After picking up a hearty breakfast of Schokolade croissants from the Backerei on our street, I sat down for a nerd-out morning with 'Von Schlauen Fuchsen und anderen Hinterlistigen Tieren' (or 'Of Sly Foxes and Other Deceitful Animals' to you and me). I found this cute-as-cupcakes kids book at the Humana store on Frankfurter Tor (more on that later), and have set out to translate a couple of pages a day before attending my intensive language class in the arvo.
German is a tricksy beast. It lures you in with the promise of familiar nouns - Mann is man, Fuchs is fox, Sack is sack etc - before slamming you full force in the face with a tsunami of cases, articles and bizarro verb conjugations. Hell, I've never fully acquainted myself with English grammar, aside from a day-long introduction to the perfect tense in high school, so trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the Nominativ, Akkusativ and Dativ kasus feels like I'm back in a GCSE classroom fighting back waves of frustration whilst staring blankly at a textbook full of badly drawn cartoon people in Mom jeans and rucksacks. At least I can now confidently order a beer to ease the post-class brain ache.
To summarise, life in Germany would be far, far easier if I could learn the lingo the way Neo learns Kung Fu in The Matrix.
Bis morgen,
Betti Baudelaire xxx
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