Meine erste Woche in Berlin war ein aufgeregte Woche. Ich besuche viele Sehenswürdigkeiten (sites/attractions). So far I visited the Berline Mauer (Wall), Brandenburger Tor (Gate), Zoologischer Garten und Aquarium, Berlin Cathedral, Holocaust Memorial, Alexanderplatz, and lastly a few other castles and churches. Berlin is truly a blend of the old and the new, you have places like vast shopping malls with everything you could ever want, KaDaWe and the Berlin Mall. But then in addition you also have very historical Schlösser und Kirchen standing as remnants from the past; examples include Schloss Charlottenburg und Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche. Some of the monument reminds us of the price for war, and how fortunate it is to have peace. Others shows new advancements in the nation, or stand as a symbol of identity for the nation’s growth and opportunities in the upcoming years.
In six words to describe my first week in Berlin is, new atmospheres definitely helps you grow. Even though New York City and Berlin are both huge cities, there are still big differences between them, such as how I said previously, Berlin is a greener city, and tends to recycle more. But travelling to a new nation, having a new routine, staying with a new family dynamic really tends to make you sense and be more alert of your surroundings, there are just more sensory information coming in. Sometimes even changing the thought process you have at certain times of the day. The cause can be because of the variety of new cultures. But I can also propose a few major factors that creates change, one is definitely the change of relationships and change in the dynamic in relations you are having, as you have a different friend group, a different family to go home to, and a different support group in case you are feeling down. The second major factor is the change in routine you have daily, you are exposed to more foreignness daily, causing more cognitive thinking, and therefore you are more present in your surroundings. This can then result to changes in habits, as we know that habits are essentially only a three step process: cue, routine, and reward. One change in my habits that I have realized in a new setting is that I have became a more proactive thinker, instead of being hypersensitive whenever something not expected in my routine happens, I now try to think and react ahead of time, this way my stress is reduced dramatically daily. Proactive thinking is always about prediction, expecting the unexpected.
Now moving on to my largest goal coming to Berlin: to learn German; I'd say I had a lot more exposure here in Germany with German than at home. We all take 3 hour courses each day, 4 classes separated by level. I’m in class 3 out of 4, which means the class is basically completely taught in German, including written material. The highest class 4/4 has a lot of students who have taken German courses before, some even for an unbelievable but astonishing twelve years. I find my class a little hard to keep up, since I’ve never taken German before, and self taught myself the language in 8 months (self-teaching yourself a language is indeed possible, with determination and the right resources), so I never had a clear curriculum that went through every grammatical aspect I might’ve needed to know. But all in all, after class ends, we go out for lunch and have a community activity with a random stranger on the street, in my class the topics for community conversations can differ from a simple self-introduction, to asking for their interest, or practice asking for directions to a certain place. This allows you to use the language in a real life context and practice with a person who speaks German natively.
Ja, da sind viele Zeiten. There were many times where because German is not my native language, I do not know all the vocabulary needed to make complicated sentence I tend to do in English. Such as instead of saying “The jam is sticky”, I would start usually explaining about why it’s sticky and etc. Such as, how it’s a thick, made out of sugar, etc. But now speaking German, I’m forced to be more direct, concise, and clear cut, which isn’t a bad trait, but just not my usual way of talking. Other language barriers I would say it when is it ok/ not ok to use a English imported word in German. The word for fair in German is actually “gerecht”, but there’s also the English cognate “fair” that was probably imported and not native German, this causes confusion, because if you use the “false” cognate with people who speak strictly German they might not be able to understand what you are trying to convey. Learning German in Germany is definitely much more fun than a traditional classroom experience. Not only that, but you learn a lot faster since the language is tied to your daily needs, making it more practical, and also you are exposed to it a lot more each day. Whether it’s taking the public transportation to class, ordering food, going to a movie theater, sightseeing around the city, you are always encountering the targeted language constantly. That is the feeling when the world has just became your classroom.
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