New site

Since I'm not in Germany anymore ... and since I've not been updating this site ...

I've got a new one up and running at:

... changed my mind on the new site. I'm keeping this name, just moving it (and making the English spelling correct).

http://ueberdiebruecke.wordpress.com/

Back in Germany

Back in Germany for the first time since leaving in March, I'm thinking ... how could I have put up with the smoking here for 8 months?

I don't remember it being all that bad, but maybe now after living in relatively smoke-free Ohio it seems worse. I was at a trade show this past week, and at every entrance from one hall to the next, or any doorway leading outside, you had to run the gauntlet of smokers. I swear my clothes smelled like smoke by the end of the day.

My teammate Tris had sent me an internet link about the problem of obesity in the US. He said Americans are eating themselves to death. Looking at the people here in Germany, the contrast is pretty stark. While the Germans may on the whole be thin, they are perhaps smoking themselves to death. I'm not sure which is worse.

It's especially disturbing to me to see the young people smoking in such large numbers.

At some point, the smoking restrictions we now have in the US, and that are present in many other countries, will eventually come to Germany. From my perspective, that will make Germany a better place.

***

At the moment I'm in Nürnberg. I stayed here after the trade show because they have one of the biggest Christmas markets in Germany, and it seemed worth checking out. Unfortunately because it is such a big event it draws a huge crowd.

After a day of walking around the old part of the city, I went down to the opening of the Weinachtsmarkt. Imagine trying to fight the crowd rushing to the men's room at halftime of a football game. Couple that with live cigarettes in peoples' hands, which becomes quite deadly in close quarters.

The atmosphere is wonderful -- food, spiced wine, people in a festive mood. If there were only about 1/2 of those festive people it would be great.

An hour's worth was enough for me. Craving a little peace, I found a nice Italian restaurant on a quiet side street, where I had one of my favorite meals: beef carpaccio, pizza with prosciutto and mushrooms, and a couple glasses of wine. Guess I'd had enough German for the day.

Opportunities to speak

Living in the U.S., going about your daily affairs, how often would you think you could use a foreign language? I suppose if you lived in Miami or San Diego you could use Spanish quite often. What about Italian, or French, or … German? How often would you be able to use those languages?

You might be surprised.

As I wrote previously, my friend and colleague from Germany was here recently. We attended several work meetings and then got together a few times after work. It would have been easy – for me – to just speak English. It probably would have been easy for Viktor too, since his English is close to perfect and he wouldn’t have to suffer through my mistakes in German.

But we just started speaking German, just like we did in Germany. It was difficult for me at first, having been away from hearing and speaking German every day. I was having trouble getting the right sounds to come out of my mouth. But before too long I felt reasonably comfortable again. Encouraging.

The following week I had a work trip to California. One of the people I met had coincidentally lived and worked in Düsseldorf for several years. He had married a German woman, and spoke fluent German -- though with a California accent.

So one night at dinner, there we were, standing in the bar in San Jose speaking German – a comical scene, and something I never would have imagined.

On the way back home, at one of the airport shops in Houston, I noticed the cashier had an accent that sounded German. I asked, and yes, she was from Germany. We had a short conversation, as the line of puzzled customers started to grow behind me.

In Chagrin Falls, just a couple miles from where we live, there is store called the Ski & Sport Haus. The spelling of “Haus” might lead one to think that someone there has at least some knowledge of German. I stopped in the store not too long ago, and one of the women working there had an accent. She was one of the owners (or from the owners’ family), and she told me she was from Austria – which was then apparent from her accent when speaking German.

I had 4 years of Spanish in high school, and another semester in college, but never felt I was very fluent. When I think back on this, not once did I ever have the opportunity to speak it, as I did in these little interactions in German. I wonder now, was it that I didn’t have the opportunity or was it more that I didn’t look for the opportunity?

Many people have told me, if you want to learn the language, you have to be willing to try it – to speak it and to make mistakes. There is a saying in German, “Übung macht den Meister“. Literally that means „practice makes the master“. People said this to me on many occasions when I would apologize for my many mistakes. I wonder what my Spanish would be like had I followed that advice.

Foreign in Cleveland

It’s an odd feeling to be sitting in a restaurant in Cleveland speaking German, surrounded by people dressed for the Indians game that day. Or standing in front of the Rolling Stones exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

My friend and colleague Viktor was in the U.S., and we had gone downtown to visit the Rock Hall and get something to eat.

In Germany, I was self-conscious that my German gave me away as a non-native speaker. Here I could sense people around us turning their heads and noticing that we weren’t speaking English. I imagined what they might be thinking – that we were foreign tourists out sightseeing. It seemed a bit comical -- and fun-- to be a foreign tourist in the place where you live.

I had asked Viktor what he might want to do, and offered some suggestions such as the Indians game, or visiting museums at University Circle. I was surprised when he said he wanted to visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It turns out he had played bass in a band when he was younger, and he was pretty knowledgeable about bands from the 60’s and 70’s.

I suppose it would be natural to go to a Beethoven festival in Germany, or to a Mozart exhibit in Salzburg. So it shouldn’t have been too surprising to visit the Rock Hall in Cleveland.

We took the train (the “Rapid”) from the Rock Hall to the Tower City complex to get something to eat. Not having done this in Cleveland before, I realized that I knew more about taking the train in Germany. I had no idea how often the trains ran, how much they cost, and where to get a ticket. We played tourist again, and asked some other people waiting on the mostly-deserted platform.

The difference between here and Germany was striking, as there was no ticket machine, no timetable for the train posted, and no display that told you when the next train would depart. We had to pay the driver on the train – something that would create a certain delay during busy times.

On the short trip we noticed the driver continuously chatting with one of the attendants, beneath a sign that said “No unnecessary talking with driver.”

Viktor turned and said, in German, “That must be necessary talking”.

Here was a cool benefit of a foreign language: being able to talk about someone and not have them understand.

Souvenirs from Germany

After an 8-month stay in Germany, you might reasonably assume I’d accumulated souvenirs and other German stuff to bring back home. But I resisted the temptation to buy a bunch of stuff that would just collect dust on a shelf.

I did come home with a couple of functional items: 2 beer glasses from Belgium, and my GPS unit.

Each brand and style of beer in Germany (Belgium, too) seems to have its own special glass. If you go into a bar or restaurant, and order two different beers, you’ll get a different glass each time. So ‘collecting’ beer glasses could get completely out of control.

Driving back to Düsseldorf after a work trip to Brussels, I stopped in the Belgian equivalent of Wal-Mart. I wandered around a bit, and found an entire aisle of Belgian beer. I’ve been told there are over 900 different beers in Belgium, and it seemed this store had a good percentage of them (that is only a slight exaggeration).

Belgian beers seem to be often served in more of a goblet than a beer glass. This store had a package of Leffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leffe), which I like, along with 2 Leffe glasses. I figured this would be my beer souvenir. It’s possible to find Leffe in the U.S., so I figured I’d be able to use the glasses for their intended purpose.


The GPS unit was less of a souvenir. Since my car in Germany had a built-in GPS, I’d gotten used to having one. It saved me many times trying to find my way along streets that changed direction seemingly at random.

I bought this particular GPS unit because it has maps of both the U.S. and Europe. I’ve written previously about my experience buying this in the Düsseldorf airport and trying to get a VAT rebate, with no success.

On my way out of Germany, in the Köln-Bonn airport, I tried one last time. I went to the customs office, showed them my receipt and passport, and asked about getting the tax rebate. As in Düsseldorf, they said no, I’d been in Germany too long. But in contrast to the agent in Düsseldorf, they were quite friendly and apologetic. It occurred to me that this confirmed the perception that people from Köln are friendlier than those from Düsseldorf, who can have, shall we say, a bit of an attitude.

Back in the U.S., I’ve kept the German voice on the GPS unit – one of those little ways to keep some exposure to German. There are actually 4 German voices to choose from: Katrin, Stefan, Lisa, and Werner. I’ve got Katrin giving me directions. It’s comical at times to hear the attempts (computer-generated) at pronouncing U.S. road and city names. “Interstate 480 West” just doesn’t sound right in German. Neither does “fahren Sie auf die Autobahn”, when I am only able to legally drive 65mph.

Losing German

After 8 months away in Germany, I became pretty comfortable hearing and speaking German. I wasn’t fluent enough that people would mistake me for a native speaker – well actually people did, but they weren’t native speakers either.

Although I wasn’t completely fluent, the longer I was in Germany, the better I became at navigating what I did and didn’t know. I could hear a long stream of German, and from that mess pick out enough to understand the basics then use what I knew to say something back, or ask for clarification. And I always had the option of saying I didn’t understand.

Since returning to the U.S., I’d been wondering how quickly I might lose what I’d learned.

Viktor, my friend and colleague from Germany, called the other day. I hadn’t talked with him in a couple of weeks, and when he called and started speaking German it was a shock. I had to listen very closely and struggled with how to answer. I felt self-conscious speaking German and was starting to sweat.

After a few minutes my comfort level started to improve, but it was obvious and a bit discouraging to recognize that after just a month my German had already started to decline.

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising – if you hear a language every day you’re bound to absorb something. And if you use it every day, even just a little, you’re bound to improve.

The little realization I had is how much easier it is when everyone around you is speaking the language. You don’t have to make the effort to immerse yourself in it – it’s all around you. You’d have to make an effort to avoid it.

It would take a fair amount of effort and diligence to get even a portion of the language exposure I had while in Germany. I would need to: listen to German stations via Internet radio while at work (www.dw-world.de), listen to German-language podcasts while in the car (www.schlaflosinmuenchen.com is a good one), tape the daily Deutsche Welle show on the SCOLA cable channel, read German newspapers. This is all reasonably doable, but without the imminent need to use it on a daily basis, it’s easy to get lazy.

I liked to ask people in Germany about learning English. More than one person told me that learning English in Germany was quite different when they knew they would need to go to the US or England and use it every day.

That’s the other realization: the motivation to make the extra effort with the language comes easier when you have a compelling reason.

Ugly and dreary

I don’t want to bash the place where I live. But I guess I’m going to do it anyway.

It seems so dreary here. In part that's because it’s winter again: almost 3 feet of snow over the weekend, in my backyard at least. The roads are dirty with salt and cinders. Trees are still without leaves.

But it’s more than that.

A few weeks ago, my first weekend back home, I drove down to Mansfield for a bike race. On the way there, driving down I-71, it occurred to me how unattractive things seemed. I passed the big outlet mall, the sprawling truck stops, junkyards you can see from the highway.

Mansfield was lots of concrete and ugly 50’s-style houses, with other areas of bulldozed farmland sprouting new “McMansions”. None of it was attractive.

Now there are certainly aspects of Germany that are dreary: the heavy industry in the Rurhgebiet north of Düsseldorf, open mines, graffiti in the city. But it never seemed very far to the next open space or town center with a pedestrian area. Even heavily populated areas were broken up by green space. This is something I miss about Germany, though I don’t miss the heavy traffic the goes along with the population.

It’s particularly disturbing how we seem to be paving over more and more green space in this area, despite an overall decline in population. People then wonder why there are problems with storm water runoff after heavy rain.

I’m sure the weather here is affecting how things seem right now. I’m hoping things will look different when the sun and green return. But even the sun and green won’t stop yet another redundant cluster of Home Depot-Petsmart-Bed, Bath, and Beyond from being built.