Keeping Up With The Chemnitzians
Good evening and welcome to this week's installment of Eleanor Continues To Do Things In Germany! This week on the blog we will be covering topics such as Fraught Encounters With Restaurants, Nervous German, and Both Hating And Loving Working At A School.
Firstly though, as I'm sure you're all wondering, the answer is yes - I have continued to be somewhat productive this week, meaning my New Year's resolution has lasted three weeks into January so far! Perhaps not that impressive, actually, now I see it written down. But it's felt like quite a big step, and certainly a significant change from the end of last term, when all I seemed to do was eat, drink, be merry, and ignore responsibilities.
In the last week I seem to have spent an inordinately large amount of time thinking about, co-ordinating, and meeting tandem partners. In reality it may not be as much as I think, but allow me to explain. Last Thursday I met Marlene for a coffee in Cafe Brühlaffe, an amazingly cosy, hipster cafe of the type which before last week, I had accused Chemnitz of seriously lacking. However it appears that I was mistaken; the whole Brühl Boulevard area is the kind of place that is full of crocheted or knitted lamppost- and benchwarmers. I assume they're warmers, anyway. The lampposts and benches that are lucky enough to be wrapped in wool always look so much cosier than their unlucky, naked kin. It's a really nice area, very full of character, so I will definitely be returning there soon.
It turns out that Marlene is nineteen years old, from near Frankfurt so speaks beautifully non-Saxon German, and incredibly friendly and easy to talk to. It was one of the most relaxed German conversations I've had, once I'd got over the shock of finding out how many siblings she has - three sisters and three brothers! She not only said I was welcome to stay the night at her necessarily large house if I am ever in Frankfurt, but also very kindly invited me to a flat party that her sister's French tandem partner was having that weekend. I of course accepted - more German-speaking! How could I say no.
This meant that Saturday was relatively action-packed, or rather, action-packed by my slothlike standards. In the morning we went to Schloss Augustusburg with my German class, which was nice despite the foggy weather meaning we missed out on all the views. Although the castle itself was fine, the experience was marred by their collection of stuffed animals (literal stuffed animals, not toys) that was frankly distressing. For example, there were tiny wild boar piglets and fawns, which would have been cute apart from they were very dead. I cannot comprehend the appeal of keeping animal corpses in a glass box. On a brighter note, the Carriage Museum also housed in the castle was lovely - plenty of opportunity to imagine being a princess or some form of nobility, or at least being rich enough three hundred years ago to own a carriage. The highlight of the trip for me, however, was the funicular. Aptly named. Saturday's trip made it twice in the space of a month that I've had the joy of riding a funicular, the other time being in Hastings at the end of December. Just fab.
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Saturday evening was the flat party. The party itself, it was generally agreed, was not that great, but we had a really good night nonetheless because Marlene and her friends were so welcoming (and also because we spent most of the time at Marlene's flat pre-drinking). Although they hadn't seen each other for three weeks, they still managed not to do the whole talk-only-to-each-other-about-private-jokes thing that so many groups of friends do after time apart, or indeed all the time, leading to the newcomer being totally excluded. The fact that we weren't on Saturday was surprising and lovely, and I'm hoping to see them all again!
Speaking of friendship groups, last Wednesday Melanie invited me to have dinner with her and three friends in an American diner in Chemnitz. It was strange being in an 'American' place in Germany, and as usual I had the problem of all native English speakers when we encounter English words in another language. Do you pronounce it in your own, English accent? Or do you hazard a guess at the German pronunciation of the English word? My favourite example of this is Woolworth, which is German is 'vool-verse'. The meal was marginally less good a German experience than Saturday, mainly because I was still ill and therefore in some sort of daze with the choice between either being an active participant in the conversation, or eating the food without being ludicrously clumsy, messy and generally cack-handed. Of course I chose the food, which I suspect lead to the impression that I didn't understand the conversation. While I can happily confirm that this was not the case, I must sadly confirm that I had very little to add to it.
Back to the topic of tandem partners - on Monday I met Katrin for the first time and we went for a coffee in the Ratskeller next to the old town hall. I'd not been there before either, but it's really atmospheric - almost like a Wiener Kaffeehaus or the Bierkeller we went to in Munich, with painted vaulted ceilings and grand windows. Katrin is lovely - she is refreshingly honest about correcting my German mistakes, while at the same time being in no way discouraging. I think we're going to end up doing more things together, as she seems keen to show me more of Chemnitz and the surrounding area, which of course I would love. Also we have the same birthday! (6th March, in case any of you need to start planning elaborate gifts worthy of a 21st.)
Nervous German was one of the topics I promised to cover, so it's probably a good idea to explain what I meant by that. Although this is the fifth month I've been living in Germany, my German is nowhere near the high standard I expect from myself. I was rudely awakened to this in the last week especially, although I was definitely aware before, first by an email from Katrin in which she corrected my German and I realised how many errors I make, and secondly by an email from Wiebke, in which she returned the short essay I did for the Learning Log and I realised how many errors I make. Just...so many. In short, this has had the effect of making me unwilling to speak German in front of anyone, because they will hear all the mistakes, and while it's unlikely they'll be as unforgiving as I am, they will still instantly realise that my German is far from perfect, and that is upsetting. No doubt this Nervous German stage will pass, as it's not the first time it's happened, but as there's more pressure now to be Not Terrible it is a struggle.
In terms of Fraught Encounters With Restaurants, I have been giving my CV to various places in the last few days. I had another interview with a small restaurant near where I used to live, which again went well with the unfortunate side-effect that they didn't give me a job. This time it was because they don't actually need a regular server in the restaurant, as it's very small, despite their website clearly advertising that they do. This would have been annoying, but my frustration was lessened (or perhaps increased) with the discovery that the woman in charge doesn't even own a computer, let alone have any idea how to edit a website. Foolishly, when she asked if I had any knowledge of computers I didn't lie and say no, leading to her threatening to ring me to arrange a time for us to meet in the library so I can help her with the website. Oh GOD. Computers are fine in English, but I fear that in German it may all be beyond me. I had another Encounter with a very nice French restaurant a minute's walk from my flat, where I handed in my CV and the woman said "Ich kriege dich", which I assumed meant "We'll let you know", so I left. Directly outside the restaurant I looked up what this meant: "I'll come and get you." So I had just walked out when I was meant to wait. After stressing about this for an evening, I went back the next day and garbled an apology to a different woman, who, once she'd understood what I was rambling about, told me that I'd done the right thing and they'd call me. Safe in the knowledge that they will now never call me, I ran away and bought a bath bomb from Lush - it's important to take care of yourself, forgive your own mistakes, and treat yo' self to any kind of comfort product, be it chocolate, bath bombs, or strong liquor (maybe).
All in all, I have slightly had enough of restaurants for now - several of them have my number, and if they need someone with a poor grasp of German and weak social skills to help out, then they know where I am.
Finally, the third topic: Both Hating And Loving Working At A School. Last Friday was a languages day at my school, where we celebrated twenty years of the school's intensive languages courses. While this was in theory lovely, the reality meant turning up an hour earlier than necessary to listen to a video of a disgustingly talented woman talk about the EIGHT different languages she knows, and then doing the same quiz about weird British traditions FOUR TIMES IN A ROW with the year 8s and 9s. I wasn't too keen on the quiz at the beginning of the afternoon, but by the end I had firmly decided to ceremonially burn it at the first opportunity.
I think I hit a low point at the beginning of this school term, when I realised just how much longer I had working in the school, and how totally pointless so many of my lessons are. While there are great teachers who get me to do really helpful things, and there are classes that I truly love (shoutout to class 6/2 - you're the best), I do spend a lot of time talking to mostly uninterested students or sitting at the back of classrooms. This feeling seems to be improving a bit already, despite a few unsuccessful lessons in the last few days, and no doubt it will be gone again in another few. However it is definitely worth telling as many people as possible that no, I absolutely don't want to be a teacher.
Anyway, I leave you with this picture I took outside school this morning: the first icicle I've seen all year! It's supposed to snow pretty much every day for the next week, so I'm super excited about that.
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