to say this in German. A lot. So much in fact, I had to look at Leo.Dict to see how to say it. ‘Komm herunter’, ‘hebe das ab’, ‘lege das ab’ – which makes sense now I can see them in front of me, but at the time, my brain was on a little language strike. Still, it’s these little quirks that show I’m still learning, I suppose.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post was – just to release a little frustration, I suppose. Ultimately though, despite what the tone of this post may suggest, I am happily using German in day-to-day conversations and reading etc., it’s just when it gets that little too complex, that it’s annoying. All of this though, shows that I still have the drive and will to become fluent, or as near to fluent as I can be, and that, after this amount of time here, is a very good thing.

As a friend said to me: “You’re past the reef point: the comfortable sandy beach of grammar forms and verb tenses has suddenly dropped away and left you in an endless ocean of sophisticated, specialized vocabulary and infinitely delicate nuances. You’re not drowning, you’re just learning how to swim when you can’t touch the bottom anymore.”
So very true, so very eloquently put. Nail – head – hit.

Writer’s Block

There’s been a distinct lack of posts and inane ramblings here since January.

This is down to a number of reasons, I think.
First off, a lack of things to write about. My ideas tend to come in drips and drabs and I tend to go in cycles of having (what I consider to be) good topics, then nothing for a few days. The ‘nothingness’ period has been extended somewhat over the past month or so. I think this is only natural, as, after having been here for so long (relatively speaking) – the best part of seven months or so – there are things that were once interesting that aren’t anymore, or things that would have once intrigued me that I just accept as ‘normal’ and ‘German’ now.

Secondly, a lack of energy to write about the few ideas that I have. When I do have ideas for posts (which I now do – around five or so), I’ve found that it now takes energy to log onto here and type out something that reads, sounds and flows well. I keep notes of good ideas for posts and they keep accruing. It’s a case of me doing them justice.

Thirdly, I’ve been chomping at the bit a lot more in terms of planning lessons and travelling (Prague and around the place to the other LAs), which is a positive reason why I’ve not had much time to put swirling hurricanes of letters that’ll perhaps one time rearrange themselves into words, down in pixel form.

Fourthly, I think I just needed a bit of a break from the blog for a few days. I know that I’m not obliged to post here, but I feel like I should – and as a result, it became a bit of a chore rather than a pleasant past time, which is what it should be – as well as a vaguely educational (if somewhat self-centred) and hopefully interesting read.

All in all, I love writing. It helps me relax, I like describing things lexically – painting a canvas via words is all I can do, as I’m crap with a paintbrush. Hopefully this’ll be the end of the post and idea drought – I’ve enjoyed typing this out!

Finally, as Insomniac Medic, a blogger whom I read regularly, says about his writer’s block:

There are about half a dozen unfinished posts in the drafts folder, and I can’t finish any of them. I’m not sure I’m enough of an author to really call it writer’s block, but it’s definitely some sort of block. Dozens of ideas are scribbled in tiny notes at the back of my diary, hieroglyphics decipherable only to skilled Egyptologists and myself, and all are waiting to be converted into normalspeak. For some reason, this week I just can’t seem to do it.

Couldn’t agree more, really.

A desire to move

I like Weimar and Thüringen, but they are, it must be said, small places. I’m very happy to be here, don’t get me wrong – but I’ve got the yearning to explore somewhere else, to feel settled there rather than here.

On the way back from Prague at the weekend, I had an hour or so to wait at Dresden, so I had a little walk a little further afield than I previously had done – to see the spire of the churches in the distance. A new place, unseen territory: ‘Da will ich hin!’

I’ve noticed that since November really, I haven’t done any proper travelling within Germany. Not to see any places anyway. The places where I have been: Rudolstadt and Oberhof were spur of the moment type things. I suppose some of the reasons that I’ve been rather inactive on this front is because of the winter weather (though that’s now giving way to spring), the fact that I’ve done a relatively large amount of most of the places that I’ve still got on my ‘To see’ list are now relatively far afield – 90 minute or two hour journeys, which I haven’t really got the time for during the week, or inclination to do at the weekend as it measns I’d have to get up rather early – and I like my sleep!

I’m not dissatisfied with living here, just little jaded, I think. A week or two in another, bigger place in a different Land – a city such as Cologne, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and the like – would be very nice though. Maybe then I’d appreciate Weimar and Thüringen for its attractiveness, more so than I do at the moment.

I hope I’ll do a lot more travelling, both around Thüringen and Germany soon in a bigger way than to Erfurt or Jena. Whether I’ll have the time though, is another question!

Blue sky thinking: Jobs and life goals

This isn’t a Germany focused post as such, rather a bit of blue sky thinking on my part. Today, I’ve been pondering what to do with life and what various ideas I’ve got for jobs and such – after all (as I need to keep reminding myself), I’m off to university again next year to finish my degree and after that (fingers crossed!) it’ll be off into the world of work. This is the bullet point list I came up with.

Year Abroad aims

• Become an accomplished German speaker: I’m getting there, I’d say – but I still make lots of mistakes (but I can tell that, which is half the battle) and there’s always something new to learn every day.
• Become more independent and confident: I’d say that’s happened already. There’s always situations where I’d feel a little out of my depth though (public speaking for example), but I haven’t had to deal with these here, really.
• Travel: I’ve obviously already done a lot, but there’s always, always more to do!
• Have adventures: Had many already, but will surely have more in the future too. Depends on what one calls ‘adventure’ though…
• Begin to discover what I want to do / where I want to be in the future: I’m getting there – see below!

University

• Dive back in and get into the philosophy, as this will probably be my weakest area – I haven’t done any proper study of it since May of 2010.
• 2:1: Everyone wants this, yes?
• Blitz German classes – which I hope to, seeing as I’ll have been abroad for the best part of nine months, including Bremen!

Job
Type:

• Writing? (Book? Journalism? Short articles for something or other?)
• Helping others? (Charity?)
• Using German in some way

Location:

• Germany (Anywhere’ll do!)
• Austria (Austrian German dialects would be interesting, along with exploring a country that I haven’t really seen much of)
• Based in UK, but with German travel opportunities?

Key things

• Be satisfied and happy in whatever I do / wherever I go
• Be myself and follow my goals
• Hold onto Germany!

So, there it is. My current life plan summarised into handy bullet points. Whether any of these things’ll come to fruition or not, I’ve no idea, but life’s an adventure and it’ll be interesting to see how things all play out!

Graffiti

In the UK, I think it’s fair to say that graffiti is seen as a problem. Initiatives are unveiled every now and again, such as painting a wall white and letting that be sprayed to contain it to one area and, from what the (oh-so-trustworthy) media says, these appear to rarely work or have the desired effect.

Germany has a graffiti problem too – in most towns, there are ‘tags’ of various gangs and such, adorning walls and alleyways. The thing is, unless you’re up on your local gang info, it’s going to mean sod-all to you.

There’s a slight difference in attitudes between the UK and Germany though: While the UK seems to see it purely as a problem, in Germany in some places, it appears to be almost encouraged – or certainly not discouraged. At the school that I visited while on my Frankfurt exchange, they had a wall dedicated to it for the pupils to scrawl on, and the Bremen university was equally covered in some at times, rather poetic daubings.

These daubings though, are not all mindless: Bremen had ‘Learn until it becomes boring’, Erfurt has ‘Empty walls are for the people’ and Apolda has ‘Graffiti is art, not a children’s playground’. Anti-fascist graffiti too, can be seen if you take a look here and there and, in addition, stencils are sometimes used to stand out against the status quo: ‘Against repression’ being one that I saw.

I’ve made an album showing the various different bits of amusing, political, anti-fascist or simply artistic graffiti and drawings that I’ve come across on my various travels throughout Thüringen since around September. You can find that by clicking here.

European rail travel I: Information availability and pricing

If you’ve lived anywhere other than an island known as ‘The United Kingdom’, you’ll know first hand that in a so-called ‘westernised’ country, rail and public transport can be the thing that connects a country together.

America, for example, has Amtrak service with illustrious names such as ‘The Empire Builder’ and ‘Zephyr’ which can be scheduled to take days to get from their start point to their destination (Chicago to Seattle, for example). While there isn’t really any country in Europe – except perhaps Russia – that can match that, either in terms of size or duration, what’s prompted this post, is the relatively large amount of long-distance inter-Europe train travel I’ve done over the past month, and will be in the future too. There are clear differences between European rail travel – to be precise, with Deutsche Bahn and České dráhy (Czech Railways) – and the UK’s effort, be it with little hops between towns or huge journies spanning a couple of countries.

Availability of information
Think of this: The UK. It’s a weekend – perhaps a Sunday. You’re on a train. What, generally, is the first thing you’re going to think of? Engineering works? Even if not, you’ve got to admit that they are a necessary but frustrating part of the British rail experience.
Here, in Germany, while they happen fairly reguarly, it seems as though a route is never really completely devoid of trains – there are always one or two an hour. Where there aren’t, buses are provided, at a regular service.

Announcements and general information too, is widely available and easily accessible. No matter how small the station, how swamped the station staff, how delayed a train is, generally speaking, every train gets announced with the reason for delay and expected arrival time, if applicable. Timetables are clear, with arrivals being shown on white, departures on black, platform numbers shown and all important stopping points along the way. Long distance IC (Intercity) and ICE (Intercity Express) services along with night trains and such, are shown in red, to differentiate them from the all stations trains too.

Pricing
While rail travel in Germany is renouned for being expensive, you could argue that the service it provides is generally on time 95% of the time – thus it’s worth paying the high price for. I’m not too sure though, if I subscribe to this line of thought (even though I just came up with it) – but one thing’s for sure – since September, Deutsche Bahn have got a lot of money out of me (around €1,000 in fact, as I later worked out), even with a Bahncard 50!

A discounted ticket from Weimar to Erfurt on the RB/RE trains, for example, is €3.80, so €7.60 for a return. Contrast this with a discounted ticket with the ICE services to Frankfurt-am-Main is around €30, €60 without. On the trains themselves too, things don’t come cheaply: I don’t enjoy spending €2.80 on a bottle of still water from the so-called ‘Bordbistro’. I’d rather a beer for that price! Likewise, at most stations – why should I have to pay to use the toilet? Not 30p like in the UK, but – in some Hauptbahnhöfe – €1! (One area that the UK has over Germany, I must say…)

Contrast all of this with the Czech Railway’s pricing scheme: Our journey from Prague to Kostelec nad Orlicí for New Year took three hours and involved a couple of changes along the way. The intercity train from Prague for the first 1hr 45m was very comfortable, nicely upholstered, had toilets, had food provisions too. The distance was around 100km. The price for all of this? 104 Czech Krona. Any idea what that is in Euros? €4. Four Euros! Unbelievable…

Germany’s grading system

Germany’s grading system is significantly different to the UK’s. It replaces letters with numbers. In fact, most European countries do this, so perhaps it’s better to say that the UK’s system is markedly different to Germany’s – but no matter. You get the picture.

Whereas the UK grading system for schools, goes from A* – G for GCSE, A – E for A-Levels and then moves into the wholly more sensible area of percentages for university (and all the associated gubbins that goes along with it), Germany uses a numbered system: 1 – outstanding (ausgezeichnet), 2 – good (gut), 3 – satisfactory (befriedigend), 4 – sufficient (ausreichend), 5 – deficient (mangelhaft), 6 – insufficient (ungenügend), with 5 and 6 being fail grades. These numbers are used, with some small tweaks to the criteria here and there, throughout the whole of the time pupils are in education – from primary school right up to the end of university. Much more streamlined that the UK’s fairing, in my opinion.

Not only is the grading itself different, but also the method of delivery. In all my experiences as a British student, for example, when I was given a mark, it was handed to me perhaps a week or so after I’d given in the essay or whatever it was and I could celebrate or commiserate with myself, on my own. If I wanted others to know what I’d got, I could tell them, but no-one would know until that moment, when the words came out of my mouth.

Not the case in Deutschland, though. In my school, and indeed all of the others that my fellow LAs work at, at times – such as an in-class presentation, the grades are given out instantly. Boom. There you go. A pupil that gets a 1 and their face lights up, smiles all round. Likewise, a 3 or a 4 and those smiles fade to frowns and you see their face sink a little lower in their seat. It’s not just the pupil that knows, it’s whole class. While nobody teases and everyone just gets on with the next task, I – personally speaking – would rather not let everyone know what I had, if I was in their shoes.

Even as a person who’s now in the teaching role, every time I watch this every few lessons, it makes me, even now, feel that little bit uncomfortable.

The F word and where I am with it

It’s the aim of most, if not all, linguists to become fluent in a foreign language. What exactly is it though, to ‘be fluent’ in a language?

Wikipedia defines it as:
“Language fluency is used informally to denote broadly a high level of language proficiency, most typically foreign language or another learned language, and more narrowly to denote fluid language use, as opposed to slow, halting use.”

It then speaks of ‘proficiency’, which is then broken down into four key areas:

• Reading: the ability to easily read and understand texts written in the language;
• Writing: the ability to formulate written texts in the language;
• Comprehension: the ability to follow and understand speech in the language;
• Speaking: the ability to produce speech in the language and be understood by its speakers.

If you then couple it up with this nice paragraph that asks a few searching questions to you, as a language learner, from About.com, you can then begin to get a nice little overview as to where you strengths and weaknesses lie. It can also give you a few goals and things to work on.

“Do you feel comfortable speaking the language? Can you communicate easily with native speakers? Can you read newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch tv? Are you able to understand the gist of the language as it is spoken and written, even if you don’t know every single word? Can you understand native speakers from different regions? The more fluent you are, the more of these questions you can answer “yes” to.”

For me, the answers to most of these questions – except perhaps ‘Can you understand native speakers from different regions?’ – is ‘yes’. What I realised the other day, after around 9 days away from German, is how quickly you slot back into it – in restaurants, on TV, in newspapers – it all just seems to be understandable now. The gist is what counts and that’s what I’m getting in most cases.

There’s also the further question of ‘Do you think in a foreign language?’ My answer: At times. It’s not got to the point where I think of everything in German when I’m out and about – but it definitely is getting there.

What the point of this is, is that while I’ve had around six to seven years of ‘school teaching’ of German, while that has no doubt got the structure of it all in my head and has given me some vocabulary, the real groundbreaking work has been occuring since July. It’s documented in this blog in fact – Bremen and Thüringen!
For me (and everyone’s different), the key turning point was just being able to be living and breathing the language on a daily basis. In Bremen, something just clicked after a couple of weeks and the cases and passive, which I’d previously loathed, just fell into place.

Many previous Language Assistants have said that the real rewarding thing about the year abroad is the chance to improve your language skills at a vast rate of knots. I’m pleased to say that now, after months of waiting, it seems to be finally happening to me.