On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

When I arrived in Cologne, I didn’t speak German very well. As a matter of fact, that is just about the first thing I said to my host, Ludwig, when he picked me up at the train station. “Mein Deutch is nicht sehr gut.” 

Now, after a full week being 100% immersed in German, from every single meal and daily interaction to daily language lessons, I can honestly say…

I still don’t speak German very well.

BUT I do, without a doubt, speak it better! Much better, actually. 

And, that’s what matters most – getting better, step by step. 

I still test at the A2 level that I started my week with, but a much higher level of A2 than before. And, the biggest change is one that is much more impactful than what a written exam can show.

When I arrived in Berlin, I didn’t have the moxie to actually say German words to German people, even though I knew more than a few. When I left Berlin, I managed to take a baby step with my willingness to say, “Hello, sorry, I don’t speak German very well.” in German. That, in itself, was progress.

Well, I can now proudly announce that, with a week of full German immersion under my belt, I have found the mettle to brazenly, but innocently, butcher the beauty of the German language in front of actual Germans. I now have the nerve to piece together astoundingly broken sentences in real live interactions. While I will issue a heartfelt apology for any general insult to the language that might result from my meager attempt to communicate in it, I do know, my efforts are enough to facilitate actual information transfer! This is great progress!

And I have 4 weeks of German study in Vienna ahead of me. So, the sky is the limit!

And, as per my goal for the end of my stay in each country that I study in, I actually succeeded in writing a blog post in German at the end of the week. It serves as a decent summary of my week – short, sweet and written with the linguistic prowess of a 10 year old. But, hey we gotta start somewhere!  Well, I should say, I learned enough to be able to write a first draft of a blog post. Thanks to autocorrect and a set of corrections my German hosts and teachers helped me make, my draft turned into something that is, at the very least, readable. If you speak any German or just want to see German words that I made – click here! 

Since I have a (slightly) better grasp of the English language, this post is a much more fleshed out version of my report on my week in Bornheim (read – waaaaay more wordy, and unapologetically so). I think, after a week of only being able to speak in sentence fragments, there is a certain amount of word build up and it seems to be pouring out in the long paragraphs of this post. Despite being proud to have pieced together a summary in German, it does feel good to feel the flow of words that I can twist and turn around corners of nuance with my native language.

Don’t get me wrong. Expressing oneself with such fan favorites like, “Then we went to the museum. I liked the museum. It was interesting.” is fantastic. And, when scribbled in crayon with a few accompanying stick figure drawings, it is definitely more than enough to win you a coveted spot on your parents refrigerator when you are 8. However, it feels nice, at 46, to be able to fancy things up a bit. 

In terms of my linguistic journey throughout the week, one of my highlights happened when my teacher, Ludwig, and I went to a buffet restaurant for lunch during our visit to Bonn. It was an incredibly small moment in terms of time and general import in the goings on of day-to-day life, but, for my language learning journey, it was a milestone. To read more about my buffet adventure, click here.

It was really fantastic for me to immerse myself in German all week. I can hardly believe how much I understood! 

And, my hosts were absolutely fantastic – Ludwig and Sylvie. They were warm, welcoming and fun!

I would say, hands down, the best part of my week were my conversations with Ludwig and Sylvie. Sitting around the breakfast table, the lunch table or the dinner table, (which, incidentally, are all the same table) the conversations bounced from tidbits of German instruction to chatting about life, travel, philosophy and all the way to the biggest issues and questions of our world, past, present and future – and then circling all the way back to the simple issues of the day in front of or behind us.

The fact that I actually felt like I was in real conversations still blows my mind. Somehow, my brain was able to piece together the words I already knew, with the ones I could take a good guess at, with context, with facial expressions and hand gestures and, somehow, for the most part, put it all in a blender and land me in a place of actually understanding what they were saying. It was clear that the two of them had lots of interesting things to say and lots of interesting life lived that I was so interested to hear about. I was glad I was able to understand as much as I did – but I understood enough to know that there was a lot I was missing out on too. That is part of the value of the immersive experience as it just made me that much hungrier to improve.

And, as the week progressed, I was more and more able to contribute on my side of the conversation. As each day built on the one before, I was able to share more and more real and meaningful information about my life and my thoughts. It was so neat to see the stories I was telling landing in their ears. 

There are so many layers to learning a language, and so many levels of learning that happen before you can really claim a state of total ease and fluency. But, long before fluency, there is the most raw and primal purpose of language – just getting information from here to there. By the end of the week, it was amazing to me how much information I was able to transport across the kitchen table about my life, about my perspectives of things going on in our world. Even though I did it in broken and bruised German, it was enough to get the job done.

So, yea, that was the best part of my week.

The second best part was just the fact that the week was all in German. Gosh I loved that. It was strange. It was uncomfortable. It was awkward. It was challenging. It was tiring. And I loved every second of it.

I had already had the fully immersive language experience in my last week in France. And I loved it there. But the big difference is, I spoke decent French coming into that week. I definitely ran into plenty of things I didn’t understand or times when I stumbled over myself to find how to express myself and plenty of times where I expressed myself with tons of mistakes in my grammar, but, I could just hang out in the flow of conversation and I understood about 95% of what was going on around me. This was different. And, there wasn’t a single second where I wished for the relief of an English word. Every once in a while, they would throw one out there (oddly, usually for really easy words that I clearly knew, right after saying about a hundred words I didn’t know) and, honestly, my skin bristled each time, even though it was, technically, helpful. I so much more preferred when they struggled with me, trying to find German words I did understand to help me understand the ones I didn’t – which is what they mostly did. I can only imagine how much patience that takes for them to do, especially when you could just take the easy route and say the English word. I’m grateful that, for the most part, they took the hard road.

One of my other favorite parts was this, when I was really struggling to communicate something that was far beyond my German capacity, since Sylvie is French, we would pop over into French so she could understand what I was trying to say and then help me get there in German. For me, this still gave me the feeling of being in an immersion experience, even though it was technically a bit of a cheat from the full German immersion. It was so neat to feel that the easy bridge to understanding for me was in French! I knew, during my first month of the trip in France that my French had been improving, but it is all of the times I’ve gotten to use my French since then that have absolutely confirmed it.

So, yea, I absolutely loved the full immersion of 1 week in German.

When each day was over, I did give my brain a break to rest and recover and either watched English entertainment, or German language entertainment with English subtitles. But almost all communication I had with real human beings was in German. And I loved it.

The third best part? Well, that was clearly SCRABBLE NIGHT! For those of you that don’t know me, I grew up in a house where scrabble is a bloodsport. My dad taught us girls to play hard and go for the win. He also had a brilliant strategy. For years, of course, he would crush the heck out of us game after game. Eventually, we started to build skill, we started laying down those 7 letter words and grabbing the big money points and gleefully grinding my dad deep into 3rd place. He would just smugly sit there and say, “I win either way. I taught you everything you know.” He’s not wrong. He deserves the gloat. Well, when the scrabble board laid out in front of me and I felt my scrabble bloodlust begin to brew, I realized I was up against the reality that my German vocabulary is lacking, to say the least. Well, turns out scrabble frenzy overcomes linguistic inadequacy. I came in second place! Not too shabby! 

I can’t celebrate my scrabble podium spot fully without giving props to Nicole. She helped me out more than a few times and even sacrificed a play for me so I could lay down a solid word. I am told she usually takes the crown at the scrabble table, but, thanks to her generosity with me, she landed herself in last place. Okay – that acknowledgment aside, I played the heck out of that scrabble and earned my points. So, yea, scrabble night was a highlight.

Over the course of the week, I ate lots of delicious German food – a handful of wursts, Schweinhaxe (which google says translates to pork knuckle), sauerkraut, and potatoes.

Pork knuckle! Mmm…

Though the program that I signed up for told me that I would be in Cologne, in reality, we were in a small town about 20 minutes outside of Cologne called Bornheim. Driving from the train station in Cologne to Bornheim, I definitely felt, out of all of the places I’ve been so far on this trip, this part of western Germany was reminding me the most of home. 

During the week, Ludwig took me to Bonn, former capitol of West Germany, where we visited the Haus der Gischichte – the history museum that tells the story of Germany since World War II. I love learning about history. I had been particularly looking forward to learning more about the history of Germany, specifically. It is a history that, to me, tells a very powerful, important and impactful story about, not just one country, but about humanity itself. For me, though there is a lot of pain in the history of Germany, I also find a tremendous amount of hope. For all of the darkness that occurred there, the story of healing and repair is profound. History is often taken for granted as the only way things could have turned out, but there are a million ways every story can go. At least from the view of an outsider that didn’t live it and doesn’t really know all that much about it, there is a lot that has happened in Germany since the end of World War II that to me, is downright miraculous – and that gives me hope. 

Our first day in Bonn, at the museum, we didn’t have enough time to see all the exhibits I had wanted to see and Ludwig said we could and would come back. While we were in the museum, Ludwig told me stories of his life related to the things we saw in the museum. In those moments, I desperately wished I understood German better. I was able, only, to gather the most fundamental elements of his stories and I could tell that there were many stories to tell. I did my best to follow along.

We did have time in that first visit to see the exhibit about the end of the Berlin wall and the story of German reunification that followed. When watching the video telling the story of the night the wall came down, I found myself overcome with emotion. It’s a story that is very personal to Germany, but it is also a deeply human story of loss and separation and reconnection. It is a story of light breaking through into a dark room.

Ludwig later told me that he had seen me getting emotional. He shared with me how it had been emotional for him too – which, of course, was not surprising at all. I was an observer from afar. It meant something to me, but this moment in history meant something to me from across the miles of ocean. To hear him share what it meant to him, for me was special – just knowing that this was a part of his life, a part of his personal story. “I really had thought it would never happen”, he told me. The look in his eyes made any prior necessity I had been feeling to understand German irrelevant in that moment. I heard volumes. I can only begin to imagine what that must have been like to live through. If one night, someone told me that while Ryan was out for dinner across town, a wall went up and I wouldn’t be able to see him for the next 28 years, I can’t begin to imagine how I would feel. And I can’t begin to imagine how I would feel if, with just as much unexpectedness, one night that wall just came down and there he was. It’s an unbelievable thing. But you have to believe it – because it happened. History, for the best and the worst of what humans are capable to be and to do, has a way of forcing you to believe unbelievable things.

I really got a lot out of our visit to the museum.

Oh, and I can’t get through my post about my week in Western Germany without mentioning the subways. I was obsessed with taking pictures of the subway train and the subway stations. I was agog. It was SPOTLESS. On our way back from Bonn, sitting in the train station, I commented to Ludwig for about the hundredth time with the same observation.

“Es ist ganz sauber!” I exclaimed.

This translates to, “It is completely clean!”

Ludwig, ever on his toes and always ready with a mischevious glint in his eye showed his meticulous German nature and playful spirit when he responded with a finger point to the ONE piece of garbage in sight on the floor.

We both laughed. I conceded.

“Ok. Es ist sehr, SEHR sauber.”/”Ok – it is very, VERY clean.”

We spent another afternoon in the actual city of Cologne. Ludwig toured me around the old town. He took me into a bunch of brewhouses to show me the gorgeous art and architecture inside these pubs, before we landed in one where we would partake of the gustatory delights. 

There wasn’t much on the menu that I could eat, thanks to my allergies. Luckily, the one thing I could eat is the thing I would have chosen anyways. Schwienhaxe! Google translate says that means “Pig Knuckles”. If this was a pig knuckle, well, they have monster pigs in Germany. This thing was huge! And Julie was happy. 🙂

Before I got to Cologne, every time I mentioned to anyone that I would be going to Cologne, they said something to the effect of, “Oh, the cathedral is beautiful.” I knew nothing about the cathedral in Cologne. I had never heard of it.

Beautiful is an understatement.

I’m not trying to start any fights but, I had just paid a visit to the iconic and stunning Notre Dame and, well, I gotta say, well, – okay, I’m too chicken to say it, but I’ll see how much the pictures can do the talking. It was astounding. 

My flight left at 5PM on Saturday, so we had time on my last morning to make our way back to Bonn for one more visit to the museum where I got to travel from 1945 to the present time through the eyes of the generations that have followed the rise and fall of National Socialism in Germany. It was powerful and I’m really glad I got a chance to see it. There is so much more to say than that, but, it was a powerful and reflective way to end my week in Bornheim and my 10 days in Germany.

It was a really great week. Everything had been wonderful. Well, almost everything.

There was one not-so-great-thing traveling with me the whole week, starting on Tuesday. 

Nicole had offered to take me on a walk. The walk itself was a highlight. It was the first time up until that moment that I really started trying to speak in German. Nicole and I talked the whole walk and she was gracious and helpful escorting me through my attempts at communication.

We passed by beautiful horses, wide open rolling green hills that reminded me of home and we even saw a camel! I recently found out during our trip in Morocco that I LOVE camels. And this camel had the keys to my heart right away. It was a great walk! And we even got to see a rainbow!

When I got back from the walk, I started to feel the beginnings of some allergies. I figured it was hay seeds in the wind or pollen. No big deal, I thought. Well, those initial allergy signals ended up keeping me from having a single good nights sleep for the rest of my visit. And, with day in and day out pushing my brain to the max in an all German environment, that was pretty brutal. I was exhausted by week’s end. Every night, my lungs were on fire and, even when I did sleep, it wasn’t restful sleep and I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a mac truck. So, that part was not particularly fun.

HOWEVER, it ended up providing a great opportunity to learn all sorts of new words in German about health and sickness! I got to have the experience of navigating a doctor’s visit in Germany. I learned the words for cough, lungs, shivers, cold, flu and all sorts of other useful vocabulary! So, silver lining!

My hosts were so gracious, doing everything they could to help me be comfortable. I even came downstairs one day and Sylvie had purchased a new mattress for the bed – just in case it was the mattress I was allergic to! Yes, these are the kind of people we are talking about!

By the end of the week, it was becoming more and more clear – these were not allergies. I was sick.

You know, I saw this coming. Not from a physical perspective, but from a “laws of the Universe” perspective. On my way from Berlin to Cologne, I remember having the actual thought, “Wow – I’m crushing it on this trip. All of this travel, all of this physical strain, and I haven’t gotten sick at all.” As soon as the thought crossed my mind and with a feeling of pride and a genuine desire to brag about it, I knew I was doomed. The universe just can’t let that kind of thinking go on too long without a swift serving of humble pie, at least for me. During our Morocco trip, one guy in front of us on the van was wiping his nose with a tissue pretty regularly and told us he was just getting over a cold. I also felt the actual molecules of a passenger next to me on my flight from Morocco to Paris waft over my shoulders after a solid cough. This is a game of statistics, and with an immune system likely weakened for all manner of travel-related reasons, my number was up. My guess is that it was allergies to pollen and hay that got the party started and broke my immune system down to pebbles, but that it was a virus that really took me all the way. 

So, alas, I consider it a success that I managed to leave for my trip without catching the sickness that had been sweeping through town around New Years. And I made it almost 2 months and 4 countries before the inevitable caught up with me. And, the best news is, I am nice and humble now.

And, as for timing, I suppose it couldn’t have happened at a better time. I was still able to enjoy all the benefits of living in my German environment and had a warm couple there to care for me. My next stop is a time when I will have 4 weeks in one place with more time to rest than I have had in the last 5 weeks. And with four whole weeks here to enjoy Vienna, being sick for a few days won’t ruin the whole visit. 

So, there you have it – a wonderful, (albeit physically uncomfortable), enriching and fun-loving time in Bornheim! 

Next stop – Vienna! More German! More learning! More fun!

I’m leaving Germany with tremendous gratitude. Thank you to my wonderful hosts, Sylvie and Ludwig! Thank you to Cologne and Bonn. Thank you to German. And thank you to Germany! 

Until we meet again! Tchuss!