Author Archives: Gabor

Learning German in Berlin

test result

As we’re almost at the end of the course, we had to take a test to see how much we learned here. You can see my result, it’s not bad.. actually, in Hungary a mark 1 means that you failed, so when I first saw it I was really shocked – but then it turned out that it’s the best you can get here!

Now we still have some pages left from the book, but I can tell you, that this 4 weeks have been very helpful for me, in fact, yesterday I was speaking with a german guy on the phone and I could understand him – this was unimaginable for me a month ago..

So if you are reading this, and wondering if you should come here for learning German in Berlin, don’t hesitate that much, just try it! I’m sure you’ll be satisfied with the result.

Now excuse me, but I really have to get going, see you tomorrow!
Gabor

Zoologischer Garten

Zoo

Today I shall share with you what I think the best place in Berlin is, so I gave a lot of thoughts into it, and I should tell you that my favourite place so far is the Zoologischer Garten.

The reason for that can be that I pass this park every day on my way back home, and it’s a really good feeling to see all this relaxed people sitting on the bank of the canal, or just the tourists taking a cruise on a ship. Also, I have to mention that the Berliner Zoo is situated on the bank of this canal as well, and unlike a Zoo in other capitals (e.g. Budapest) they didn’t build huge fences to keep the curious eyes away (who are yet not willing to pay 12 Euros to get inside). In fact, you can see the animals from here, and there’s even a part of the Zoo especially for the ones outside..

Nevertheless, it’s also a nice place to ride the bike, as this road that you can see on the picture goes along the canal very far (actually, I’ve never been to where it ends). And, if you want to go into the park, yo can cross one of the bridges, and there you are.. narrow and wide passages going through and around the network of little lakes and grassy spots, perfect for a nice ride if you have time.

All in all, I recommend that you visit this great place. See you there!
Gabor

Tale of the smallest boy

For the weekend, we got a very interesting homework: we had  to write a story on or own – in german of course. As I mentioned here earlier, I have a big handicap in written german, since I had never learned it in school before, so I’m not really familiar with the grammatic rules.. anyway, you can see the result here (that’s the corrected version, and yes, the green marks are the mistakes:) :

Story in german

So, I had some corrections to make, and here it is, in a hopefully proper version:

Geschichte des kleinsten Jungen, der nach Deutschland ging,
um dort sein Glück zu finden


Es war einmal ein kleiner Junge, genannt Gabor, irgendwo in Ungarn. Bübchen Gabor hatte alles, was er brauchte: eine liebevolle Familie, ein schönes Haus, und ein Diplom als Bauingenieur.
Obwohl er alles hatte, was er brauchte, war er auch neugierig und offen für alles was auf der Welt war, und eines Tages entschied sich die Grenzen zu kreuzen,die er nie gekreuzt hatte, und zu versuchen sein Glück im großen Land der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu finden.


Obwohl seine Familie versuchte ihm zu stoppen, packte er alle notwendigen Dinge – bis zu 20 kg – in seine kleine Tasche und eines sonnigen Morgens nahm er die EasyJet Flug nach Berlin.
Als er in der Hauptstadt dieses weit entfernten Landes landete, sah er schöne Dinge, die er noch nie erlebt hatte: riesige grüne Parks mit Seen und Kanälen, alte Fachwerk Gebäude, Züge und Fahrrad Wege gehen durch die Stadt, die Menschen essen Frühstück auf der Straße und so weiter .. Es gab nur eine Sache, die ihm störte: Er konnte kein Wort der Sprache verstehen, die sie hier sprechen. So suchte klein Gabor nach den nächsten Wi-Fi-Stelle, wo er sich mit dem so genannten Internet verbinden konnte, und er fand einen Ort, an dem er diese Worte, die er zuvor nie gesprochen hatte, lernen konnte: es war die DeutschAkademie.


Er zögertete nicht lange, stieg in den ersten Bus, der ihn in die Tauentzienstraße bringen konnte, und schloss sich einer Gruppe von anderen Ausländer aus der ganzen Welt an. Er war froh, dass er hier Freunde gefunden hatte, und eine große Meisterin, die ihm alle Geheimnisse und Regeln der alten und geheimnisvollen Sprache lehren konnte.


Was passiert danach? Es ist eine andere Geschichte zu erzählen …

Berlin by night

Now I’ve written about how you should spend your first days in Berlin, but what about your nights?
Tired?
Wanna sleep?
Oh, come on!

If you just take a look at the rich offerings for the night of different pubs, clubs and concert halls all over the city, you will instatly get the feeling that every minute spent home is wasted – and so does apparently everyone, day by day. Except for Sundays and local holidays, you’ll find people overwhelming the streets, means of local transport and late-night open shops (a.k.a. Spätkauf, or Spätie) on the way to their evening programme – should that be a concert, theatre act, show, performance or just a beer with friends.

Although I didn’t really have the chance yet to exploit the possibilities of Berlins amazing nightlife, I already have some places I would recommend: first of all, there was this open-air beer garden we ended up one night, it was on Kastanienallee, and it’s called the Prater.. it’s hard to miss it. However, the whole allee is a great place at night, with people sitting in front of pubs and restaurants on the street.

The other great place to just simply sit on the street is Hackescher Markt, right near the river.

We’ve also been to some kind of house for different cultures, where there were several concerts of arabic and african world musicians, but since I was very new to Berlin, I can’t remember where it was… and there was this jazz pub as well, where one of our friends‘ band played a week ago, but the only thing I can recall that it was in Kreuzberg somewhere.. well, I’m not that good of a guide for an exciting evening in Berlin, am I?
What I know is that their music is worth a listening, because they were really great:
http://www.myspace.com/minamazemusic

All in all, the best place for an evening in Berlin for me so far happened to be our own kitchen… I know it’s the opposite of the post’s opening line, but still. We just moved in that day, and started talking and cooking, and playing music, and the hours just flew by. Here’s a photo proof from the middle of the night somewhen:

Our kitchen

In fact, our french girl roommate’s mother is here for the weekend and right now she is cooking something delicious in the kitchen.. oh and I can hear something about a bottle of vine they brought from home. Sorry, I have to go now!

See you later,
Gabor

Our German course so far

Now that we’re almost at the end of the third week of the course, it’s time to sit look back on what we’ve learned so far. Well, a lot of things.. we started with describing buildings and types of hauses and rooms to live in, family relations and so on… and throughout the stories we started to repeat or learn grammatic rules, such as the „Infinitiv mit zu“, and how to connect the parts of sentences,  oh and the „Ausdrücken“ of course..
Then came the stations of our lives or other famous people’s, with learning the „Praeteritum“ (Past) and „Plusquamperfekt“ (Past Perfect) tenses, and the verbes that these rules doesn’t apply to as to the others.. At that time did we learn when to use „wenn“ and „als“ as well.
Then came the hotels and the indirect questions, the conditional forms, and the lovely „Personalpronomen“, followed by the situations of a tourist guide helping people lost in Graz, giving directions – with the proper prepositions of course. Oh, how could I forgot those „Lokale Prapositionen“!

But these are just the brief facts, not even all of them.. What I like the most is still the situational games and interactions when we have to speak to eachother, because it really gives me the courage to talk to people on the street in german as well. In fact, I have only been speaking to strangers in shops or on the street in german since I’m here, and so far – it went quite good!

I hope that by next week, I’ll be able to write this blog in german as well, because that was my origonal purpose. We’ll see!

Cheers,
Gabor

Tourist guide

Treptower Park

Since I’m a newcomer myself to this city with my last 2 weeks spent only here, if it comes to to write a short recommendation for other tourists what to visit here, we could say that I start with a bit of a handicap. On the other hand, I have the advantage of having fresh memories and impressions not shrouded by tipical tourist-guide lines, so I can share with you my favourite sights of Berlin.

First af all, I would recommend you to look around whereever you are, and go to the nearest park, just to get a taste of the feeling I felt on my first week here, seeing thousands of people, families and friends together enjoying simply being the closest to the nature possible in a town this big. If this park you found doesn’t happen to be near a lake or a river, than the next thing I recommend you to find one – that actually is!

Müggelsee

Like the Müggelsee for example. It’s a very big lake in the B district of Berlin, which means you can get there by S-Bahn or by a simple tram as well, and I guarantee you won’t believe your eyes.
Now if you’re more curious what the city itself can show you, I would send you back to the central, basically to any of the streets that have a little more people than avarage… What for? To see the most interesting street musicians in Europe!

Musicians in Mauerpark

Solo-guitar players, saxophonists, trumpeters, different kinds of drummers, complete jazz bands playing on the street – as you can see, in Berlin nothing’s impossible! As far as I know, it’s hard to find someone here who can’t play any musical instrument at all… My favourite place, where you can find musicians even in the most unfriendly weather is the Mauerpark in Prezlauer Berg.
Of course, if you’d like to listen to professionals, there are lots of places to go as well. There’s a great thing that they invented here to get more people going to classical performances: the so-called Classic Card. If you haven’t turned 30 yet, you can get this card for only 15 Euros, and for one year, you can get even the best places at different performances related to classical music (opera, ballet, classical concerts etc.) at various spots in the city. For more information you should visit: http://www.classiccard.de

Filharmonie

And finally, when you’re tired of culture.. well, you should have a drink at one of the many different pubs in Berlin! Since – of course – I haven’t been to many of them yet, I suggest you go into the closest one you can find. If it’s on the bank of one of the rivers or canals – even better!

Pub on the canal

And finally, if you are more into the calm, peaceful village-life, you can always take the S-Bahn to Potsdam or Spandau – two of the nice suburbian parts of Berlin with their own cultures and (world) heritages – they both worth a visit!

Spandau Citadel

For now, that’s what I recommend – tell me when you’re finished!
Gabor

Berlin by bike

Sara on the bike

I’ve already said a few words about how great this city is for bikers, but I have to repeat myself today.. Since I got a great bike here in a second-hand bike shop, I’ve been riding it every day, not only to the Academy and back, but before and after as well, just exploring the city, taking pictures and so on. Even with my girlfriend, if we can, we ride the bike everywhere.
It’s not hard to get used to the feeling that the car drivers respect you, they treat you on the roads as one of them, so unlike biking in Budapest, you don’t have to be afraid of death every time you try to turn left..
And, I have to mention that you don’t even have to go on the same way with them – there’s an incredible amount of bikeways all around in Berlin, with their own traffic signs and lamps!
You can visit my gallery of photos taken riding a bike here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/liebergabor/BerlinByBikePhoneCam#

However, it’s not the only possibility of doing sports here. We’ve already been to a great swimming pool last week, which is open till 22.00 and after 8 p.m. you can go in for 2,50 Euros, which is really cheap. My girlfriend tried Yoga, which is also very famous here, and I’m sure there are lots of other options – we still have to find them!

See you tomorrow!
Gabor

Lesson at Håkan’s

Anne and Hokan enjoying the sunshine

Hi everyone!

Today we had a very special afternoon, as we all gathered at the home of our famous swedish writer, to make up for the lesson we had to skip on Monday beacouse of the Easter Holidays. Håkan has a really great, recently built flat on the top of an earlier built building in Charlottenburg, with a huge terrace where we could all enjoy the sunshine.
However, as we weren’t only there for a sunbathe, we also learned about the famous town of Liepzig, and the conditional grammatic structures.

The girls learning hard

Luckily, everyone brought something to eat, some of the girls even cooked for the event, so weren’t starving. In fact, we ate a lot during this few hours.. It was really great to get to know eachother a little better – not that you can’t do that at DeutschAcademie, but a sunny terrace feels a bit more relaxing – no offense!
You can see the other pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/liebergabor/LessonAtHakanSPhoneCam#

See you,
Gabor

All about the past

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Today we were learning about the past. Not only as a grammatic issue though, since the examples for Prateritum and Plusquamperfekt were shown in a text about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was maybe from a newspaper from the next day of the fall, and it was very interesting, as we all live here now, where all of this happened 20 years ago.

When I was first in Berlin in the end of February we went to Potsdamer Platz, where you can visit a quite spectacular part of the expositions created for the Jubilee of the Fall today as well. The exhibited posters contain holographic images, where as you move your head, you can see how certain places and buildings in Berlin looked liked when the Wall was still up, and how they look today. From there you can as well walk by the line of the once existing wall (it can still be seen on the pavement) to Checkpoint Charlie, and read numerous posters and documentary images of the attempts of desperate East-Berliners trying to get to the West. Some of them succeeded, but most of them had a sad story, which you can read there.

Anyways, that night was a happy moment not only for the Berliners, but for the whole world, so it was really great reading about it, and learning the grammatic structures as well. 

See you tomorrow,
Gabor

Our group at my language school in Munich

My classroom

Guten Abend!

As I already told you, we have a very interesting group here in the course (I took the photo secretely while I had to write on the board), coming from different countries not even geographically, but our habits and religions are also different. Some of us speaks spanish in the break, the others build conversations in english just for a change. Some girls are already married despite their age not reaching 30 years, and some already divorced, but having a kid. We are here in Berlin for different reasons, trying to get by, learning or working (or looking for a job) as saleswoman, architect, secretary, or different kind of engineer – we even have a famous swedish writer! Our goal is nevertheless the same: learning german together.

Today there was a really interesting task, we read a fable in german with words used in a regular folk-tale, and had to interpret it with our own words – using praeteritum of course! I wrote one page of my dictionary full with new words…

Now, back to my homework. See you tomorrow!
Gabor