Guten Abend!
I thought it was summer. With sonne, blue skies. But no. Nein, ich bin nicht beiß. Ja, ich bin Kalt! Nobody deserves to wake up to zehn degree weather ( high vierzig bin low funfzig )… Ich hatte gern die sonne! Das Wetter schecht! Entschuldigung Berlin, but it really needs to get warm. Kein Probleme, mir geht es sehr blendend. Ive spent a good draizehn hours today fully immersed in German. Im practically swimming in it.
Today, as you can see, wir sprecht about the wetter in class. We coupled that with zuhl (numbers) and verbal conjugations. It was an interesting mixture to say the least. (im guessing whether i conjugated the sprechen correctly. Probably not). Verbal conjugations in German is pretty similar to the other languages. For example, for the verb Geher (to go) Ich gehe, due/Sie Gehst/Gehen, er/sie/es Gehe, Wir Gehen, ihr Geht und sie/Sie Gehen. The endings of the words change and that’s about it. Verbs I used today included Kommen (coming), Gehen (going), Lachen (laughing), Wienen (crying), Sagen (saying), Heißen (hot), Kalten (cold), Reisen (Leave/Travel), Winken (Wave), und Wohnen (leave). Ive got some homework tonight to memorize the conjugation rules (there arent that many.. unlike spanish or portuguese). The exception to the rule is the verb to be (as usual), which goes like this: ich bin, due/sie bist/sind, er,sie, es ist, wir sind, ihr seid, sie/Sie sind. Pretty self explanatory thus far.
But enough of class. In der Morgen, ich laufe in Mitte with a tour of the Institut. Although I understood about swai %, i got to horen a very articulate german guy speak about Berlin. Its a pretty sick city for anyone interested in history, theory, arkitectur, politics, philosophy, literaturen, religion.. you name it.
From the tour I headed to Alexanderplatz to pick up a SIM card and a camera battery charger. In some respects Berlin is cheap but definately not in electronic devices! Egrh.
The tour was mostly outside, in the cold, damp rainiest of summer days, but we got a good feel for the city. I had lunch with the Brasilians in the subway (there are a ton of little cheap restaurants in Alexanderplatz), and had a chicken sandwich und ein Wasser (that i took to class this time around. Not making the kaffee mistake again.) The best thing was that I was able to order without my handy notecard. When he named the price however, i was lost. (later in the day i had the reversal of power. Stil getting the numbers, but im starting to understand the currency!) Numbers are wierd, however. Like if you have the number 76, you have to say the equivalent of six-and-seven-tens. In other words, sechundsiebzig. If you dont hear the first number things get a bit difficult. But its been fun so far learning this stuff. Ich bin hier zum studieren. Ich mochte ein paar worter und Ausdrucke in Deutsche.
Class was class. Learning lots, desperately trying to remember everything my professor says and writes; desperately looking at my lonely planet english-deutsche/deutsche-english dictionary. Keeping up hasnt been so difficult. They have this business of teaching languages pretty much down to a science.
After class I headed home, picked up the other 2 jackets I brought with me, and took a good hour of downtime. Busy day eh! I think i activated my phone (it was all in german so it was truly a challenge). I just have to give it a call tomnorrow from a landline and we will see if it works.
At around 8, I arrived at an organized happy hour event held at a bar in Oranienburgerstraße, called Cafe Zosch. I spent most of the time tryng to follow people 2-3 levels ahead of me. It was sehr gut. Im happy that I was able to follow a lot more this afternoon than i was this morgen. I left the bar and headed home and noticed that the S-bahn was more full than I’d expect it to. Apparently one stop north of where I am there’s a rising night district and people were heading to a pub crawl. Prob gonna check it out sometime.
The best part is that i have a few expressions down now and i dont feel like i need to carry around the notecard. Ive been accumulating loads of new notecards to carry around, all with phrases that I learned over the course of the day. Tonight I’m going to sort them and leave at home the ones I feel like I already know.
At the end of the day our professor always says – Ich wunsche Ihnen einen wunderbaren Abend! And to that, I Gute Nacht! Tschuss!
