Night out with the German Girls, Alienation und Ueber-Sexy Films

Flensburg, Germany

The other night I went for a night ou with the girls in Flensburg. We first went to a few pubs. It was weird, everyone was talking in German. I had gone out with the same five girls in England and it was the opposite. It was a little alienating at times. Most of the language they use I haven't learned yet. It's one thing to order food or ask for directions, it's another thing to have a conversation. Later on we went for a walk by the harbour and then we went to see a film. I kept thinking to myself that people will start talking in English or I'll hear something in English sooner or later. We sat down for the film and the staff came on stage for a ticket draw, if your ticket had the same 5 numbers that they called then you won a prize. As soon as they started talking I was expecting English to come out of their mouths but it was German, I had never been surrounded like this before in my life. Eventually the movie started. The movie was (in English) "The Sweetest Thing", which was renamed for Germany to "Ãœber-Sexy". The entire movie was dubbed into German with no subtitles. It was easy to follow along, usually when they dub something they use easy words to convey the message and the actions by the characters help to describe what is going on, e.g. when you give a presentation, your body movements and voice tone/level mean more than the words you speak.

Yesterday Anja and I went to Flensburg again to get some Kabab. We walked into a Takeaway and I said "Eine Kabab bite" and two other girls in the kabab shop said "Are you American?". I asked for the Kabab in German but I guess my accent is really strong. I replied with "No, I'm Canadian" and we had a nice little conversation about how they were studying in America for a year.

Afterword, Anja and I rented a DVD called Blow (It's not a dodgy film ,-)). It was about drug trafficing in the 60's - 80's. I configured the DVD for English Audio and German Subtitles to help with my reading/translation and so I could still enjoy the film in my native language. Through out the film there was a lot of Spainish dialog as well so it was a really nice mix of German/English/Spanish, my 3 languages. Half way through the film, Anja's family came in to celebrate Anja's brother's new baby, it was born the other night. Anja's brother's wife nor child were there but Anja's two brothers and mother were there. They were completely smashed on Expensive French Champage. At one point her two brothers played a German CD and began singing along. I was only slightly scared ;-). Eventually they all stumbled out and we finished our film.

It's strange, three weeks ago I would never had imagined that I would be living with a german family and be intregrating into a completely new culture. There are very few people here who can speak english and most of them have the same fluency rate as those who speak German in Canada.

Today we have to go buy some furniture for our new flat in Bremen.

Previous Blogs