Election Day

Yesterday was Election Day in Germany, which I almost didn’t know about. Elections aren’t really a big deal in Germany, it’s not as publicized as in the US. Candidates put up signs with their pictures on billboards or just around trees, and that’s about all the publicity they generate. Someone told me there was just one debate, but no one really watched. It’s really interesting to me that people aren’t very into politics here, since in America it’s a huge source of entertainment and controversy, and your political party determines a lot about you. Here people don’t take your political views into account when they’re getting to know you; if you believe something different it’s not a big deal.

In America we’re taught that people have a lot of power through voting, but here it’s kind of laughed at. I was eating dinner with my host mom last night and she checked her watch and realized that the polls had closed and she hadn’t voted. She merely shrugged and said na ja (the German equivalent of “oh well”), and went on eating.

I didn’t even hear who won, I had to google it myself. Once again the chancellor of Germany is Angela Merkel, serving her third term.

Wichtige Wörter
wählen - to choose, in this case to vote
die Bundestagswahl - Election Day (or something equivalent - I believe that’s what yesterday was called)

And finally, my pictures aren’t that great or interesting, but since you all asked, here’s a few:

This is a view of the Elbe River, which runs through Hamburg. Here, I'm up on a hill, which was built to prevent the water from rising over the banks and flooding the village. There are lots of sheep around that act as a natural lawn mower, and it's very cute.

This is a statue depicting a fairy tale about a magical goose, and everyone is trying to hold onto its feathers to get some of the magic for themselves.

Last weekend I was at an AFS camp for all the exchange students living in Hamburg, so I got to meet people from all over the world. The people in this picture, for example, are from America, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, Bolivia, Turkey, and Paraguay, but there were other students from Serbia, India, Indonesia, and Columbia.

Language Barrier

If you’re learning a second language, you’ll find that it’s much easier to understand than to form your own sentences. Here, as long as people are speaking slowly enough and don't catch me off guard, I can understand almost everything they say, but when I try to contribute, it’s a mess. Therefore, I think people assume that I don’t know much German at all, so I have to actively show that I understand what they are saying.

That means I do a lot of nodding, a lot of mmhming, and a lot of saying “ja” or “okay” every time the speaker pauses. Here’s what a normal conversation with me looks like:

German: Gestern...
Me: Ja?

G: Ich war im Kino...
M: Mmhm
G: Und hab ein Film gesehen...
M: Okay
G: Und es war sehr lustig...
M: Mmhm
G: da der Hauptdarsteller eine komische Frisur hatte.
M: okaaay... (drawn out so I have time to process)

Apparently saying okay is an American thing. Germans, and especially the older generations of Germans, don’t really say it. I, on the other hand, have say it all the time, and others have started to pick up on it. For example, my host mom is a teacher, and she said her students at school have started asking why she says “okay” so much these days.

The way I pronounce words is also, of course, distinctly American. One of the hardest letters for me to articulate is the r. In the US it’s arr, in Germany it’s err with a slight tongue roll, which many of you know is impossible for me. Once someone asked me to say “r”, and I responded with the American arrrrrr., to which he said, “no, no, errrrrr!” “Oh, I can’t do that.” “Haha I know, guys, she can’t do that!”

But my host sister and I are working on my accent, I read out loud and she corrects me. We’ve made it through about a page and a half of Sofies Welt, a 606 page fiction book about philosophy. Plenty of material to last the year.

Wichtige Wörter

• vorlesen - to read out loud.
• Ich verstehe - I understand. I see. I know what you're talking about, you don't have to try to switch to English to explain it to me.
• Ich verstehe nicht - I wish you would explain that to me in English.

How I may have gotten my visa for free

Germans think that other countries still hate them because of World War II, and because of that, they like show foreigners, such as myself, how nice they can be. And now here comes my story about that. And this smooth transition, I guess.

This morning before school my host mother and I went to get my visa. If you’re planning to live in Germany longer than 10 months, you need a visa so you don’t get sent back home. The office opened at 8, but we had to get there about 30 minutes early to get a good spot in line and climb the four flights of stairs. About 15 minutes before it opened, my host mom and I went through all our bags to make sure we had everything we needed, only to discover that, of course, we didn’t.

The night before my host mom and I were talking about what I needed to bring, and we were talking about passports in one sentence and the next she used the word Passbild, Bild meaning photo. I took that to mean the picture in my passport.

What it actually meant was another little picture of myself, which I had. When you buy a monthly bus pass, you have to go in a photo booth, which takes four, five, or six pictures, depending on how many you need. So I had plenty of extras, just not with me.

When we realized what miscommunication had occurred, we got the people behind us to hold our place and ran down the four flights of stairs, out the doors, dodged some dumpsters that were for whatever reason in the middle of the sidewalk, and into the building next door. We ran up some more stairs, and then down, before I spotted a photo booth. I ran inside, tried to find exact change, selected the English instructions option, and after two takes, successfully took a visa-worthy photo. (The first one cut off my forehead, and since I couldn’t figure out how to move the camera lower, I had to slouch like I’ve never slouched before.)

Since we were tired from all that running around, we took the elevator back and made it with a few minutes to spare. I’m not really sure about the actual process of receiving a visa, but we had to talk to a woman first, who looked at my passport and made copies. That cost 10 Euro, which my host mother thoughtfully paid for me.

Then, even though we needed an appointment and had none, we were allowed to see a different employee, who took my fingerprints and gave me forms to fill out. He perked up when he learned that I was an exchange student from America, and we had a little conversation in German. At the end of the visit, the cost was over 100 Euro, and we tried to pay but he said it was a gift. He let us have it completely free. I have no idea if he has the authority to give that kind of money away, but the point of the story is that I saved a lot of money, that man was very very nice, and Germans just want people to think the best of them.

Also I am now legally living in Germany.

Wichtige Wörter:

• das Passbild - not a passport, but a passport photo. But a different one than what’s in your passport, as I now know.
• anstrengend - stressful. My host mother used this word a few times after this ordeal. I felt bad.
• Nicht so slimm - It’s not so bad. My host family uses this phrase a lot around me while I adjust to a new culture and make many mistakes. For example, today it was nicht so schlimm when I accidentally skipped orchestra because I thought it started a half an hour after 6, not a half an hour before.

Public Transportation

There are no school buses in Germany, kids as young as elementary age all take the bus to school. Buses typically come every five to ten minutes, so if you miss a bus it's no big deal. Yesterday after school I bought a bus pass that's good for one month, and with it I can go on any bus or train. It's initially expensive, but completely worth it because of how often everyone uses public transportation. Plus, AFS covers the cost since I use it to get to school, which is super nice.

The downside to this system is that I don't know Hamburg or its bus systems yet, and many of you know how hard it is for me to follow simple directions. So without my host sister present, a bus ride that should take only 15 minutes turns into 50.

So, today I was able to go to school later since I had first block free. Feli, my host sister, had to go earlier, but a girl who helped me take the bus a day before also had first block free and was going to meet me this morning to catch the 9:59 bus. However, due to me not yet knowing which clocks are accurate in this house (I just realized that the clock in my bedroom, for example, is 10 minutes late), I ended up on the 10:04 bus. It could literally happen to anyone who wasn't German. I asked the driver if he knew where Gymnasium Bornbrook (my school) was, but he had never heard of it. So I spent that bus ride trying to remember if I needed to switch buses somewhere. Using my politest German I eventually asked the woman beside me if she knew where the school was, and she didn't, but she very helpfully pointed me toward the train station.

Once at the Bergedorf train station, I went inside an information booth to ask for directions. The man had also never heard of the school, and I was beginning to think I made the name up. However he found it in his computer, pointed me toward the right bus (I did in face need to switch). I happily boarded the bus, and all was well.

Until a few minutes later. I didn't know how long I was supposed to stay on the bus, so when things started to look familiar, I got off. Plus I saw a big sign marked "school" so I figured I couldn't go wrong.

But of course I did. It was a different school with incredibly similar surroundings. I wasn't sure if I went too far or not far enough, but I decided that I should check down the road. So I went back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus.

While I was waiting, who should pass on her bike but Josie, a girl I had met the previous day at school. She was just in the nick of time, another minute or two and I would have boarded the extremely punctual bus and gotten off who knows where. She walked her bike and me the rest of the way to school and showed me where my class was.

And that's how I got to school. On time, too.

P.S. How I got home is very similar.

Wichtige Wörter

• einsteigen - to get on. The bus, for example.
• aussteigen - to get off. The bus again.

My Arrival

It took from 9:00 Thursday morning till 6:00 Saturday evening, but I'm finally in Hamburg! Immediately on my arrival I was taken on a tour, and all of Sunday was spent looking at the architecture, bridges, churches, and other distinct qualities of Hamburg. Unfortunately I didn't bring a camera, but not to worry, I have ten months of pictures to take! You can indirectly experience Hamburg's beauty another time.

Writing this blog post is actually quite difficult. I haven't spoken English out loud (except for the occasional sentence that I can't translate into German), and even my thoughts are a mixture of German and English. I think that my mind is actually simplifying itself because I have a limited German vocabulary, and my mind tends to think more in German these days. So when writing this it's sometimes hard to call an English word to mind, and it takes a lot not to write in German. Same goes for grammar (which I just tried to capitalize, Germans capitalize all nouns), so I apologize if there are glaring mistakes.

 There is German all around me, of course, and it takes a lot of focus, effort, and the right mindset to speak a foreign language. People tell me my German is good (for an American, I suspect, or maybe they're just being polite) but I have a very long way to go. I especially need to work on my accent, even for things that aren't real German words. For example, here I'm not Maddy, I'm "Meddy" and "um" becomes a slightly more elegant "em". "Ouch" becomes "oweh", "wow" is "vow" and so on.

My host family and I are a very good fit: so far we've laughed about Neo Nazis and people who don't eat breakfast. They're very talkative and energetic so I can listen to them speak German and try to develop a stronger sense of its grammar and vocabulary. When I don't understand something, I can ask for an explanation, and they'll stop to reexplain with easier words, which is very helpful. Sometimes I feel like a kindergartener, although in reality I am probably on the same level as one. Today my host sister taught me animal sounds, and it shot me right back to my childhood.

Oh, and I brought Dutch Blitz, and they absolutely love it. And they're good at it! They picked it up very quickly and my host sister often asks for a game after supper.

Wichtige Wörter (important vocabulary from the last few days - now you can learn German, too!)

• Die Brücke - bridge. The Elbe River runs through Hamburg, as well as many smaller rivers, and there are bridges everywhere. This word stuck with me on my tour of Hamburg because of the sheer amount of times it was used.
• gucken - to look. Also: guck mal, the command form that was also used a lot on my tour.
• probieren - to try. I tried a lot of new things, especially around meal times. Everything is delicious here, of course.
• reden - to speak. I knew this term, but I used the verb "sprechen" more, which means the same. But here everything is reden, it's a bit strange to say sprechen when you say you talked to someone.