2. Stammtisch im Januar

Liebe Teilnehmer,

vielen Dank für den schönen Abend gestern im Weihenstephaner am Hackeschen Markt. Wir hoffen ihr hattet genauso viel Spaß wie wir! Nochmals herzlichen Glückwunsch an die Gewinner des Quiz‘: Hassan, Martina und Dario!
Wir freuen uns, euch bald wieder beim Stammtisch zu sehen oder bei uns im Büro!

Viel Spaß mit den Bildern.

Liebe Grüße

Euer DeutschAkademie Team

 

I am too emotional…

People over the world with a warm cultural background might think that Germany is a cold country once they move in. Despite all the cultural stereotypes, with my made up term  “warm cultural background”,  I personally mean all those people who grew up in a naturally social environment, in a small community where everybody helps each other or just in a place where interaction is much easier than other contexts. Community-oriented cultures and group oriented mindsets might have some problems when they approach the german culture for the first time. I do not want to mention any country or culture in particular, because I believe that every person is different and everyone can identify him/herself  into a more social/community-oriented culture or in a more independent/individualistic one. There are people who grew up in a certain context and however they feel much better in a completely different one. Anyway, for all the “warm  people” the initial integration in the country would look not so easy. First, the warm people attitude will completely crash with the German mindset. Then, there will be disorientation and frustration for the broken expectations. According to our internal schemes, we have internal values and point of references. Those can lead to the very common mistake of thinking that everybody perceives the world in the same way. For instance, my life in Berlin has been full of social misunderstanding. In my culture it is obvious that people help you when you are in trouble by asking you if you want to be helped. I learned that the German way requires rather an active style: you should ask for help, because the people otherwise will never know that you need help. I do not know if this sounds clear, but in general I learned that Germans are very shy at the beginning and for the warm people they might look very cold. We (warm people) wonder why they never call to meet up for a coffee, why they do not invite us spontaneously for lunch, or why they do not text us so often as we do. All these expectations made me suffer a lot at the beginning and I thought that actually nobody cares about friendship. And I also have been blamed to be “too emotional”, that is actually true. The funny thing is that they told me the opposite at work. It looks like the working environment makes me very cold. But I like the way I am: very focused at work and totally not focused outside. And I realized that most of my German colleagues do not change attitude at work and at  “feierabend” when we used to go out for a beer. It looked very amusing to me and I could not believe that! But time can reveal lots of surprises. Indeed, if you are a “warm one” and you experienced the same situation, just know that time will help a lot! Over time Germans become very warm. When they get you know you better, they are really reliable and trustworthy friends. More than you can imagine and even better than the warm ones!

Well, this is just my small experience and as I as said at the beginning, every person is different and free to have different opinions, experiences and expectations.

 

By the way, since I could not find a relevant picture about this topic, I would like to post myself looking “too emotional” just while enjoying my time at Tempelhofer Feld during a warm and sunny day JTempelhofer Feld

The passenger

“I am a passenger

And I ride and I ride

I ride through the city’s backside

I see the stars come out of the sky

Yeah, they’re bright in a hollow sky”

 

You know it looks so good tonight…”

… wrote James Newell Ostemberg Jr, alias Iggy Pop while travelling in the Ubahn, or at least that´s what somebody claims. True or not, Iggy Pop had a very musical productive time in Berlin, when he was sharing a flat with the blonde and charismatic David Robert Jones, alias David Bowie. In his biography it is claimed that the white Duke saved him after a period of confusion, alcohol, drugs and psychiatric hospital. And it looks like he did a good job! It is amazing to see how Berlin had inspired so many artists who created their best works in this city. However, true or not, it is not so difficult to imagine Iggy Pop writing “the passenger” in the Ubahn. Berlin is a big city and unless you work next door or you have the “neighborhood life”, travelling is part of your day. A few days ago, I was making a calculation of how much time I spend travelling among Ubahn, Sbahn, tram, bus  and I realized that it is a quite big segment of the day. How easy is to get lost in your thoughts while looking the metropolitan landscape through the window. And how easy is to meet the weirdest people ever there. Every line has its categories The U1, for instance, is the nightlife Ubahn. Here, every weekend after midnight you will see the people of the night. But not only the U1 is so famous, every line has its own character. During my travels I can mention just few examples of funny human beings who crossed my road: old woman with pink and green hair, the typical homeless trying to sell the newspaper, then the very elegant lady carrying fresh cupcakes, the construction guys with dirty outfits always shouting and drinking beer, a big variety of hipsters, almost never Berliner, but coming to Berlin to fully express themselves, hippies with lots of bags and children walking without shoes. Yes, in Berlin you can really meet every type of person and never be too surprised. At the beginning, the amount of time spent travelling in the Ubahn was pissing me off and I considered it to be a big waste of time. I needed to find something to turn that time into something productive by reading a book, planning my week, making the “to do list” or just listening to music. But now I learnt how to enjoy the trip. Everything happening there could be an input for something creative, indeed the Ubahn´s experience could be annoying for lots of workers, a “must do” for the people who instead would be happy to have a car and a reason of complaint for the active old Berliner going to the market in the morning. Instead for me it is the time to catch every little thing happening and use it to inspire a story. It is not a very social place, everybody prefers rather to be alone and not chatting around, but it is a great place for social experiments! And while looking through the window I wonder which weird, funny and incredible thing will suddenly happen. Here´s why  the Ubahn is the time and place where many stories meet and cross but they never face up to each other.

“Oh, the passenger

He rides and he rides

He sees things from under glass

He looks through his window’s eye

He sees the things he knows are his

He sees the bright and hollow sky

He sees the city asleep at night…”the passenger

Kulturprogramm im Januar

Am Freitag 23.01.2015 waren wir mit euch im Currywurst Museum in Berlin. Der Aufenthalt im Museum war sehr erlebnisreich und eine Currywurst zum probieren gab es auch.

Wir hoffen Ihr hattet genauso viel Spaß wie wir. Wir freuen uns bereits auf das nächste Kulturprogramm mit EUCH!!

Euer DeutschAkademie Team Berlin

 

Our Deutschkurs 2: Never ask “Warum”

Today is a day that must be remembered for good. The memorable event is about the fact that I went to the job center alone (my translator could not come) and I managed to reach my goal with my elementary German! I am aware that the majority of the people would laugh now and think that this is not a big deal. But only international non-german speakers who live here can fully understand what this means. Of course the task was not overcomplicated and it was just about bringing some documents. But did you ever go to the job center? Well, if you did not have this life experience, I will tell you how it looks. It is a grey office where the typical employee is an old lady whose best language skill is Berlin´s dialect. And then there is a big cue of people, most of them with translators, who try their best to understand their super complex requests. German bureaucracy is not the easiest, but with a bit of patience you can make it. Yes you can! Repeat always: “Yes, I can!”, because it helps. So usually it works like this: after waiting in the cue, the old lady´s protocol includes 3 types of answers:

-take a number and wait (Situation eins);

-you are in the wrong place and you must follow the stairs, then go right, left, geradeus room 20189992 (Situation zwei);

-your request is not her area of responsibility, therefore you must address it to another employee who is at the second floor, then right, then left, straight, room 15155151615.

It is very likely that you will repeat this procedure also with the second or third employee, but at some point you will find your way.

So you might now understand a bit better the reason why today is a good day for me.

And for this small but important result I have to be grateful to our deutschkurs and especially to our teacher. Indeed, managing the bureaucracy at the job center by myself means a lot to me: it is step forward in climbing a high mountain.

We are still at the beginning but big results can be reached only step by step. For instance, yesterday our nice teacher was in trouble trying to explain why a German sentence has a certain structure and it is always changing depending on multiple factors. Ambitious people are often impatient and I can see that at the course almost everybody is quite ambitious and with the desire to do more, to go forward. Poor our teacher, in the end she said: “Please, in German never ask WARUM”. And everybody was laughing and feeling that mix of confusion and frustration which comes when you want to get the logic behind a non-logical process. The reality is that it is very challenging to learn everything by hard, as we are supposed to do with German. We need anchors to build categories, to associate different elements (audio, images…), in order to memorize. And when there are just a few rules, then the teacher must be good enough to find methods and schemes to support the learning process. And yes, we have one of the best! One good example of what I am talking about happened yesterday. During the last 45 minutes we played a Kinder game to better memorize verbs and time. No need to say how funny it turned out, since everybody was super competitive and going crazy like a child! I think that learning while having fun is the best way to do it and I am glad to be in the right place for that.

Looking forward for next game!Kinder game!

Unser 2. Stammtisch am 28.01.2015

Liebe Teilnehmer,

nächste Woche Mittwoch ist es soweit – unser Stammtisch findet wieder statt. Dieses Mal im Weihenstephaner am Hakeschen Markt.  Kommt mit uns mit!

Alle Schüler sind herzlich eingeladen einen tollen Abend mit uns zu verbringen!

Kommt gerne ins Büro oder schaut auf dem Flyer nach, um weitere Informationen zu erhalten.

Wir freuen uns auf Euch.

Euer DeutschAkademie Team

 

Poster_Stammtisch_Weihenstephaner-001

Euer DeutschAkademie Team

Our Deutschkurs

It is the 20th of January and the second week of our Deutschkurs at DeutschAkademie begins. Ten people meeting together every day from Monday to Thursday with the same goal: getting to Level A 1.2. Our coach is the lovely teacher Marie, who is a very kind and creative girl. She tries to guide us through the mysteries of German. For instance, the characteristic of the German language to put words together: an Italian sentence can just be summarized into a German word. This word has the great responsibility to express at once a complicated meaning. For this reason the poor word cannot be simple. It is not possible, so it will be just very long and scary for us, the poor people who are still at the A1.2 Level. However, with our lovely teacher we are able to learn German and have fun at the same time. The method is quite practical and beyond exercises, conversations and team games, includes also songs that we sing to better memorize prepositions or concepts without any logic or rule and also funny activities!

For instance, yesterday we had the excursion´s task! The second chapter of our book is about touristic attractions, the well known “Sehenwurdigkeiten”! In the middle of our class, which is usually “die Pause” time, our teacher Marie surprised us with an interesting activity: becoming tourists and going to see any monument that we like, in order to write some information about it. Additionally, every team had the hard task to question very busy and active Berliners on how to get to that monument. My team got a very fast reply, but other teams were luckier. Finally, we needed a proof that we have been there, so what is better than a selfie? That is what our teacher Marie decided for us! Even though we were a bit annoyed by the strong cold, our “Project” ended with laughter, jokes and of course lots of fun!

Our selfie at Check Point Charlie was not the best picture of us, but instead of trying to have the perfect selfie after several shooting, we have Check Point Charliedecided to keep the flowed one which catches perfectly that amusing instant.

Sunday: time to try some new food!

Sunny Sunday today! What a great combination! For those who still think that winter in Berlin is dark and depressing, today is the proof that the Berlin winter can offer a lot of surprises. And since the sun here is considered to be something special, of course it is time to break the Sunday laziness and visit the city! There are so many places to see, parks where to walk and activities to do. I know the feeling of going around the whole day enjoying the sun until it is up. But afterwards the laziness comes back and most likely the thought of going home and cooking is not so appealing after such a nice day, or maybe the fridge is empty. Well Berlin is the best city ever to solve all your issues. I think it is one of cities with the greatest variety of international food in Europe. When you would like to try something new, you are in the right place. In Berlin it is possible to go to South-Asia and taste the flavor of Nepalese food, or going to the Caribbean Sea and taste some jerk chicken, or going to the Australian restaurant to try some strange animals, or still going to Africa to try some soul food!

Once I was in the mood for “brand new kind of food” and it happened to find an Ethiopian restaurant in Schöneberg, where I went with my boyfriend. I strongly suggest this place when you are inEthiopian restaurant this “curiosity-for-new-food mood”. First of all, the look of the food will be different from what you have seen before (if you have never been in Africa or in an African restaurant). Plus, it is worthy to try since you will have the experience of eating with your hands. It is kind of weird at the beginning and you can challenge your partner or your friends on how long they will go on without asking for some cutlery! But in the end it is very funny. The most popular dish is a big “kind of pancake” with different kind of soups on it. But you need to share it at least with another person. By eating with your hands together with you partner, you can experience the flavor of African culture. Here, the food has a strong social meaning and the meals are considered to be special opportunities for interaction and sharing.

If you are a coffee lover, you cannot miss the coffee ceremony which starts every evening at 8pm. A group of ladies will prepare the coffee starting from roasting the beans and finally boiling the coffee in a coffee pot called “jebena”. By the way, the restaurant is called “Bejte Ethiopia” and I wish you to enjoy this hand experiment!

That grey square

Hello you! Are you currently looking for a Deutschkurs, but you cannot decide among the many options offered by the city? You might be brand new in Berlin. You are thinking about the next move and you decided that it is going to be obviously a German course. Or you might be already in Berlin for 2-3 years never caring about learning German since you don´t need it at work and you don’t hang out with Germans. You might be a student who enrolled in an international study program and you are used to interact just in English. But you might be also an artist who has been attracted by all the cultural and artistic movement rising in Berlin in the last few years, trying to be part of the German culture.

Nevertheless, whoever you are, while analyzing all your options in depth, or just seeing a flayer in the underground which advertize the best German school, or just accepting your friend´s advice, you must know something.

Studying German will be not like taking a walk in the park. You could also do it for fun, but with the awareness that this requires lots of dedication, discipline and resistance.

Therefore, you should include also secondary/qualitative factors in the choice of the school which fits you the best. In my humble opinion, one of those factors is the location of the school. When I went to the DeutschAkademie for the first time, I have been asked to choose a location between Alexander Platz and Wittenberg Platz. Always following my damn instinct I chose Alexanderplatz. I did not even think about all the quantitative factors, as the distance from my house. Despite the fact that Wittenberg Platz is cool as well (you can go shopping and lose yourself into Kadewe if you are rich), I believe that Alexanderplatz is “The Location”. Why? Now I want to go back for a moment to the first time I came to Berlin as a tourist. It was 2 or 3 years ago and I was so anxious to see the city and especially Alexanderplatz. I was curious to understand why this square was considered to be so special to get mentioned in songs, movies, books. What were those artists feeling in order to celebrate this square which such fascination? Therefore I was there. First impression, first thought: “so, is Alexanderplatz that grey square”? I went back home a bit confused and disappointed. Indeed, you cannot really understand Berlin until you don´t live in the city. Even though I read a lot of books about it and I had a romanticized view of the city, only now I can fully understand the magic of Alexanderplatz. Alexanderplatz is more a feeling than a physical space. That feeling of walking through a place where everything can happen (It happens a lot there). A place that keeps the ruins of the East world and it mix them with an ongoing metamorphosis caused by the rapid-changing of our time. That is a place where you can breathe the metropolitan chaos, where lots of busy people run around the whole day concerned about their business and while walking, you can experience a kind of connection with them. Different stories who have in common just the great chance to share the same life space.

So you get out in the morning, take the underground and you are in Alexanderplatz. A quick look to the Fernsehturm, the second highest building in Europe, just to remind that one day you will go up there to watch the whole city. Then a quick check to the World Time Clock, maybe to remember what would be the time in your own country. Then a nice coffee at Tschibo and you are already in the class getting ready for a new chapter!

Now, imagine that your school is located in a not well-known street of any area where there is not so much going on. Then, remember how hard is to study German and finally think about how much having a positive reinforcement matters.

Do you still think that any location would be the same for you?