Last saturday, while swimming at my favourite Baderhalle at StadtBade Tiergarten (not at all close to Tiergarten, more like in Moabit), I remembered that there is a Kletterhalle quite proximate to the pool. The DAV Kletterzentrum. I decided to go inside and see what it looked like, and I also asked some questions of the receptionist, who kindly spoke English with me. She told me they offered an introductory 2-hour beginner’s course every Saturday, and I decided on the spot that I would register!

So, yesterday I went back to the Kletterhalle! I was feeling quite nervous, as I have never done any climbing, let alone in German, but I managed to pay my entrance and rent a pair of shoes. The group was 6 people in total, all beginners, and one trainer – NOBODY spoke English! eep.

The kletterhalle is beautiful, by the way. It is about 4 storeys high, with skylights at the top, and various coloured and contoured grips and textures all the way up. Each series of coloured „rocks“ is rated according to difficulty, which I imagine is based on the size of the grip – how much stuff is sticking out from the wall / how easy it is to hold onto – and how far apart these are spaced.

We all began in the upstairs room, a smaller space with a thick foam mat on the ground. Here we could try „bouldering“, which is basically the same as climbing, but without the safety of a harness and rope system. I was nervous, at first, because I thought there would be some kind of skill-set that I would need to be schooled in before being allowed to touch a plastic rock, but nope! It was completely intuitive, which, I’ve got to say, made me happy, because I was so nervous about not understanding (that much) German. So I began bouldering away. It was totally fun, and also scary. I was trembling a bit and sweating a lot. I found my way up, but then was nervous and couldn’t be certain I would be able to descend, but the trainer spotted me should I wish to jump down onto the padded floor, and I actually did find the footholds to return to the ground.

The next step was climbing, which we did in groups of three. We all wore harnesses, with one person climbing, and two people belaying the rope. The walls were much higher, although when climbing it was easy to forget how high I got until I looked down. Then I got nervous! However it was nothing compared to one woman who got about a meter up the wall and started hyperventilating and crying. (She got a LOT better, and more comfortable by the end of the course, but I was concerned about her at the beginning).

At first felt intimidated by how far apart each grip was – I attributed this to my being short. The trainer encouraged me, saying it really wasn’t about how tall I was, but more about dynamism, mental confidence, and flexibility. She also said that when the body gets nervous it contracts, and the arms and legs stiffen and pull in. As I said, so long as I continued to focus on the wall directly  above and in front of me, I remained calm. I began trying to pull myself up, puzzling out the relationship between my bodyweight and the series of grips to find the best positions from which to jump for the grips that were harder to reach. I climbed the wall several times, and the descent was like being on a movie set for spiderman or something! You just hung from the harness and jumped away from the wall while the people on the ground (and the magic carabiner) helped fly you down.

I felt safe the whole time. I scraped a bit of skin on my knee at one point, but mostly I was very proud of myself!

 

 

Today in class we learned prepositions, specifically which prepositions are indicative of dative, and which are akkusative. This was very, VERY useful. I have been struggling to recognize how to distinguish between dative and akkusative, and only this morning realized that it’s actually not so hard! Now I just need to memorize the millions of unpredictable articles attributed for god-knows-what reason to every single German word, and to learn the various conjugations. I am not so great at math either, but I have a 33% wahrscheinlichkeit of first getting the nominative article correct, and then divide that by 3 again to cover dative or akkusative, I am guaranteed an 11% chance of getting the article correct just by guessing (I believe this, although again, math is really not my strength)! If I apply the skills I learned in class today, and my prior knowledge, I can probably increase my chances hahahaha.

Anyways, that’s why I’m taking classes!

I also wanted to describe my experience trying to learn German by podcast, which, as I mentioned, I had been doing while in Canada. So, learning by podcast was actually a lot of fun, but not the most effective technique to learn how to SPEAK German. Positive aspects were that I was listening every day to German idioms, to phrases, to pronunciation, and to a range of vocabulary. I heard how words were used in the context of simple stories, that were also entertaining. As a language introduction and a personal activity I highly recommend it. Grammar-wise, however, learning by podcast wasn’t so effective. I find that learning in a classroom, taking notes, being in a context where it is encouraged to speak and safe to make mistakes has really accelerated my learning. While I learn very well by ear, learning by reading and writing has been really effective. Classroom-based learning is also more useful because there is an established structure and order to what I’m learning, as well as exercises to aid in the application and repetition of what is taught. So, in the end I would recommend both, since my vocabulary is much more extensive from the podcasts, but without the course I would be like a handful of beads without a string to turn them into a necklace (the course is the string, for those of you rolling your eyes at my awkward metaphor).