Friend or Foe?
Today is a bank holiday (although in German it's more excitingly named: Feiertag, ie. celebrate day!) so there are a number of things I am going to do - write this post, make a start on my Learning log thing, plan a few lessons - and there are a number of things I am not going to do - put on a bra, go outside for any reason. I've decided that I need a relaxing day after the incredibly hectic Monday and Tuesday of this week, which both involved getting up upsettingly early (5.40 and 6.40 respectively) and being constantly with people. I may have mentioned this on here before, but Germans are very tiring to be around.
Anyway, enough rambling, and to the point of this post: friends and enemies!
Friends
In the last few weeks, there has been a lot more general contact between other language assistants in Saxony. First there was the Gluehwein fest that I mentioned last time, which was swiftly followed the next weekend by meeting with David and Verity in Leipzig. I'd gone to Leipzig the day before to continue celebrating mine and Jack's third anniversary (that is the only time I will mention it here, at the risk of being too sickening for words and scaring everyone away), so we met David and Verity in Leipzig station on Friday. After a fight with the lockers in the station so they could leave their bags there, we went to a museum on Friday afternoon which had an exhibition about World War One. It was fascinating to see it from the strikingly honest German point of view for once. The exhibition focused on the soldiers from Leipzig who went away to fight, and there was one part that stood out for me especially: on one of the informative noticeboards there was a paragraph about the 'shameful' action of the troop from Leipzig which had attacked and killed dozens of civilians in a village in Belgium. It was so brutally honest, and entirely different from the romanticised view we seem to have in Britain of 'our brave soldiers' who 'protected our country'. Uncritical patriotism in general makes me extremely uncomfortable - I've never understood the concept that you should be mindlessly proud of your own country. Just because it's where you live or were born doesn't necessarily mean it's worthy of pride, does it? I must have been thinking about this so much recently because of all the debate this year about poppies, and the poppy installation by the Tower of London. But anyway, back to Germany - it was a really interesting museum, and it's lovely to get a perspective on history that's different from the biased one we're taught in school.
After the museum we went to a bar for a drink, where we all had Gluehwein apart from Jack who tried the Leipzig speciality beer called Gose, which instead of being bitter is sour. We agreed it gets nicer the more of it you drink. We spent the rest of the evening pre-drinking in Jack's flat while playing Jenga, Consequences, and the other one that's basically Consequences crossed with Pictionary. Does it have a name? Probably. The games got funnier and funnier due to the recurring themes of S Club, fungi/fun guys, and the idea of doing side flips. We eventually did make it out, first to Moritzbastei, which is an incredibly cool underground club that kind of looks like a dungeon or crypt with several different floors. Unfortunately, the music was far too heavy for most of us - not nearly cheerful enough! - so we moved on to Cafe Waldi, which is a cross between a bar and a club that plays 'indie' music - much more fun, and I actually knew lots of the songs which made it ten times better. Verity and I also played table football against a couple of Germans and nearly won - the final score was 2 games to 1. Unfortunately I can take no credit for our performance; Verity is seemingly a table football demon.
Despite getting back in the not even that early hours of the morning, which I am not used to, it was a really lovely weekend, and there are hopefully more to come; a trip to the Dresden Christmas markets is being planned, as is an outing to Colditz at some point.
German-speaking friends are slightly thin on the ground at the moment, but I wanted to note down a few occasions recently. Firstly, I met a really friendly girl at choir who is also new and therefore the choir loner, like me, and hopefully I'll be able to see a bit more of her at some point. (I like her especially because she was very complimentary about my German accent.)
Also in school I seem to be getting better at making if not friends, then closer acquaintances. The kids are more likely to come and ask me questions now, and lots of them are super excited to see me in their classroom. It's a delightful feeling having twenty five children scream 'HELLO' as you enter a room. There are also a couple of teachers that seem to have now taken me under their wing. On Monday, for example, I marked a piece of work for Ulrike and received and hug and a kiss in return. She then made me a coffee, and Anke gave me a little cake, which made me feel loved, as did her email the previous week thanking me for all my help in 'this teacherless time', saying that I am indeed allowed to call her Anke and not Frau Spaeth, and signing off with the hope that I have a good weekend, 'love, Anke'. So that's all lovely. But now to Part 2:
Enemies
That may be too harsh a term for my current flatmates, but please don't ruin my fun. It's been quite a while since I've had people I can truly call my enemies. Anyway, I will always have a problem with people who write a passive-aggressive note rather than simply talk about whatever it is, hence: enemies. Please refer to Exhibit A.
Moreover, my flatmates are very odd, in that they apparently hate the smell of food. Whenever I cook, which is every day, they will either rush in and open the kitchen window, or, more likely, tell the supervisor person that 'Eleanor has cooked something', and they will then come up, engage me in nonchalant conversation about 'oh we wondered what you were cooking!' before throwing open every window in sight. I have two problems with this. Firstly the obvious question, 'why are you upset by the smell of food, it's just in the kitchen and none of you is EVER in here anyway'. My second issue is that it is now what we call 'winter' and therefore 'not very warm outside'. However, because I am fundamentally an acceptable person, I do always open the window as requested when I cook. Which is one reason the note that appeared a week or so ago, shown in Exhibit B, was so annoying - I always do!! Another reason is the fact that it was written in English - how condescending! - although I did take pleasure in the mistake 'it smells very hard' and did consider correcting it obviously in a bright colour. In general though, I'm finding these notes more funny than anything else. As I'm moving out of this godforsaken flat in less than two weeks, what the people here think of me is frankly Jacke wie Hose. I have also been taking pleasure in exacting the astonishingly petty revenge of subtly vandalising the notes with water (the bathroom one) and food/knife slashes (the kitchen one). If anyone asks, it was an accident. I don't know why they are so crumpled and the ink has run so much. I do not know.
Slightly more concerning in terms of enemies was Monday evening, when I went to the aforementioned choir. I discovered it on the Chemnitz University Facebook page, and I am so happy I did, because Christmas is the best time of year for music, and I'd hate to miss out. We're doing various pieces called 'O Magnum Mysterium', which is the theme of the concerts, and a number of carols, both German and English. Therein lay the problem. On Monday we rehearsed 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', incidentally one of my favourite carols, which contains the verse,
Anyway, enough rambling, and to the point of this post: friends and enemies!
Friends
In the last few weeks, there has been a lot more general contact between other language assistants in Saxony. First there was the Gluehwein fest that I mentioned last time, which was swiftly followed the next weekend by meeting with David and Verity in Leipzig. I'd gone to Leipzig the day before to continue celebrating mine and Jack's third anniversary (that is the only time I will mention it here, at the risk of being too sickening for words and scaring everyone away), so we met David and Verity in Leipzig station on Friday. After a fight with the lockers in the station so they could leave their bags there, we went to a museum on Friday afternoon which had an exhibition about World War One. It was fascinating to see it from the strikingly honest German point of view for once. The exhibition focused on the soldiers from Leipzig who went away to fight, and there was one part that stood out for me especially: on one of the informative noticeboards there was a paragraph about the 'shameful' action of the troop from Leipzig which had attacked and killed dozens of civilians in a village in Belgium. It was so brutally honest, and entirely different from the romanticised view we seem to have in Britain of 'our brave soldiers' who 'protected our country'. Uncritical patriotism in general makes me extremely uncomfortable - I've never understood the concept that you should be mindlessly proud of your own country. Just because it's where you live or were born doesn't necessarily mean it's worthy of pride, does it? I must have been thinking about this so much recently because of all the debate this year about poppies, and the poppy installation by the Tower of London. But anyway, back to Germany - it was a really interesting museum, and it's lovely to get a perspective on history that's different from the biased one we're taught in school.
After the museum we went to a bar for a drink, where we all had Gluehwein apart from Jack who tried the Leipzig speciality beer called Gose, which instead of being bitter is sour. We agreed it gets nicer the more of it you drink. We spent the rest of the evening pre-drinking in Jack's flat while playing Jenga, Consequences, and the other one that's basically Consequences crossed with Pictionary. Does it have a name? Probably. The games got funnier and funnier due to the recurring themes of S Club, fungi/fun guys, and the idea of doing side flips. We eventually did make it out, first to Moritzbastei, which is an incredibly cool underground club that kind of looks like a dungeon or crypt with several different floors. Unfortunately, the music was far too heavy for most of us - not nearly cheerful enough! - so we moved on to Cafe Waldi, which is a cross between a bar and a club that plays 'indie' music - much more fun, and I actually knew lots of the songs which made it ten times better. Verity and I also played table football against a couple of Germans and nearly won - the final score was 2 games to 1. Unfortunately I can take no credit for our performance; Verity is seemingly a table football demon.
Despite getting back in the not even that early hours of the morning, which I am not used to, it was a really lovely weekend, and there are hopefully more to come; a trip to the Dresden Christmas markets is being planned, as is an outing to Colditz at some point.
German-speaking friends are slightly thin on the ground at the moment, but I wanted to note down a few occasions recently. Firstly, I met a really friendly girl at choir who is also new and therefore the choir loner, like me, and hopefully I'll be able to see a bit more of her at some point. (I like her especially because she was very complimentary about my German accent.)
Also in school I seem to be getting better at making if not friends, then closer acquaintances. The kids are more likely to come and ask me questions now, and lots of them are super excited to see me in their classroom. It's a delightful feeling having twenty five children scream 'HELLO' as you enter a room. There are also a couple of teachers that seem to have now taken me under their wing. On Monday, for example, I marked a piece of work for Ulrike and received and hug and a kiss in return. She then made me a coffee, and Anke gave me a little cake, which made me feel loved, as did her email the previous week thanking me for all my help in 'this teacherless time', saying that I am indeed allowed to call her Anke and not Frau Spaeth, and signing off with the hope that I have a good weekend, 'love, Anke'. So that's all lovely. But now to Part 2:
Enemies
That may be too harsh a term for my current flatmates, but please don't ruin my fun. It's been quite a while since I've had people I can truly call my enemies. Anyway, I will always have a problem with people who write a passive-aggressive note rather than simply talk about whatever it is, hence: enemies. Please refer to Exhibit A.
 |
| Exhibit A |
As you can probably not see, Exhibit A is the note that was stuck to the bathroom door after I foolishly attempted to unblock the shower that had been blocked for days with no one even acknowledging the problem, much less doing anything about it. The note basically says 'don't try to unblock the shower yourself because it might be different from the ones you're used to at home, and don't do any hair removal or brush your hair in the shower because it'll block it'. This angered me greatly for several reasons, but namely a) don't patronise me, and b) oh my GOD, pouring hair down the drain will block it?! NO WAY if only I'd known that very obvious piece of information, DAMN. Also c) how dare you assume I do any hair removal.
 |
| Exhibit B |
Slightly more concerning in terms of enemies was Monday evening, when I went to the aforementioned choir. I discovered it on the Chemnitz University Facebook page, and I am so happy I did, because Christmas is the best time of year for music, and I'd hate to miss out. We're doing various pieces called 'O Magnum Mysterium', which is the theme of the concerts, and a number of carols, both German and English. Therein lay the problem. On Monday we rehearsed 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', incidentally one of my favourite carols, which contains the verse,
The shepherds at those tidings / Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding / In tempest storm and wind...
Do you see the problem? Yep, 'mind' and 'wind' don't rhyme. This is typical of carols and hymns - there are often words that don't rhyme but look as though they should, and it's a feature I've always loved because it sounds so ridiculous. So when we sang it on Monday, the Germans rhymed the two words, and I unintentionally winced. The conductor noticed, laughed, and asked me the correct pronunciation, so I told him, and they tried it like that...and THEN, someone put her hand up and said that it sounded horrible like that, and couldn't they rhyme it anyway? She seemed genuinely angry at the fact that the words didn't rhyme, and she appealed directly to me, as if it was my fault. In school, I often want to apologise for my native language and its many arbitrary spelling and grammar rules, but that is slightly different. I was inwardly amazed by her argument, which was 'let's ignore the meaning of the words because I don't like how the English language sounds, so I get to choose how it's pronounced'. So that was annoying. But outwardly I pretended not to mind because choir is important to me and on the whole I enjoy not being ostracised and rejected from social groups. So I think that was a good save by me - dodging making enemies can be harder than you might think.
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