Learning German...or rather...trying to learn German.

Hands down, this might be the hardest thing I have ever done. The timing was great for this intensive course that I'm taking and I'm not expecting a miracle at the end of my 4 weeks. I'm expecting a better understand of the language and the opportunity to introduce myself and converse a bit with others who speak Deutsch and no English.
The Grammatik is killing me. I was never a big fan of English classes in school so therefore how am I supposed to remember verb conjugation or 1st/2nd verb position? All of that I was taught was just...just what it was! To figure out now (in Deutsch) if a verb is conjugated with "he/she/it/they/you (Informal or Formal)/I/your" type is so very confusing. I've learned the infinitive and the tense, but not sure how to tell the difference of present, past and future tenses! I was so confused yesterday I had to ask my Romanian classmate (who is an English teacher) what the heck a verb was; I was totally drawing a blank! I can understand when reading, but when I'm asked to form the sentence I pause. I can understand all of the words in the sentence but when putting them together it confuses me because it's backwards from English!

I have 2 different teachers, Sandra the 1st part of the week and Lydia the 2nd part of the week. I definitely LEARN from teacher #1 but not so much with teacher #2. I'm not alone; half the people in class feel the same. I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing - I should be exposed to different learning styles so that I don't become comfortable with one person's style. BUT I just feel so much better the first part of the week when I can figure out what I'm being asked in class!

I just needed to vent this out. As soon as I woke up this am the Deutsch started flowing into my brain. Wo bist du? Ich komme aus... Mein name ist... die, der, das...mein, kein, meine, keine. Is it masculine or feminine or neutral...oh geez. And from what I've read in "learning a foreign language is frustrating" articles, it is good for me to practice these things and it's totally normal for me to be feeling this way. The class is great, fun actually. The best part is that it is a total melting pot. My classmates are from Romania, Russia, Iran, Brazil, Spain, Venezuela, Uruguay, and 1 more from the USA. Some don't speak English so it's really fun to try to converse with each of them when someone else across the room can translate, it's actually quite comical. If anything we are working on our team work skills, trying to work together to figure out what the heck is going on half the time!

Over the past almost 5 months I think I've done pretty good getting by and self-teaching myself the important things that I need to understand while out and about. I think the main thing that I've learned living in Deutschland is that I just have to go with the flow and not worry too much when I can't understand anything or everything that a native speaker tells me. Living here is a unique and extremely worthwhile experience on so many levels and of course there are going to be daily frustrations when I can't even understand the simple question of what my name is! At the same time, it is a great feeling to chat with someone at the bus stop or in the store and have a complete understanding of the conversation with a German. 

Only 14 days of class to go, 6 down.  It's not much but it has been intensive and I'm sure will continue to be!  Hopefully I understand and do well enough in this course so that I can move to the next level!

And the past few months went where?

I've been keeping a list of things I WANT to blog about but I just haven't been taking the time to do the blogging since I actually feel like I've been having a life here in Deutschland!  It's hard to believe that November is 1/2 over...where does the time go?  The fall season is beautiful here, it is so similar to Upstate NY but I actually think it might be a little prettier :)


This is looking over the town of Alsenbon from a trail near our house.

Our Shadows!

This is a lake/pond on the property of a house near us - we are on the trail behind it.

The weather had been quite warm, allowing for nice pleasant walks in the woods but once daylight savings came (a week before the US) it just turned dark, cold and foggy!  It was time to turn to inside chores...I thought...such as putting away the summer clothes and getting all of the winter clothes out which would include a complete ROYGBIV makeover of all of my drawers and hung clothing.  Yes I do that, it's easier to find things when it is all color coordinated! 


I thought we were done with the yard for the season but the landlords have been watering away like crazy.  Apparently they think it's dry.  Um, it's freezing at night so one would think it's time to unhook the hoses but not yet.  I feel so guilty when they are here just working away in the cold.  I don't mind doing it, but not when it's cold! I think they like to do it.


Cold it is.  We do not have a central thermostat so controlling the heat is a bit of a challenge.  I'm constantly freezing.  Contstantly wearing a hoodie, a blanket or my snuggie.  Maybe I just need to turn the radiators up?!  Sounds logical.  I can't see having them on in rooms that we aren't in.  I don't know, our landlady said that she was going to have the heating/cooling guy over to explain it all to me.  I  do know that I am supposed to air out my house everyday for 10 minutes a day to help bring fresh air into the house.  It's economical for the heating system because there is no return air coming into the house.  I've been pretty good at doing that daily but I don't hang my bedding out the window like the rest of the Germans do!


The Nordic walks are still going on 2-3 days a week, even as it gets colder but it surely gets harder to get out of bed to go! Luckily I have had the car a lot since Dave has been traveling and that makes it a little easier to get up and get going. The classes at Fitness First are great though; I absolutely love going to Zumba, and Step and a few other strength training and toning classes. I have yet to do a spinning class but soon! It's a little intimidating because everyone in there has on "biking apparel" and those spiky little shoes! I've been settling for the stationary "regular" bike for now. It's been great to go though, especially when I have the car but when I don't I can take the bus, I'm a big girl and now.


Over the past few weeks I've been obsessively making jewelry that I took to a local craft shop to sell on consignment. I'm pretty excited about this and hope that it sells!  I priced everything and took inventory of about 50 pieces.  

This is a picture of everything I took to the shop:

I've been to a few craft fairs and have stocked up on supplies and beads galore.  Bonnie even bought a bunch of stones to have me make necklaces and bracelets for her.  We found a great deal on natural stone beads and semi-precious gems at an enormous craft fair in Wiesbaden.  I was in jewelry making heaven.  Although it was a bit overwhelming, there were so many crafters and suppliers there. 

That is what I've been up to.  Next project = learn German.  Next week I start an intensive 5 hour/day for 4 weeks class that hopefully will teach me more than just the basics.  I can get by now but I'd really like to have a conversation with my German friends!  I don't like the idea of being class for 5 days a week for 4 weeks straight but the timing was actually really good and I really do want to learn the language.  I think I've done pretty well over the last 4 months trying to at least communicate a little...grasping for my rescue sentance each time someone talks to me..."Bitte, Ich spreche wenig Deutsch."  I speak little German, of course.  I'll get there, I'm not putting super high expectations on myself even though my brother is a language learing genious.  I don't think I inherited those genes, although, I think I've mentioned it before - the French I learned practically 15 years ago has been surfacing to the forefront of my brain ever since we got here!

The class is what I need, no doubt.  I have totally reached the level of feeling "at home" here or "normal" so to speak.  We always have the attitude of making home where ever we are and even though it's a different country, it's still home.  I remember our relocation specialist telling us that the first 3 months are hard, really hard.  The next 3 are definitely easier and after 6 months, we are expat experts!  I wouldn't say that the 1st 3 months were really hard, but yes, difficult for sure.  Interesting, sure.  Challenging, f'sho.  I could write on forever about some of the funny/interesting/challenging things we've encountered but I'll end this post here for now.   

The Völklingen Ironworks

On Saturday we decided to take a drive to Völklingen and visit the Ironworks, a World Cultural Heritage Site located there about an hour away near Saarbrücken. I had no idea what this place was - Dave picked this one out! It was a beautiful day so we packed a nice little picnic lunch and ended up eating it on the autobahn because guess what...we were stuck in a STAU!

We just enjoyed the beauty of the day as we made our way there.  The Völklingen Ironworks became the 1st plant from the heyday of industrialization to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.  For more than 100 years, the Völklingen Ironworks had shaped the lives of many 1000's of people.  Today, it is the only fully preserved ironworks from the 19th and 20th centuries and an extraordinary monument and sightseeing location.

In 1965 more than 17,000 people worked at the Völklinger Hütte .  It was the highest number of employees in the history of the works.  Now it's just a huge iron ghost town.  In 1975 the Völklingen Ironworks was affected by the worldwide steel crisis.  In 1982 the iron and steelworks in Völklingen and Burbach were amalgamated to become ARBED-Saarstahl and in 1986 the Völklinger Hütte blast furnaces were shut down.  It takes about 2-3 hours to tour through the massive 6000 meter plant and it was a great experience to be able to walk around and appreciate the vastness of the plant and the working conditions in the old days. It's hard to even image how HOT it must have been in some of the areas and what kind of conditions the workers had to endure.  The viewing platforms offer great views of the place as well as the town. 

The tour took us through 7 stations.  Various pics of all are in the pics.  The sintering plant, which is the world's largest, with enormous ventilators and sintering machines.  In the sintering process, residues from iron production were recycled back into the blast furnace system. 

Next is the ore shed where large quantities of ore were stored. Today exhibits and cultural events are held there.



Inside the ore shed

Station 3 is the burden shed, the "belly" of the ironworks where 12,000 tons of raw material (iron ore, sinter, scrap, lime, coke) were once stored.  The upper level is where railway wagons brought in the raw materials and the monorail cars were loaded up to go up to the blast furnaces.  Eight men filled each car-an extremely dusty and dirty job! 


The monorail cars



Next we learned the blast heating process and walked through the blast furnaces.  Every 2 hours the blast furnace was tapped (done by hand until later controlled by remote) 130 tons of molten pig iron flowed through the tapping launder into the car which in turn carried it to the steelworks.  The pig iron emerged from the tapping hole at a whopping 1400° C!  Yowsers!  "Foundry Fleas" or glowing splashes of iron jumped out of the tapping hole and burned holes in the foundrymen's clothing or their skin...can you imagine???



Part of the large blast furnace system

Station 5 is the Coking Plant where fire of 1300° C processed mineral coal into blast furnace coke.  The heat, smoke and gas created one of the most arduous work places in Ironworks but today it was turned into what is called "Paradise".



The coking chambers



Station 6 is the coal track - the inclined ore lift.  This track is how all 6 of the blast furnaces were supplied the raw materials.  The track is about 3.5 miles with about 265 monorail cars in motion during working times.


The track

The last station is the Blower Hall.  Huge blowers generated an enormous mass of compressed air for the blast furnaces.  The machines themselves were driven by blast furnace gas, an ingenious cycle of energy.


Inside the blower hall

Below is a view of the plant from "Paradise" an area that has been left to itself for 25 years between the former coking plant and the Saar river.  Plants and animals were able to develop freely, as in paradse.  



Overall it was a pretty neat excursion - aside from the normal castles, ruins, fests, etc. that we usually find ourselves at! 

  

LINK TO THE PICTURES

Betcha feel a whole lot smarter about iron production now don't you?!