Language immersion is exhausting. When I was studying German in New York, at least I could put it aside when I wanted to. Here, there is no escape (except maybe fleeing to London, which I am trying next weekend!). I wake up in the morning to German radio and hear and see German around me the rest of the day – on the way to and from language school, at night, every weekend. Sometimes I ask myself whether it’s worth it, especially since most people here speak English, anyway.
But then comes a small moment to make all the studying seem worthwhile. One night this week, I was doing my Hausaufgaben (homework) over a mini-pizza with tuna and onions in the Mitte district. (I love tuna pizza—why has it never caught on in the U.S.?) Sitting next to me in the window was an older woman, probably in her late 60s, drinking a glass of red wine and looking silently out at the passers-by along the busy street in front of us. She looked quite content and a bit elegant – dressed well, wearing make-up – and stuck out a bit in this place, where young people came in off their bikes or sweaty with basketball in hand to grab a quick snack. MTV blared on a TV hanging from the wall behind us.
The woman had already finished a mini-pizza and was slowly sipping her wine. As I worked my way through practice exercises, she tapped me on the arm and asked in German whether I could concentrate in such a noisy place. I understood what she had asked and replied that it was not hard, especially since I came from New York, where it is usually loud! The woman’s face lit up and she told me she and her daughter had visited Manhattan and had greatly enjoyed it. They had even seen a Broadway show. This was before September 11, she added severely. The woman’s daughter, she explained proudly, is an artist and teacher who worked for some years in an English school in Munich. (If this woman spoke any English at all, she didn’t let on.) Mother and daughter travel together often, including recently to Russia. The woman asked what I did for a living and what I was doing in Germany. I told her about my fellowship and she seemed delighted, and recommended certain museums.
A few moments of awkward silence passed, as I tried to decide whether it would be rude to go back to my homework. The woman soon picked up the conversation, and asked me something I didn’t understand about Barack Obama. She then asked me whether Obama is a “good man.” I said I believed he was, and that I hoped he would win. She asked what I thought of “Frau Clinton,” and I said I liked her, too. Somehow we then got onto the subject of capitalism. The woman said every place in the world had become too capitalist, but added that socialism was no better. I tried to say capitalism was perhaps the least bad economic system (copying Churchill’s comment that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried) and I think she knew what I meant.
Toward the end of our conversation, the woman commended me on my German skills and asked how long I had been studying the language. She expressed surprised when I said I had only been taking German since the end of February, and she asked whether my family came from Germany. I told her my Opa (grandfather) was from Wien (Vienna) and thus spoke German. Again she lighted up, saying, “Er war österreichisch!” I considered telling her that while he was indeed Austrian, he was also Jewish, and that he fled Central Europe in the early 1940s never to return. But I didn’t know how she would react, and didn’t want to turn the conversation sour. Perhaps I should have taken the risk; at her age, she might well have lived through the war as a young girl. Instead, I said yes, but that my Opa died before I was born.
Eventually I turned back to my Hausaufgaben, and the woman wished me well and went on her way. I was satisfied that I knew enough German to be able to communicate with her, to hear just a bit of her Weltanschauung (worldview) – ultimately the greatest value in learning other languages.
