Of interesting German songs and more..

The past week has been quite good and I have now got used to the new place but still getting used to taking the bus to my language school. Being at the bus stop within the right time every day is a good exercise at practicing punctuality and blending into the German system and I would say, well yes I’m taking some really sincere efforts towards that goal (hmm.. ). There is a clearly perceivable change in the weather pattern. We have colder mornings and evenings, which would get even colder as I move towards the dreaded winter.

The atmosphere for this last month has been more relaxed in my language class – which means we get to hear German songs, play more activity-based games aimed at improving our vocabulary and watch a few films.

There were 2 very interesting songs that we listened to this week. The first was a classic by Marlene Dietrich called ‘Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind ‘ (Tell me, where the flowers are.. – its an Anti-war song). I later came to know that she is a very famous singer here. The next song was by a band called ‘Die Toten Hosen’ (meaning -the dead pants- obviously the tendency of music groups to call themselves by unworldly names is universal), the song was called ‘Zehn kleine Jägermeister’ and it was quite funny and entertaining. We also saw a film called ‘FC Venus’ in our class but I didn’t find it great, since it was supposed to be a comedy but was funny only in a few scenes. It is about a football challenge between the football-crazed husbands (the stereotyped guys who still want to be boys) and their irritated wives (the underdogs) in a village and you would get no points for guessing who the winners would be.

On the monetary front it has been quite a pleasant time for me since I had received reimbursements from DAAD (for the trip to the Bonn seminar) and from DB. The latter is quite an interesting story about which I had not written since it is about my trip to Hamburg and Berlin and I didn’t really want to add another travel based- article and anyway Berlin is probably already a thoroughly discussed subject in these pages. Well, on our return, our first train at Berlin was late which meant we had to miss the next 2 connections. We then had to take a train to Hannover and from there another to Göttingen and then a taxi to Marburg. The reimbursement included the taxi charges and a small difference amount since the travel plans were changed into different trains. They had taken only 4 weeks for processing our claim and I must say I was quite impressed! So, though we ended up reaching Marburg by 2:30 in the morning, the trip from Göttingen to Marburg on the Autobahn at the comfortable back seat of a Mercedes taxi and in the middle of the night at a stable speed of more than 150 km/h was amazing and I didn’t really want it to end..

Schools have reopened after Sommerferien and I see lots of school kids on the roads in the noon and also many school buses. School kids in the buses I take are mostly too noisy and naughty and keep pulling pranks on each other and are very much fun to watch! The bus frequency has also been considerably increased in this month.

There was one interesting incident in the Bus no. 7 that I take to my class every day. Two days back, on a usual morning in this bus, suddenly midway the bus had to be stopped since one of the back doors (automatic) failed to stay closed. It kept opening repeatedly and was out of the driver’s control (probably a faulty circuit). I expected him to just drive on after trying for a few minutes to set it. But he gave it a sweet 15 minutes trying to set it back under control and some of the passengers were starting to groan while a few had already stepped out. I couldn’t believe it since, punctuality is very important in the transportation system here but I learnt that the door staying under control was even more important. Finally he let the door as it would be and started the bus, made me relieved, but only to pull over a few metres ahead and ask us politely to take the next following bus!

I returned the Asterix, Tintin and Calvin & Hobbes comics that I had borrowed a few weeks back, to the Stadtbücherei. I have had a great time reading them as its more fun to learn a language like how a kid would. After typing the last sentence and reading through it I feel I’m now constructing English sentences with a German touch to it!

I met Hery our co-blogger yesterday at my place. From the photo of his new residence that he had pasted in an earlier blog I could recognize the building in the background. Turns out that he lives just in the ground floor of the hostel where I live in the 3^rd floor!

My next blog will be about the trip I’m making to Erlangen this week and the meeting with my Supervisor. Bis dann!