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it’s gonna go my way, Germany – 60, me – 52
I walked out of the O2 store at Marienplatz empty handed and grinning from ear to ear.
The last time I held my head that high, as if I were giving back the finger to any sort of European snide eye, was the day after Obama was elected president. But that instance wasn’t something I really owned or solely accomplished. Since moving to Germany, moments, go me moments, have come few and far between and therefore they must be savored.. with a fine beer, for example, while repeating the word sucker and prolonging the ’sss’.
‘Cause you know, it is a rare occurrence to give my host culture a taste of its own medicine. So often has been the case as an Immi-pat, I’ve casted myself the roll as the quiet observer, the on-looker, or mimicked along. I’ve been the brunt of jokes or simply naive and so utterly clueless you’d think I was one of those crazy Americans who believe in the Jesus Cheeto.
No, not a Cheesus believer.
Honestly I don’t have it that bad compared to other expats. I have an iGerman: my Obi-Wan Kenobi, the bearer of bacon. Problem is, he doesn’t fit into my pocket. I’m left to resolve those close encounters of the DE-kind gone awry alone. So I’ve gained a reputation as the gatherer of problems and have gone about solving them through trial and error. I’ve grown to expect the prerequisite Auslander hauteur but it just feels nice, like being hugged, to know a little justice has been dealt.. at the very least, knowing my logic upheld the German bar.
What I’ve learned in that trial and error period: wishing for justice to be inherent only increases the likelihood that you’ll receive it by chance.. or not at all. What? Choke up to the fact I no longer have the upper hand in Germany? this sucks! How do I turn the tables? get better odds? get it my way!? I know the answer. I just never expected it to be such a constant struggle for those day-to-day trivialities.
That’s probably why I find myself easily distracted, constantly falling off the wagon of well-intentions and stray, like a lost lemming, to the nearest English-speaking kin meet up. If I let myself truly slip, there could be something enticing for every evening of the week. Really I want nothing more than to master more control of my surroundings despite the language barrier even if it is as comfortable as rubbing Meerrettich into my eyes. Is it wrong of me to desire a short-cut or two?
What takes countless hours of getting to know the quirks and habits of one’s host culture can be a cinch to one person or cinch the very soul of another. (I waiver between the two.) Some are naturals -they dive into the slang, the dress code, the food, the German ideology. I’m drawn to this band but have to mask my feelings of unworthiness and seeming too unnaturally timid. Some are adamant -they have a ‘why bother attitude’ tattooed on their foreheads and usually get pissy when the natives don’t speak in an English that agrees with them. I’m finding myself more and more annoyed with group, even those fresh in the old world and flashing of unabashed ignorance. I’m not sure what I did with my tolerance. And then there is another group. Although their efforts are slightly noticeable they are often too insecure or modest. I know I fall into this group on a bad day especially when I feel resistant to advice or think everyone is a know-it-all.
I keep telling myself: integration can be one iota closer from hopeless foreigners, like myself, with practice. There are a number of ways to get from residing in Germany to living in Germany but the important thing is: really do try. I’m baffled (and a little jealous) that there are expats in Germany with very little contact with English-speakers, so some are forced to try. In Munich it is next to impossible to escape the comforts of English-speaking communities and mingle among the locals. This can make the task a feat conducted in vain or a repetitive blow to your ego.
I know, I know. I’m in danger of becoming a perpetual whiner. It’s not Munich. It’s not the German ideals. It’s me. I could probably use a pity party diet and carb-up on some Tubthumping lyrics.. eh, or stick to the ropes and avoid a puke-fest.
And then it happens: a kick-ass accomplishment.
It may be a mundane one and required a total bluff on my part. Without the iGerman, without raising my voice I made the o2-store take back their junk UMTS router. I won.
And to think I almost chickened out because I knew there would be tetchiness from those smarty clerks at the o2 Help desk. Just your classic friendly Munich customer-to-clerk conversation, and in this case I got what I wanted:
- Me – Hi, I no longer have a contract with o2 and so I’d like to return this o2 router.
- O2 – Well, you can keep it.
- Me – It’s over 3-years old and I have no use for it.
- O2 – Well then throw it away.
- Me -I could do that, but I’m sure there is an environmental law that requires all electronic companies, like Apple, Dell, and O2, to take back their equipment.
- O2 – Um, yes. We can take the router and properly dispose of it.. is what I meant to say.
- Me -Okay. Prima!
uh huh. okay. So what if I twisted the truth. Tor für mich.
privilege wasting, my laxing German phonetics
Alex says I’m loosing my grip on umlauts. Hearing him say that makes me just short of Übel considering the work I’ve put into this language. Throughout certain points in this expat game I have wanted to say, forget it. So what if my brain slips and I utter words stained with an American accent. So what if I mutter through an umlaut or two. So what if I trip up on articles or meanings of a word. So what. I’m here. I’m trying, sort of. Efforts fall short, so what.
The pouting fades after I hear about stories like this and I am reminded that I shouldn’t take for granted the fact that I am even allowed to live in Germany and now speak German.
In recent years, Germany has become more progressive, compared to the majority of states in the USA. One example is in extending partner rights and protections to not only it’s citizens but to citizens of other certain nations who live in Germany. Since 2001, sexual orientation has no longer posed as an obstacle for people wanting to rubber stamp their shared lives with a government seal of approval. Just 4 years ago, couples with a registered partnership joined the ranks of married couples with the right to joint adoption and pension rights for widow(er)s. Language skills aren’t required for these folks -in the meantime.
What the US hasn’t done thus far is now a major hurdle for some German citizens. Those Germans who happen to have a loved one with citizenship outside of an EU country, the USA, Canada, South Korea or Japan are finding their families split in two places. Under new reform of the Zuwanderungsgesetz or Immigration Law, passed in March 2007, some German citizens are finding that they cannot bring their wives or husbands home with them until their spouses pass a basic language proficiency exam. No entry before she or he can say and define maybe a word like, Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.
The unfair part of it all is that families from my country or Canada, with no citizenship in Germany, don’t have this obstacle. US citizens with a German work permit or the ability to show financial independence may bring their US passport-carrying spouses to Germany without subjecting them to a German language test prior to the move. Even, I, as a single, was allowed entry and residence without basic German knowledge all because I have a US passport.
Maybe it’s not that hard in Chile to find a German speaker, but I bet not too many people speak German in say, Uzbekistan. Based on the fact that the number of immigrants into Germany has recently sunk, I suspect it could be influenced by the scarcity of effective German learning resources in non-German speaking countries. My own ‘how-to-German’ story wasn’t without its privileges and still it was difficult.
While I was living in Florida, the first thing I did was search for German language schools in my area after Alex and I agreed that we would start our lives together in Germany. Well there were no language schools. This was the first of many trials that laid ahead. Community colleges in my town didn’t offer German courses, only French and Spanish. The German American social club of Sarasota ignored my e-mail requesting whether they knew of any German Stammtische or if they had any suggestions for people like me. The nearest Goethe Institute was in Atlanta. One option was to register at USF to drive 90 minutes away to take a university class that was only offered during my work hours.
So I learned on my own, after work. Jogging with German. Driving with German. I’d even learn German while on my work break mostly to make fun of myself and to humor my work colleagues who had a hard time understanding why I was even going through the trouble. After all, Alex speaks English.
Word spread between friends and acquaintances and suddenly I became the receptacle for all of their old German language material: books published in the 1960s to newer forms of learning methods – Treffpunkt Deutsch, Berlitz essential German, Lehr- und Übungsbuch der deutschen Grammatik, German MADE SIMPLE – the stack kept getting higher and higher. Some friends would later taunt me, testing if I was now convinced that German was a forsaken, loogie-hawking language. No doubt their imagery was marred by propagandaizing war films. I laughed with them, the treat of the day was listening to me repeat the German word for five over and over. foonf, no. funf, no. fuhnf..
I did this for a year in Florida. When I arrived in Munich you may be little surprised to know everything about my German stunk. I understood just as much as the time I visited Germany 18 months before and spoke with probably a 20-word vocabulary. Two days later, I was sitting in a class with 15 other foreigners repeating, Es macht Spaß, Deutsch zu lernen.
So I tell you this story from the comfort of my Munich apartment now with a lot more than 20 words of German in my noggin. I know German only because I live in Germany. There could have been no other way for me. My folks do not speak German. I took two years of high school Spanish because at the time I thought my future was in Florida. My major didn’t require a foreign language to receive a degree. German may have been in my distant heritage but it was not in my upbringing and certainly not in my sphere of influence in Sarasota.
Even with a few odds against me, I am happy to be a student in a German university and Alex and I are able to live together, having gone on record that we are responsible for each other during my stay. I hold a residence permit sticker in my passport all because I am American.
It’s hard not to feel disgusted with myself that I made even a slight fuss about learning German knowing there is a child in the world without her German dad, all because his foreign wife understandably doesn’t comprehend German.
Much like the US, Germany has a ways to go before they can get over its integration problems. It may think that it is keeping its language intact by keeping poor, ignorant, would-be immigrants out, but there is still work to be done for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation immigrants living in Germany without decent language skills. Keeping families apart is not the answer, maybe a little tolerance and the use of innovative teaching methods could be.
But you know, I can’t vote here so the only thing I can do is perhaps brush up on my umlauts, it’s the least I can do as a privileged American living in Germany.
Here are some on-line resources I found helpful:
- Practicing long and short ö
- Practicing long and short ü
- Practicing long and short ä
- If you need a visual on how to form your lips while saying ä, ö, ü, check out this site: Phonetics
Choose the German flag, then Monophtonge. Then choose between vorn (front), zentral (middle), hinter (back) and one of the letters on the left.
I found the links about at this site here: Online German Lessons. There are plenty of other resources to brush up your German language featured on that site. My own German grammar pages are posted at www.lucidindeutschland.net/german_easy/
Angelegenheit
Completed my scarf. Now onto the hat.This is my 3rd January in Germany and finally I’ve learned an expression I’ve been dying to know: Das ist nicht meine Angelegenheit meaning, that’s none of my business.
Or better: Kümmere dich um deine eigenen Angelegenheiten! Can you guess? That’s right: Mind your own business!
Do native people use this expression? I’ve never heard it but then again I don’t ask enough questions, which is sort of a New Year’s resolution (or Vorsatz) for me.
It has been pointed out to me that I rely too heavily on assumptions that don’t work in the German culture. When I don’t understand something I need to speak up.
Only it isn’t that I know immediately that I don’t understand something, rather it is mostly the case that I understand it differently. It is recognizing that I am understanding something differently and subsequently wrongly is the point where I could save myself from getting into trouble or not. But regardless I’m destined to repeat my mistakes over and over again if I don’t start getting a clue soon. And this is where I start to miss Florida.
In Florida and I image in other states in the U.S., the people and perhaps the ‘lack-of-culture’ culture is often times more forgiving than it is here. Mind you I’d never want to experience the nightmare of being a foreigner trying to get a green card or just to pass customs for a few days vacation in the U.S. It is certainly comparatively easier in my shoes.
But once you are in the US, you aren’t told in so many words that your thinking is backwards or you lack proper communication skills. Am I wrong? Americans just take you for who you are. They are open to jesters and speaking slowly, imitating sounds and relying on facial expressions if need be.
Try using these primitive measures in Germany and you’ll get a blank ape stare from your confused, native speaker. Asking politely of a native German speaker to speak slowly is like slowing down the merry-go-round for 2 seconds. Then it gets boring or unnatural for the German and the merry-go-round accelerates again. The struggling foreigner has to weigh whether to ask to slow it down again or hang on and hope he’ll recognize something after all that spinning. (When in doubt and even if it feels rude, ASK!)
To a certain point, the way Germans speak is infectious. Now that my German is pretty good (once I get going) I don’t like to switch back to English. In fact I prefer to speak in German; I don’t have to worry about my hands or facial muscles. It’s all just brain and mouth. In an unfair way, one could say speaking in German is robotic, like Data. yeah.
Now it feels completely out of place to speak English in public places and when I do, I can feel that inside my cranium is war to arrive with the most appropriate words. It’s when my thoughts land in a mushy spot on my brain and the German words get mixed up with the English. Then nothing comes out and then I revert to the old assumptions and the old way of telling a story, which is to use body language, but opps! how?!
I know that it is just a bad, bad, bad thing to just give up on a train of mindless, American thought just to save the conversation. But sometimes that is the only thing that feels comfortable. Better to skip to a clean part of the record than to relive hearing the skinny lady tumble out nonsense repetitively.
In other news, I’ve written a post on Knokke and I’ve posted some pictures of Belgium. We’ve joined a gym and love it. Oh and this ol’ bag of bones turns 30 is in 2 days. How’s that for train of thought!
Visual Learner?
what’s this?I can’t say I’m 100% a visual learner but it certainly helps to see a picture of a foreign word when you are just learning a language. While surfing the net, I found a basic picture dictionary for English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. Since I’m in a perpetual state of learning German, here’s the link to the German portion of the site. You can test your knowledge with the following activities: Flashcards, Fill-in-the-blanks, Word Scramble, Spelling or Straight Recall. Although one drawback is that you can’t test your article knowledge.
Ha! I just learned that the German word for bagpipe is called der Dudelsack. I like it.
It isn’t very thorough and for those seasoned learners you’ll probably reach your boredom point rather quickly. Yet I think it’s a fun refresher, its no-frills make it simple to navigate and you’re bound to learn something new, if not in another foreign language.
