Berlin Byways

Much to my utter shock and amazement, on the basis of one (count it ONE) ten-week German language class at Occidental College in the spring of 1975 (and a passing acquaintance with the Danish language), I placed out of the introductory German class (A1.1) and into the “minnow” class (A1.2). While this is clearly a great complement to Herr Professor A., it means I will probably have a bit of catch-up to do and may spend a good deal of class time with the “deer in headlights” look on my face. My fellow students at this level have already worked their way through a rather substantial 12-chapter textbook. We’ll see how this turns out.

But before we go much further, a quick word about language learning and assessment in Europe. All languages taught and tested are based on the CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which consists of a set of acquisition levels based on time in class, topics taught, and proficiency attained. What that means is that a grade of A 1 (introductory) or B 1 (intermediate) or C 1 (advanced) is pretty much the same across languages, schools, and grading scores. As you go up the levels, each section takes a little longer and means you are more proficient in that language according to a set of testable variables. A 1.1 is “I don’t know diddly” and C 2.2 is the equivalent of someone functioning at the master’s level. I first encountered this most reasonable system when I was teaching in Georgia and I felt like a king-sized idiot that I had neither heard of it or knew where in the US it was even in use. Just chalk it up to yet another one of those useful and widespread metrics that the world is cheerfully running along on and of which we in the US are cheerfully ignorant.

I’d certainly like to be able to talk to him

This morning sharply at 9:00 am I took my seat in my classroom, joining a woman from Italy, a man from Palestine, another man from the US, a woman from Taiwan, and five students (male and female) from China. I am clearly the oldest, although the Taiwanese woman, a teacher herself, is probably in her 40’s. The rest are college-aged (as far as I can tell). Our teacher J, a lovely woman probably in her 30’s, was born in Russia and grew up in Berlin. In addition to Russian, German, and English, she speaks a little Spanish and Portuguese. (It’s just so damn humbling.) Happily, the lingua franca at the school (used for announcements and anything really important that they don’t want us to miss) is in English. Boy, am I lucky. Class runs from 9:00 am to 11:00 am, then a break to 11:30 am, and then another stretch until 1:15. This is considered five class units (45 minutes each, even though the timing doesn’t reflect that exactly). I myself have never taught a class longer than two hours and 45 minutes, including a 15-minute break in the middle – my hat’s off to the whole team for a schedule that sustained in terms of teaching concentration.

So it was off to the races this morning with J acting out lots of words and having us guess what they were (auf Deutsch, naturlich), playing tapes of conversations, pairing us up to do worksheets with other students, and trying to teach us to puzzle out the use of the appropriate prepositions and articles for the damn Dativ case (location). We talked a lot about how the bank is next to the police station and the dog is on the sofa and so forth. I took copious notes during class which I have just finished re-copying into my crisp fresh notebook, and I’m feeling quite proud of myself, all things considered.

Work in progress

As part of this language learning exercise, I have already had a chat with Herr Director, ‘outing’ myself as an English teacher interested in observing another second language classroom in action to scout out best practices. He was delighted and intrigued and asked that we meet over the course of the program to discuss what I have seen and how what they are doing there compares to my experiences. So I am taking notes not only on the language, but on the language teaching as well (mostly things I am impressed with, only a few where some tweaking might be considered) and I am looking forward to the conversations to come.

But before you think I’m some kind of uber-kind, let me tell you today was hard. It was hard to sit and focus that intently for that long, to hear so much language I didn’t understand. It was hard to stare at a list of words and to try to remember what the article is (der, die, or das (singular) or die (plural)) and what the resulting dative form would be (dem or der (singular) or den (plural)). It was hard to see youngsters rippling this stuff off their tongues (the Palestinian man, as were my Arabic students in Portland, clearly the most at ease in the classroom). And by the time I staggered out of the classroom at 1:15, I was simply a tired pup.

Thankfully this week there is a holiday on Thursday (Ascension?), so after tomorrow’s class a little “pause.” (I’ll be having lunch that day with my buddy Kurt, so that will be a great treat.) Then Friday followed by a weekend. It’s only next week that the pedal will hit the metal with five straight days of class in a row….but listen to me, will ya? I’m not doing this because I have to, to form a new life in a new country because I can’t go back to my own country. I’m not doing this because my academic or professional life and that of my entire family depends on it. I’m simply doing this because…I am curious and interested to learn more about language and language learning, and because I have some free time on my hands. Nothing hangs in the balance except some minor ego adjustment. And to be humbled from time to time, me thinks, is a great blessing in itself.

So I’ve had my official first “everything is not perfect in Berlin” moment. Wi-Fi. Can’t live without it, right? So as you may recall, shortly after I arrived I learned the unhappy fact that there is no Wi-Fi in my accommodation. This is completely understandable from an organizational and administrative point of view, as I explained below, but pretty frustrating from my personal “I can’t live without internet access” point of view. So today, like several other similarly disillusioned new arrivals, I trudged off to the Saturn store in Alexanderplatz to obtain a Wi-Fi stick and a sim card.

Now during my days in Batumi, I had become completely enamored of (and dependent upon) a small USB stick with a monthly allotment of gigs as a marvelous way to carry around one’s internet access and avoid the dreaded TWC installation experience that awaits most of us as we set up cyber-shop in a new venue. Buy the stick and pay a very reasonable monthly fee – presto magic, the internet follows you and your laptop around the environs like a well-trained pooch. In fact, I was downright pissy when I got back to the US in the summer of 2013 only to learn we didn’t even have such devices available. Pah. We’re so 2002.

Fast forward to this afternoon. Brimming with confidence and bravado, off I go to slay the tech dragons and emerge victorious, a USB stick and sim card that will make my life here perfect clutched tightly in my hot little hands.

(You know this isn’t going to end well.)

First of all, Saturn is one of those gynormous soul-sucking multi-story commercial establishments, selling a mind-bending array of electronic devices that, under the best of circumstances, usually reduces me to quivering, sweating frustration, eyes brimming, voice catching, in under 15 minutes flat. Just imagine that all, but auf Deutsch, naturlich.

Step One. Establish that USB sticks are on the third floor. Find the escalator and head up multiple levels. Find sticks at far end of the floor. Head back down to sim card section on first floor. Run into fellow student who tells me USB sticks will not work with Macs.

Step Two. Go back up to third floor, chat with a sales associate. He scans in the bar code of the stick I have chosen and confirms that it does, indeed, work with Macs. Back down to the sim card arena.

Step Three. Try to puzzle out sim card section. First, do I want a German card or an international card? (Is the internet German?) Nice sales lady tells me I need the international version. Then I have to pick 8 or 16 or 32 or 64 or 128 gigs. How much do I need for a month? To be able to play Bubble Witch Saga and to interview my fellowship applicants on Skype? I settle for 32. It’s a number. The prices aren’t too different.

Step Four. Stand in line to register the sim card. Ooops, can’t do that before you buy it.

Step Five. Purchase stick and sim card. This sets me back about 60 Euro, but ya gotta have the internet.

Step Six. Go back to sim card area with proof of purchase. Stand in line again. Nice young man takes my passport and fills out a lengthy online form, probably one that goes directly to Interpol. I reflect that I certainly won’t plan any terrorist actions using that sim card ‘cuz they’ll find me in a heartbeat.

Step Seven. Since I don’t know what I’m doing with a stick and sim card to begin with, I head over to the Service Desk to ask for installation advice. Take a number. Wait for next available resident genius. Oh, this is an installation? Go down to the desk at the end of the counter.

Step Eight. Special desk at end of service counter. Nice young man explains that it will cost an additional 19 Euro to do the installation. This seems a little dear to me, but since I don’t want to get all the way back home and then not know what the hell I’m doing and break the damn thing, I agree. He sets out to get the stick ready, pops card in stick, pops stick in computer…

Step Nine. Nichts. “Device will not connect.” We try several times. Nice young man goes deep into the computer and learns that because I am running an earlier version of my operating system, the stick cannot register itself with my OS. Tells me it will take two hours for the new OS, EL Capitan, to download onto my laptop. I flash on the near future, sitting in the corner of this megalithic technology superstore counting sheep while the software downloads. I try to think of it as a learning experience and agree to do it.

Step Ten. I need my Apple password to download the new OS. I don’t have my f-ing Apple password. I have my Facebook pw, my Outlook pw, my Expedia pw, my blog pw, my bank pw, a few other pws, but not the Apple one, not thinking there would be any need for it during a German language class in Berlin. But the sad truth remains. No pw, no free download, no stick, no sim card, no internet.

Step Eleven. My eyes fill with tears and I look across the counter into the sympathetic face of the Nice Young Man. I suggest he really doesn’t want to see an old lady cry in right front of him just right now. He nods gently and writes something illegible on my crumpled service ticket #107. I take it and my now useless purchases to the same cash register where I had bought the stick and the sim card about ten minutes ago, confident that this horror will soon end.

Step Twelve. My receipt and the scribbled note from the Nice Young Man are not sufficient to reimburse my funds. I have to go back up to stickland on the third floor and get approval from the very same sales associate I had worked with there twice before to verify my return.

Step Thirteen. I show my handwritten note from the installation guy to the guy in stickland (after I track him down). He prints something out from his computer that apparently will do the trick. I head back down to the first floor.

Step Fourteen. I go back to the same cashier (we’re almost sharing recipes at this point) and she is able to reimburse me for the stick, but not for the sim card (since it’s registered to me and no one but me). I grab my documentation and stagger out of the store into the bright spring sunlight of Alexanderplatz, considering myself fortunate to have survived the experience, sim card or no. I guess I’ll be spending a little more of my leisure time at MLS (my language school) where the Wi-Fi is free and the doors don’t lock until 6:30 pm. So if you don’t hear from me as often as you’d like, this is the reason. Sic transit gloria mundi.

After several days playing around in Berlin (more about that in a moment), I settled into my student digs last night in preparation for the beginning of my language course today. If I were asked to describe my shared flat, I’d say “modest” and leave it at that. For those of you who know me well, it’s probably somewhere between Batumi and the Co-op. But the bed is decent, and that’s saying a lot.

Keepin’ it simple

While the flat comes with furniture and kitchen basics, on the down side there’s no wifi because some former student broke a barrel of German cyber laws by downloading copyrighted materials (and getting the school charged 6,000 Euros in the process) so that amenity went by the wayside. But there are some unexpected compensations. This morning I was awakened at 4:30 am by a cacophony of bird songs in the courtyard behind my flat – warblers, chirpers, doves, crows – all rejoicing in a new day and inviting me to share the beauty with them.

My view of the aviary

So, up early this am and out the door to face my first day of school. But before anything else, I had to find a cup of coffee. There is a small so-so bakery downstairs with decent brew, so initially caffeinated off I went to the subway to arrive in time for the 9:00 am placement test. No problem there – six stops away. Once on site, it turns out they weren’t ready for me/us, so I started by cooling my heels in the “library” appreciating the excellent free wifi and catching up with news and notes, while the pleasant and obviously busy staff scurry around.

I won’t be identifying this school for several reasons, the main one of which is that I plan to be very honest and that isn’t fair to an organization that didn’t sign up for a “secret shopper.” The second reason is that this is the internet, after all, and I want to protect the privacy and security of my colleagues here. So we’ll just call it My Language School (MLS).

The placement test has come and gone (can you spell “KEIN DEUTSCH”?) and I’ll be getting my results later this afternoon. Following that little exercise, the director himself, a lovely man, gave us a nearly two-hour orientation on everything from German dos and don’ts to all the get-togethers they have planned for us to get to know each other and to speak German. English is probably the lingua franca for most of us, so it will be a bit of a challenge to stay in character, as it were. The newbie bunch of us featured eleven students in a range of ages from countries including Italy, the Philippines, Great Britain, Singapore, Switzerland, Poland, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, and the US. I may have forgotten one or two, but you get the idea. One of the placement questions featured a sentence that read something like “There are over 500,000 foreigners living in Berlin, hailing from 186 countries.” That’s pretty damn international.

So we’re officially finished for the day although there’s a welcome party a little later this evening (if I can stay up past 8:00 pm). I’m going to head out to find an Internet USB stick, so wish me luck. But before I go, here are a few pictures from my first few days here. First, a lovely shot of the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) at dusk:

Springtime NOT for Hitler

One of my goals for this trip, though, is to move away from the beauties of Berlin and to spend a little more time digging deeper and trying to understand the not-so-photogenic parts of the city. Berlin is, believe it or not, quite poor and very gritty, with an arty edge that makes one think everyone here went away to university and never left. Aside from the tourist spots, fancy hotels, and shopping streets, a very different urban environment quickly reveals itself, often consisting of large construction sites or whole sections of neighborhoods covered with street art.  Amazingly, this spirit was beautifully captured over 100 years ago, even before the horrors of the 20th century had begun to reveal themselves: “Berlin ist eine Stadt, verdammt dazu, ewig zu werden, niemals zu sein” (“Berlin is a city condemned forever to becoming and never to being.” (Karl Scheffler, author of Berlin: Ein Stadtschicksal))

In that spirit of being and becoming, here’s a great piece of urban art featuring Anne Frank, currently gracing the Haus Schwarzenberg done by an artist who goes by the name Jimmy C:

Still inspiring

So in addition to book larnin’, this month I’m going to make an effort to spread my wings, as it were, and look beneath and museums and cafes. Part of this is because Berlin appears to be “Ground Zero” in Europe for the process of Islamic integration and refugee asylum, so I’m eager to learn how that’s going and what that looks like moving forward. If the old world is going to survive in any sustainable and civic-minded way, its cities are going to have to start looking a lot more like this one. You won’t be surprised to hear I already have some thoughts on this, but they will have to wait for another time.

More to come.