Day 7

(Montag, 22. Sept., 2008)

Last night I watched TV for a few hours, and just before I went to bed I felt the teensiest breakthrough with my German. I can’t say exactly what it is, but I now feel as though when I hear spoken German I can recognize enough words quickly enough that I don’t have to translate them in my head and then try to guess what the sentence means. I cannot by any means understand everything everyone says, and there are still a lot of individual words that don’t make sense to me, but I find if I focus on the meaning and not the words, then after a while the language becomes sort of transparent.

Another thing that keeps happening is language puzzles get solved. Sometimes I think I know a word and then it's used in a completely unfamiliar way. Well, that's what happens with homonyms, my friends. Homonyms such as schaffen (to create or to form) and schaffen (to do something successfully). I’ll think I’ve made some mistake when someone says, “Ich habe es geschafft!” and I know they didn’t create anything. Then I look in the dictionary and be enlightened.

Oh, and incidentally, no one will actually say, “Ich habe es geschafft". They’ll say, if you're lucky, “Ich hab’s geschafft”. That’s a contraction that no one ever taught me. Often the ‘e’ on the end of habe (have) disappears, as does the ‘e’ on the beginning of es (it). Oh yeah, and sometimes even the ich is swallowed so it just comes out, “hab’s geschafft!” Colloquial German is really something ganz anders (wholly different) from formal, written German.

The most notable thing that happened today is that I had my first Döner Kebab and it was delicious, or as the Germans say, lecker! Seriously. They say lecker all the time, at least on TV. Half the things in Germany are echt (genuine, real, really) as in echt cool or echt Qualität, and the other half are lecker. Some things are even echt lecker. Like Döner Kebab.




Oh, mein Gott, for only four euros I had all this and a coke. It was so groß (big) and so lecker! It was the first great meal I’ve had in Deutschland. Where are all OUR Turkish restaurateurs in the US?

And speaking of lecker (You have to understand how great this word is. It’s pronounced “LEK-uh”, like with a British ‘r’. It’s so fun to say! Heidi Klum has two lines in a current German McDonald’s commercial, so of course you know what one of them had to be.) right now I’m grilling fresh bratwurst on my stove. I just bought it at Aldi. Berlin! Aldi! Bratwurst! Kebab! Lecker!

That was in Lankwitz. I was there because I wanted to anmelden, that is, report my residence to the local authorities. The office was geschloßen. That means closed. Until further notice. So I have to go to another office tomorrow.

But that’s fine because I got my landlord’s signature on the necessary forms today, so I can go report myself without much hassle. And then I will be one step closer to getting my much-hoped-for Begrüßungsgeld. Is this a country or what?

While I was in Lankwitz I saw a stop sign.



I thought that was strange, since ‘stop’ is not a German word. But the Berliners do love signs so I guess it makes sense. They will put up as many as they can think of. Eventually I’ll give you a sample of the millions and millions of signs all around this place.

The other interesting thing I did today was get off at the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn stop and walk to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. I don’t have any idea what they are, but I’ve heard of them, so I went and took pictures of myself there. Just like every other tourist I guess.





Well, OK, the other *actually* interesting thing I did today was to go to the Fristo Getränkemarkt which is right next to Aldi, about five minutes from my apartment.



There I met a very friendly English-speaking cashier who helped me get what he called a “gentleman’s handbag”



And buy six different kinds of German Bier.



This six-pack of 50 centiliter (16 oz.) bottles of German beer cost less than five Euros. And he said they have over 150 varieties. I told him this would be the first of many visits.

All told today was a very good day. Hell, any day that ends with six new German beers has to be pretty good. And I think what I learned from my experience today is that one needn’t have a very definite plan in order for things to go well. All one has to do is get out of the house and walk around. Sometimes it’s boring, other times it’s fun and interesting. The only problem is it's impossible to tell beforehand which kind of day it will be.