The Behrens Venture

My German Prefung(final) was yesterday, I wasn’t that worried.  After beening here for almost 5 months now, speaking the language almost everyday, what more do I have to study? My overall understanding is pretty good and even though I don’t use perfect grammar, I do know the correct grammar, for the most part. It was pretty standard: listening comprehension, short answer in full sentences, grammar fill in the blanks, and then writing a short story. No worries.

After waking me up again at 8 in the morning, I had some time to ponder and decided to share. Hausmeister is German for landlord/super, he just basically comes to yell at us over stupid things, as I just heard him doing with the rest of my roommates. He is never a quiet guy, he always has to tell everyone in the apartment what we’re doing wrong, it’s awesome. Something things never change between cultures! But I digress.

So about 2 weeks ago he woke me up, because no one else was aroun, to tell me to clean out the kitchen for Friday. He meant EVERYTHING, dishes, tables, couches, it was all going because he was finally going to do renovations. Renovations which he had promised would take place over Christmas Break… anyways, we, the apartment, do it and then we all get woken up on Friday as the renovators came in at 7AM and wouldn’t shut up. I also couldn’t get access to the kitchen, so I couldn’t get breakfast! Perfect.

No work on Saturday or Sunday, of course, while our kitchen was empty and we could barely use it. Monday at 7AM, they started again! Another sleepless morning. Pretty much the same way for the rest of the week. Normally I’m pretty happy with working Germans, they do great quality of work and get done pretty quick, but this time, not really. It turned into 1 guy in the kitchen tearing down the ceiling, while 1 guy painted everything out in the hallway. All superficial repairs, becuase well, they hadn’t been done in 10 years. They would work for like 2 hours and be on break by the time I woke up, around 10AM, then repeat and break around 12AM. Their work quality was not good and it took them forever to paint like 8 doors and some siding.

So this past weekend, they done in the kitchen and we moved most of our stuff back in. Things were good over the weekend. Yesterday, Monday, they did somemore “work” and finished up and were gone. The Hausmeister woke me up and told me we have to remove everything from the kitchen again for “cleaning.” I had heard about this and acknowledged, he told me everything out by Wednesday. No problem.

Now as far as I heard this morning, he wants everything out by 2PM today? I wasn’t sure, the walls are thin, but not that thin. Whatever, I’m going back to sleep.

I’m just taking a break from studying, 1 final down and 3 to go. They sneak up quick here in Germany, because well, I didn’t really know about this until last week! No, seriously, we held a vote in class last week to hold the final this week or next week and everyone except me chose this week. “Early” finals are not fun.

But they aren’t that hard either. The final I took today was for Foundations of Cognitive Science, a freshman lecture class. A bunch of slides and lectures were all the class was. The final turned into 22 multiple choice questions, with a %50 required to pass. I’m not that worried.

However, tommorow is my German language final! I’m not sure exactly what to study considering I’ve been “studying” German language for the last 5 months I’ve been here, but since I’m not fluent, I obviously haven’t been doing a good job. I’m not too worried for this either, I just have to pay more attention to the grammar and I should be fine.

I just find the German system so different, almost all of your grade comes down to this final test, barely any homework or quizes. Since I am not a very favorable test person, I’m not happy. However, the final week is really spread out over 2 week or more, it’s generally just when your last class takes place. After the final, you are pretty much done, you just have to get your notes from the teacher, assuming you passed. Look for more updates to follow on this fun fun time.

The cold kept up all week and it’s finally snowing! This is the view directly outside my window, it’s slowed down later in the night, so all in all, we got about 2-3 inches of wet snow. Yay!

We were talking about Höflichkeit(manners and courtesy) the other day in German class and came up with some really great differences between German and American culture, but also some between Japan, China, Turkey, France, and other countries. I really do love the multi-cultural environment that we have in our German class, I’ve learned so much more about other countries during my time here.

So some big things between American and German culture that I found were personal space, classroom attitude, and the garbage of course.

• Germans, more so Europeans, definitely do not have the same feelings about personal space that we do. This relates more so to me in classroom environment, but when I’m sitting down in a row full of empty chairs, someone will naturally come and sit right next to me. Why do you do that, there is a whole row of empty seats, I like my space?!?! On buses or trains, people sit next to random strangers all the time without question. I went out to lunch today at a Döner shop and some random dude sat with me at lunch because there weren’t any seats available. I don’t see myself as arrogant or a loner, I just prefer my space. It’s a lot different I guess due to the lack of space around here…

• Relating to the space issue, I like sitting at the end of the row in class because I don’t like getting squished in the center of the row, however I hate it when people will just come in late and then ask to get by me, to sit in the center of the row. I find this rude and totally annoying while class is going on. This is just the prevalent attitude in class. You will have class scheduled from 4PM to 6PM, but class really starts at 4:15PM and ends at 5:45PM. People will walk into class every 10 minutes, late, and no one cares. Likewise, someone will be walking out every 10 minutes to the bathroom or to answer their phone. People will talk in class and carry on conversations regularly, no even quietly. I wouldn’t call it less respect, just a more relaxed environment. I hate it though, waaay to distracting.

• One of the other random things is garbage system. Everyone recycles here, it’s law I think. You have brown glass, green glass, white glass, old newspapers, general garbage, used wrappers, biodegradable stuff, metal, bottles, it goes on and on. Of course in America, we just throw everything away and it’s simple.

Some other random interesting things were the French dudes in the class even thought that Germans were very cold, because in France everyone hugs and kisses on the cheek as a greeting. Germans just prefer a strong handshake. Have I mentioned how hot French girls are? The Chinese girls in the class just kind of joked at how everyone was unpolite, which I could believe coming from their society. I’ll say it again, viewing the world from other’s eyes has taught me so much.