Zwischenseminar

Just got back from my program's Mid-Year Seminar in Cologne. It was so strange to be in that city again, where I spent my first two months in Germany. Since everything is new to me this year, it seems like it was years ago that I first arrived in Cologne.

I took the U-Bahn to my former host mom's place, transferring nostalgically at Friesenplatz. The announcer voice on Linie 4 had changed to a more chipper, less jaded woman's voice, I noted sadly ("Umsteigenmöglichkeit zu: S-Bahn! Und. Regionalverkehr!"). I got off at Piustraße to familiar graffiti and waited the 5 minutes for the light to change. I began to feel nervous and clammy about coming back, but once my feet recognized the well-trodden ground, they started taking me there even faster. The soap smell inside the apartment building made me feel as if I had never left. It comes from the laundry facilities in the cellar. I climbed the stairs, suddenly unsure if I had lived on the 3rd or 4th floor, but my feet remembered.

I knocked on the door.

My host mom Ellen answered with a flood of greetings and informations (yes, informations), sweeping my coat off while informing me of all that had happened in the past 4 months (had it really only been that long?). In contrast to my first arrival in August, this time I had no problems understanding what she said, having all but conquered that accent.

We cooked dinner and split a bottle of red.

Ellen paid the obligatorisch complements to my German, adding that she'd heard no trace of an accent on the telephone earlier (Why do Germans always do this? I want to believe them, but they were already telling me how good my German was back when it was really terrible. Sometimes they jump the gun and tell me how good my German is without me even telling them that I am foreign, which makes one suspicious. I think the measure of one's language success in Germany is that the Germans stop complementing you).

I told her about Erfurt, about the seminar so far, about the tour we made of Deutsche Welle. I told her about how the program participants who had been in Model United Nations were asked to speak at the seminar, and since the seminar was in German and I was the first one who was given the mic, I thought it had to be in German. It was hard to describe the workings of the International Labour Conference in German, so all the words I didn't know I just said in English and kept going. Germans do the same thing to sound cool anyway ("Er war so eine easygoing person!" or, "Wir haben das party feeling wirklich erlebt!") Anyway, I talked for 5 minutes before they told me I could also speak in English and everyone laughed.

Babbling in German about Model UN. Film still thanks to Erich.

My friend Erich had the rare and unfortunate presence of mind to film this, but I couldn't watch the entire thing. I could see my brain working overtime and noticed myself making these little thinking breaks where there were clearly words missing.

After I said goodbye to my host mom I burst into tears, and then I went dancing at Underground in Ehrenfeld, where the music was okay.