I’ve reached the halfway point of my studies here in Mannheim this summer. Last week my first Goethe Institut course ended, and I’ve had a five day break before my next one begins today. This break has been a good time to rest, travel, do some extra study, and take stock of how my learning has progressed over the past four weeks. On the whole I am cautiously pleased with what I’ve accomplished, which feels dramatic in some areas while being more modest in others. Now that I know how Goethe Institut courses work, and feel relatively settled into my routines of daily life here in Mannheim, I am looking forward to increasing the effort I put into my studies and trying to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities to learn that remain for me here.

Finding ways to learn outside of the classroom has been the most important step I’ve taken since coming here; this is, of course, the whole purpose of studying abroad. My most fruitful experience learning German outside the classroom has been meeting once a week with a local Mannheimer (as residents of the city are called), and talking over tea, coffee, and pastries. I’m doing this through TandemPartners, which matches native speakers of different languages together so both can both improve on a target language. Since I want to learn German and my partner wants to learn English, over the course of several hours together we switch between the two languages, or sometimes speak both at the same time. Along with this practice speaking, having a Tandem partner has also helped me to get a better understanding of the life and culture of the place I am living; my partner has graciously invited me on excursions to the surrounding area that I otherwise would not have known were possible. For example, last week we drove to the nearby city of Ladenburg, where my partner has a friend who is an official tour guide. Speaking in German I could understand, she showed us Roman ruins, medieval city gates, and the workshop where the first automobile was invented by Karl Benz. It was a wonderful tour–and the city of Ladenburg had not even been listed in my guidebooks! This just goes to show that to really learn a language and the lay of the land, you have to get to know the locals.

I’ve been getting to know locals in less in-depth but still significant ways by interacting with people while I am simply walking around Mannheim. The other day someone asked me where I gotten the bretzel (pretzel) I was eating. Another time I had to explain to a conductor that I had forgotten the pass I usually use to ride the streetcar (it’s amazing how quickly your second language improves when you are trying to avoid being ticketed!). Once a woman living on the street stuck up a conversation with me about where I was from and what she was doing that day. All of these interactions, just a few examples of many, are brief, but their spontaneous and colloquial nature help keep me on my toes.

Because of immersion experiences like these, it is my speaking skills that have improved most rapidly during my time here. However, because I am learning German for academic purposes, it is also important that I continue to improve my reading and translation abilities; this is something I’d like to focus on more in the second half on my time here. I’m going to start wrestling with an eighteenth-century text I want to translate (this was one of my perhaps overly ambitious goals for my summer learning), but I’ve also begun reading a less complex book titled Über das Meer, a undercover journalistic account of Syrian refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe (the English translation of this book was actually sponsored by Goethe Institut). Lately I’ve also enjoyed listening to and translating the lyrics of a German musician named Philip Poisel, whose music I was first introduced to in my translation course at Notre Dame. By adding these translating, reading, and listening habits to my routine here in Mannheim, I hope that by the end of my time here I will have seen significant improvement in multiple areas of German usage.

These first four weeks have gone by quickly, and I have a feeling that the next four will also fly by. I’m grateful that along with the language learning I’ve been able to travel to some beautiful places nearby Mannheim, such as the city of Heidelberg, or Triberg, a town in the *Schwarzwald*, or Black Forest. My language learning journey has been paired with travels along riverside paths and hiking trails (see photos below). I know that just as there is more to learn, there is also more to see. This blog has been a great way to keep track of what I’ve experienced in Germany so far, and I looking forward to updating it with more posts in the weeks to come.

The Philosopher’s Walk along the Neckar River in Heidelberg

Triberg’s Waterfall in the Black Forest, one of the Largest in Germany

Today I completed my second week of classes at the Goethe Institut in Mannheim, which means I’m already a quarter of the way through my studies here. It’s been a full two weeks: my classes run from 8:30 AM to 1 PM Monday through Friday, and when I’m not in class I’ve been exploring the city and adjusting to life in a new place. My studies at the Goethe Institut have helped to solidify the German I’ve already learned while continuing to push me forward, especially when it comes to speaking. Goethe Institut has several great locations throughout Germany, but I am glad that I choose to come to Mannheim, a mid-sized city where I’ve already made a few wonderful discoveries.

The Goethe Institut was founded in 1951 with the purpose of providing additional training for foreign teachers of German in Germany. Today it serves as the Federal Republic of Germany’s cultural institute, teaching German language and serving as an ambassador for German culture broadly defined. Goethe Institut’s global reach can be easily deduced from my class’s international composition: my fellow students are from Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ireland, Tunisia, Vietnam, and the United States. Our classes are structured around activities and interpersonal interaction (carried out completely in German, of course), so we’re consistently required to mingle with each other. This approach has been very helpful for my own particular learning. I started studying German this year in a graduate reading course that focused exclusively on translation into English. It was fast-paced, and I learned enough to competently translate German given enough time and a dictionary, but my knowledge was more broad than deep, and I could essentially only read. The intensive classes here at Goethe Institut have allowed me to develop a better grasp of some of the grammar I learned so quickly before, and the focus on interpersonal interaction has helped bring my conversational skills up to speed.

The grammatical area I’ve sensed the most improvement in so far has been the German case system, which I think is a significant challenge for English speakers. Whereas in English there is only one definite article, “the,” in German there are five, “der,” “die,” “das,” “den,” and “dem,” and they can signify sixteen different kinds of noun depending on gender, number, and case. That’s a paradigm shift! When I was learning to translate I had to have familiarity with the case system, but I could get away with a little guesswork: all I needed to do was translate German definite article into “the.” Being required to speak German has forced me to get closer to the case system, and to develop a more precise understanding of how the language is working. Overall, even though I’m still a beginner when it comes to speaking German, I’ve taken significant steps beyond the Goethe Institut placement interview I had to do upon my arrival. Then I could barely string a sentence together to say what I needed to say, and now I do this kind of thing on a daily basis in class.

Of course, speaking in class is different that speaking on the streets, but I’ve been doing some of this too. Mannheim’s streets, in fact, are quite distinctive. Much like Philadelphia, and built around the same time, Mannheim’s city center is laid out as a chessboard-like grid, a testament to the Enlightenment’s rage for order. Unlike Philadelphia, however, you won’t find a Chestnut or an Arch street here, not even a Goethe Straße: the grid is organized by letters and numbers, so blocks are referred to as “A4” or “K7.” This layout has garnered Mannhiem the nickname “die Quadratestadt”—city of squares. While this may seem a bit impersonal, Mannheim’s city center contains a number of public spaces and historic buildings, and is largely pedestrianized, so walking the city makes for a nice break from study. I suppose the Enlightenment was never as orderly as it hoped to be, and that here, there, and everywhere, it sometimes is hip to be square.

While Mannheim’s most famous sight is the Wasserturm, my favorite thing to go to downtown is Wochenmarkt, the weekly farmer’s market held in in the Marktplatz. Here I can take in the wide array of fruit, vegetables, breads, cheeses, and, of course, Wurst, that the vendors bring in from the area. Last week I approached one of the stands selling Wurst and asked for help selecting from the many kinds of sausage that were being sold. The vendor very patiently helped me, teaching me the names of the various sausages and giving me a summary of how spicy they were. I took several home and enjoyed them very much. Yet even outings like this on the city grid practicing my German can feel taxing at the end of the day. I’m learning how much energy it takes to make one’s way around a foreign place using a foreign language. For this reason I’ve been thankful to discover recently, completely by accident, that my apartment is a five minute walk from a heavily forested park that borders the Rhine river. At the end of the day being able to go here and stroll along the bank, passing other people by and not having to say a word, is a welcome respite.

Mannheim’s Water Tower

The Rhine