What Has Learning Got To Do With It?

Last week, I decided that I wouldn't write the impending German B2 level exam. Strangely enough, once that decision was taken, I found my bi-weekly German lesson infinitely more bearable, enjoyable even. We had a mock oral exam (mundliche Prufung) a couple days ago and the class was unanimous in its agreement that I had done the best of us all (don't need to be modest here). That's when the penny dropped.

In my anxiety to do well in the exam, I had lost all the excitement around learning the language. I had become so entangled in the myriad grammatical traps that German so eagerly flings at you, that I had failed to recognise the joy that accompanies communicating - even if it is only haltingly - in the language. Instead, I had become so focussed on passing the exam as if it were a box to be ticked and not a tool to be learnt, practised and eventually, gradually and sometimes even painstakingly mastered. I had become blind to the singular sense of victory that follows comprehending a complicated article in a German magazine. I had bought into the whole myth of passing "with flying colours" (a most beloved expression used specifically in the context of passing an exam. I have never known anyone to pass an exam well, or pass it reasonably. It was only every with flying colours as if they were some aircraft that plumed colourful smoke out of its back to mark a very special event).

Years ago, when I was studying French, I would be asked repeatedly why I was learning the language. Was it because I wanted to study in France? Would it help my job prospects? Did I want to become a translator? Endless questions wondering about the reasons behind my pursuit. Sometimes it would be that, sometimes it would be this. I would tailor my answer to suit what I thought the questioner wanted to hear. But even back then, I knew with a gnawing feeling that none of this was accurate. Because I had no particular reason why I was learning French other than the fact that it felt good to learn something new.

Not long ago, when a close family member was writing her tenth standard board exams, I watched agonisingly from the wings and winced at how little the schools and their primary preoccupation with getting the children to pass exams had changed since my time. I cited the very wonderful Ken Robinson and talked about how we are killing everything that was wonderful and joyous and creative about our children by subjecting them to this egregious practice called examinations.

In my mind I saw children children lining up on a carousel, all tightly packed with invisible rollers carrying them inevitably towards a levelling machine that would at first, chop the tops off and trims the sides so they looked more like a stack of pencils than a gorgeously disparate gathering of young people. Then the carousel would taken them to a feeding machine with a huge, gaping hole for a mouth and into this, the children would tumble one by one. They would roll and twist around in the machine like they would if there were clothes in a front loading washing machine before finally being ejected out of the other end, into one massive pile. Each child, indistinguishable from the other, their eccentricities and vagaries wiped out to form a uniformly bland creation that slotted straight into a shelf somewhere.

When I shared my nightmare with a friend who had just surrendered her two daughters to this very system and who had both just endured tenth and twelfth standard exams, she rolled her eyes and said that of course, I would say that. After all, I had the luxury of keeping my children away from this system. Not every one had an ivory tower from which to talk from, she remarked.

How had I forgotten so readily the very lessons I preached so passionately to others? How had I let myself believe that somehow passing the exam and securing high marks was more important that learning a skill? And how dare I accuse others of succumbing to the antiquated exam-driven learning system and suggest to them that they seek alternatives for their children, when I had thrown that option right out of the window to seek a certificate in an exam that had no consequence? In an exam whose outcome had little bearing on my life or its course and whose only purpose was for me to then sign up for the next level?

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. 

Penny Drops On Crutches

I fell down on Christmas Day. Out for a jog and back home on crutches. One minute I was jogging and the next I was done clutching my ankle which had swollen like a balloon. A kind stranger offered to take me to the hospital, but I had left my mobile behind at home and we needed to make a stopover to collect it so I could call my husband and update him (he was away with the boys on a bike ride on a different route).

So the kind woman drove me home and I gave her the keys to let herself in while I remained in her car. I called out directions to her as to where to find my mobile - luckily, I remembered where I'd left it and she didn't have root around for it. She helped me get off the car, brought me a wheelchair and waited for a while with me at the hospital. The X-rays revealed nothing at first glance but a doctor called two days later and informed me that I'd chipped bone and that my foot had to be in a brace for six weeks. We'd booked to ski for seven Saturdays from mid-January but he strongly advised me against doing any sport (an advice I paid heed to selectively) as it could hinder the healing process.

On Christmas morning, I'd complained to a friend about how I was still struggling to get used to the German brusqueness citing a recent incident when a rank strangers asked me if I really didn't speak much German or if I was just "being lazy". It rankled me a lot as I'd put in a lot of effort into tackling their bewildering maze of language. Why are they being so rude?, I'd bemoaned to my friend over the weekly catch up, why can't they be civil to foreigners?

And yet, barely a couple of hours later, there I was being accosted home and taken to hospital by someone whose name I forgot to ask and whose whereabouts I was in too much pain to find out. Came out of nowhere and offered to help a foreigner in need. Bloody Germans!

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.