It has been almost 15 months since I have been in Germany. Oh man, how fast it went by! I was almost sure that I would speak German by now, but it was not that easy.
Honestly? First year of migrating to Germany is like an emotional hell. Especially if you are alone. Particularly if you are from Iran and you have never been in Europe, yet alone Germany! And again especially if you have a new job in a 100% new work culture with the pressure of: what if I am not good enough to work in Germany?! What if they decide to terminate my contract during the probationary period?
There is a lot to catch up with in the first year, you know? You go to the market. Everything is new. I mean, literally EVERY F* thing. And you can not ask questions in german! So you ask with shame: Can you speak English? And mostly they say: NO! (in German for sure). You pick some stuff from the shelves and try to understand what it is! You buy lots of WRONG stuff over the first months actually; I needed breakfast cheese for example and bought some kind of yogurt. I had a dark period of time looking for bread that tastes like the ones we had in Iran.
The thing is, I did not have a phone internet during the first weeks so I even could not google stuff while shopping. It was taking lots of energy just going out and shopping for something for 30 minutes. I used to sleep a lot! I am not sure if it was jetlag? weather? mental pressure? I am not sure. I just wanted to sleep all the time. My body was begging for it. And the big mistake was talking about it at work! I realized that they are starting to consider me as maybe a lazy girl! So I decided firmly to shut up about it, and continue to sleep in secret!
But it got hard! Why? Because in Germany, every Monday, every colleague will ask you: How was your weekend?
I really needed to say: What the hell guys! I am from Iran. We don’t have weekends. We work our ass off, yet we can not pay the bills. We don’t know how to relax, how to just go out and enjoy the sun! Islamic dictatorship there has taken our lives away. Now I have to report how my weekends were?! 😐 I just need to sleep forever you know? I have dragged myself here, and I am done actually. I just want to lay down and breathe.
So, as I realized it is not good for my character to say “I slept all the time at weekend, and I loved it”, I just started answering like this: “It was good, how was yours?”, and let them explain their happy human-like weekend to me. So, well, I can have an idea how normal humans from developed countries spend their weekends.
Where was I?
Yep! See? Learning German over the first year of immigration is a never-happening result. Nevertheless, I managed to learn from zero to almost A2.1 using Duolingo almost every day. That was not easy though. Imagine me in that sleepy mood, lying on bed, trying to hold my mobile just to learn some words. But I am happy I did it (although I still ask people: “can you speak English?”, but now in german).
I told all this to say that I have decided to take a German course. I am done with playing for fun. I need to go to the championship league. Because even doctors here only speak in German (which is extremely strange to me that a doctor can not talk in English), and because, well, I am in germany. It is a pity that you live in Germany and can not communicate in german. At least people say that! And as we are affected by what society says, let’s use this sad fact and learn the language for God sake!
It is very expensive by the way. No excuse, I just wanted to let it out of my system 😐