Eastern Comfort

Another long day, so long that I don’t remember how it began but I do remember looking at my alarm clock before it went off and I was planning on getting up at seven. I had homework to do and a morning city tour to get to. I woke up, spent almost two hours correcting stuff for my brother and speaking to family and then had very little time to get ready before speeding out the door. At the S-Bahn station I actually debated not buying a ticket (it was 9:30 and I have a 10am onwards monthly pass), but I’m glad I shelled out the 2.10euro as there was a ticket control. And very sneaky and much more effective than the ones I saw in Switzerland. What really struck me tough, was that the people who schwarzfahren (ride black – without a ticket) didn’t argue at all when caught and just accepted their fate. It was sort of amazing because Berliners actually swear and curse a lot on the streets.

I did my homework on the train and made it to the Institut accumulating quite a group of people on my walk over – people were streaming in from all directions, walking, cycling, smoking on a bench. We headed to the oldest part of Berlin. Well that general area as there isn’t much that’s left of medieval Berlin – more like there’s nothing left of medieval Berlin. But the tour was pretty good, although we all agreed that we needed a Pause afterwards and not the five hours of lessons.

I changed classes today, so I was with a different group, with a very different group dynamic. At least half the class is German teachers who need the highest level test in order to teach higher level classes. The rest of the class seems pretty crazy, like my former group. Sadly between grammar exercises and discussing the Holocaust monument in Berlin, I didn’t really have time to get to know anyone, but the people at my desk pod. The Serbian guy from my former class moved up with me and we ended up together with this really, really chill man from Barcelona, Toni (in his 40’s I think) who is very soft spoken but says amazingly insightful things. I didn’t really figure out what the American girl from Chicago was about, but I hit it off well with the Russian teacher sitting next to me within seconds of sitting down. I think he’s the reason I don’t make a complete ass of myself when we do fill in the blank grammar exercises and I have no clue what the answer is. The other “character” in my class who could not go unnoticed was the Norwegian historian who speaks slowly, but therefore also very correctly. More on him later.

Also class, and then at six, although I was pretty brain dead at that point, I decided to go to the lecture on the Weimar Republic. It was raining outside and I took that to be a sign. The lecture was excellent and I was sitting next to a Swedish guy from Lund who was most definitely sniffing Snus. Oh Scandinavia.

After the lecture, I headed to buy some paper (as I literally had nothing to write my homework on) and then headed to the Stammtisch on a ship close to the Oberbaumbrücke. Wednesday nights are get together nights for Goethe Institut students at this bar so that we can just sit around and speak German and such. I arrived fashionably late – an hour and a half or so. But it was a good choice as that’s when the “party” was really starting to take off. And by that I mean people had consumed enough alcohol to have begun speaking semi fluently – well the lower levels. The higher level people were using tenses and vocabulary that was definitely stored in the back of their brains in class.

I spoke with a guy from Mauritius for a long time – he had gone to MIT, lived in New York and now has been on holiday for the past eight months in Europe. I sort of want to sell my soul to do that, but after hearing his horror story of 22-hour days as a lawyer, I’ve decided I don’t actually really want to do it. The Norwegian historian from my class joined us, together with the Italian who’s a basketball playing actor. We talked and talked and talked, they kept on offering to get me drinks, offering to roll me a cigarette. In the meantime they themselves downed an endless amount of beer and wine and had managed to “impregnate” me with cigarette smoke that I can still smell after having taken a shower. And my right eye is killing me – this contact lens and smoke thing doesn’t really go together.

Eventually we branched out from our private party to a larger number of people sitting down at a table – really mainly because we had been standing for a long time. The dancing sitting down began, as well as a short episode of singing. Then we started speaking a mixture of German and English and soon French and Serbian also came into the mix. I finally figured out what the Swiss guy from Lausanne is about – he’s very cool and chill. And actually not from Lausanne itself, but a small town close by. Eventually he and a bunch of people took off as it was getting late and our private party shrunk down to its original members plus a Polish guy who lives in the Netherlands at the moment. We talked about excellent movies, theatre, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Böll and good German literature in general. I felt like I got more out of our conversation than then five hours of class. But the grammar exercises from today might still give me nightmares. Gute Nacht!

PS - Now that I'm done with this post I realize how much better it could have been. I could have sprinkled in the leather conversation, the hand kissing on the part of the Norwegian, the flower proposals, the Estonian hate, happy birthday, nationality impersonations, forgetting stuff and just gesticulating like crazy to fill in the gaps, Madonna, the old ladies from the West. Oh man this post sucked. Sorry.