first week in würzburg

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Went something like this...

For the month of September, I take an Intensive German Language course. So on Tuesday, I went to a giant auditorium with a hundred-odd students of all sorts of national origins to take a test that would place us into a class of appropriate language skill level. I was aiming low. In fact, I wasn't sure there was a class so very very low that would suit my needs. My German language training to date: 25 hours of Pimsleur language tapes ("Wo sind die toillete?") and a week as a tourist in Bavaria ("Grüß Gott"). The test destroyed me. Oh, but the funny thing is, dear travelfellow, I knew not at the time how the test destroyed me. I would learn soon enough.

An overhead transparency, in the center was our teacher's name, Christine, and it was flanked by eight or so words, numbers, or names. If I had to guess, I would say that Christine is somewhere in her early-40s in good physical condition. She was the sort of person you would say looked younger than they were, not in a "Gross, please give your plastic surgeon a day off" but, you know, healthy, well-groomed, nice. Anyway, this comes into play later. The exercise was to guess the significance of the words to our teacher's life story. Some classmates correctly guessed that some words were the name of her hobbies, favorite author, and children. Two numbers remained "12" and "14," obviously the ages of her two children. Here was my chance to show I could do this, I was not incapable of learning and my dearth of language training would not hold me back from taking as much from this course as I could! HA!

Before I continue, I'd like to point out that, even in English, the words for fourTEEN and forTY sound pretty similar, you know, totally fertile ground for completely unintentional and benign mistakes involving numbers.

More to the point, I ended up asking my teacher if she had a forty year old son. This could easily be the title of an entire chapter in a book entitled, "Unfortunate first-impressions: How not to make friends with older women, at home or abroad." Needless to say, my comment evoked here quiet nervous laughter, here barely suppressed gasps, and in at least one student a short, explosive cackle that made me want to cry. The reactions only served to grate at the wound my blooper had opened up. Uggggh.

About this time I got this sinking suspicion that something was horribly wrong with the placement test. Talking with classmates confirmed this. Most of them had had years of German under their belts, and all had had at least some formal classroom training. I hadn't even been placed into the lowest skill level class. All of this greatly troubled me, but the intellectual investment...ok ok, the 50euros worth of books...kept me from abandoning the class.

I decided to persevere, knowing full well that I would be obliging myself to many many more stupid stupid comments. Take this gem...

A new exercise. This time we were supposed to tell a little about ourselves by filling out a worksheet with some of our favorite things, like favorite color, band, flower. I filled them all with gusto. Then I reached a rather interesting prompts: "Was ist deine Lieblingsname?" or "What is your favorite name?" Now, I should say this is something I've actually spent a good deal of time pondering, for no readily-available reason. One fine day in Tucson, this came to a head and I decided on what is forever to be, not only my favorite name, but simply the finest name ever rendered. Charlemagne Sciencelogik. On that fateful day, I committed the name to memory, never to forget it, fully intending to apply it to each and every of my offspring. Charlemagne Sciencelogik Gibboni 1 through 25.

Still, I was hesitant to put it to paper, since I wasn't sure what course the exercise would take, and the strangeness of the name wasn't lost on me; I wasn't in a hurry to share it with a room of strangers. But when it came time to draw, the pure animal magnetism of those characters forced my hand. To put down another name would have weighed heavily on my soul. Of course, we had to share. And of course, in spite of all my psychokinetic maneuverings and attempts to sink into the German topsoil, take root, and grow for 200 years into a massive trembling oak, I was selected, and what's more, I was selected to read my Lieblingsname of all other Lieblingsthings. Oh cruel cruel fate. A combination of dread and sick desire to really say the name outloud paralyzed any chance of me thinking up a substitute name. So out it came. Blank stares. Discomfort. Chortles, then a single, "Bitte?" I was forced to repeat no fewer than two times, this wonderful, horrible name to my teacher and classmates. Eventually, they came to understand what it was I was saying, but I don't think they would ever understand quite why. But maybe that is my burden to bear.

Quickly, a third notable event involved practicing the Konditional II form, a verb form used, among other things, to express desires, like "I would like to have a deep-space adventure" as opposed to "I want to have a deep-space adventure." The exercise was simple and thusly: write a sentence using the Konditional II. Yeah, easy, cake, something I can do. Christine went around asking students to read their sentences. When it came to be my turn, I read, what I thought was a completely fine sentence, "Wäre ich doch nur eine Hause unter dem Meer" or roughly "Oh, if I only had a house under the sea." Christine was confused. "Uh oh," I wondered, "have I made some gross grammatical error?" By now, I had learned to take such things fully in stride. Finally, she lit up. "Ah nein, nein," I was gently told, like a mother pulling her ambling toddler from the cabinets under the kitchen sink where you keep your Ajax and OxyClean and Holy Cow! All-Purpose Degreaser. Clearly, I had wanted to say "Wäre ich doch nur eine Hause in der Nähe des Meeres" or "Oh, if I only had a house near the sea." "Nein, nein," I replied gently. This went on for sometime, again much to the amusement of the class. I won my house under the sea, eventually after much convincing.

In closing, I never expected to be learning this much German. Testing into an outrageously unsuited language-skill level may be the best thing that could have happened. I learn a ton every day; Christine's most quotidian statement of review is to me a head-exploding revelation of brand-new information. It sure is fast-paced, and I feel lost and idiotic for a full 5 hour each day, but in hanging on for dear life, I'm constantly forced to improve. And in spite of myself, I think Christine might in fact have a soft spot for my poor poor soul. Sometimes pity is the best kind of friendship.

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Comments

[Katie]

let me get this straight...
so you're going to bang a german lady with a 40 year old son, get married in a house under the sea, and have kids all named charlemagne sciencelogik?

[Kati]

humoresque
I would give a lot to hear you pronounce your Liebelingsname in German. Don't worry - Tschubbylina would have not been much better. Keep your teacher entertained - you are contributing to the gloabl welfare of humankind, defeating day-by-day the dreadful lack of sense of humor in the average German. Kati

[Maddie]

I was just recently made aware of your travel blog and catching up on your posts has been the most delightful distraction from my first round of midterms. This one is my favorite. I hope your house under the sea is better than Sponge Bob's.