19/366 The Night Circus (Photo credit: clogsilk)

So you know how I was all freaking out about my German test that was scheduled for next week, well, I’ve been given a reprieve – kinda. My German teacher, for some reason, is away until next Thursday, so we have been given one extra week’s preparation time.  This does mean I will be studying on my birthday (boo hiss!) but having an extra week in which to prepare has dropped my stress levels dramatically.

That said I’m starting to feel good about what I have been able to accomplish so far in terms of preparation, but an extra week will really solidify it. I still feel shaky on my writing skills though as we won’t be allowed a dictionary which I really rely on to get my word choices right.  I’m hoping we will get told the theme and the writing type (letter, short story etc) so we have some time to think about what we need to produce in the exam.

In preparation for the exam, tonight’s homework is to write a short blurb about our favourite book. I’ve just finished reading The Night Circus which I loved, but have had no time to write a book review about.  So here is one, although it is more of a blurb and less of a review, in German.

Der erste Roman von Autorin Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus ist eine neunzehnten Jahrhundert Geschichte uber das tödliche Spiel zwischen zwei großer Zauberer und ihr zwei Studenten. The Night Circus hat, als ein fantastisch und mysteriös final Schlachtfeld zwischen die zwei Studenten, gebaut. Aber dieses tödliche Spiel ist nicht langer zwischen die zwei Studenten, es beteiligt jetzt das Leben der viele Leute.

All bad word choices, wrong cases and hideous grammar are mine.

I think, despite all my mistakes, that I’m slowly starting to get better at writing in German.  This blurb was kinda fun to write.

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My German teacher set us a writing task to do this weekend. Using a personals ad as inspiration, we are to write the love story (die Liebesgeschichte) of the two main characters using some set phrases (eg Am Anfang, Am Schluss, Deshlab etc) and the pictures in our course book.

The ad is as follows:

Ich bin 65 Jahre alt und fühle mich seit dem Tod meiner Frau sehr einsam. Welche liebe Dame (Nichtrauchen) mötche sich einmal mit mir treffen? Ich bin ein guter Tänzer, wandere gern und habe ein schönes Haus in Grünen. Tel: 77 53 75

The love story I came up with is:

Seit dem Tod seiner Frau viele Jahre vor, hat Wilhelm sehr einsam gefühlt . Deshalb hat er eine Anzeige in der Zeitung gesetzt. Eine schöne altere Frau heißt Eva hat ihn angerufen. Sie hatten viele Hobbys gemeinsam  und sie entschieden sich zu treffen. Am Anfangen, alles war gut. Sie gingen tanzen und wanderen und sie verliebten sich bald.
Später, nach ein bisschen Monate, Wilhelm fragt Eva ihn zu heiraten. Eva hat  ‘Ja’ gesagt. Sie waren beide sehr glücklich.  Aber bald, sie anfingen zu streiten .
Schließlich hat Wilhelm die Hochzeit gestrichen als sie waren sich nicht mehr verliebt.
Am Schluss war Wilhelm noch einmal allein.

Now here comes a big favour, can those of you who are fluent in German pick this monstrosity apart and tell me where I have completely and utterly screwed up the grammar and tenses? Knowing what mistakes I’ve made will be very helpful for my A2 Prüfung where I have to produce a piece of writing, like the one above, but without the help of my German dictionary and my textbooks.  Thanks!

I am totally unprepared for this.  Completely and utterly unprepared.  I have felt all through the A2 class that I’m just not keeping up, but thought with my new learn German routine I might be able to pull it all together to pass my test. However, I’m not sure I can pull it all together in just 2 weeks. I’m missing Thursday’s class to do the second week of the play and with it goes all my nights and all my free time until Sunday. I simply feel I don’t have enough time to get myself up to the level I need to be at to pass this test.

So, this is me having a little meltdown. Feel free to ignore the hysterics.

It was a very surreal experience to actually be able to walk across the Alster River and despite the cold, I had lots of fun photographing people playing on the ice.  I was only able to last 45 minutes on the ice before I lost all feeling in my fingers and legs.

I can now tick walk across a frozen river off my bucket list.

Kids playing on the ice

Rescue Helicopter Landing on the Alster

Spinning on the ice

Small kid playing ice hockey

And this is who he is playing against

Most of Hamburg out enjoying Alstereisvergnügen

The rest of my photos from Alstereisvergnügen can be found here.

Last night was our technical rehearsal for the play ‘Beyond Therapy’ for which I’m doing sound production. At the technical rehearsal, we had to set up the entire sound system from speakers to mixing boards.  It took four hours and involved climbing up and down multiple ladders.  Whilst wrapping my head around how much sound production technology has changed in the past 20 years, I also had to wrap my head around all the German names for everything as naturally in a German theatre all the signs are in German.  I’m now making friends with words like Saalbeleuchtung and Steuerung (although no one seems to know what the Steuerung button does).

What I also found wonderful and somewhat terrifying is how everyone around me was switching between German and English as the make-up of our crew is both Germans and expats.  I think I’m one of the very few people who do not speak both languages fluently as I’m the only ‘expat’ who hasn’t been living in Germany for at least 10 years or was fluent in German before moving here. I was able to follow parts of the German directions, thanks mainly by knowing the German word for curtain (Vorhange), so that felt pretty good.  However, I think this production, which is in English, might have the unforeseen side-effect of helping improve my German.

The problems started with me getting airsick for the first time ever on the flight to London.  It was a rather unpleasant flight further heightened by the fact that the drinkable water tank on our plane froze overnight and they could not defrost it, therefore all hot drinks were unavailable as was the water in the toilets.

Then I went to check into my hotel and was told that they might not have a room for me due to renovations, but they would know for sure later on that afternoon.  When I went back to the hotel, it turned out they did not have a room and I would have a trek across London to a different hotel for the night and return the next day to check in.  The hotel I ended up staying in was quite nice, but room service, ordered due to my extreme tiredness, took over a hour to turn up and I flooded the bathroom whilst showering.

The next evening when I went to check into my original hotel, there was actually a room and they offered me an upgrade to apologise for the inconvenience of having to change hotels for the night. However, the offer of an upgrade was followed up with ‘but it will cost you £20 extra a night, but that is our cheap rate’.  I’m sorry, but offering an upgrade you have to pay for is not an apology, it’s an upsell. The room I ended up getting was extremely small to the point where you needed to open the bathroom door to have enough room to dry yourself off after a shower.

I ran late to everywhere I needed to be and I didn’t have enough time to go shopping for my beloved hot cross buns. However, not everything was bad.  I managed to find time to have a gorgeous sushi dinner with my long-time friend Sarah and I had porridge every morning for breakfast (oh porridge, I do miss you).  Also I had Mexican, twice! and a meat pie, mash potato and gravy for lunch one day.  Oh yes, it’s all about the food.

Not the most attractive photo but it was so delicious

Also, I saw this sign and it made me laugh, which was exactly what I needed after the crap I went through.

I’m hoping my next trip to London will be less full of bad luck and work and more full of awesomeness and fun times.

However, in a move that shows extreme hypocriscy, the Susan G. Komen Foundation also announced this week, that in conjunction with Discount Gun Sales, they are releasing a breast cancer awareness edition handgun.

Because nothing screams pro-life more than sponsoring a product that is designed to kill people.  I guess for some, life is only important when it is inside the womb, once it comes out, it’s irrelevant.

Therefore, if you are thinking of donating funds to scan and treat women for breast cancer, then don’t give your hand earned dollars to Susan G. Komen Foundation.  Choose another one that doesn’t think that the life of fetuses are worth more than those of poor women but will happily sponsor a handgun.

Edit: News has just come through this afternoon that Susan G. Komen Foundation has overtuned their decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood.  However, having a breast cancer handgun is still utterly ridiculous for a foundation that has been set up to save lives.

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In my never-ending quest to improve my German, I thought last night I would watch some TV and given that my choices weren’t very inspiring, I thought I would watch some reality TV on the assumption that the language probably wouldn’t be very complex and I could probably guess what was going on without needing to understand the dialogue.  These assumptions were right, but, I was not prepared for the horror that is German reality TV.

My first exposure to German reality TV was Die Wollnys – Eine schrecklich große Familie! The tagline of this show is ‘a terribly big family’ and they are definitely right about the terrible fact.  This family was like The Duggars if the Duggars weren’t scarily religious and were on welfare. I learnt some great vocab if I ever want to accuse my husband of being a lazy slob. You can witness the fantastic family dynamics on the RTL II site where they have entire episodes online.

My next foray into the world of German reality TV was far more frightening.  I had the misfortune to watch Traumfrau gesucht. I thought this was going to be harmless dating show, kinda like The Bachelor or Beauty and the Geek, but I was wrong, horribly wrong. The show is about three guys Elvis, Walther, Manfred who go to Eastern Europe to basically find a mail order bride.  After watching the show for just 5 minutes you have no doubts why these guys are single and can’t find a single woman in the whole of Germany who will date them. They honestly made my skin crawl.  Fortunately, most of the women on this show also had enough sense to look suitably horrified. These men in all their creepy glory, especially Walther who thinks nothing of buying a woman he doesn’t know a thong and nylons as a 1st date gift and has a catalogue of women, can be seen here. It’s terrifying stuff.

I’m not sure my German language skills were improved any by watching these shows but they have certainly given me an interesting view of a slice of German society.

I’ve been told that when you start dreaming in another language is when you finally make some kind of breakthrough. I hope this is correct.  For those of you who are conversational/fluent in another language, at what point did you start dreaming in that language? And do you think that it had any relation to what stage of learning that language you were up to?