Back to the daily grind

So, enough of all that fountain frolicking and other such unnecessary fun. Having only done one statistics exam in the previous semester and failed it, this was to be my 2nd semester in which I really knuckled down and got some real grades (French doesn't count as a real subject - it's just English spoken all wrong).

With this in mind, I took the unprecedented step of choosing 3 actual statistics modules, and just the one module of French to hopefully keep me sane. They turned out to be Statistik 4, which is a bit like Statistik 3 really, Lineare Modell, which is lead by a man who has a voice wasted on statistics - sometimes in lectures I close my eyes and imagine I'm in some kind of numbers therapy session, where all my cares are washed away by the proof to Fermat's Last Theorum. If only.

So, breaking with the usual strict chronological structure of this blog, I thought I'd take a look back to my previous post on 11th November, hilariously titled "The strange world of studying in Germany", to add a few more observations I've made, see how this semester compares to last and whether I've truly managed to adapt to the way things are done over here.

Cheeky mid-lecture photo

So, a few extra things to add. Firstly, and in a theme which comes up again after my issues having to fax off for a a mobile phone contract and an internet connection, things are done quite old-school here. No flashy power-point presentations or interactive whiteboard nonsense, this really still is the world of chalk and blackboard. So the lectures are delivered on a 3x3 grid of green 'black'boards, which are moved up and mechanically by buttons along the wall. Due to the massive amount of proofs given here, these inevitably get filled up after 45 mins, whereby a necessary 10 minute break is taken in order to give the lecturer time to dip a huge long white mop into a bucket, and perform a complicated procedure of board manoeuvres and window-cleaner style wiping. Clearly a bit of a waste of time, but somewhat charming in a way. The other main lecture with Mr Therapist involves him standing behind an overheard projector and writing on a never-ending piece of see-through plastic - even better.

Another thing I've learned is not to be intimidated by the whole thing. At the beginning I had this feeling that all the Germans students were ridiculously intelligent and I was ridiculously stupid in comparison. This was mainly because I was sat around like a lemon whilst they all had these seemingly terribly in-depth and intellectual conversations. Now I'm used to the language more it turns out the conversations aren't all that in-depth and intellectual, they're just doing what English students do all day and asking each other 'what the hell is this all about?' 'do you have any idea how we're supposed to answer this?' and such things. Very reassuring. A lot of students here have done similar semesters abroad and are quite understanding of my issues, which means they're more than happy to let me copy their work. Bonus.

Generally though, I think I'm becoming more and more German in my studying ways. I often have work finished by Friday when it doesn't have to be in until Monday, and if I know I have a lecture at 8.15 I'll go to the student bar with the intention of only having a quiet beer, and actually just have one quiet beer. A 90 minute lecture starting at 8.15 doesn't really seem like such a big deal any more. I've definitely changed...

Aside from that, the stats isn't all that exciting, and I'm not about to waste precious internet space talking about the awesome applications for the poisson distribution that we learned the other week. However, my French course has been somewhat more interesting.

My very considered opinion of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys

Having registered late for the course, I asked the teacher a few questions in German about whether I'd be able to stay on the course since I knew of a few people who'd registered but had dropped out, each question provoking an outbreak of laughter from the classroom full of strangers. Was feeling pretty fed as our teacher, a Swiss-Italian teaching French, asked if there were any Erasmus students in the class. As I held my hand up, she turned to me and asked 'you?!', after which followed 5 minutes of her trying to find out if I really wasn't German, including the sneaky tactic of asking ' if youu are eeengleeesh then you can speeek eeengliiish, no?', to which I replied 'well, a leetle bit'. I could have skipped out of the classroom that day, finally mistaken for a German. Living the dream in the truest possible way.

Anyway, it's been a tough old course as the only non-German speaker and the only one who had never learned French to any level at school, in a class containing two older women, one of which clearly thinks the class is below them and tuts at any grammatical mistakes from the rest of us. The whole class is delivered in French, with only complicated grammatical concepts being explained in German for ease of understanding (ha ha).

As I gradually got more confidence in the class, I started to be more open with my opinions. This started off with being asked to draw what France means to me and going just slightly over the top (see above), and came to a head in a slightly uncomfortable exchange last week which went something like this:

Madame Scapozza: "Ce que la Belgique pour vous et les Anglais?"
Me: "Uhh, le chocolat, la bière, je ne sais pas... ahhhh les Belgiques, je sais.... (this next bit in attempted French), yeah we have a good relationship with the Belgians because they stood up to the Germans in the war due to the neutrality agreement we signed with them that the Germans contravened..."

It was about this time that I realised I'd had my first 'don't mention the war' (see above!) moment. In the whole time I've been mostly hanging around with people younger than 30, and have been used to making comments like 'sometimes I complain that Dortmund is ugly, but then I remember that that's because we bombed the shit out of them', and had completely dropped my guard. Clearly to a woman in the autumn of her life, some jumped up English kid explaining the heroics of the Belgians against those big bad naughty Germans in terrible French doesn't sit too kindly, and she spent the rest of the time criticizing my history and then history teaching in my country, and finishing off by asking me if I'd be coming back next week, and whether I'd be doing out my presentation in French, since she didn't think I'd be able to read it out. Most definitely an enemy gained and a lesson learned.


So that's pretty much it. I still have my job that I've been doing since October, where I sit in a computer room, collect the post and wait for people to need English translations (they generally don't). For 2 and a half hours a week I end up getting 250 Euros in my bank at the end of the month, and I'm not quite sure how that makes sense either. Sometimes it can be tricky, such as the time I had to correct a paper written in English by a Chinese man who was translating in his head from Chinese into German and then into English. Not the easiest of tasks, but was rewarded by a bottle of chinese spirits. Tastes disgusting, but looks rather good. I sit up on one of those important looking boards of workers now, and was so excited that I took a photo.

Think that will do for now. Will probably write another one of these before rocking myself to sleep after my two end-of-year oral statistics exams. That's right, 15 weeks of work decided by two separate 30 minute meetings talking about the course content, calculating formulas, and drawing graphs. In German. Terrified doesn't cover it.

23rd March - 4th April. Korea collides with Yorkshire

After all those exciting tales of trips to European destinations, I needed bringing back down to earth, and what better way than with a trip back to good old Yorkshire with my Korean friend Hun-gu. As regular readers will no doubt appreciate, he was totally psyched for his first visit to the land of Top Gear, and I was secretly shitting it about disappointing him with the Yorkshire reality of pessimism, heavy drinking (of both beer and tea) and sheep.

We all love sausage rolls

It didn't get off to the best start - my mum was a bit nervous and started using funny little English expression like 'you have to drink tea here on pain of death', which no doubt made him feel totally welcome and at home, and possibly wondering what my true motives for bringing him to England were. However, the fresh air was a big hit, and gave him the idea of filling it up in bottles and selling in Dortmund. I think it'd go down a storm. My motives for bringing him to blighty were partly to show him that England isn't just grey and miserable, and that our food isn't all so bad, hence he was taken straight away to Gregg's. 1-0 to England there. The first night was spent down my local, The New Inn, where we got a mixture of strange looks and 'aww's. Guess it makes a change from being called Shinji Kagawa (well-loved Dortmund Japanese player) all the time.

Appreciating the tea cosy

The rest of the time in Cononley was spent walking up Pen-y-Ghent, which almost killed Hun-gu since he was wearing 5 layers after all my warnings about English weather, only for it to be sunny and actually warm (20 degrees in March!!!). Pub quiz on the evening left him totally dumbfounded, and eating fish & chips in the blazing (for March) heat the next day was a bit of a set back for the joys of English cuisine. Thank God we'd made a fried breakfast that morning and introduced him to the wonder that is baked beans. He spent the rest of the day asking for the recipe. The highlight of the North Yorkshire trip had to be explaining the Yorkshire walkers greeting code (say "lovely day!" to everyone you see), and attempting to explain the humour behind the response "aye, not bad for August" that we got from one witty chap. Typical Yorkshire humour which I love, but not easily translated into German.

20 degrees?! You didn't warn me about this!

On Friday we headed for Sheffield to sample the joys of the student drinking and other types of 'culture'. It won't surprise any English readers to learn that this involved lots of cans of continental lager, drinking competitions, my friend Bradshaw being forced to (and failing to) lick a lamppost, and then a lot of sweat and arm in arm singing in Propaganda. God knows what Hun-gu really made of it all, but he joined in with the Bradshaw-mocking, which is the main thing.

Note the clear daylight between
tongue and pole

The rest of the time in Sheffield consisted of lots of Top Gear watching, winding Welsh Dan up during the England vs Wales match, a nice traditional English curry followed by a similar night out to the one before, but this time in Pop Tarts (amazing cheese-fest of a night) in the Student's Union, Wetherspoon's Sunday lunch (only the best for my guest), running through the Peace Garden fountains (yes, it was still warm AND sunny!), and a night of English and Irish folk music, with plenty of real ale of course.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

So that was a lot of Englishness packed into only four days. No doubt it was quite of a very foreign culture for one man to take in, but I think I gave a pretty good account of my country. The only 'disappointment' was that it didn't rain once the whole time he was there, in fact the weather was perfect throughout. I made it very clear to him that that part of the trip was NOT typical English - I wanted him to understand how we suffer with our weather and don't spend the whole time casually sipping coffee on outdoor terraces and frolicking in public fountains.

The whole experience, including the time after Hun-gu left and I went down to see my brother and sister in Bristol, was just ace, and reminded me that there's a lot to be proud about being English. Especially introducing your little island world to someone who'd never been to England showed me how many stupid little things I love about England. When you get super excited about a trip to Greggs you know you've been away too long.

So at that stage if there'd been a way to avoid going back to Dortmund and the land where cyclists don't say hello to each other and you have to explain every time you make a joke, then I'd have taken it, but I have another semester here in Dortmund to honour of course

I'm so behind with this blog that it feels like the ending of each post is like serialising my own life. So come back next week to learn how I adapted back to life in Dortmund, and began to rebuild my social life after the loss of my foreign friends. I'll sell this story to Take A Break yet...