I said you'd hear from me soon... I didn't actually mean this soon, but I have a lot of pent up stories, and now that I've done my washing up and had some hot chocolate, I don't have anything else to do, so here I am.
Some general observations on Germany:
Today, I bought a packet of 'Vegetable Meatballs'. I later read the packet, to find they contain '25% pork-mince'. Luckily I'm not actually veggie, and they were delicious, but only in Germany can you buy vegetarian products made of meat. (Though having thought about it, probably in France too.)
On the subject of shopping, it is ridiculously hard to find hot chocolate powder here. It's cold and miserable outside, especially in the evenings, so I just wanted some hot chocolate... The shops all sell coffee in every variety you can imagine, in every format and every flavour, and this includes 'Schoko-cappucino' and so on, but I don't really want to get hooked on coffee here, and it's probably not the best idea for just before bed. I have eventually found some, but still... I miss Cadburys, and I even miss Asda Smart Price hot chocolate powder...
Other foods I am missing include Marmite *sigh* and cheddar cheese... It's weird that whenever I toast the bread I have at the moment, I know it would make perfect cheese on toast. But there is no cheddar, or even anything cheddar-like for me to put on it. I'm experimenting at the moment, and hopefully I'll find something that works.. either that or I'll have to track down a specialist cheese supplier and hope they deliver to Germany! Obviously the other thing is teaaaaa, it's just not the same here, and it's depressing having to buy it as a speciality drink, as that means it's small packets, one of the packets I bought actually had individually wrapped tea bags... It's also sad that whenever anyone else mentions tea, they are either making fun of my Englishness 'Oh, it's tea tiiiime' or when they are suggesting it seriously they mean herb tea, or fruit tea, which are all very nice, and there's a lot more variety here, but stopping for a herbal tea is NOT what having a tea break means! I've started drinking some herbal tea made of anise and fennel though, and that's pretty tasty.
However, there are good foods here. The afore mentioned Veggie Meatballs, with 25% meat, were yum. I've been buying by bread from a bakery mostly, and that makes me feel like I'm here on some kind of holiday, or that I'm being very European/villager-y, which I like. I'm slowly making my way around the bakeries, trying out certain types of bread and everything else they offer. They have things called 'Hörnchen' which are a cross between brioche, white bread and croissants, and are basically a more practical croissant- it tastes nice and it doesn't flake all over the place- which are tasty. The cereal here is pretty good too, Ian you would love it, they sell it in boxes as tall as at home, but as deep as they are wide, so the top of the box is a square (I hope I've explained that well enough, I basically mean they are BIG boxes.) They also sell it in massive bags, but the only thing I can think to compare that too is the big bags of cat litter, which doesn't make it sound that appealing. I also go to the market on Fridays, and pride myself that I'm buying fresh cheese and locally grown vegetables. It's slightly worrying that they sell vegetables I've never even seen before but who knows, maybe I'll learn all about them.
Food is one of those ongoing topics- I'm still working out the best places to shop and the best varieties of things to buy, no doubt I will find some firm favourites (and some things I definitely won't bt buying again-the packet of biscuits I bought were such a let down!), and I'm sure I will be commenting, should I find anything amazing!
I'm leaving it there for now, it is well past my bedtime (I'm writing this at 10:20) and I have school and college tomorrow.
Bis Bald =)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Here goes...
After reading the blog of another language assistant here in Germany, I've decided to give it a go myself. Hopefully it will let me keep everyone at home (and in other parts of the world) up-to-date, and I'll just add to it whenever I've done anything interesting, or I have an observation to make, or when anything else occurs to me.
Maybe eventually I'll be able to put up photos and so on, but we'll see how the basic writing goes at first...
So, my third week in Germany.
I met Daniela, the Bulgarian, and she is absolutely lovely. I am very jealous that she is fluent in Bulgarian, English, and practically fluent in German, but it's good, we talk in both German and English, depending on where we are/what we are talking about, and whether we know certain words in either language. She goes to the local college, to do German lessons, and she invited me along, so now I have lessons 3 afternoons a week. It's good, as well as giving me the chance to learn and practice more German, it turns out I can do a fair amount of the technical grammar stuff, which reassures me that there is some German in my brain, and its not completely pointless being here. It's also good as it's a whole class of students, so I've already met some more people my age. I'm going to have a weird accent by the time I'm finished here- our class comes from all over Europe.
I spent Friday and Sunday with Daniela and Dinara, a Russian girl from the college. Daniela is a language assistant too, and this weekend we met her supervisor/teacher, Sonja and family. Her husband fixed my bike, for which I am very grateful- it was so annoying not having it, especially as that meant having to get up earlier to go to school, and needing to have the right change for the bus, and so on and so on. I think it's fixed now. (Fingers crossed, thumbs pressed, and so on*) Sonja also has a daughter our age, and on Sunday we all made muffins together- baking vocabulary increased! =) It was funny when we were all talking together, Daniela and I helped each other with translations into English, Dinara could sometimes follow the English but not always, Bulgarian and Russian have some similarities so sometimes Daniela and Dinara would try to help each other, but often they'd find out the exact same word has a completely different meaning, which was very confusing, Maria (the German- Sonja's daughter) obviously is a native german speaker, and kept speaking teenage slang German, very fast, and probably also found it hard to get past our accents/ roundabout way of saying things, and to top it all off Sonja speaks a little bit of Russian, what she remembers from school, so every so often she'd just spout a lot of Russian, and I'd severely worry that my German skills had suddenly completely disappeared. It was mental, but it was pretty fun. It's a similar atmosphere in classes, the teaching is all in German, but everyone uses German synonyms, English and their own language to try and work things out. It's great getting to listen to everyone, I hope I pick up a few phrases!
That's probably enough for now, though lists and stories are already forming in my head for next time, so no doubt you will hear from me soon.
Love to you all. =)
* In Germany (and also Bulgaria, according to Daniela) rather than crossing their fingers for luck, they press their thumbs... 'Ich druck dir die Daumen' is 'I'll press my thumbs [cross my fingers] for you' but I'm not sure if 'Daumens gedruckt' or 'gedruckte Daumens' has quite the same effect as 'fingers crossed!'.
Maybe eventually I'll be able to put up photos and so on, but we'll see how the basic writing goes at first...
So, my third week in Germany.
I met Daniela, the Bulgarian, and she is absolutely lovely. I am very jealous that she is fluent in Bulgarian, English, and practically fluent in German, but it's good, we talk in both German and English, depending on where we are/what we are talking about, and whether we know certain words in either language. She goes to the local college, to do German lessons, and she invited me along, so now I have lessons 3 afternoons a week. It's good, as well as giving me the chance to learn and practice more German, it turns out I can do a fair amount of the technical grammar stuff, which reassures me that there is some German in my brain, and its not completely pointless being here. It's also good as it's a whole class of students, so I've already met some more people my age. I'm going to have a weird accent by the time I'm finished here- our class comes from all over Europe.
I spent Friday and Sunday with Daniela and Dinara, a Russian girl from the college. Daniela is a language assistant too, and this weekend we met her supervisor/teacher, Sonja and family. Her husband fixed my bike, for which I am very grateful- it was so annoying not having it, especially as that meant having to get up earlier to go to school, and needing to have the right change for the bus, and so on and so on. I think it's fixed now. (Fingers crossed, thumbs pressed, and so on*) Sonja also has a daughter our age, and on Sunday we all made muffins together- baking vocabulary increased! =) It was funny when we were all talking together, Daniela and I helped each other with translations into English, Dinara could sometimes follow the English but not always, Bulgarian and Russian have some similarities so sometimes Daniela and Dinara would try to help each other, but often they'd find out the exact same word has a completely different meaning, which was very confusing, Maria (the German- Sonja's daughter) obviously is a native german speaker, and kept speaking teenage slang German, very fast, and probably also found it hard to get past our accents/ roundabout way of saying things, and to top it all off Sonja speaks a little bit of Russian, what she remembers from school, so every so often she'd just spout a lot of Russian, and I'd severely worry that my German skills had suddenly completely disappeared. It was mental, but it was pretty fun. It's a similar atmosphere in classes, the teaching is all in German, but everyone uses German synonyms, English and their own language to try and work things out. It's great getting to listen to everyone, I hope I pick up a few phrases!
That's probably enough for now, though lists and stories are already forming in my head for next time, so no doubt you will hear from me soon.
Love to you all. =)
* In Germany (and also Bulgaria, according to Daniela) rather than crossing their fingers for luck, they press their thumbs... 'Ich druck dir die Daumen' is 'I'll press my thumbs [cross my fingers] for you' but I'm not sure if 'Daumens gedruckt' or 'gedruckte Daumens' has quite the same effect as 'fingers crossed!'.
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