On The Beaches, In The Fields, German Everywhere

The German B1 test is one that those who are looking to live in Germany permanently need to take. People generally do that after having lived here for a few years. I have no intention of staying here for the rest of my life but having been here for sixteen months, I thought I'd take the test anyway. For weeks leading up to the test, I beavered away at it. It wasn't hard work in the way that I had worked for exams before, learning by rote and slaving at it dawn to dusk. But this was altogether a more enjoyable way to work for an exam. No German magazine or newspaper would go through the household without having at least an article read by me. Some I understood but most, I had a minimal grasp of. Still, I put in the hours reading and reading some more.

At the cafe and elsewhere, I spoke as often as I could to others in German and most were polite enough to humour me. I booked myself in for a training course and spent a Friday evening learning tips on how to pass the exam - mind you, this came after I'd spent eight hours earlier in the day cooking at the cafe. A colleague from the cafe spent an afternoon speaking to me in German ahead of the oral exams and I cooked for her as a thank you.

"Wir werden an den Stränden kämpfen,
wir werden auf dem Landeplatz kämpfen"

The exam itself was not that hard but concentrating for hours at a stretch was exacting. I'd not taken a German exam up until then and wasn't sure what level I was at and decided to keep my expectations low. The results would come later that evening and I asked my son whose school had finished early that day, to join me in the city while I waited. We watched The Darkest Hour dubbed in German, marvelling at the irony of watchingWinston Churchill vowing to fight the Germans on beaches and in the fields in German.

The results were to be called out by a woman from the Goethe Institute who would then hand out the certificates. I was really not certain about the outcome and chose to remain in the corridor while my son sat on the sofa in the waiting room where the results would be announced. The woman walked in. My son beckoned me inside. I shook my head. Come in, he mouthed. No, I said. You will have passed, he assured me. Don't think so, I mimed. You are so good, Amma, he said. I'm rubbish, I pleaded. The woman started calling out names alphabetically. Mine wasn't the first one like it usually is (initials AA). I was about to leave. Mine wasn't the second name either. I was on my way out. A pause. Then I thought I heard my name. That's my mum, said my son clapping for me. The woman said something about my marks which didn't register.

I came out into the corridor clutching my certificate. I had passed. 83% in reading, 80% in listening, 77% in writing and 90% in speaking.

That's when I realised how seamlessly our roles had reversed. My son was the reassuring parent and me the child riddled with self-doubt. He was cool and certain about my abilities while I was a wreck. That evening I knew what I was most proud about. The tall, ridiculously handsome and utterly charming son who became the parent when I needed one? Or the language skills? That's easy. German's a doddle. 

Bloody Germans

Two words describe my relationship with this country. Love, hate. And I experienced both this week. Earlier this week, I was out shopping in the supermarket when a simple mistake on my part meant that the lady at the till had to check something over and then had to take it off the bill when I realised that the price was not what I thought it was. She sighed, rolled her eyes at what I was making her do and rolled her eyes once more when I lost my patience with her. I apologised for my lack of German and told her that her customer service was appalling and that I was not going to continue shopping there and left. An old man who saw me strop, said something rude in German to me and waved bye. As I sat in the car park, I was terribly flustered from the encounter and fumed at the sheer rudeness of it all. Given that this is not the first time that I had encountered poor service and with each time, I find wondering what it is about this country that its citizens think it's okay to be so rude to others - even when they are only doing their job.

Later that very afternoon, as I was trying to park my car, a lady flagged me down furiously to show me the parking spot that she had just vacated where I could park mine and then handed me a parking ticket which had another 2 hours left on it. Later still as I sat on a bar stool in a small cafe eating a beautifully cooked vegetarian lasagne, a woman seated next to me - also a lone diner - could scarcely believe when I told her my children's age and kept wondering how that could be so, when I looked so young (nice!). These two encounters found Germany's prices rising in my personal stock exchange. But no one, least of all me, could have foreseen the crash that was about to happen less than 24 hours later. 

Here's a view from my kitchen.
I admit, it's very pretty here but if I had to
pick between great views and polite people, I'd
much rather the latter.

Any local that I meet for the first time will find me apologising for not being terribly good with their language but that I will try to speak it. And so it was that I started greeting someone yesterday when she turned to me and wondered if I really didn't know the language or if I was "just being lazy to speak it." Naturally, I was taken aback at how brusque she was but replied something rather weak about how I'm learning German and moved away. But I wondered how anyone could be so brazenly rude to your face and get away with it. The trouble however, is that  I came up with a retort 12 hours later ("Are you naturally rude or are you just being German?") whereas in the immediate moment, I could just about muster a mumble.

Germany's stocks are trading at a low at the moment. It would need an impossible act of kindness to look up from here. 

A Full Year In Germany

Me: Sprechen Sie Englisch?
Call centre lady: Nein
Me: Okay...leider mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut aber Ich versuche...

Normally we coast along for a few minutes conversing like this before invariably hitting a technical snag word like 'leakage' or 'confirmation'. And then I have to begin apologising again for my lack of fluency in German before beginning the arduous task of explaining the whole thing. This usually involves breaking the problem down into small words like water, fall, little by little and bathroom before I succumb and say it again in English slowly and loudly. And somehow hope that the volume and pace of my English would make a difference to her comprehension. At times it works, often it doesn't.

On my good days I resolve to get better at German but on those days when I long for some simplicity and don't want to feel like I am wading through a sea of bafflement and incomprehension, I curse this place and all its people. Bloody Germans! With a language so complicated that few countries in the world dare speak it.

Have you had the joy of interacting with a German noun? They are staggeringly long, often made up of smaller words and have a gender. They are like a group of children who have climbed on top of each other to form a pyramid of some sort and then covered themselves up with a cloak and given themselves a mask and demand that you call them by a neutral gender. You want to give them a clip around the ears, ask them to quit horsing around and behave. The nouns are most silly!

Pictorial representation of German nouns 

Yes, it is hard but I have to be grateful to be given an opportunity to be challenged as an adult. Bizarrely enough, we never once thought to visit Germany earlier, always choosing to go holidaying in its neighbouring countries instead. Yet it's only upon living here, that my family and I see how beautiful this country is. We live in a stunning part of the world and on clear days, can see the Alps from near our house. It's also a very affluent region with plenty of nature and good food to offer. We experience distinct seasons through the year and live within driving distance of some of the best ski slopes in Western Europe. And yet there are days when I long to just be understood without needing to say, 'wie, bitte?' time and time again.

Perhaps it is in my nature to not be content with my lot but to constantly yearn for something else. That said, on those days when I do successfully manage to communicate or understand what is being said without needing to google translate or look up the dictionary, I am overcome with a genuine sense of achievement. I find myself picking up German books to read and actually managing to understand parts of it - I deliberately choose books in those subjects which I don't understand in the first place. This way, in case I don't understand something, I can just say, 'never got the point of management books. So much jargon!'

It has been a year of enormous learning. My children have adapted to this country way better than I have as I constantly fear transgressing some immutable, invisible social norm and be told off by some stern German person (as it happened early on when sneezing on the underground train made someone tell us that we were "disgusting"). It still feels very alien and have yet to find the warmth and the feeling of 'at homeness' that I found instantly in Britain. I miss the easy access to culture and art that I so took for granted while in Britain and find the provincial attitude of several Germans many of whom live and work not far from where they grew up, incomprehensible. 

As an expat I live in a bubble and little idea of what is going on in the local area. Listening to the news, I can gather snippets of what is going on but then find myself going on the Guardian or the BBC to gather more detail. So this is how it is. There are days when I am awestruck by this place and days when I find it small and stifling and cannot bear to remain. It is pretty but dull. Pretty dull, pretty boring, pretty cold. But where do I go? With each passing year, the places I come from and where I have lived recede further and further that I had better unpack my bags and plan to stay here for a while. Willkommen in Deutschland.