Ich decke dich

We're right past the halfway point of my year in Germany, and to prove it, last week we had our midyear seminar in Frankfurt.

A pretty unique skyline for Germany

Luckily the week before last, all of my classes ended. In fairness I only had 3 classes and 2 half classes, so it wasn't like the end of classes gave me that much more free time than I normally had. However, I decided to take this opportunity to drop by Berlin and Karlsruhe again before I headed into Frankfurt a day early.

I've already discussed Berlin ad nauseum, so I'll skip a long-winded explanation of how much I love that city. On Saturday I bought my ticket from Berlin to Frankfurt...via Karlsruhe. If you're not familiar with German geography, this is like driving from Kansas City to Chicago by way of Denver. Every ticket checker I encountered was confused as hell.

Anyway I eventually get to Frankfurt a day early, having booked an extra night at our hostel. I was checked in by a very nice guy from Kenya. His German wasn't fantastic, but neither is mine as you'll soon see. There was a lull in the check in process where something was printing off, and to fill this lull he decides to banter with me. At this point I notice that his hat has some sort of bible verse on it, and his T shirt is similarly decorated. He then asks me “Sind Sie...Christ?” Now I'm an atheist, so I never really focused on learning religious words in German, which means that I didn't know that “Christ” in German doesn't mean “Jesus Christ”, it means “christian”. So I was very confused for a hot second, because of course I'm not Christ, not by a long shot. Then I realized he was asking my religion, so I was relieved to see that he hadn't mistaken me for his savior, but also concerned that I'd be drawn into a debate about born-again Christianity, during which I'm not certain I would have stayed polite. So I very excitedly informed him that I love Jesus and that, yes, my family is Christian. So, I technically avoided lying depending on how you define my family and if by love I meant respect. Welcome to Frankfurt!

That night I met a guy named David, who is a history student at the University of Frankfurt and who is also learning to be a tour guide of the city. He showed me around Frankfurt and explained the history of the city and the traditions, and he even spoke some Hessisch, which is the local dialect. He paid special attention during the tour to mention anywhere that JFK stayed at, spoke from, ate in, sat on, or even so much as glanced at during his time in Frankfurt. Later in the week, we also met his friend Samuel and all of us got lunch together at the University (Fun Fact: the University used to be the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command after the war.) This particular building on the campus doesn't have normal elevators, but instead has paternosters. They're cool as hell. It looks like an elevator, but it never stops running and has cabins all along the elevator cable. There is an upward side and a downward side. So instead of pressing a button and waiting you just step into a cabin as it comes by and wait until you hit the right floor! It was wild!

At this point, I suppose I should explain the title of the post. I often say sentences in German that make no sense to anyone except me. Usually people just say they don't understand and ask me to rephrase it, but last week was different. I have two examples. During the first example, I was standing in front of the Goethe Haus with David and Samuel, and we were planning what to do next. I said that I would probably catch a train back home and not stay another night (I was getting a sore throat). Then I added an apology for being a party pooper. I wanted to say something funny like “don't get mad and hit me.” and I said “bitte mich nicht abhauen.” And Samuel asked me to repeat it, so I did. Then David asked me to repeat it, and I did, and then they both laughed. They said it was a very pretty phrase, but made absolutely no sense at all. It was worse than a grammar mistake and more like a collection of random German words strung together. I ended up saying “ please me no scram.” After four years of German, that was humbling to say the least.

The other, and by far funnier, mess up that I made happened on Sunday. Christoph and I were going to meet my friend Kevin for lunch. Christoph didn't have any cash, but time was short. So I wanted to tell Christoph that I would just pay for his lunch. I tried to say, “I'll cover you.” In German, things to do with covering usually have the word stem “deck” in them. Decke = blanket, abdecken = conceal, entdecken = discover, Deckel = lid. It seemed logical to me that covering the cost of a meal would also involve this word. I very casually said to him, “ich decke dich”. And he suddenly stopped walking. Then he realized that I (probably) didn't actually mean what I had just said, and he started to laugh. He then politely informed me that I just said I was going to impregnate him, ostensibly in the restaurant.

Other than my (hilariously) poor German turns of phrase, the week was a blast. The first night most of the 75 of us decided to go to a bar near the hostel. It being a Monday night, they weren't expecting 40 people to show up at once, but the bartender made bank on us. We also got to see the The Who's Tommy. At my mom's behest, I'd seen the movie version when I was about 15 or so, and I loved it. But I was the only one who'd heard of Tommy. Trying to explain the plot of Tommy goes over about as well as explaining the plot of Rocky Horror Picture Show: There's this kid who sees a murder, and then he is struck deaf, dumb, and blind...for some reason. So Tina Turner tries to cure him with LSD. Oh and then (still blind) he gets really good at pinball and defeats...Elton John. Then he founds a cult. My friends were less than enthused, but after the first half I think they were all converted.

Anyway, I'm halfway done, and I'll be writing more soon.