This week my friends from home – Laura and Jayne – visited Munich.  They hadn’t been to Munich before, even Germany for that matter, but they really loved it here and had a great time.  I was a bit worried about the weather as rain was forecast for every day they were here (how unlucky!), but it turned out ok, and although it was overcast we didn’t really get any rain.   On Wednesday, it was even hot enough for us to go swimming outdoors!They arrived on Monday afternoon, so I spent the afternoon showing them around the English Garden.  We sat in the Chinese Tower and drank beer (of course) for a few hours.  In the evening we then went to a restaurant in Schwabing and tried out a few of the bars.  Tuesday was a bit more eventful, and although it looked like it was going to rain all day, we walked into the city centre.  We looked around Marienplatz, Viktualienmarkt, the old town, and around Frauenkirche.  I think they really loved the old buildings.  After a nice german lunch, my friends hired some bikes so we set off on a bike ride round around the city.  I took them through the English Garden again and we were lucky enough to see the surfers surfing on the river (defintely a sight unique to Munich!).

Wednesday was the best of the days we were here.  We got up early, prepared a picnic, and then cycled to Faulcher, the beer garden south of Munich on an island of the Isar.  It was pretty empty at midday on a weekday, but we bought a whole chicken to eat with our picnic and it was beautiful (I’ll definitely be going back to do that again this weekend!).  By the time we’d finished lounging in the beer garden, the sun was beaming, so we raced to Ungererbad for some swimming in the sun :)  In the evening we had a lovely meal in Park Cafe (my new favourite place ;) ), watched England play football in the Australian Bar, then headed to some bar/club with my german friends.  We had a great night.My friends went home yesterday, but I’m certain they had a brilliant time here in Munich.  I feel very lucky to get the chance to live here for 4 months, and I’m so excited to have another 9 weeks here.  Hopefully my german will get much better in that time :)Schöne Wochenende!

I’ve been asked to write a couple of blogs about my free time in Munich, so here’s the first :) As I’ve said in other posts, Munich is a great city to live in, especially in the summer months.  Compared to England you can go outside much more, and there are so many outdoor-sy things to do.  For example, on Friday I met some of my course mates in the English Garden.  We walked around the lovely footpaths and stopped off at the Chinese Tower beer garden for some cola (no beer, since we had so much on Thursday night!).  I tried Spezi, which, at first sounded a bit of crazy drink to me, but turns out to be gorgeous!  I’ll be ordering it much more often from now on.  We then went and sat in the sun in the park.  What a life!Saturday was a bit of a rainy day here, but Sunday was nice.   My boyfriend and I got on our bikes and rode along the Isar.  We managed to find a really lovely beer garden called Flaucher (see picture below).  Apparently, Zum Flaucher is a favorite destination for bicyclists and hikers stopping to refuel.  We did just the same on Sunday, stopping for some great fresh fish and beer.  On Sunday evening, a friend from University had arrived in Munich with 5 of her friends.  It was brilliant (and quite strange) to meet her at the Chinese Tower.  We then went to Park Cafe for a meal.  I had Bavarian pork with a potato dumpling and sauerkraut (see photo below).  Yum!  I’m really enjoying Bavarian food now :)

This weekend I’ve definitely noticed that my German has improved so much since I took the Deutsch Akadamie course.  When my friends ask ‘how do you say this in German?’, I actually know now ;).Two of my good friends from home are arriving today, so I’ll write another blog about what we get up too soon.

Thursday 6th June was our last lesson as class 1A.  I’m definitely sad to be finishing as I’ve had a great time and made some lovely friends.  I really looked forward to going to class every day, and although I’m not (yet!) fluent in German, I feel like I’ve learnt such a lot.Our lesson on Thursday was quite intense as we tried to finish the course material.  We learnt how to say what we were going to do at the weekend (wochenende plannen) and then did some work on model verbs (I can, I must etc…).  As usual we had fun learning with a mix of reading text, speaking to each other (e.g. mochst du am Samstagabend mit mir ins Kino gehen?), and listening to dialogue on the CD.As it was our last lesson, we didn’t have a break and finished a little early so we could go for a drink to celebrate the end of the course.  We went to Park Cafe first, a really nice beer garden and restaurant quite close to the Deutsch Akademie, and then on to Ned Kelly’s (Munich’s Australian bar) for some karaoke.  I’ve posted a few photos of us all below :)

Bettina came along to the Park Cafe and it was nice for us to be able to say thank you to her for being such an excellent teacher.  I don’t have the free time in June to do 1B, but I would have loved to have carried on learning with her.  Deutsch Akademie as a whole has been a great place to learn German in Munich and I would very much recommend it to anyone.  I will be in Munich until mid-August, so I’m hoping that I will have enough money to do 1B in July :)  Maybe I’ll even be back writing another blog (which would be great).  Over June I have so many visitors from the UK coming and I can’t wait to show them Munich – what a great city.So, that’s it.. my last blog.  Auf wiidersehen, Tschuss, ciao! Caroline x

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we’ve had two public holidays during our four week course so have lost two days.  So today we tried to get as much done as possible!

We started by reading longer passages (e.g. short stories) and trying to answer some true/false questions about them.  It’s really great that I now understand a lot of it, and it’s brilliant to see how much progress I’ve made in four weeks.  Hopefully I can keep it up after Thursday!We then continued the tricky work we’ve been doing on sentences with a second person in them (i.e. using me, you, her, him etc), before doing something that I found incredible difficult – telling the difference between u and ü.  It sounds like a very subtle difference to me, but is very important if I want people to understand me.  For example, ‘Bruder’ is German for ‘brother’, but ‘Brüder’ is German for ‘brothers’.  Similarly, ‘Mutter’ translates to ‘mother’ and ‘Mütter’ to ‘mothers’.  I’ve been practising at home, and will continue to do so until I get it right! :)The last half of our penultimate lesson was spent asking each other ‘Was machst du gern?’ (‘what do you like doing (in your free time)?’) and asking what the time was (‘Wie viel Uhr ist es?’).  We were told that it helps to be very specific about what time it is whist in Germany. ;)My next blog will be my last as we only have one lesson left to go.  Our teacher, Bettina, has suggested we all go out to the beer garden to celebrate reaching the end of the course.  I’m going to take my camera, so will post a few pictures of us on my last entry tomorrow.

It’s our last week this week (sob!) and only three lessons to go because of the public holiday. We’ve had two public holidays during our course, so we still have a lot to get through.Today we did a lot of work on sentences with me/we/you/he/she and verbs in them. e.g. ‘kaufst du uns ein Eis?'(‘Can we buy an ice cream?). It’s tricky, but with a lot of practice it should be fine. We did quite a bit today, including a fun ‘swapping’ game where we had to ask each other if we had certain items for a 1) round the world trip, 2) enquiring about a fridge, 3) making a sandwich, or 4) watching TV.At the end of the lesson we were asked to write a story about a picture in our work books. It’s a very simple story (we are only beginner’s after all!), but here it is: :)Die Mutter und das Kind gehen in den Supermarkt. Das Kind moechte Sueßigkeiten, aber die Mutter sagt: ‘Nein, Ich habe kein Geld’. Das Kind weint. Die Mutter ist traurig, weil sie keine Zeit hat. Es sind viele Leute an der Kasse, weil die Kasse nicht funktioniert. Die Kassiererin ist nervoes.:)

We’ve come to the end of our third week now and it’s sad that we’ve only got one week left of the course.Thursday’s lesson was as good fun as usual though.  We spent most of it learning how to buy things in different scenarios.  We started at the department store, where we got into pairs and wrote a short dialogue between a customer and a shop assistant (verkaufer/verkauferin).  We also listened to some recorded dialogue in order for us to understand intonation (tricky stuff!).After the department store, we practiced enquiring about items for sale in the paper.   In real life this would involve speaking over the phone without the hand signals usually used when you don’t know the language very well!  We all did quite well speaking with our backs to each other as if we were on the telephone..  At the end of the lesson we got to have some more fun pretending we were kids in a Supermarket asking for chocolates, sweets etc from our father!So, it’s the end of the week and time for a long weekend (there’s a public holiday here in Germany on Monday you see).  To celebrate ;) , most of the class went out for a drink at the Hofbrauhaus.  Guter Spaß für alle.Here we all are in our classroom……

Today we learnt how to say ‘I have…’ and ‘I don’t have’ using the correct articles for each noun.    For example:

Hast du…eine Spuelmaschine/einen MP3 player/eins Auto?

:) Ich habe eine Spuelmaschine – I have a dishwasher:) Ich habe einen MP3 player – I have a MP3 player:) Ich habe ein Auto – I have a car:( Ich habe keine Spuelmaschine – I don’t have a dishwasher:( Ich habe keinen MP3 player – I don’t have an MP3 player:( I habe kein Auto – I don’t have a carSo… what is key for us to remember is that when a noun is neutral (i.e. has the article ‘das’), we change ein to eins, kein to keins, and remove the noun from the sentence altogether.  We had fun practising this by pretending we were sales men/women, coming to the door and listing what we had for our partners to buy.We then went shopping (again :)), but this time in the department store.  We learnt quite a few questions and responses that would definitely help if we were searching for something in a large store.   For example, asking which floor departments were on, and what we were looking for in particular when asked.Towards the end of the lesson, we moved on to learning about plurals.  For example, ‘das Auto’ becomes ‘die Autos’, and ‘der Teppich’ becomes ‘die Teppiche’.  The good news is that all plurals use the article ‘die’.  The not so good news is that singular words change in a number of different ways to become plural!  I’m sure it’s just a case of learning them a few at a time :)

Another boiling hot day here in Munich.  It’s a good job we have a fan in our classroom!Today we carried on with ‘Artikel Akkusativ’ – i.e. verbs, subjects and objects.  It’s very different to English and I’m finding it complicated, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.  Bettina had put together some little comic strip pictures for us all, and we had fun going through each one identifying the ‘subject’ and the ‘object’.  For example, in the next few sentences the suject is highlighted in bold and the object is in CAPITALS.Der Mann bestellt EINEN KAFFEE (The man orders a coffee)Die Frau tanzt (The women dances)Die Waschmaschine wäscht DIE KLEIDUNG (The washing machine washes the clothes)Following this, we also learnt that the only articles that change when there’s a subject and an object in a sentence is the masculine article – der.We then did some more shopping (hurrah!).  Pretend of course, but still fun.  We stuck pictures of household items (sofas, chairs, rugs etc), got into pairs then walked around the shop (well, classroom) asking our partners what they thought of the item.  Me and my partner bought a lovely rug ;)

By the end of the lesson the skies had turned black and a thunder storm looked imminent – something that can happen quite suddenly when you’re this close to the alps.  I raced home on my bike (along with the rest of Munich!) and just made it before a spectacular storm.  Now, we definitely don’t get those in England…

Since Thursday was a public holiday here in Munich, we haven’t been in class since last Wednesday.  We couldn’t have had better weather in our 4 day break though.  It was really hot every day, so I managed to spend a lot of time sitting in the Beer Gardens, and getting in lots of outdoor activities.  On both Thursday and Sunday, my boyfriend and I tried out some of Munich’s outdoor swimming pools.  On Thursday we cycled down the Isar to Maria Einsiedel, which has a lovely flow channel from the Isar that you can swim in.  Warning if you go there, the flow channel is frrrrrezing cold!  Then on Sunday, we went to Ungererbad in Schwabing – a lovely big complex with 4 pools and even a slide :)

More info on all the outdoor pools in Munich can be found here: http://www.inside-munich.com/outdoor-swimming-pool.htmlAnyway, back to Monday’s lesson.  We started with some speaking training.  Good news for me as my speaking is definitely my weakest area!  We learnt when vowels were produced long (lang) or short (kurz) – for example, the ‘e’s’ in Tee are extended when you say the word, whereas the ‘e’ in ‘denn’ is short, or pronounced quickly.  It’s complicated at first, but hopefully I’m getting the hang of it!We then talked about money (geld) and exchange rates, which was good practice for revising numbers.  Unfortunately this reminded me of the dire state of the pound at the moment – £1.13 for 1 Euro!Finally, towards the end of the lesson we studied ‘einkaufen’ (shopping).  This was good timing for me as it’s my birthday this week and I’m sure I’ll be buying something.  We combined this exercise with learning adjectives – great (toll), not bad (nicht schlecht), boring (langweilig), chic (schick) etc.  To do this we listening to a couple discussing whether to buy certain pieces of furniture in a furniture store.   Whereas 2 weeks ago I would’ve found this extremely difficult, it was great to be able to follow the dialogue and pick up more than a few words.  I’m definitely making some progress :)

The days are flying by now, and yesterday was our seventh lesson!  It was a particularly useful one for us all as we learnt about food, drink, and ordering in a restaurant.  I’d already picked up a bit of this vocab from my first month in Munich, but I’m really glad that I can now attempt to speak to waiters and waitresses in German.We had fun making up a mock menu, and then taking it in turns to ask how much things cost, and then order beir, wein, kasebrot, wurst etc.  We then learnt how to say ‘I like to eat/drink…’ and ‘I don’t like to eat/drink…’.   For instance, ‘Ich esse gern curry’ (I am British after all! ;) ) and ‘Ich trinke gern wein’.  Before I arrived in Germany, I would’ve said ‘Ich trinke nicht gern bier’, but that’s definitely not true anymore – I order it where ever I go.  We went on to do some listening exercises, and then to had to get into pairs and perform a restaurant scene.  This was particularly good fun, as we all try and make them a bit funny :)Towards the end of the lesson we had a bit of test on what we’d learnt this week (lektion 2 of the book).  It was good to see where I needed to do the most work – in this week’s case on learning which of der, die and das goes with each word.  I’m hoping this will come with time!