My Weekly German Class, German at Work, and Swans

Just finished my first German written assignment! It's very strange having to write paragraphs that end up of consisting of very short sentences, very short words, and involve looking up every second word in a dictionary followed by checking the correct use of everything in a grammar book. I LOVE IT! And I even get to pay for it! Bliss!!!

My German class is incredibly lively compared to other language classes I've done in the past. Everyone has to speak German as that's the only common language between us, and this means I'm DESPERATE to speak English after two hours of intensive German! We're seven students from all over the world: Italy, Hungary, Ivory Coast, Portugal, a Spanish speaking country (not sure which one as she started one of the weeks I was away, and as we don't have a break, I haven't had a chance to ask her where she's from), Sri Lanka, and Denmark (me). The teacher is Swiss. 

The other students have lived in Switzerland between 4 and 16 years so their spoken German is pretty good. The reason they're on this course is to get an understanding of the structure of the language and to improve their writing skills. 

I mentioned above that the class is very lively, which is brilliant. There's a lot of drilling of verbs going on which we all do at the same time. When it gets to the teacher asking each individual student a question, if there's a delay of more than three seconds before he/she replies, one or two of the other students will have given a couple of replies - not necessarily the same or the right one. Last week our teacher had to tell us off for interrupting each other constantly. We're all adults but completely turn into attention-seeking teenagers in the classroom. (Look at me! Look at me!) 

My study

Two weeks ago at work the Swiss girl, Sara, and I talked about how to introduce German to our colleagues. We came up with the idea of Sara writing one word in German and then the English equivalent below it on a post-it note every morning and stick up up by the coffee-machine for all to see. This has been quite successful so far and we have learnt: Kartoffeln (potatoes), Rosenkohl (brusssel sprouts), Wildschwein (boar), Gabel (fork), Messer (knife) etc. Yes, there's a theme: The HR-director asked if we could start with words you find on a menu so she knew what to order - and more importantly what not to order! Thursday everyone in the office was walking around mumbling: 'Messer.' 'Messer.' 'Messer.' under their breath. 

The picture below was taken earlier today, when Paul and I had walked to Zurich from Oerlikon (takes just under an hour) and sat down for a well-deserved break by Lake Zurich. Eventually this swan (or its brother, who can tell, they all look the same apart from the black ones) got too close for my liking when it started nipping at my right shoe. And that was the end of our break. Even an animal lover like myself has a limit when it comes to personal space and invasion of said space by fowl, fish, or field mice. 

NO PHOTOSHOPPING!

So yet another drama packed week!

Lots of love,

Karen x

Denmark, Flu, Bitte Keine Werbung

Back to the blog after two weeks which have included:

Paul's first visit to Denmark (with five days in Copenhagen which included: Meeting some of my friends and their children, dogs and in one case pet rabbit; meeting most of my family; one family wedding; a couple of trips to Vesterhavet (the North Sea); and of course lots of food).

Karen's first experience of the flu in Switzerland (which actually wasn't much different from British flus. I have realised, though, that I speak much better German with a sore throat and a head full of snot than when mucus free. Just in case anyone was wondering...).

Hence, I'm actually looking forward to starting a new working week tomorrow which will hopefully see me back at my desk every day, all day Mon-Fri and ready to kick ass in my German class Tuesday evening.

Due to the anonymous nature of this blog (one pretends to be a little bit royal, bar running around top-less in front of French photographers), I don't have many pictures available to share from the visit to Denmark. However, I had a little Dogme-moment by Vesterhavet the other day:

I'd also like to show you how we've decorated our postbox down in the foyer:

During the week we receive a landfill of paper rubbish from Aldi, Coop, Migros (all three supermarkets here in Switzerland); furniture shop 1, 2 and 3; Get Your Mobility Scooter From Here, etc. which we don't want. We were starting to get rather fed up with all this crap (for want of a better word) when we began to notice a variation of stickers saying 'Bitte Keine Werbung' (please no marketing (leaflets, magazines, flyers...)) adorning more and more of the neighbouring postboxes. As we don't want to be different (and really don't want more post than strictly necessary), Paul found out where to get these stickers from. Out of the seven different ones he bought, we chose this silver one with striking red writing in CAPITAL LETTERS. We both think it's stylish and authoritative at the same time. It says: 'Don't mess with us' (metaphorically) as well as 'Bitte Keine Werbung' (literally).

I look forward to telling you about my German class in the next post, particularly which grammatical points we discussed. Unless something more interesting (one doubts that's likely) happens that is...

Lots of love,

Karen x