Swiss Easter (and more April holidays)

As I mentioned in a previous post, most people in Switzerland have at least two days off for Easter - Good Friday (the Friday before) and Easter Monday (probably a fairly self-explanatory date, even if you aren't Christian), making for a four-day weekend.

My German class was no exception, which meant that we had almost five entire days off from the language. It seems that several of my classmates traveled or were otherwise occupied and failed to get around to their homework - and none of us had apparently practiced the language in our time off. To put it delicately, some of us suffered more from the break than others (No, I am not going to tell you which group I belonged to. I will say, though, that at the very least, I hadn't lost the ability to conjugate "to be" unlike at least one classmate. Day 1 of class, people, come on!).

On Tuesday, when we all regathered after various adventures, our teacher spoke briefly about Easter - I was hoping for a lively conversation a la David Sedaris (if you haven't read his story about his French class and the Easter bunny, click on the link and do so - scroll way down to find it. It's one of the funniest pieces of writing I have ever come across. Ever.).

Unfortunately, everybody in the class seemed to agree that indeed a Hase (rabbit) is responsible for the delivery of eggs on Easter morning. Although the instructor did stress that the Hase did not bring die Kinder chocolate - my first attempt at this sentence was shot down, although I was unclear if it was due to atrocious grammar or incorrect information. Instead, he carefully mimed his way through his version of a traditional Easter morning in which the rabbit must first hide the eggs, and the children must then find them. It may have just been he was trying to ingrain some new vocabulary, but overall his version didn't feature enough chocolate for my taste (no pun intended, but now I'm keeping it there), and also didn't resemble my Easter mornings as a child, in which there was chocolate waiting for my sisters and me in baskets in the morning and the egg hunt was later and just involved bonus candy.

Certainly there were bountiful chocolate displays in the months (yes, actually months - these things showed up practically right after Christmas) leading up to Easter, and I am hoping that my trip to the grocery store today will reveal that, as with Halloween in the US, somehow chocolate loses its value post-Easter and I can grab some on the cheap. I have no children, so I don't mind if the rabbit visits me a week later than usual. Especially if he's made of chocolate.

Tasty.

I still have high hopes that other Swiss holidays will lead to German class confusion; sometime in the next few weeks, there is a Zurich-specific holiday that involves the (literal) burning of a snowman effigy, which sounds promising. 

Deutsch vs Francais

Remember that post last week where I commented it was spring? Yeah, I was wrong.

And we've had steady (though not heavy) snow all day, so there's another good inch by now.

The above picture is the view outside our window this morning. Apparently, I am a not a groundhog (how did Punksataw Punxsutawney - yep, had to google that spelling - Phil do this year, by the way? Did he successfully predict the half-dozen spring snowstorms on the east coast?).

Meanwhile, I am still attending daily German classes - I'm currently just over halfway through my second month. Unfortunately, any German I retain appears to come at the cost of my poor long-disused French skills. When I first started class, I would think "Ah! I totally know how to say this in French, why can't people here just speak another of this country's official languages? Then I could totally communicate." Now, however, my thought process is more akin to "Oh, in French that's...wait, why can't I remember how to say this? Did I ever even know it? Is this word French or German? What's happening to me?!" It's as if my brain only has room for one foreign language, and it's performing a slow, steady 1:1 replacement of French with German.

Unfortunately, some French words insist on sticking around, particularly prepositions and conjunctions. So I often pepper my stuttered German sentences with mais ["but"], ou ["or"], or sans ["without" - not helped by the fact that this is also used in English]. Some German prepositions make sense but most rarely line up with the ones we use in English (I hang out with my friends, but German uses bei, - however, I go to class by tram, while in German I go mit the tram). To make it more confusing, the French prepositions often paralleled English, so it was never a part of speech that caused particular problems for me previously. And, of course, I am not even starting on the dativ or akkusativ articles for nouns in a prepositional phrase. That's a whole other post (or just several long, inconclusive rants).

As far as I can tell in German, prepositions are idiomatic usage - thus straight memorization. At the beginning, I tried to draw parallels ("Hmm, so bei is by, um is at, and am is in." Yeah, wrong. One of my favorites - auf is "on"). I've since abandoned that approach.

The Australian girl in class (the only other native English speaker than myself) went to Paris this past weekend and missed class on Monday. The teacher inquired as to where she was, and I replied with a garbled "Elle - sie - ist in Paris avec - mit - ....ihr Freund." I then gave an even more incomprehensible attempt in German - my goal sentence was "She went to France" (we learned the past tense this week). I did not succeed in saying that, although I did manage to remember the German name for France (Frankreich, in case you need to know). I think I said something akin to "You go towards France went [incorrect past participle]." Does he really expect me to be able to discuss France or French topics in German? My poor brain is melting. In related news, I've abandoned the Swiss habit of saying Merci as a way of thanking people and just insist on using Danke. If I'm going to go German, I'm committing, dammit.

As for functionality in German, it's been a mixed bag over the past few weeks.

I successfully understood when a cashier asked me if I wanted a bag (Ja, bitte), but later that same day failed to comprehend when another cashier asked me if I wanted my receipt for a croissant purchase (unrelated tangent: what on earth is the difference between a "croissant francais" and a "gipfeli"? They appear the exact same, but have different prices). I answered Nein, despite failing to understand (interactions are still at least 60% guesswork for me), since I figured I had everything I needed, so whatever she was offering, I could safely decline. This led to an awkward moment where I held out my hand for the change and kept hovering it there as she ripped off the receipt and...turned to put it in the trash. Light bulb moment for me, as I realized what I had just refused, but awkward, as she turned around to see my outstretched hand waiting for the item that five seconds previously I had refused. Oops. Hard to make it look smooth, so I left.

Moving date!!

The biggest news in the past week is that B and I found an apartment! We actually received simultaneous offers on 2 places (cover letters apparently do make a difference), and after some agonizing, we picked one. It's large-ish (for Zurich) and a few stops on the regional train outside the main city. But it has a shopping complex (ie, groceries) right across the street, a bus stop 2 minutes away, and even a sport facility nearby - as well as parking places for rent should we ever decide to get a car. By train, it's less than twenty minutes from the city center, although it is a good 45 minutes away from the airport (that's ok, I promise I'll still meet visitors there). I am SO excited - our move in date is May 1st, so that gives us some time to pack up and also show the current apartment (after a thorough spring cleaning) - since we are moving without three months' notice, we need to find at least two "suitable" candidates for the apartment to offer to the company in order for B to be released from the current lease. I spent all evening yesterday on Pinterest looking at color schemes and decorating and gardening ideas.

A friend asked me last week if we had Kinder Surprises in Switzerland. We do, although they are rather lost in the copious Lindt displays. This was one of three in a small grocery store. Perhaps a stereotype, but it does appear that the Swiss are serious about their chocolate.

My second month of German class started this week. So far the grammar continues to make sense, but I am still horrible at pluralizing nouns and I haven't been studying my vocabulary enough, so I often find myself conjugating verbs that I have no idea what they mean (always an interesting venture when they require additional verbs or direct objects, eg "What do you do when you are hungry?" "When I am hungry, I dance." - No?). It was an epiphany that I was perhaps a tad slow to reach - it took me three weeks to realize that since there is no common language, we are never expected or asked to translate anything. The instructor tries to ensure that we understand a word when it is first introduced, but beyond that, we're on our own. I've made some flash cards, but I desperately need to make more. Typically in reading texts, I can eventually come up with the meaning, but definitely not fast enough for oral exercises.

I've started staying after class to work on homework - the school has a small cafeteria area that is quiet and has fewer distractions than home. Last week, my instructor came in to visit the vending machine and saw me there. He first said something complimentary (yay! Ok, he probably would've said it to any student - something along the lines of Good job with German), and then asked if I was staying for the movie showing that evening. The school was showing "Friends with Benefits" (yes, the one with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, a rather odd choice for a German school largely populated with native Spanish speakers).

"Nein, ich habe ein Besichtigung." [No, I have an apartment viewing - and yes, I was guessing on the gender of "Besichtigung," since I couldn't ever recall learning it. And yes, I garbled the pronunciation and had to try it a few times. But I got it out eventually.]

"Ah! Wo?" (Where?)

I gave him the street name and he shook his head. I was pretty pleased with myself that I had understood his question and managed to come up with an almost-complete answer, so I wasn't concentrating enough on my next attempt.

"Die Wohnung ist....<painful pause> nachts....mein Mann <another painful pause>...arbeitet." I was a deep red at this point and gave up, waving my hand arbitrarily in the air, as if to give what I said some logical context. (What I meant to say was that the place was next to [nächste] where my husband works. What I actually said was "The apartment is.....night....my husband works." Did I mention that umlauts (¨) not only change pronunciation but also entire meanings of words? Languages are tricky beasts.)

"Ah...ok." He left.

I heard him in the cafetera again yesterday, but I kept my eyes firmly focused on my work. I think we were both grateful for that.

Quiet week

The past week has been a rather quiet one. Not many apartment viewings were scheduled, and although we got an email thanking us for one of our applications and informing us that they would choose three finalists for interviews, we've heard nothing further. This may be due to the fact that we have not been sending in a cover letter with our application, a fact that we realized (Ok, I "discovered" and B "remembered"; his response - "Oh yeah, I did do that for this apartment. Hmm. Interesting.") after sending out all but one of our applications. Oops.

Hopefully we'll have better luck with the next round of applications - we have six viewings scheduled for next week. I think that a cover letter will definitely help to explain why B has a mysteriously appearing wife with no apparent background (on paper, it does look like I just materialized in his apartment 6 weeks ago). We can also work in a not-so-subtle references to his job (yay for paycheck security) and my Harvard PhD (Don't we sound RESPONSIBLE? Even if I am unemployed? Plz let us have an apartment!).

German class continues apace. We started on some heavy vocab this week, and I did know heading in that German likes to spread the object gender love, as it has masculine and feminine as well as neuter definite articles (in contrast to English, which has only neuter, and French, which has only masc. and fem.). So I had braced myself for that (and, it turns out, it's not too terrible, since for the indefinite, the masc. and neuter have the same artikel. What I mean to say is that it's not too terrible yet).

What I had not anticipated was the unbelievable variety of ways to pluralize nouns. It's A LOT. And it's not similar to English, in which you typically throw on an 's' or 'es' at the end and learn the exceptions (mice, geese, etc). No, no. There are around TEN WAYS a noun can be pluralized. And to make it better, there are very, very few rules. Yep. Similar to parlay code, it's more what'd you call "guidelines" than actual rules. Much of this week has been spent frantically searching for index cards in stores so that I can make flashcards before the vocabulary gets out of hand (which it may already be, but I'm going to give it my best effort this weekend).

The good news is that although I feel that I may be slowly slipping further underwater in class, I am starting to understand more of my surroundings. I've been able to pick apart some advertisements on the tram (or at least understand what they are advertising), and on Wednesday I was absurdly excited when a girl behind me answered her phone and bluntly asked "Wo bist du [Where are you]?" Simple enough, but still - small victories.

On the other  hand, I've had two instances this week where I was "spoken" at in German, but never quite reached the conversation stage (not counting my second run in with the sweet lady neighbor, again revolving around laundry). On Monday, I ran for a bus that had already closed its doors, and when I got on, the driver decided to yell back at me about...something. Instructions? Berating me for holding up the bus (they do like their timetables here)? I had no idea, so I just sat down. In an attempt that I marked down as "well-meaning," another passenger in front of me turned around and tried to ...comfort? explain?..., but since it was also in German (and I'm 80% sure it was Swiss German), I just sunk further into my seat and gave more apologetic smiles. The bus driver's admonitions certainly worked on some level - for the rest of the week, I have made sure that I am at least 2 minutes earlier than the posted bus time.

The second instance was a tad less embarrassing, if only because it was not a direct result of my actions. I was waiting on a tram when an older women decided, out of all the people at the stop, that I was to be the lucky recipient of her rant. I'm not sure what it involved, but there were a LOT of numbers in it (some of the few words I can reliably catch), so my guess is that she had been waiting for a while for her tram, while other buses and tram lines have come and gone. I tried nodding but she seemed to want more than that, so I gave a few muttered "Yah, yah"s. The first time, she took it and ran. "YAH!" she agreed, and let a few more sentences fly. The next time she stopped and looked at me, I tried it again, but there was an awkward pause after, as if this was not the expected response. At that point, she may have started to clue in that, in fact, I possessed no understanding of what she was saying. She muttered a few more things and we moved away from each other in a slow, penguin-like shuffle, blissfully stepping through separate doors on the arriving tram.
At least in that case, I felt that the embarrassment was likely shared. 

German class continues

Yesterday, we learned "he" and "she" in German class. Our teacher pulled out a series of photos of various celebrities and quizzed us: "Wer ist das?" It led to a lot of red faces - it turns out that there aren't many celebrities that have truly global appeal (or at least not nearly as many as celebrity-obsessed American culture might lead one to believe). We also had no vocabulary to describe what they do (actor, musician, politician), so nobody really broadened their pop culture knowledge.

I was interrogated about Antonio Banderas and managed to come up with his name (I did have a momentary pause, as the picture was probably at least 20 years old, which appeared to be embarrassingly slow, judging by the mutterings of the Spanish students in the class). I was blown away when a Portuguese woman couldn't identify Paul McCartney (from the classic moptop Beatles days), but found myself on the ignorant end when the instructor held up a picture of dancing man of African descent with dreads. "Das ist DJ Bubbles!" several voices called out. I looked at the Hungarian woman next to me. "Who on earth is DJ Bubbles?" I whispered.

Unfortunately the instructor hushed us and I never found out. So, of course, I googled him when I got home. Can a person even be a celebrity without a wikipedia page!? (Please note sarcasm here. I don't really follow music, and the interview I found with him online was in English and referred to him as "legendary," so this is obviously a deficiency in my own personal pop culture knowledge).

However, my ignorance was at least private, since the instructor was not addressing me specifically. I felt for the Hungarian when the instructor pulled up the image of an oil painting and turned to her. "Wer ist das?" The room fell silent. Old dead white guy, I thought - but we haven't learned any of those adjectives, so I couldn't lighten the moment. She sputtered, and the instructor double checked the image, then turned back to her. "Yah, Ungarn [Hungary]!" he urged, as a way of encouraging her. I was still drawing a blank, so I silently applauded her when she hazarded a guess. "Liszt?" she whispered.

And lo and behold, that is exactly who it was! Now, I enjoy classical music, but I wouldn't know a picture of Beethoven from Tchaikovsky, so kudos to her. Perhaps Liszt is the only famous dead white guy that Hungary has produced.

But either way, at least he has a wikipedia page.

My first German class

Yesterday afternoon I started German classes here in Zurich. I arrived (much too) early, as I was a little nervous. Upon entering the classroom, another early student leaned over and introduced himself (possibly in German? I understood nothing). I said my name, repeated it once, didn't know how to ask him to repeat his, and sat down to fiddle nervously with my notebook.

The other student, whom I later learned was Hungarian, started talking to the teacher who was packing up to leave the room. I caught only that this was an A1 class (aka, super beginner class), but the fact that the conversation happened in German confirmed my nerves. I am so going to be the only person who doesn't already know some German. Screwed.

As the students filed in, there was a strange energy in the air. Nobody, myself included, seemed eager to talk, but we all obviously wondered what languages others spoke. When there were four of us in the room, one man ventured forth "Espanol?"I shook my head, but someone else apparently gestured that they knew a little. "No mas papas," the student tried. I frowned in concentration. Isn't papa what B calls his father? No more fathers? I shook my head. He repeated it, more urgently and gestured at his phone. "No mas papas!" I reviewed all of my limited Spanish vocabulary - patatas are potatoes. No more potatoes? Was papas something to do with the phone? Maybe no wifi signal in the classroom? I sighed and gave up - without the noun, the conversation, or the attempt at such, was going nowhere.

(Yesterday evening, I asked B about possible translations of this, and I suspect that the man had just read on his phone about the pope retiring. Although I clearly remember it in the plural, B pointed out this is unlikely. The pope (singular) is retiring, but I haven't read that the Catholic church plans to abandon Popes as a concept).

One girl sat down next to me and muttered "Hi" under her breath. I took the leap that she spoke English and inquired. She turned out to be Australian. Overall, there are about a dozen fellow students in the class - the Australian and another American were the only other native English speakers, although I would guess that around eight of the dozen of us can speak English to widely varying degrees. I was surprised (although perhaps I shouldn't have been) that the largest group in the class was South American (Brazilian or various other countries), so there was a lot of muttered Spanish going around as we all tried to figure out what the teacher was saying. There were also three Hungarians (one who was fluent in English, in talking to her after class, while I think the other two spoke Russian). At least two women in the class rattled off four to five languages when asked (in German) what they spoke. Show offs.

A language class where there is no common language is quite a different experience from any other language class I've been to in the US, where concepts and phrases can be explained at length in English. In this class, there can be no explanations, and often the question is only understood when the answer is given. But the teacher is obviously well-versed in this approach and I was impressed at his ability to explain without words (ok, it also helps that a lot of words sound like English with a German accent; mit Respekt, etc). I believe that he does speak excellent English, although I am less confident that he understood the Spanish speakers. He did resort to English at the very end of class so that we all knew what homework to do.

Overall, the class went well and I was pleased that I already knew my numbers and some of the basic questions (How old are you? Where are you from?), which put me ahead of some others, although there are definitely several in the class who can already have basic conversations in German. Our accents are all over the place, so I'm sure future classes will have some interesting misunderstandings.

Settling in

I've now been in Zurich for 3.5 weeks, and I'm starting to settle into some sort of routine. The first morning activity after B leaves for work is to spend a solid 1-2 hours on apartment websites. We've been making the rounds of open houses and also gotten bolder (and faster, which is key) about emailing for apartments that don't have scheduled free visitations. We've only applied to a couple places, as we are trying to be selective and make sure we actively want to live in a place, and not just escape the current studio situation.

The rest of the morning is usually spent straightening and cleaning up after the previous day's cooking/baking messes - and, to be completely honest, scrolling through all the facebook happenings of my friends in the US, since I usually am in bed before the east coast gets out of work.

Waiting for the train up the mountain - sleds at the ready.

It's been grey and either rainy (blech) or snowy (so pretty) the past 2 weeks, so it's been challenging to force myself out of the house in the afternoons. However, this past Wednesday I did make it to the German language school I'd chosen after searching around online. I made the mistake of asking for a placement exam - how optimistic of me.

I've been using some podcasts and a (rather poor quality, but cheap) CD language set to try to expose to me to some German, and apparently it hasn't really worked. I thought I was improving - I'm able to say hello, thank you, goodbye, excuse me, and differentiate when the cashier lady asks me if I have a loyalty card ("zuperkarte?") vs if I want a bag (Ok, I don't know what she's saying, but it doesn't have the word "karte"in it). I can ask how it's going informally (which, btw, is a big rub I have with several courses. Why am I learning the informal - do you think I'll be speaking German to all my closest friends?), although apparently you aren't supposed to ask that if you don't really want to know how someone is feeling. I can even read some of the food at the grocery store in German and not depend on the French in tiny letters below ("die Milch-produkt, yah!").

I shamefacedly returned to the school counter after fifteen minutes of guessing what the instructions were telling me to do (there were blank lines for some questions - free form answers? Are you kidding me?) and signed up for the first beginner's course. Two hours a day in the afternoon, five days a week, and it starts on Monday! I am eager to start learning in a more productive setting, and also pretty terrified that I'll be the one ignoramus in class who actually doesn't know any German (yes, even though it's the zuper beginning course).

I've been doing more scientific manuscript editing recently as well, a part-time remote job that I signed up for while finishing my dissertation, but have only really had time for since arriving in Zurich. In my limited experience, the papers are of vastly varying quality, and I think that I obsess a bit more than necessary about changes, but I'm early on in my contract and still intent on making the best impression I can so that the company will continue to send me work. Overall, I'm enjoying it - it allows me to still feel somewhat connected to science as well as have some short-term deadlines and goals.