Well, flight takes off nice and early at 8:50 tomorrow, get into Berlin-Tegel at 10:00 Germany time, which is around 2 in the morning Utah time I think. It will be "viel spaß" (lots of fun) to figure out the S-Bahn and U-Bahn (Berlin's two subway systems) after spending 18 hours in transit. I have directions to the IES Berlin Center (take a bus to a train station to another station and take a short walk), but neither me nor Mom could figure out the handful of U/S-Bahn online maps. But ehhh. Not worried about it. I'm sure there will be scads of maps and people to direct me to where I need to go.
It will be really interesting switching from speaking German three hours a week in class to speaking it full time . I had a French teacher in Junior High who peaced out and moved back to France after about a month of living in the US. Some of that may be attributable to living in Utah (no joke), some from teaching Junior High French classes, but I think it was a matter of culture shock. I consider myself a pretty flexible, adaptable guy; hopefully German culture isn't too far outside my range of tolerance. I understand the people are a little cold and emotionally distant, which I'm sure doesn't apply to everybody in the country, but still... As unfair as I consider the scary/brutal cultural stereotypes that the country's Nazi history has imbued it with (people being frightened by the "axe-murderish tone" of the language, etc.), there may be some truth to this German coldness I've heard of; a few people have told me about it.
But hey! Adveture, eh? I'll be sure to report on whether or not there's any truth to all that.
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Dear Andry,
ReplyDeleteYou spelled adventure wrong, and I wanted that to be duly noted. In other news, German does sound very scary when it's being shouted at you, speaking from experience.
But I AM SO EXCITED TO HEAR THE REST OF THIS TALE. So yes! Voyage onward! (Son?)
Love, Bridget
Two of the top reasons why I'll be reading this on the regular are the use of a) the word "scads," and b) a semicolon! You're the complete package, Fry.
ReplyDeleteSo who said German sounds "axe-murderish"? I always thought you could be reciting the most beautiful poetry in German and it would still sound like you were going to invade something, but calling it homocidal seems a bit excessive. I've also heard similar complaints about English: Apparently we always sound angry to some people.
1) I don't like you very much anymore Bridget.
ReplyDelete2) English majors don't mess around with punctuation.