It’s coming up to the 2 year anniversary of my life in Germany and I won’t lie, it’s been good. I haven’t been home since and I seem to have brought some sort of bad weather with me (short, cold summers and flooding?!) but I do get to spend my life with my husband and travel.
The weather is clearing up in time for a semblance of a summer (let’s hope it stays this way) but many parts of Germany are under water due to heavy rain. We’re planning to head to Lüneburg and spend time in the Lüneburger Heide. It’s flat in northern Germany, meaning that we’ll be riding bikes and picnicing amongst the colourful heath. This is what it looks like there:
I’m quite critical of myself and my abilities so this is not easy for me to say, but I really have done quite well in learning German in this short space of time and I hope this gives hope to others who are trying to learn this tricky language. It is possible!
I’ve even been studying at uni with all lectures, exams, etc being 100% in German and I’ve managed to get astoundingly good results, usually at the top of the class despite this. I’m the kind of person who wants to achieve good grades and succeed in whatever I choose to do, so I am pleasantly surprised by how I’ve made it through life in Germany and enjoyed it along the way.
In light of this, here’s a fun fact: Germany’s longest word is 63 letters long and was introduced in 1999 because of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Crisis. The word, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, means “the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labelling of beef”. I find the acronym almost more interesting than the word itself: RkReÜAÜG.
At uni, we recently had a Copyright test and that was hard enough for me to understand, so I feel for the bureaucrats who have to deal with this word and acronym! Good riddance, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, rest in peace.
Portfolio: Stephanie Kok 