The Times When This Seems Impossible

The Goethe-Institut has a Tandem-Programm, in which they pair Goethe students who want to practice German with local residents who want to practice other languages. Today, I met my Tandem-Partner for the first time. He's 20, is originally from Russia but has lived in Germany for 8 years, just took his Abitur, and is going to Stuttgart in the beginning of October to study economics.

For the first half of the time, we spoke English while walking through the main park in Schwäbisch Hall. He told me about why it's so hard for immigrants to succeed in the German education system (which I knew), how bureaucratic Germany is (which I didn't know), how he loves to rap in Russian and how rap is modern poetry (I totally agree with him there!), how 9-11 was an inside job (maybe, but probably not), and how Germany is going to flounder because women want careers instead of babies (definitely not).

Then, about the time we decided to go to a bar (typical), we switched to German, and talked about how expensive higher education is in the US. In Germany, the government actually gives you money for school, and you only have to pay half of it back. But he's doing a program where he alternates studying semesters in Stuttgart with working semesters in Munich, gets 1100 Euros per month, and doesn't have to pay anything back. He thought I was crazy when I explained that I'm paying $20000 for each semester at Harvard.

We also commiserated about how boring Schwäbisch Hall is, and how we'd much rather be in big cities, where there are clubs/bars to go, different types of people to meet, and public transit that works at night (sorry, Boston!). I told him, though, that it was nice to be learning German in Schwäbisch Hall, because people were patient enough to speak German with me. He said, though, that was just because they can't speak English, and that when he worked at McDonald's, he was the only person who could talk to the foreign tourists because no one else at the restaurant spoke English.

When he spoke German, though, I was hanging on for dear life. He had a small Russian accent, but the main problem was that he spoke so much faster than anyone I've ever heard speaking German: teachers, actors, news reporters, etc. Real-life language -- the language Germans speak to each other -- clearly, is not the same language that you hear on the radio or in the TV. I could barely keep afloat, and was mainly just trying to predict when I would need to say something, or could say something, before being washed over by the flood of language. But despite it all, I never lost track of the conversation! I'll take a small victory when it comes. And I'm thankful for the opportunity to practice language in such a setting before I go to Vienna.