Learning German: Daham

I've been in Vienna for just short of three months now, and I've reached a point in my adjustment where I can say that nowhere in the world feels as much like home right now as this city does.

German differentiates between "die Heimat" ("home," as in the place where you're from) and "daheim" / "daham" ("home," as in where you live). I will always have a special connection to Pittsburgh -- in my complete admiration for working-class culture, in the way a turn-of-the-century brick factory brings tears to my eyes, in the way I value grit more than anything, in my complete and utter belief thats unions are the way to a better life. (Speaking of which, check this out!) Pittsburgh is and will always be a part of who I am.

But, at least for now, I'm a Wienerin, too. I have built a life for myself here.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

I love my job. The kids are, for the most part, engaged and interested in discussing American life and politics, and almost every day I come home with a new story to tell about something my students said. The teachers have begun to warm up to me, recognizing that I can actually lead really great lessons and giving me freedom to let my imagination run wild in coming up with fun activities that relate to the topics they're discussing in class. Not all of my lessons are home runs, of course, but almost every week, at least one student in one of my classes will come up to me and say, "That was really fun. Thank you." Teaching really is the best thing ever.

As great as things are at the Karajangasse are, though, there's one dark reality staring all of us in the face: These kids are not going to do well on the Matura.

Nur Du Allein

I realize that many of my blog posts lately have been quite snarky. Because I'm so familiar with Wien now, I don't feel the need to gush over it the way I once did. I prefer to write about the things I find amusing, the things that strike me as odd as I go about the city interacting with its people.

Sometimes, though, even this hardened Wienerin is struck by how lucky I am to live in such a magical city. Like this weekend, when the first Christkindlmärkte opened.

"Check" it!

English is cool here. This means that advertisements* -- although ostensibly in German -- will consist of as much as 80% English words ("Laser shows! Gratis drinks! Die Night wird awesome!"). Rappers will try to sound tough by spitting lines like "Kein Gangster auf der Street ist so beliebt bei den Kids." And pretty much everyone drops English words into their everyday speech.

When I first arrived in Austria, I was very paranoid about this. Is this person just saying "Beste Party Ever" or "That's it" because I'm around, and I'm missing out on some Ur-Austrian expression that they would normally say?

Slowly, though, I've been realizing that that's just the way German works. In fact, I'm often the one who looks silly for using German words, when everyone just uses the English one. When I wanted to know what to pack for my work at Uni Wien last summer, I looked in my favorite online dictionary / Austrian lifeline for the best translation of "dress code," and proudly wrote in my email to my boss, "Gibt's Kleiderregelungen?" "Nein, es gibt keinen Dress-Code" was her response.

Sometimes, though, German uses words that, at first glance, look like English -- but will confuse the living daylights out of you if you are actually a native speaker of English (or, as German speakers would say, "eine Native Speaker"-- even though everyone is a native speaker of something!). Here are some examples, for your (Schaden)freude:

Schweigen ist Schuld

Today, I went on a Stadtrundgang in commemoration of (Reichs)kristallnacht, also known as the Novemberpogrom. Every year, a group of citizens comes together to research and organize a tour of another part of the city in order to uncover stories of the Nazi period that have been forgotten, often in places where no public memorials stand. This year, the focus was on the 4. and 5. Bezirke. We were on the move for around two hours, listening to stories of burned synagogues, "arisierte" (aryanized) shops and apartments, and street violence.

Private memories, most notably the first-person accounts of several people who had lived in the district before fleeing the country, became public. Three police officers accompanied us on our way, stopping traffic at every intersection for us to pass through. At some of the stops, people heard our portable microphone and came out of their houses, or opened the windows of their flats, in order to hear and remember.

Schüler Say the Darndest Things

In general, I've been really impressed by the English levels of my students. I am, of course, getting a bit of a biased sample, because only the ones who feel comfortable enough to speak in English tend to participate in class. And I'm not surprised that some of them prefer to not speak, because the kids can be quite brutal to each other. On Wednesday, for example, I had one of my sixth-form classes do small group discussions about various issues in the American election. One of the groups was talking about Afghanistan, and so one of the boys said, "Yes, war is bad. It costs much death of soldiers." Whereupon his partner gave him a dirty look and said, "Much death of soldiers? Seriously?"

Because young people in Austria watch so much American television*, they have a really good idea of what correct English sounds like -- even if they can't quite speak it themselves. Stefan, a friend of mine from my dorm, for example, speaks absolutely awful English. (He once asked me how to translate "Studenten" when he was trying to have a conversation with one of the people in the dorm who speaks no German.) But another time, we got to talking about TV shows, and he quotes me an entire scene of Family Guy, in perfect English (punctuated, of course, by German phrases like "Und dann schaut er durchs Fenster und sagt...").

I try to be supportive of my students even when they make mistakes, so that they'll continue to want to speak. Sometimes, though, I find it hard not to laugh along with their classmates at some of the things they say. And so, in the spirit of Schadenfreude, here are some of my favorite exchanges with students in the past three weeks: