My love/hate relationship with German

'There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it --after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.'
The above is an excerpt from an essay by Mark Twain titled, 'The Awful German Language.' (Full essay here: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html#x1 ). 

What can I say. German is not an easy language. There are days when I am confident in my skills and days when I feel like I can't say anything right. I started teaching myself German back in 2009 and have taken courses here and there. I recently finished an intensive course at the University of Vienna. It lasted 4 months and I spent 2.5 hours everyday submerged in this course (not to mention to 2-3 hours spent studying outside of the course). At times, I've felt like progress has been slow and not very noticeable. Compared to when I moved back here a few months ago, I'd say I'm doing pretty good. I can read the newspapers without looking up every word and can carry on conversations in German. One major difficulty is speaking in German with Nico. We can be quite successful at it...for about 20 minutes until we inevitably end up speaking in English. It's not a problem with my level of German but more a problem that we met in English and have spoken English ever since. It's really hard to make that linguistic switch in our relationship.

Back to why German can be so awful at times. I don't mind the word order in German, once you get used to it. In simple sentences, German word order is easy to take in. But as one progresses to a higher level, the sentence structure becomes increasingly frustrating at times. You could read a whole sentence and wait until the end to read the verb, and depending on how many verbs, it could signal passive past tense, subjunctive I or II, or simply the present tense. Verbs in German can just be all around confusing. There are separable verbs, inseparable verbs, reflexive verbs, verbs that take only one case, verbs that are combined with certain nouns to create a completely different meaning and verbs that are combined with a preposition and use exclusively one case. Sometimes I feel like I'm just swimming in a pool of verbs and struggling to find the right one.

The other difficulty of German, at least for me, is the case system. We have these in English but we really just don't learn about them or have declensions so that they change their ending, unlike German. German has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. The purpose of cases is to denote the relationship of nouns and pronouns to other words in the sentence. Let's look at the dog in German, der Hund. The der could change to den, dem or des depending on what place the dog has in the sentence (subject, direct object, indirect object, or possessive object). Throw in an adjective and the ending of the adjective will change based on what case it is, for example, der lange Hund, den langen Hund, dem langen Hund, des langen Hundes. These are only the declensions for nouns. All of this would change if we wanted to say a dog instead of the dog. Not to mention, if we wanted to use any of the slew of different pronouns, those would also change case based on their function in the sentence. Keeping all this straight sometimes feels impossible!

These are only a couple of examples why German can be so perplexing, as Twain put it. It really can be hard getting everything right in a sentence. I have yet to find something that I find entertaining about the German language. I'm sure it will probably take a year or two until I can really communicate my thoughts and needs clearly without making  grammatical mistakes. And after that, I then have to learn the Viennese dialect. Learning German is going to be a continual task but I'm up to it!

Schlosshof

A while back...more like a month and a half ago...Nico's parents took us to a lovely place called Schlosshof. It's about an hour drive outside of Vienna and lies on the border of Austria and Slovakia. It has a palace in that same lovely yellow as Schönbrunn, a beautiful garden and a farm. We really lucked out with a nice sunny day to visit. I really enjoyed walking around the farm area and the gardens. Despite it being spring, there were still quite a few lovely flowers and herb gardens to see. Also, it was easy to convince me to go; they have llamas and goats. We also had a delicious lunch on a terrace overlooking part of the farm. After our little outing there,  I became really interested in the history of the place. For example, who lived here with this insane garden looking out towards the Morava River? What was this palace used for? So, here's your little history lesson!

The history of the palace prior to 1725 is pretty bleak. In the 12th century it was mentioned as a fortress courtyard. It changed ownership throughout the years but of course when royalty became involved, it was of more importance. It eventually was bought by Prince Eugene of Savoy (in 1725). He was one of the most successful and wealthiest generals in Austrian history. His lovely French people deemed him unfit for a military career so he fled to Austria looking for a position with the military. Now, Prince Eugene already had a splendid summer palace in Vienna called Belvedere (which now houses the famous Klimt painting 'The Kiss'), as well as a palace closer to the Imperial family. He bought Schlosshof to use another summer palace/hunting grounds. The palace stayed in his hands until his death in 1736, at which time it was inherited by his niece. She later lost it in a divorce.

In 1755, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (the only female to rule Austria, also the mother of famed Marie Antoinette) purchased it as a gift for her husband. It continued to be used as a hunting lodge and as an escape from life at court. After the Emperor passed away, Maria Theresa decided to add a second storey to the building to create more space for her, her children (she had 16 total) and all the servants.

After her death, the emperors and archdukes that followed didn't care much for Schlosshof and let nature do her thing. In 1898, Franz Josef (second to last emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire) started using the grounds as a military training camp. It continued to be used for military purposes (it was a fortress after all, remember?) throughout the second world war when it was occupied by the Red Army. After the mid 1950's no one took much notice of the palace. Nature had done her thing as well as the different militaries  that occupied the grounds and left the palace in not such a pretty state. Many people wanted it restored but it wasn't until 2002 that funding was found for such a big project. It was reopened to the public in 2005.  

I hope you enjoyed reading a little about Austrian culture and history. Even after being away from this great country for 2 years, I am still fascinated by its history.

What have I been doing?

We've been back in Austria since mid-February now. We are really enjoying being back here and taking advantage of all that Vienna has to offer. We moved into our flat, which we initially felt was very tiny, two months ago and we have just finished putting it all together. We've got our furniture, kitchen and appliances, and everything else all set up. We bought quite a bit of stuff used or heavily discounted. Fundgrube (the scratch and dent section before checkout at Ikea) was my best friend for a while. I found quite a few good deals in there. We feel that for 2 months, we're doing pretty good since we started from scratch. We have all the big and small stuff. Most importantly, our flat feels spacious and we are so very comfortable here.
We really enjoy our neighborhood. We live close to tram lines and a subway station. We can easily walk to the inner district and to many surrounding areas. Our windows face a courtyard which means we have no street noise. Did I mention that we are now only 900 meters away from his parents compared with 9000km? It's really nice having his parents here. They've been a big help the past few months, especially since we had no where to stay while our flat was being renovated. All in all, we're quite content here.

Gotta love a giant closet underneath the loft bed!

Since moving back here, I've gotten my residence permit, been taking a German class and have been doing a lot of cooking. I mean A LOT. Let's start with the cooking. When we moved in, our kitchen was just an empty room with some outlets on the wall and a water hookup for the sink. That's it. No cupboards, no appliances, and no sink (to the dismay of some people!) We had to invest some money in all of that (although we got a break on the deposit). I found it great. This meant we could design our kitchen from the ground up and have things just the way we wanted them. So far, it's been working great. We have way more counter space than we thought we would have in that tiny room. For some reason, it feels bigger now than when it was empty. Since we have a proper kitchen, unlike in Singapore, it is much easier to cook. The selection of food here is also better and cheaper. The fruits and vegetables taste way better. The meat and dairy here is so delicious and did I mention cheaper? This probably comes down to the fact that the food in Austria comes from within Austria or very close by (for example Italy) and in Singapore the majority of it has to be imported, which takes its toll on freshness. This, combined with my excess free time, has equaled out to extra pounds around the waist.

It's also amazing how far along my German has come. It definitely helped, those first six weeks, when we were living with his parents. They don't speak much English at all so I was forced to speak German. My class also started back in the beginning of March. It's an intensive course at the University of Vienna. Thankfully the class is almost over; only 2 1/2 more weeks to go. I say thankfully because it is 5 days a week for 2 1/2 hours. Let's be honest, I'm losing my motivation. As long as I pass the exam at the end of the course, I'll be able to study at the University.

Enjoying a Wiener Melange while studying German.

I also applied for and received my residence permit. It was a little stressful at times but it's done for this year and we don't have to worry about it until next January. Nico had to do some hand holding there since the offices where you apply for residence permits/visas refuse to speak anything but German. We now know that married couples get to go to a special office that is down the street from us where you don't have to wait as long ( a bonus considering the main office is always busy and you have to wait forever). There is nothing on there website about this location and we only found out about it after going across town and waiting in line 30 minutes just to get a queue number. We weren't very pleased to be told we had to go all the way back to where we had just come from. So after submitting, we waited and waited and waited. We waited until one day, about 3 weeks before my 90 day visa would expire, I finally got the approval letter. Picking up the visa was also an experience in and of itself. We went back to the main office. We showed up 45 minutes before they opened and there were already a good 30 or so people queuing up by the front door. After they opened and we got to the right area to pick up my visa, something interesting happened. We knocked on the office we needed and the woman inside told us to come back later. So we sat in the waiting area for about 5 minutes until someone else knocked on her door. He went in and did his visa business and left. Nico and I just looked at each other wondering what was the point of queuing for a queue number to just have it completely ignored. We went and knocked on her door. She apologized and said she was having her coffee break. Mind you, they had just opened. It was 8:15 and they opened at 8:00. I'm still confused as to why someone would need a break after just starting the day. Either way, like I said, I'm thankful it's done until next year and hopefully I will be able to manage Austrian bureaucracy on my own next year.

My favorite museum in Vienna; The Natural History Museum

Besides all of that, we have been enjoying seeing old friends, visiting museums and just going on small day excursions with his parents on the weekends. Life is much simpler here, just the way we want it.

Thoughts on Singapore

Looking back at the pictures, it was a great time. But my memory serves me differently. There isn't much that I really miss. It's a strange feeling. After leaving Sweden and Austria, there were countless things I missed upon returning to the States. I missed all the delicious lingonberry juices in Sweden and all the amazing museums if Vienna. I missed being immersed in the languages and learning new things in those languages. After leaving Singapore, that longing feeling was lacking.

Hiking the tree top walk in MacRitchie Reservoir 

There are things I miss from Singapore. I really enjoyed my job as an English teacher. It was quite daunting at first since it was my first real teaching job. I enjoyed making worksheets and reading stories with the children. I miss them and the teachers I worked with. I miss having that job. I miss the friends that I made there, whether it be from German class or through Nico. I also miss some of the food. I loved buttered chicken, Xiaolongbao (Chinese soup dumplings), and all the fresh tropical fruit. The scenery is something that was definitely a novelty for me and I loved it. Talking walks in the jungle was great; it was the new 'woods' for me. It was so interesting to look at and identify all the new plant and animal species. The zoo in Singapore was also a favorite place for Nico and I. It's in the jungle and the amount of different species they have is amazing. It is the best zoo I have been to. I really miss the crazy tropical thunderstorms/downpours. There were always so entertaining for me to watch for some reason. From there, my list of favorite things starts to dwindle...more like stops.

Xiaolongbao in the bamboo basket. 

Buttered chicken (the orange one) from
Jaggi's; our favorite Indian restaurant.

The weather is alright in Singapore. It just gets tiring to constantly be sweating while you do everything. It also made me tired in general. I also had trouble staying hydrated because I'd always forget to drink water (and still do) I was also sick quite often. Maybe I was picking up bugs from the kids or maybe it was from being dehydrated, or a combination of both. It was terrible being sick every month with some bug. That leads me to health care. The GP doctors there are not what I am used to. I found one that was very nice and trained in the U.K. but she was definitely Singaporean at heart. A typical appointment would last 5 minutes or less. In the end you walk away with 2-5 different prescriptions for your ailment(s). They give you the medicine there but that's a lot of different things to be taking. If you call in sick to work, you need to go to the doctor to get a note. Even for one day. People there go to the doctor for everything, including colds. I had to go get a sick note for a cold and walked away with 4 different medicines, one of which was not for congestion, sore throat, or fever. I was even prescribed antibiotics for a cold. To me, that is just medicine overload. I always feel a cold will just work its way out of your system. So, for me, the health care system is a minus.

Singapore has a well connected transit system but it can be expensive. You pay for the distance in Singapore. There's no sort of monthly/yearly ticket. I usually spent anywhere from $30-40USD a week on transport. The downside is I feel like it took forever to get anywhere. I spent approximately 2 hours a day on transit getting to and from work. The people on transit are also quite rude. I've seen many people 'sleeping' or too busy on their phone to get up for the elderly/injured/pregnant while they take up the seat designated for this purpose.
Quality of living for Nico and I was nothing like we are used to and it was hard for us to adapt. He was working quite long hours at work, which for his European standards was new. It wasn't about the quality of the work so much as the amount of time he spent there. My work hours were fine but coupled with my transit times made for a long day. By the time we both got home and had found somewhere to eat dinner, the day was done. Our living situation was also odd. We shared a condo with our landlord and 2 other people. The condo was 3 bedrooms. The landlord had her 'bedroom' on the balcony with the living/dining room as the rest of her bedroom. This made the kitchen, which was in a dire state, the only common area in the condo. While at home, we were confined to our bedroom. We ate out almost every day. Getting groceries was hassle in the heat and the kitchen, like I said, was terrible. It was hard to cook much besides noodles or make a salad. We came to realize that the amount of money you make in Singapore is directly correlated with the quality of living. If you can make enough money to rent your own apartment and be on your own, than the situation greatly improves. But that was something we couldn't afford. We were paying $1200USD for a bedroom with an attached bathroom.

The culture in Singapore is interesting. I really enjoyed learning about the Malay and Indian cultures. The Chinese culture was interesting, but for me it left something to be desired. It was definitely challenging for me to live there. It was an experience and I wouldn't trade if for anything; it just had more ups and downs than I had expected based on my previous experience living abroad. Singapore is a beautiful country. I do want to go back and visit some day. But for me, living there is no longer on my list.