In December just before the end of the first half of the season, I found an English pub that shows Bundesliga matches and they even added my favorite local brewery's beer on tap recently. Now, you might say, wow, what a shock - an English pub that shows soccer. Well, there are about five English pubs in town, and really, only one of the others even shows football, and they only have the English Premier League. So if I want to watch the Bundesliga, I've got to go to this other one. And I do. I mean, come on, I'm in the Germany, why would I watch English football? Plus, at this bar, all of the staff, regulars, etc. speak German.
Well, yeah - it's Germany, you say. And you're right. At the other place, they do as well. But just because they can speak German doesn't mean that they do. Basically, this other place is a little piece of Britain. And I love the place, I really do. The food is great, the beer is good, and the people are really cool. But if I want to immerse myself in German culture, that's not the place I need to hang out at. It's more of a place for a temporary escape (and since they also have monthly golf outings... you better believe I will).
And I need the German atmosphere. I don't really know what the problem is, but I am having the worst time learning German. And it's not even learning German, per se, it's hearing it and understanding it. I can say quite a bit, even though my vocabulary is pretty limited, and I understand most of the grammatical rules and such that I've come across so far, but damned if I can catch what anyone's saying to me unless it's the simplest thing, which means conversations are out. Possibly, it's because I don't have a television in my house, so I get home, and I'm right back to the English-speaking world, since, of course, it's just me and my English language TV shows, DVDs, and books. But on the other hand, I don't really want to get a television. I have a bad history of just plopping my lazy ass down in front of it, and I definitely don't want to do that, plus it would just be one more thing that I wouldn't be able to bring back to the States with me, and I'm trying to keep those items to a minimum. So this place may be my new hangout, or at least for one day a week. I can watch sports, the beer's good, the people are pretty friendly, and maybe, just maybe, I can improve my language skills.
Other than that, there's really not that much going on right now. The weather has been back to a good level, temp-wise (although it was snowing again tonight on my way home, so it'll be the bus to work tomorrow), the German lessons are on-going, and we've even started back up having practices with the baseball team. Mainly, it's just conditioning and minor throwing and hitting drills, but it's something, and after four months without any practices and a month plus without even being able to ride the bike because it was so damn cold, I need it. I was shocked at how much I missed the torture machine, but I think that besides the occasional rainy/snowy day, I should be able to ride it most every day from here on out. As for the conditioning... well, I'm still old and out of shape, so that sucks, but hey, I've still got a few months before the season starts.
No comments:
Post a Comment