Note: [text in brackets] indicates German)
Whew! What a whirlwind tour. I’d say I prepared a fair deal for this, but so far the whole experience has hit me a lot harder mentally than I thought it would, and this city is nothing like I imagined it would be. Currently sitting in bed writing. I spent all day running around the city, getting a mini tour of the IES center, meeting my home stay host, and once I finally saw the bed around six PM I just lost it, hit the sheets and passed out from exhaustion. Not quite sure what time it is, I’ve found three conflicting time sources in the apartment so far, but best guesses put the time around 1 AM. I’m wide awake of course; it’s only five in the afternoon in Utah. So I figure I’ll write a little something up and try to tire myself out again.
Left for the airport around 6:30 in the morning on Monday with Mom, got there, checked my bags, and got on board. Neither flight was particularly bad, except I didn’t sleep on either of them. From SLC to JFK I took a little 10-minute nap, but on the JFK to Berlin flight, which departed at 7 PM East Coast time and arrived in Berlin around 2 in the morning (9 AM in this time zone), I sort of pretended to close my eyes and tried to sleep, but to no avail. I was a little wired when I touched down, not only from the lack of sleep, but cause I’m finally in FRICKIN BERLIN MAN!!! Grabbed my bags with no holdups, and headed out the gate to the pick-up area.
To get to the IES Center I had to catch bus 128 to an U-Bahn station, hop on train U6 and take it to the Oranienberger Tor stop, and walk to the Center. First order of business upon arrival was figuring out where the busses were. I wandered around for a little bit, searching for a map of the airport and looking as conspicuously American as possible with my bright red external frame backpacking backpack, but I couldn’t figure it out on my own. And so I was faced with the first of many dilemmas I have confronted in my short time in the city so far: 1) find someone who speaks English to give me directions to the busses, ensuring I get a straight answer but starting myself down the slippery slope of invalidating one of my main reasons for going on this trip (getting better at German), or 2) ask for directions in German and risk sounding completely stupid.
“[Uh, hi. Where are the busses?]”
He regarded me critically for a second, pointed to the right, said,
“[You see down there?]”
“[Um, yes.]”
“[Ok, so, blkasjdf;lajsokjhliuh;bih;kewf.]” (approximation of his mumbled, lightning-fast response)
Shhhhhhhhhit. What did the hell did he just say? I nodded like an idiot, pretending to understand, and went off in the direction he pointed, figuring that at the very least I might be able to figure it out based on that. Fortunately that was enough to find it. I went up to the bus ticket counter to get a ticket for the bus, and the attendant—either trying to be sympathetic with me or just giving up—answered me in English when I spoke to him. Well. Maybe this whole speaking German thing is going to be a little harder in real life than I thought. I was little chagrined to discover I couldn’t even pick up on conversations in the terminal at JFK. I could hear German noises and vowel sounds—“aah” and “ooh” and “ehh” and “kkh” all over the place—but could only pick out a word or two.
Finding the Center wasn’t too big a deal. When I arrived I set my bags down and headed into the lounge to meet and greet with the other students who had arrived. We were all divided into groups and given little mini tours of the grounds and given packets with maps of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, calendars for the program, and monthly passes for the busses and trains. That took about an hour, and after that I teamed up with a few people—Nick, Mark, Caitlyn, Kristin, and Rena—and headed off to Alexanderplatz to get a cell phone, as the program requires you to have one. Actually figuring out the routes on the S-Bahn was an adventure in and of itself, and we got off way too early and ended up walking most of the distance to the place.
When we got there we roamed around for a little bit looking for Saturn or Media Market (both places where you can get prepaid cell phones), but couldn’t really figure it out until asking some people to point us in the right direction. Found Saturn we located some cheap phones (10 Euros) with prepaid cards (15 Euros), and went to the desk to activate them. Someone at IES told me that Germany is a “very bureaucratic country,” but I had no idea how far that bureaucracy extends. Just getting a cell phone here is an absurdly complicated process. First you have to prove that you have a German address, show the shop owner your passport, and sign a whole bunch of forms, four of which I think were completely identical. I signed my name a total of eight times before I could head to the front counter to check out. I was chatting with the guy who was helping me and said, “[It’s a little complicated to buy a cell phone in Germany, yeah?]” He gave me one look and answered with a simple, “[That is how it works here, ok?]” Something to be said for the System here I guess.
We got some lunch after the cell phone adventure, and headed back to the Center. After waiting around in the lounge for a while I met up with my home stay host, Katja Lehmann. Katja is 27, and she’s studying Economics at one of the universities in Berlin (Humboldt maybe). I was surprised but relieved to get a home stay with another student. If I got stuck with a family with kids my rough and tumble, late-night student lifestyle might have clashed with their life, but at least in this situation we both sort of have the same schedule. She’s a little shorter than me, brown hair, glasses. She asked me if I wanted to speak German or English with her as we were walking to her car, and I answered German, and for the most part it’s actually not been that bad talking with her. She told me that, aside for Rose (the other IES student who is living with us) my German is the best of anyone she’s ever hosted. Not sure if that’s a reflection of my language abilities or the caliber of the other students, but when I smiled and said “Ohhh Katja, danke,” she replied, “[No Andy, I am very serious, your German is quite good.]”
One learns, living with Katja, that it is -Katja’s- apartment, and you are –going- to abide by her rules while living there. I wouldn’t say she has any of that German “coldness” that I mentioned earlier—she’s plenty friendly—but she’s one of the most direct and commanding people I’ve ever met, and has a standard for cleanliness and orderliness that I have never seen before or will again. She was really reluctant to show me her room, telling me that “there is a huge mess in there.” Huge mess by her definition seems to mean that everything is in immaculate order, bed made and tucked in, with maybe a few small things sitting out of place on her desk. Some highlights of the 20-minute laying of the ground rules and tour of the apartment:
“[No NO Andy! Do not step on the carpet with your shoes!! You must first wipe them off and place them here!]” (I misunderstood her directions earlier)
“[When you are finished showering in the bathroom you will always clear any and all hair out of the shower drain, take the squeegee and wipe off the walls of the shower, and dry off the sink if you spill water on the ledge. In this way the bathroom will always remain clean.]”
“[These mugs, MEIN (mine, pronounced the same way in both languages), you may not use them, because if they get broken I will first be very sad and then very angry with you. This food, MEIN, your shelf is here in the fridge. These cups and plates are MEIN. You may use Rose’s if you wish.]”
“[Oh Andy NO! Do not pet the cat under the chin! He only likes to be petted on the back of the head. The chin and the back are not his favorites.]”
I was smiling the entire time and holding back a laugh. It’s not as if any of the rules were unreasonable, but her delivery was so serious and meticulously detailed that I couldn’t help but find it funny. In the United States a host showing a guest their apartment would be full of smiles and laughter and geniality, but she was deadly, deadly serious when she told me that I have to leave the microwave open after I use it to air it out and that I can’t pee standing up in the bathroom (apparently in Germany this is actually something you just don’t do, oddly enough).
I took a nap for an hour or so, and woke up to dinner in the kitchen with Katja and Rose. Rose’s German is absolutely ridiculous. She’s doing some sort of combined spring-summer semester at IES, and apparently before coming here she spent a whole year in Bremen with a different program, so her German is absolutely flawless. I could get along pretty well with Katja and all the other Germans I spoke to in the city, but trying to listen to Katja and Rose talk with each other is something else entirely:
Rose: “[So Katja, what do you think of the BL-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L]” (approximation of trilled, machine gun rate of speech)
Katja: “[Oh, well BL-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L]”
The conversation dashed around from F.C. Bayern (a soccer team) to Smirnoff Ice (don’t know where that came from) to the dishes schedule (which I still don’t entirely understand) to all sorts of other topics that I only sort of caught wind of. I just stared dejectedly down at my spaghetti and tried to nod where I thought it was appropriate.
Rose: “[BL-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L. What do you think Andy?]”
Andy: “[Um…. I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand a word of that, what?]”
I thought I had a reasonably good grasp on the language, but after excusing myself to go to bed after dinner my brain was literally SPINNING. As in felt like it was scrambled and spun around in my head. I’d heard the expression before, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced the sensation until today. I just stared at the ceiling for a little while, tired but unable to sleep, already frustrated with my skill level, feeling all the little synapses in my head quivering and shaking. I’m going to learn a ton while living with these two, but damn…that bar is really high up there.
Tomorrow we’ve got an extended tour of the facilities and a welcome dinner at a restaurant (not sure which yet). I don’t really have consistent access to the internet yet, so posts may be a little sporadic and post-dated, but challenges included I’m just having a blast so far!
Aufwiedersehen, as they say!
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