just another manic monday

Today was one of those icky Mondays when you want to hit the snooze button until noon. But I grudgingly rolled out of bed and got dressed for the drizzly, grey weather in Saarbrücken. Last week I finally got a hold of my land lady on the telephone and I made an appointment with her for 9:00 this morning.  So I grabbed my yellow umbrella and set out on foot to the other side of town. I climbed the vertical maze of steps until I reached the office of Frau Bonke (pronounced like Ban Ki-moon). She invited me to take a seat and as she opened the giant filing cabinet behind her desk and started pulling papers left and right out of the identical rows of red 4 inch binders. She had an ice-cold personality and was not very patient with me when I asked her to speak a little slower because I am not fluent in German. I searched for the right words to explain my situation but my German classes somehow failed to teach me real estate terms. I ended up signing an 8 page contract that I wasn't able to read, and leaving without still paying a single euro. I was even more confused walking out of the building, than when I entered. It was a terrifying experience.

I am afraid that my German has not progressed as much as it should have in a month's time. I almost always speak English in the office, because there are so many nationalities represented and it is the only common language we share. Even when I'm out in town, ordering food or asking for directions, people will sometimes realize I'm a foreigner and automatically switch to English with me. And it's always English-- never Spanish, French, or Italian. I have made a good effort to blend in with the locals and I don't understand what it is about me that screams "Hello, I'm an American! Please speak English with me." On Friday we had several people stop by the flat to see Cécile's room, since she is moving out soon. Every time I introduced myself to them (auf Deutsch, natürlich) and told them where I was from, they each said "Oh good! Then we can practice English." Don't get me wrong--I'm always happy to help others and I enjoy teaching people new English words, but this time around I just want to be the student. That's why I'm here, right?

Some days (well mostly on rainy, cold ones like today), I wonder what the heck I am doing here. Why am I learning German?--A language that hardly anyone speaks in the Western Hemisphere. A language that is impossible to master grammatically. I think the only reason I have stuck with it as long as I have is due to my own stubborn determination to finish what I begin. I have a difficult time visualizing how this skill is going to help me later on in life, but I am going to make the most of my summer here and try to soak up as much knowledge as I possibly can.

I will leave you with some quotes from one of my favorite authors, Mark Twain. His honest and blunt opinions on the German language can be appreciated by anyone who has attempted to tackle it as a second language:

"My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it." (A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D)

"Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples: Freundschaftsbezeigungen. Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. Stadtverordnetenversammlungen
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. Alterthumswissenschaften. Kinderbewahrungsanstalten. Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen. Wiedererstellungbestrebungen. Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across
the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape but at
the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up
his way; ... "   (A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D)

"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth." (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

"The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German." (Disappearance of Literature)