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The
Goethe Institut by Cynthia E So, you have moved to Hamburg! Welcome! You have now had time to discover that the people staring at you in the grocery line are not just heckling you… they really do bag their own groceries and you had better too!! (Amazing isn’t it that "bagging" really is an art to be mastered! Who knew?!) That you must stay off the red section of the sidewalk or you will be run over by a bicycle and rightfully so; this is their territory! And that, although you can pretty easily survive in Hamburg without learning any German, you will definitely embrace so much more of this wonderful city rich in cultural offerings, if you can speak or at least get by in the German language! That said, as I thought about my own German language skills, I realized I had already been in Germany for about one year. Never before had I thought of this language, then suddenly I was living in a small town where no one spoke English. I had to learn charades fast or go without any kind of human interaction. Thanks to the baker, the grocer, the postmistress and my best friends on television, I learned to speak some basic words, became familiar with the sounds, phrasing, and gesticulation patterns and understood a bit more than I could speak. But now it was time to take the next step in expanding my “German” experience. There are many different ways to study this complex language. Some people choose to teach themselves with scores of books, videos and computer lessons available today. But I like to have other people around me to stimulate my grey matter designated for learning. So, school was it for me! There are endless types of language schools. There are large classes, small classes; there is conversation only, reading and writing, or all of the aforementioned and culture. They are cheap, expensive and in-between. After much research, I decided to attend the Goethe Institut. The Goethe Institut in Hamburg advertises step one as a written and oral test to see which level of class you should be attending. Well, that is easy, I thought, as I walked over to the school (located at Georgsplatz 10 directly across from the Hauptbahnhof) to sign up for the next session, “Level 0 is perfect for me.” When I entered, a woman spoke with me in German. I did understand at least most of what she was saying. She assigned me to a class beginning on Monday, right then and there. “Just be sure to make the money transfer today.” Those were her parting words (in English) as she ran off to an office just beyond the reception desk where our entire discourse had taken place. I was to later learn she was the Director, Ms. Anita Stapel, of this Goethe Institut. I let this momentary feeling of distaste pass as I was elated to be assigned to Level 2 and hadn’t even had to sit for a written test!! Wow, maybe this was not going to be as hard as I had feared! Monday morning I arrived raring to go to school. My classmates, seven in total, were of all ages and came from all over the world: Israel, Ukraine, India, Japan, Syria, Ivory Coast and Spain. As class began, it became immediately clear how different our skill levels were. By Wednesday, the profile of the class changed quite dramatically as people moved by necessity or elected to go on to a different level — up or down. So much for the success of the “ungiven” exams. It was truly a waste of time and money for all of us. I had decided to take an intensive course for four weeks. It was perfect for me, but it was intensive. Between class which was 9:00 to 13:00, then the Hausaufgabe (homework) which was taking me four to six hours … I was immersed in German. I loved our teacher, Corinna Schulz, who managed to work within the dynamics of the class and take the pressure off, which I find makes learning so much easier. We studied, we laughed, we learned. It was an amazing experience and although it was an incredible amount of work and information to absorb in a brief period of time, I would do it again immediately and will need to continue to review just what we were taught for a number of months to come! The Goethe Institut offers many extracurricular activities that are wonderful, give an additional way to practice or learn German, and present a wide variety of sides of Hamburg from theatre to boat rides to clubs to concerts at the Hochschule for Music. All with your student discount! My overall rating for the Goethe Institut of Hamburg: above average. But like all learning experiences it depends on the teachers, the fellow classmates and of course, your personal effort.
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