Language Classifications and Course Woes

So I was wondering about these language classifications such as B1 and B2, and why I had never heard of them, but it appears most everyone over here has. It turns out that they are the CEFR European Language Levels. There is a widely considered institution called Europass which can make CVs and "Passports" for people's "skills and qualifications to be clearly and easily understood in Europe". The language levels are methods of reporting how fluent someone is in a language, and is mostly a self assessment. I like how they have made it pretty objective so classes such as the ones I have been looking into at Humboldt University can say "Requirements are B2 fluency in English" or something like that. Feel free to self assess yourself if you have a foreign language under your belt. It is cool to compare across languages. Based on the self assessment, I think that I am:

• Listening Understanding: B1. We are working a lot with the TV news in our class, probably so we can get better at understanding it. I don't know enough vocab and I can't understand when they speak as fast as they do on the news currently, so I am definitely B1. I can understand the main points though, so I think B1 labels me to a T.
• Reading Understanding: B1. Again with the Vocab. If I understood more vocab, I could easily be B2. I have no problem following trains or thought in texts, but I just don't know enough vocab to be able to follow most literary prose.
• Spoken Interaction: B2. I think that I am able to converse with every day people as long as they speak slowly enough in return. I didn't think that I was this B2 but since having many conversations with my teacher, host parents and brother, and classmates, I think that I might be. The people yesterday at Ultimate didn't have much trouble understanding me either, though admittedly they use a lot of English words while playing. I think that my main trouble is loss of confidence when speaking with strangers, and when the other people speak too fast for me to be able to understand them.
• Spoken Production: B1. While I really want to think that I am B2, I have a lot of trouble coming up with the right helping verbs, or using the correct cases while talking. Often I have to go back to adjust which helping verb I used. The problem with German is it either takes a ton of preparation for each sentence or a ton of intuition. Since I don't have the intuition yet, it takes a ton of concentration and time for the preparation. I can see this getting better though, and hopefully it will be at B2 by the end of the 6 weeks.
• Writing: B2. My writing is definitely my strength. All of my instruction has been heavily focused on grammar, and while it takes me a little while to do it, I have always been complimented on it. I still can't easily select a "style" for the reader, as is the goal in C1, but I am able to clearly describe what I want, with varying sentence structure and transitional statements.
• Overall: B1. I think that my comprehension and speaking errors are holding me back to being a B1. Luckily, that will always improve with more and more integration. 

I am very ticked off that I won't be able to immerse myself in German the second term of the summer, as I am this term, because I think that would help me really progress to B2 if not C1, where I would love to be. I am very tempted to take a semi-intensive class or an intensive class next term, but the Hitler class is very very interesting to me.

The class, titled "Seduction and Terror: Hitler's Germany" sounds like such an opportunity to learn about how it was in and before WWII. This is one of the reasons I chose to learn German, to hear just what he said and how he became such a powerful leader while using such inhumane tactics. He must have just been a ridiculously charismatic and powerful speaker.

This Hitler course is an "A-track" course, so it runs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which means I would have to pair a "B-track" course with it. This worked perfectly because the German speaking course was a B-track course, but now that it is cancelled it is very inconvenient. The semi-intensive courses are also A-track courses, so I can't double up with that, as I would prefer. If I decide I wan't the language instruction more than the Hitler course and switch so I have a semi-intensive course, then I might as well just do another intensive language course, because none of the B-track courses sound more interesting to me than more language classes (especially if I can manage to have this teacher again. He is spectacular). So, I am faced with a quandry. I am going to look into other universities to see if they have Tuesday/Friday courses taught in German (which seems unlikely to me, but what do I know?), but I will be faced with a tough choice this week for sure. The course offerings are here, in case you feel like offering any advice.

The End of the Second Week

A fairly uneventful couple of days followed the awesome Mauer day. Yesterday I watched some of the first WM game (World Cup...its just easier to say WM for Weltmeistershaft).

Today I had my first practice with the German ultimate team. They are nice, and about the same level as the Inception B team I was on last summer. I will be able to practice on Fridays, but not Tuesdays unless I plan on going to a tournament with them. They are very unorganized while playing, but they have some fairly good players. It is enough to play with them, but it would be nice to play with the better team if I could. I don't think they have "practice players" here, so I will just have to make do.

The German speaking course I was planning on taking next semester got cancelled due to low enrollment (which is strange as it is the ONLY German speaking course offered). So, annoyingly, I have to choose a different course to take. I think that I might not be able to a minor in German now, but that isn't so bad because I will still have the certificate. Very annoying, but it's fine.

I'm quite tired, so I might come up with more to say later, but that's all for now!

The Berliner Mauer

Well, yesterday turned out to be the first day I didn't post, and it was because the picture below summed up about all of the interesting things that happened to me yesterday.

This dude is in the U-bahn station about once a week playing a saw

But today was the best day yet in the city. Every Wednesday (except the first and last ones), our class will be making an "excursion" out into the city. Basically a field trip. Today was the first one, and boy was it awesome. We went to the memorial for the Berlin Wall on Bernauer str. My day started out a bit tough because the S42 (which runs in a counterclockwise ring around the city) was stopped up for some reason. The train arrived...then someone said something over the loud speakers that I didn't catch...then people started getting off. I was planning on getting to the start of our excursion 15 minutes early, but that time gap quickly evaporated as I went down to the U-bahn station, then rode it somewhere, then got onto another one, then on an S-bahn. I got there just before 10, 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet and 30 minutes after I was planning on arriving, but luckily still before the movie started. My teacher didn't mind.

We watched two films about the Mauer. The first was more about the history of the wall, and what it was like living inside the wall. The second was a digital reconstruction of the wall and all of the measures used to keep the people in. I remembered the second video from watching it Junior year in high school, and liked it very much. I was also glad that I watched a YouTube video of the Modern Marvel's episode on the wall, because I knew a lot about the generations that it had gone through. After the videos, we exited the main building and went to the Bernauer straße memorial. 

The gaps in the wall were filled with these stakes...also disconcerting

This memorial ran along Bernauer str., one of the most famous streets due to the fact that some apartment buildings were right next to the wall when it first went up, and people used them to jump to the west until the Soviets bricked up all the windows and evicted the residents. The memorial is about 1 km long, and includes the spot where a church was in the middle of the Death Strip (the grass you see above is the Death Strip between the two walls) until it was destroyed by the Soviets to make escaping less possible.

A cool map of the area

Being this close to such recent history was really impressive. This was easily the most intense thing I have seen here, and it really was a feat of engineering that made this wall so effective. It is unbelievable that a country, in order to keep its people in, actually constructed a WALL around its entire border, and in the most popular place to cross made it nearly impenetrable.

At one end of the memorial was a preserved section of the wall, including a watch tower, death strip, both walls (3rd and 4th generation) and the posts where the electric barbed wire was. That was the most powerful thing for me. It was just so impenetrable. And so real. So crazy.

You could see it through the far wall, and above the wall. The side of the memorial was slightly reflective giving the impression of an infinite wall in both directions

After the wall, we went to a cafe on a nearby street and had some great German food. It rained some, but that didn't effect us much because we were under a very large umbrella. Mavia had to charge her wheelchair a bit, so we hung out there waiting for the rain to pass.

The Intensiv B2 class: (left to right) Varun, Melissa, Claire, Xiner, Helena, Mavia,
Georg (the professor), Cam, Nick, Logan

After the rain and a short ice cream break, we went to the East Side Gallery. It is a just longer than 1 km long section of the wall that has been painted by many professional and amateur artists. This was a very interesting exhibition of paint and freedom, with many iconic photos and paintings. 

Many awesome works of art. I took pictures of a few of them.

After the wall, the excursion ended, but Xiner and I decided to visit the Stasi museum. It was located in the actual office of the chief of the Stasi (Erich Mielke). For me it was mostly very interesting to see all of the spy gadgets they had engineered. It was amazing how much they could do with some very small cameras.

Including a trashcan camera!

I finally made it back home and collapsed. My legs were spent, and my stored up happiness too. Time to recharge for another day of school tomorrow. On Sunday, I am going to go on the official FUBiS Wall Tour, so I am excited to see what else I can learn while on that!

Many pictures have been placed in my album, the link to which is now located on the side of the blog at the top.

The Beginning of the Second Week

The hot streak continued today while I had one of the quietest days yet. It seemed like the entire city was sleeping, especially at the time I was going to school. It was somewhat eerie to have the halls of the school completely empty while we had class, but none-the-less we endured. We got some fans to help air out the room a bit, but even with them, it was pretty hot. AC is not a common thing in Europe, so we had to just deal with an open window.

The most exciting thing that happened today was getting to have a chocolate tasting in class today. On Friday, we heard a presentation about Ritter Sport chocolate...a famous chocolate maker that is based in Berlin. This made us all want chocolate so much I proposed a tasting. I had brought some Boulder Chocolove chocolate as a part of the large assortment of items I could give to my host family, so I figured I could use it instead in class. We had a large tasting with 8 different chocolates, and started ranking them according to our favorites.

I organized mine to make the ranking easier

The boulder Raspberry-dark chocolate won, but it was closely followed by the Orange and the Iced Coffee flavors.

"Chocolate-tasting-world-championships"

After this contest we were very full and contented while we watched the news and a part of a 24-hour documentary on Berlin. We also watched Rhabarberbarbara (A video over how insane the German language can get by combining words...the title means "Rhubarb Barbara")

A Very Hot Sunday

Today was a very hot day. It probably reached 95 or so, with a decent amount of humidity. Despite that, I was out and about most of the day.

Including riding in the top of a double-decker bus! Another first

I woke up somewhat late today, and worked a bit on some homework before departing a bit early for the planned excursion to the Reichstag builing. I didn't totally know where the entrance was, so I made sure to get there 20 minutes early just in case. Because I got there so early, I had a chance to look around that area a bit, and saw a line of bricks representing where the Berlin Wall ran. Being so right on top of all of this history I have learned about is really something else. It really hits home, but also seems not quite as important in a way. It is weird how used to this history the people here must have become, because they don't acknowledge it as much as I feel like I do.

The path of the wall

We then lined up and visited the Reichstag building, the equivalent of the German Capitol Hill. It is interesting because the outside is so old, yet the inside has all been renovated after 1990, so it is incredibly new. They took away my Frisbee, saying I could have it back after the trip, which was a bit of a let down. We then listened to a woman talk about the parliament and how it works and such before heading up to the top of the building to look at the dome. It was a pretty spectacular view of the city, and the dome was nice, but we didn't stay for very long because it was like an oven. The heat was incredibly intense up there, especially inside the dome, so we headed down after only about 15 minutes of sightseeing.

Hot, but it had a great view

A large group of us then took off to find Karneval des Kultures. This is a massive street festival that takes place in Kreuzberg. It was HUGE. Tons of people and tons of music and stands. After wandering around it for a long time (and ingesting a couple of ice creams to save myself from heat stroke), we headed back home. This was a very long day, and very hot, but it was fun meeting people and seeing even more of the city. I now need to go look up more and more things about the Berlin wall, because it is so hard to imagine it running through this city.

The packed streets of Karneval