German class

I'm half way through a German language class at a community center called the VolksHochSchule. It's what you might think of a community language class . There are 12 of us. I get the whole western hemisphere to myself. One woman each from India, Kosovo, Croatia, and Kazakhstan. One man each from Hungary and Poland. One man and four women from Turkey. Most executives and their spouses get private language training as part of their package, so this group is the un- or under-employed who can spend four hours each morning for a month studying German.

I love this class.

Some of it is painful, like tossing a ball to your classmates and saying, "Guten Tag. Wie geht es Ihnen?" to the person who catches it. But great stuff comes out. I asked Chaba why he left Hungary. He said, in English: "Hmmm. Because Communist s---," he said. He will drive to Austria to hear rap concerts or Megadeath, but his all time favorite singer is Frank Sinatra.

Elhama would like to go back to Kosovo but the job market is bad there, she said. But the living is much better now than it was. We don't have the German vocabulary for political discussions. She could just say "10 years war. Bad. America comes. Now is good."

The guy from Poland has come to Germany from Ireland where he was working as a locksmith. He swears like an Irishman too so his English is pretty salty. Funny hearing a guy named Slawik say "F 'ing" with an Irish accent.

I try to talk with the women from Turkey, but they all speak Turkish so we talk together as far as our German will allow and then they switch to their common language.