Berlin- Before I Start

Hello! My name is Tal Mahlev and I’m 26 years old from Israel.

This is my second time in Berlin. I’ve been here for a while. It’s been over a month. At first, I took some time to get to know the city better. I visited the Museum Island, Berlin Cathedral, Brandenburg Gate, Westside Gallery, Checkpoint Charlie, and so on.
( Picture: me on the background of the Old Museum in Berlin).


I’ve never lived in a city before.
This is a big change for me! I never left home before (other than travelling) and Berlin has a lot to offer! I’m looking forward to meeting you! I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

I would like to know more about this. I speak 4 languages: Hebrew, Spanish, English and Portuguese (and a few more but very basic …) Hebrew- is my native language, English- by learning at school, Spanish- by watching TV, Portuguese- by travelling in Brazil and just a few days ago I would like to learn English at the same time . The school is right next to Alexanderplatz and close to all shops, cafe’s and restaurants! I am very interested in teaching and learning English and German.

I want to learn more about my experiences in GermanAkademie Berlin!

See you soon!

Valley

That A-ha moment!

Have you ever had a moment where a key piece of information falls into place and a whole bunch of confusion is suddenly cleared up? A-ha! This actually happens to me a bit too often, makes me question how well my brain has been assembled. Anyhow, this ”A-ha” moment happened to me today in class – we learnt how to count in German!

Since German is a complicated language I expected the numbers to be equally complicated, surprisingly it’s really easy. Ok so it does get a bit weird, I made up a rule to help: for anything between 20 and 99 just say it in backwards order and don’t breathe in between. I think old English was like this, Jane Austin’s books would spell people’s ages this way, e.g. ”three-and-twenty”. Our teacher explained that the German government was thinking to simplify these number expressions but that idea has been thrown out the window; cheers for complexity!

Even though German is still scary to me, at least I came away from today’s lesson equipped with the power to say my age and recite my phone number.

Now if someone speaks German to me, out of the flow of incomprehensible words I will be able to snatch up any numbers they utter. A-Ha!

First day at school!

Like a 6 year old, I was anxious about starting school. Since class was going to start at 8:30am, my bag was packed the night before, I tried to get to sleep early (which was a fail), then in the morning I woke up way too early, and before I could convince my self to go back to sleep my brain was already anticipating the day. Despite the dubious start to the day, I arrived to class perky and keen, with my shiny new textbooks!

Our teacher, Kirima, is patient and sweet, thank goodness because German is an intimidating language. I felt lost and baffled a lot during today’s class, but I got through all the exercises ok so I suppose it’s expected that everyone will feel like lost sheep in the beginning.

So today we learnt how to ask ”what’s your name?”, ”Where do you come from?”, and ”How are you?”. We learnt how to reply to these also, and there was a bit of grammar as well to help us start building an understanding of basic German. Three hours just flew by, and even though we learnt very basic things, by the end my brain was ready to call it a day.

It’s going to take some time to adjust to German eh.

 

 

 

Stammtisch im Oktober

Liebe Teilnehmer,

am 12. Oktober findet unser beliebter Stammtisch statt. Ab 20 Uhr geht es los im Cancún in der Nähe der DeutschAkademie am Alexanderplatz.
Wir freuen uns auf einen schönen gemeinsamen Abend mit euch.

Euer DeutschAkademie Team

#DeutschAkademie #Berlin #Stammtisch #DeutschLernen #MitSpaßzumErfolg #Alexanderplatz #Cancún

 

Me and Berlin, it’s complicated

Hi, my name is Komal. Last year, my partner and I received an opportunity to live in Berlin and we grabbed it with both hands, it’s always been my dream to live in Europe. So we said goodbye to sunny Australia and landed in Berlin right in the middle of winter. I was shell shocked for the first 3 months until spring finally appeared and I started to defrost.

 

After 8 months of being in Berlin I’ve come to the conclusion that life here would be more enjoyable if I at least understood what the lady at the cash register is trying to tell me every time I’m at Rewe or not having to start every conversation with “Sprechen Sie Englisch bitte?” I’ve started to cringe at myself.

 

With this as motivation, I enrolled into an A1.1 class at Deutsch Akademie. The reviews looked great, my piggie bank didn’t feel pillaged and the staff were super nice, which was a pleasant surprise! Customer service in Berlin can be rather underwhelming.

 

I’m so pumped at the prospect of having more than one German sentence to use!!

 

I’ll keep you posted on how I go over the next month.

 

Ein langes Wochenende

Am 3. Oktober feiert man in Deutschland den Einheitstag. In dem Einigungsvertag vom 31. August 1990 zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, wurde der 3. Oktober zum gesetzlichen Feiertagen bestimmt. Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit als Nationalfeiertag erinnert an die deutsche Wiedervereinigung.

Und privat hat man dieses Jahr gerade ein Paar freie Tage. Und ein bisschen Zeit, um das sonnige Wetter zu genießen. Man kann endlich mal was lesen, ein Café besuchen, alte Freunde treffen oder… einfach viel schlafen!

Nachher kann man auch ein Fest feieren. Zum 27. Jahrestag der Deutschen Einheit finden seit 1 bis zum 3. Oktober 2017 rund ums Brandenburger Tor viele Veranstaltungen statt. Viel Spaß am langen Wochenende!