An American in Berlin
13 June, 2015
Has it really been ten days since my last post? In that time I played my first ever open-mic night. And in that time, I’ve had my first week of school. ((Or, you know, the reason I’m fucking here in the first place.)) In the last ten days I had a BBQ at Tempelhofer Feld with Joschka and Verena. And in the last ten days I’ve worked diligently with Lisa to put away quite a bit of alcohol. Oh, and I met yet another lovely girl who naturally lives with her boyfriend. Because Dave.
Last Wednesday, Kelvin the Australian and I returned to the group conversation meetup where we first met however many weeks ago. But first we met for a couple of pre-game beers. It was nice to catch up. And it was nice for both of us to be able to speak in our own normal English, instead of the modified version one has to take on when dealing with non-native speakers.
Which is sort of an odd thing to say, when you think about it. What I mean is, Kelvin’s speech is full of weird Aussie idioms, just as mine gets super New York slangy. ((For example, instead of saying, “Let’s go check it out,” he’ll say “Let’s go have a squizz.” And instead of saying, “So what did she say?” I’ll say “Wait, wha’ she said?”)) But we understand each other perfectly well all the same. And it’s quite a comfort not to have to “grade your language.” ((More on this later.))
Anyway, we’re sitting outside, minding our own business. When, after a while, this dude at the next table over starts interjecting himself into our conversation. And when I say “dude,” I mean this round, bald, older fellow who seems not to be in possession of all of his teeth. And we both took this fellow for the local drunken barfly who has the annoying habit of glomming onto the nearest conversation, which naturally happens to be yours.
But a strange thing happened. As one person after another left the bar, each said a very friendly goodbye to this fellow; the men patting him on the shoulder, the women kissing him on the cheek. And it began to dawn on me that he wasn’t so much a local drunk loner/loser as he was the mayor of this little outpost.
We learned that although his German was quite good, he was actually Polish. And though we could have got on easily enough in German, he was quite proud of the English that he knew. And while his English was by no means great – in fact, he could be difficult to understand at times – it was pretty impressive, given that a) it was his third language and b) he grew up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. And when, in the end, it was our time to leave, we found ourselves saying as friendly a farewell as those who had left before us.
Then it was off to the convo-meetup, which was fine, but not worth reporting on. However, when we left – having decided to get another beer ((Natch.)) – we bumped into a girl who had also been there. Something in her face gave me the impression that she was eager to tag along, whereupon I invited her to join us. Well, why not? She looked to be about our age, was tall, skinny and cute in a punky kind of way.
From there, the three of us returned to the bar where Kelvin and I had pre-gamed. After a quick stop for a döner. ((Natch.)) And we had a lovely time of it. Turns out Punk-girl is a bit of an artist and had lived in Manchester for a bit. So she was into music and also spoke nearly flawless English. It was actually pretty cool. Because as we were walking, the three of us would switch back and forth between English and German in a very fluid and effortless sort of way.
While we were chatting at the bar, the subject of my upcoming open-mic debut came up. Punk-girl seemed pretty excited about it and asked for the details. I was pretty pleased about this. Not so much because she was cool and cute (although this obviously didn’t hurt), but because I rather didn’t want to go do this thing entirely alone. But more on that later.
So the three of us sat and chatted and had an all-around lovely time. But then, wouldn’t you know it, the mayor appeared out of the back and sat down with us at our table. And wouldn’t you know it, he turned out to be an expert on all kinds of music. So that went on for a bit, until we finally decided to call it a night. But not before Punk-girl wrote down her email and phone number for me (of her own accord) on a coaster and bade me send her the details for the open-mic.
The next day, I got a text from Kelvin. “Dude, that girl is way into you.” No, no I don’t think so, mate. “Oh yeah, dude. She was hanging on your every word.” Well, it did look that way, I have to admit. But I’m almost certain she said she lives with her boyfriend. “Really? I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear anything about that.”
Here I needs must point out a quirk of the German language. You see, German does not have a word for ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend.’ Believe it or not, this is a source of confusion even to the Germans themselves. Here’s how it works. The German word for (a male) ‘friend’ is Freund. The German word for ‘boyfriend,’ however, is also Freund. Likewise the German word for (a female) ‘friend’ is Freundin. And the German word for ‘girlfriend,’ is – you guessed it – is also Freundin.
Thus, in order to avoid confusion, you find Germans using the cumbersome periphrasis “Ein(e) Freund(in) von mir,” when they want to say ‘my friend’ instead of simply saying “Mein(e) Freund(in). Because the latter invariably sounds like ‘my boy/girlfriend.’
The point is, when we were walking to the bar after our döner, I asked Punk-girl where she lived, and I could have sworn she said, “Ich wohn’ in der Nähe mit meinem Freund.” Naturally, I took this to mean, “I live around here, with my boyfriend.” Kelvin, it seems, didn’t hear this. In any case, that was the source of our miscommunication on the subject. But whatever the truth of the matter, I decided to put it aside until the open-mic.
Friday was the Tempelhofer BBQ. That was brilliant. I mean, really just fantastic. I’ve written in previous posts about how great THF is. But I’ll say it again. It really is quite a treasure. It’s an entire commercial airfield, but decommissioned and turned into a park. People go biking, skating and windsurfing on the runways. People sunbathe, read and BBQ on the grass. It’s wonderful.
Verena brought Salmon and made a salad. I picked up some bratwursts and shish kabobs as well as two bottles of wine. And Joschka brought a disposable grill ((Did you know that was even a thing? I didn’t.)) as well as a delightfully refreshing cucumber salad. There was a brilliant sunset. Everything about it was great. It was just one of those evenings where everything is easy, if that makes any sense.
And for me and Joschka, it brought back the festival feeling. How can I explain this? There’s something about sitting out in a field, around a grill, with your metal music playing and the sun going down. If you closed your eyes, you could’ve imagined being surrounded by a village of tents. In some Prustian way, it brought us back to Wacken and Rock Harz. At one point, we sort of just looked at each other and were like, “dude, I can’t fucking wait for Rock Harz!” “We should do this every week!”
Well, we can’t do it every week. I’ve got school, for one thing. But this weekend Joschka is in Bavaria and next weekend he’s back in his hometown. Hopefully we can swing another one the week after. And hopefully Verena will come as well. It’s a very nice dynamic, the three of us.
Sunday. Open-mic night. Kind of a big deal for me. Apart from Jared and Charlotte, I’ve never played my music for other people before. And certainly not in public. Punk-girl came. Thank the gods. Sign-up was at 8pm and the show didn’t start till well after nine. If she hadn’t come, I’d have had to sit there in awkward nervousness by myself that whole time. That would have been awful.
She was great though. She really calmed me down and was super supportive. It was a huge help. As to the question of was she into me, impossible to read. If you wanted to see it, I suppose you could have. But there was nothing obvious. Anyway, I was slotted to play in the thirteenth spot, after the intermission. So we sat through the first half together. And it was fun, even if the music wasn’t particularly “rock’n’roll.”
At the break, I offered to buy her a drink. Her reaction was sufficiently awkward – “Oh…no, Dave…what are you doing?” – that it was obvious she wasn’t interested in that way. But for once in my life, I actually found my way out of an awkward situation, instead of making it worse. “Oh, no,” I said, calmly waving her off. “Please. Honestly, if you didn’t come, I’d have had to sit here by myself this whole time, and I’d probably have driven myself crazy. The least I can do is buy you a drink.” She immediately relaxed and accepted the offer. After that, it was smooth sailing for the S.S. Friendship.
And believe it or not, that whole exchange put an end to all my nerves. I suddenly didn’t have anybody to impress anymore. And what’s more, I was able to focus on being annoyed that I’d met yet another cute girl with a boyfriend rather than all the ways I could possibly fuck up my first ever performance. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck everything. It’s time to rock and roll.
And that’s what I did. Which isn’t to say I was great, or even good. I honestly have no idea how I did. But I went up there and I played some rock’n’roll – my rock’n’roll. The first song was a bit touch and go. I mean, I believe I played it well. I believe I sang it well. But I’d never sung into a microphone before. And I feel like I was spending the whole song figuring out how close or far I should be from the damned thing. But by the second song – and everybody only gets two – I believe I’d figured it out. And then it was over. Nice reaction from the crowd. Punk-girl was well impressed. I do believe that was genuine.
When it was all over, we stuck around for a couple more drinks. At this point, Punk-girl offered to buy mine. Why yes, thank you. What a doll. And that sort of sealed the ‘just-friends’ nature of things. But you know what? That’s fine. She was brilliant for support. And we had a really nice time, talking about music, Berlin and life in English and German and even French.
Next time, she might even perform some of her own poetry, poetry-slam style. But next time will not be this Sunday, but the Sunday after. Because this weekend she’ll be in Greece with her Freund. Whatever. I’m just glad to have a bit of camaraderie in this musical adventure.
So that was Sunday night, and I got home at whatever-the-fuck-time in the morning. Because five hours of sleep is always how you want to start your first day of school. ((Said no one ever.)) Yeah, I was a bit nervous. Twelve people in our class. Eleven strangers. Some good looking broads though. And only three other Yanks. As for the rest, let’s see…two Aussies, two Brits, three Germans and dame from Iran.
We’re all together in the mornings. That’s when they teach us. In the afternoons, we’re split in half. To start, my group teaches a beginner level class. The other works with an advanced level. We’ll flip halfway through the course. And I’ve got to say, my group is brilliant. I’ll come back to them in a bit. But first, teaching. Wow.
So we each teach – or taught, by now – twice this week. My first lesson was Tuesday. Let’s just say it didn’t go well. Of the six of us, I would say mine was easily the worst. Which isn’t to say it was a wepic fail. Just that it wasn’t great. Or even good. And we all knew it. I mean, when your classmates are saying things like, “Hey, come on, it was your first time,” or “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” you kinda know it wasn’t just in your head.
In the end, however, it was acceptable. By which I mean, it was acceptable. There are only three possible grades for a lesson: Below Standard, At Standard and Above Standard. I received an At Standard for my work. I also received a shit-ton of notes from my teacher. I also received a shit-ton of notes from myself, as we have to write a self-evaluation. The silver lining is, my self-evaluation matched almost one-to-one with my teacher’s. So basically, I fucked up X, Y and Z. But I knew I’d fucked up X, Y and Z. So that’s a good start.
Be that as it may, ((Election is Friday. (This footnote is entirely for my brother and my father).)) I went home feeling quite shit. But Lisa really stepped up. Lisa, my roommate, who, I’m sure I mentioned, is a German teacher. She stayed up with me until late in the night talking strategies and offering encouragements while we drank wine, and then, when there wasn’t any more wine, whiskey.
One of my biggest problems as a teacher is, I talk too damned fast. I think it’s a New York thing. ((As far back as 1774, none other than Founding Father John Adams noted in his diary that New Yorkers “talk very loud, very fast and altogether.”)) In any case, that don’t fly with people who are, say, from the South, let alone non-native speakers. Lisa said she used to have the same problem. To counter this, she made cards with Question Marks on them, and distributed them to her students with instructions to hold up said card whenever she spoke too fast. I decided to modify this slightly. I made little traffic signs; diamonds with word SLOW printed across them.
It was the first thing I did in my next class. “I need to ask you guys to help me?” I said. “Sometimes I talk too fast. So what I want you to do is, whenever you think I’m talking too fast, hold up your ‘SLOW’ card. Let’s practice. Ok, everybody, hands on your cards. Now, I’m going to start speaking slowly, at the speed I should be speaking so that you can understand me. But little by little, I’m-going-to-start-speeding-up, andImmaSstartSpeakin’RealFast, thewayispeakathomecosaintnobodygottime – “ and like a flash, the cards go up in the air. “Great! Perfect! Now don’t be shy about that, Ok?” I pause. “That’s what I want to see!” And they’re all smiling now, some of them are even laughing. So I decide to test them, just to be sure.
“But obviously, that’s not what I want to see, because-if-I’m-seeing-that, itmeansi’mtalkingwaytoo – “ and the cards go flying up again. And they’re all laughing now. Fantastic!
From there, I start the class. And man, I hit that one out of the park. Everything went brilliantly. Mind you, that’s not to say everything was perfect. Far from it. I still use too many idioms and too many big words, just to name a few failings. But, you guys, they really bought into it.
And I’ll tell you something else. I was funny. Everybody’s got their own teaching style, of course. And what works for one person may not work for the next. But I build a lot of schtick into mine. And for me, it works. And obviously it works for this particular group too, because I got a lot of laughs. But beyond the laughs, you could just see that they really enjoyed the class, which was very gratifying, as you can imagine.
When it was all over, the reaction from my classmates was night and day. They were coming up to me and saying things like, “Wow, you were hilarious!” “That was so funny!” and “That was really great, Dave.” I ain’t gonna lie, that made me feel good. It’s one thing when you see that you really connected with your students and that they enjoyed your class. But when, on top of that, you get that kind of reaction from your colleagues, it’s really quite gratifying.
Ironically, I rather beat myself up in my self-evaluation. I bought myself a Wegbier ((Wegbier – a beer for the road. Of course the Germans have a word for this.)) for the walk home, ((My new – and dare I say, beloved – habit.)) during which I had a solid 45 minutes to reflect. And it occurred to me that my job is not to entertain these people but to teach them. And while it was clear that I had done a good job entertaining them, I wasn’t at all sure how well I had taught them. And so I proceeded to pick every nit I could think of.
The next day, I met with my teacher. Yes, he said, the things which I identified as problems do indeed need further work. But I also improved tremendously from my first lesson, which was very important. And all my schtick helped build a great rapport with the students, which is hugely important. Endeffekt: ((I love this word. And it needs no translation.)) Above Standard. Booyah!
So I’m starting to develop my teaching persona: part Clown, part The Doctor, part Nutty Professor. And part Dave…whatever that means. Yeah, there’s still a literal shit-ton of work to do. But I’m starting to feel like I can do this, and do it well. The next challenge comes Monday. ((I have to teach the future tenses. And yet, somehow not the Future Perfect, the greatest of all tenses! I mean, it’s the fucking Prophet Tense! It’s the only tense that can tell you what’s happened before its’ actually happened! Also, I should probably not nerd-out over verb tenses. And yet…it’s so fucking cool!)) My job now is to be up to it.
As usual, this post has run over-long. But I do want to add just a bit more. Today was the end of the first week, thank the gods. When it was all over, our group (minus one), went for drinks and dinner. It was a much-needed catharsis for all of us. But it was also really nice to socialize with that lot outside of school and get to know them more as people. And, you guys? They’re so great. Once again, I feel like I really lucked out.
Don’t get me wrong, in the larger group of twelve, everybody is really nice. No question. But when I think about who’s in my group and who’s in the other group, well, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s like, I got all my favorites. How does that even happen? So I’m just feeling well pleased about that. Well pleased.
One other thing I want to mention. I continue to feel really good about where I’m living. When I wrote my last post, I’d only been here three days. But now I’ve been here nigh-on a fortnight. And I love it. Me and Lisa ((Lisa and I. Whatever. Fuck you. Which one of us is (going to be) the English teacher?)) just get on so well. We’re really developing a very nice and comfortable friendship here. She’s so easy to live with. And we drink. A lot. And often. But she’s also proving to be an invaluable ((Gotta love the ‘in-‘ prefix as an intensifier. “Inflammable means flammable?? What a country!” – Dr. Nick, The Simpsons, s.12, ep.20.)) resource vis-à-vis teaching. And did I mention the high ceilings?
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