This week I spent a lot of time sitting in cafes or bars, relaxing the European way. I already find it easy to stay for several hours, without worrying about being rushed out by employees who are handling too much at once. (Although, wow, I wish I'd been there for the coffee with the ex-Nazi...that happened to a friend). Today I sat for awhile writing postcards, much calmer than I would have been in most places at home, enjoying my heisse Shokolade und Bretzel.
Last night I went out for drinks with a class I am not actually in, but was invited to go with. Perhaps I was feeling a bit arrogant, being in a higher level than that class and speaking German with their teacher pretty well, but I think this is allowed, as I feel ein bisschen slow in my own class.
I also watched the movie here last night, Der Tunnel. It ended up being incredibly moving, and I was happy to find that I understood most of what happened (clearly, this is because we watched it with German subtitles, but I think I still could have gotten a large portion of it without). I also spend a long time thinking the lead man was possibly a German Bruce Willis.
One of my more interesting interactions lately was with Enrique, the old man from Spain in my class. Until today, neither of us ever understood a word the other said, partially due to my horrible grammatical constructions, but also because of both of our accents. However, today, we managed to have a conversation. We were talking about an article the class read, regarding studies on whether music can actually make people more intelligent. Enrique and I came to the eventual conclusion that yes, studying music definitely makes people smarter, but listening to it creates confusion (especially if one is trying to complete one's German homework). During all of this, I got a good deal of his life story. I told him about how I used to play violin, and he proceeded to explain that he always wanted to do so, but has bad bones and was told it would be physically bad for him to hold a violin for too long. He envied the violin players that used to be in the streets of Spain, but now feels he is too old to do anything about his wish to play, whether arthritis is an obstacle or not. He was so animated during all of this, and as a Creative Writing major, I was secretly fascinated...
I bought Die Zeit today, and felt a little strange about the headline being American news (well, that and the fact that it says "Schwarz oder Frau?" and has a picture of Obama and Clinton...which is just a somewhat uncomfortable translation). It was good to be updated though, and I understood enough of what I've read so far to actually get something out of it.
I think today I made my breakthrough against simply going "nein" or "ja" when I don't understand a question or statement, which inevitably only makes me look more clueless. But I managed to have several interactions (Baeckerei, buying the newspaper, die Post, and out for Doners for dinner) that did not involve me looking incredibly confused, but finally succeeding in politely getting people to repeat things. And I had been nervous about the post office, but it went well.
Saturday I'm off to Stuttgart, which a couple of us are trying to return to next week to see Wicked, hopefully auf Deutsch. And we're starting, slowly, to plan for the 10 day break between January and February. Some of us are hoping to get to the UK, which might be difficult, but I've got friends there. STA is apparently not functioning at the moment, but Lufthansa has some flights available that aren't too crazy. We shall see.
Need to finish the Hausaufgaben so I can successfully rise before the sun again, and head down the dark, curving hills to a fruehstuck of meats and better bread than I ever get at home.
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