As we’re almost at the end of the course, we had to take a test to see how much we learned here. You can see my result, it’s not bad.. actually, in Hungary a mark 1 means that you failed, so when I first saw it I was really shocked – but then it turned out that it’s the best you can get here!

Now we still have some pages left from the book, but I can tell you, that this 4 weeks have been very helpful for me, in fact, yesterday I was speaking with a german guy on the phone and I could understand him – this was unimaginable for me a month ago..

So if you are reading this, and wondering if you should come here for learning German in Berlin, don’t hesitate that much, just try it! I’m sure you’ll be satisfied with the result.

Now excuse me, but I really have to get going, see you tomorrow!
Gabor

For the weekend, we got a very interesting homework: we had  to write a story on or own – in german of course. As I mentioned here earlier, I have a big handicap in written german, since I had never learned it in school before, so I’m not really familiar with the grammatic rules.. anyway, you can see the result here (that’s the corrected version, and yes, the green marks are the mistakes:) :

So, I had some corrections to make, and here it is, in a hopefully proper version:

Geschichte des kleinsten Jungen, der nach Deutschland ging,
um dort sein Glück zu finden

Es war einmal ein kleiner Junge, genannt Gabor, irgendwo in Ungarn. Bübchen Gabor hatte alles, was er brauchte: eine liebevolle Familie, ein schönes Haus, und ein Diplom als Bauingenieur.
Obwohl er alles hatte, was er brauchte, war er auch neugierig und offen für alles was auf der Welt war, und eines Tages entschied sich die Grenzen zu kreuzen,die er nie gekreuzt hatte, und zu versuchen sein Glück im großen Land der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu finden.

Obwohl seine Familie versuchte ihm zu stoppen, packte er alle notwendigen Dinge – bis zu 20 kg – in seine kleine Tasche und eines sonnigen Morgens nahm er die EasyJet Flug nach Berlin.
Als er in der Hauptstadt dieses weit entfernten Landes landete, sah er schöne Dinge, die er noch nie erlebt hatte: riesige grüne Parks mit Seen und Kanälen, alte Fachwerk Gebäude, Züge und Fahrrad Wege gehen durch die Stadt, die Menschen essen Frühstück auf der Straße und so weiter .. Es gab nur eine Sache, die ihm störte: Er konnte kein Wort der Sprache verstehen, die sie hier sprechen. So suchte klein Gabor nach den nächsten Wi-Fi-Stelle, wo er sich mit dem so genannten Internet verbinden konnte, und er fand einen Ort, an dem er diese Worte, die er zuvor nie gesprochen hatte, lernen konnte: es war die DeutschAkademie.

Er zögertete nicht lange, stieg in den ersten Bus, der ihn in die Tauentzienstraße bringen konnte, und schloss sich einer Gruppe von anderen Ausländer aus der ganzen Welt an. Er war froh, dass er hier Freunde gefunden hatte, und eine große Meisterin, die ihm alle Geheimnisse und Regeln der alten und geheimnisvollen Sprache lehren konnte.

Was passiert danach? Es ist eine andere Geschichte zu erzählen …

I’ve already said a few words about how great this city is for bikers, but I have to repeat myself today.. Since I got a great bike here in a second-hand bike shop, I’ve been riding it every day, not only to the Academy and back, but before and after as well, just exploring the city, taking pictures and so on. Even with my girlfriend, if we can, we ride the bike everywhere.
It’s not hard to get used to the feeling that the car drivers respect you, they treat you on the roads as one of them, so unlike biking in Budapest, you don’t have to be afraid of death every time you try to turn left..
And, I have to mention that you don’t even have to go on the same way with them – there’s an incredible amount of bikeways all around in Berlin, with their own traffic signs and lamps!
You can visit my gallery of photos taken riding a bike here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/liebergabor/BerlinByBikePhoneCam#

However, it’s not the only possibility of doing sports here. We’ve already been to a great swimming pool last week, which is open till 22.00 and after 8 p.m. you can go in for 2,50 Euros, which is really cheap. My girlfriend tried Yoga, which is also very famous here, and I’m sure there are lots of other options – we still have to find them!

See you tomorrow!
Gabor

Today we were learning about the past. Not only as a grammatic issue though, since the examples for Prateritum and Plusquamperfekt were shown in a text about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was maybe from a newspaper from the next day of the fall, and it was very interesting, as we all live here now, where all of this happened 20 years ago.

When I was first in Berlin in the end of February we went to Potsdamer Platz, where you can visit a quite spectacular part of the expositions created for the Jubilee of the Fall today as well. The exhibited posters contain holographic images, where as you move your head, you can see how certain places and buildings in Berlin looked liked when the Wall was still up, and how they look today. From there you can as well walk by the line of the once existing wall (it can still be seen on the pavement) to Checkpoint Charlie, and read numerous posters and documentary images of the attempts of desperate East-Berliners trying to get to the West. Some of them succeeded, but most of them had a sad story, which you can read there.

Anyways, that night was a happy moment not only for the Berliners, but for the whole world, so it was really great reading about it, and learning the grammatic structures as well. 

See you tomorrow,
Gabor

Guten Abend!

As I already told you, we have a very interesting group here in the course (I took the photo secretely while I had to write on the board), coming from different countries not even geographically, but our habits and religions are also different. Some of us speaks spanish in the break, the others build conversations in english just for a change. Some girls are already married despite their age not reaching 30 years, and some already divorced, but having a kid. We are here in Berlin for different reasons, trying to get by, learning or working (or looking for a job) as saleswoman, architect, secretary, or different kind of engineer – we even have a famous swedish writer! Our goal is nevertheless the same: learning german together.

Today there was a really interesting task, we read a fable in german with words used in a regular folk-tale, and had to interpret it with our own words – using praeteritum of course! I wrote one page of my dictionary full with new words…

Now, back to my homework. See you tomorrow!
Gabor