About how I learned to speak German

I like the German language. I know: it's weird. It turns me on more to hear a German guy say something random like Einunddreißig instead of hearing an Italian guy whispering in my ear: Ciao bella. I love to see those kilometric words, as if there were not enough letters to express what is deep inside. I rather to hear those strong sounds, like a hard cookie that you can not bite really well with your teeth, instead of the Brasilian-Portuguese-honey, that one which can make you feel sickeningly sweet, but that everybody loves.

As time goes by, you learn to commit some social suicides and accept, in front of the scepticall look of the audience, that you like things that anybody else does. Yes, I like the snow. Yes, I like McDonald's fries. Yes, I wanted that Heidi would stay in Frankfurt for good and that the Coyote would eat the Roadrunner finally. And yes, I like German. Genau.

But German, as we all know, those who Schiller didn't feed when we were growing up, is hard to learn. My first attempt to learn it date back when I was 18 years old. Back then, full of energy, I sign myself up in a German course in college. After two weeks, I was totally disappointed with my progress. Since I was incapable of pronouncing, for example, my age (achtzehn back then; Youth, treasure only gods may keep, fleeting from me forever now!) with that acht that used to get stuck in my throat and never went out for Goethe's perpetual glory, I decided to change my birth certificate for learning purposes and be born in 1980. Neunzehn. Nineteen. Easier.

After a while, I quit. Especially when I arrived to the accusative. For the sake of a real gender equity and a lot of mental laziness, I decided to learn all the vocabulary without taking notice if the words were feminine, masculine or neutral. Then I realized, as soon as I discovered the accusative, that I was screwing the whole thing up and the German books began to get some dust in the drawer, they saw the new millennium pass through and they slept waiting for the resurrection, in the hope that the Esperanto would swept all the languages away and we would be able to go back to a kind of primary Indo-European tongue in a new age, in which peace and harmony would end with all these linguistic¨differences to put attention to more urgent business, such as wars for the water possession, the fall of a meteor, or the zombie apocalypse.

Until one day, 12 years later, I decided to study German again. A trip around Europe made me realize about the importance of this language, as I was smoking some pot in an apartment in Vienna. Suddenly, I realize I was not able to share with the ones around me the philosophical knowledge which was emerging from the green smoke's fertility. In that moment, I discovered the meaning of life. However, since I was not able to articulate it properly in German and remember it the next morning, the human race lost its chance. In the same way that Einstein's last words were lost since, as the legend tells, the nurse who was seated next to him at the moment of his death didn't understand German. Oh, German language, how many tragedies are committed on the sake of your unpronounceable name! Enough, I thought. I learn German because I learn it and puntk.

Yeah: Mark Twain was soooo right.

Der, die, das

The first obstacle I found, as a German neophyte, was precisely the one that made me drop out twelve years earlier: the words articles. Der, male. Die, female. Das, neutral. Bad news are that anyone who wants to learn German needs to have an excellent memory, because there is no way to know whether a word is masculine or feminine or neutral. There is no a generic "a" or generic "o" to lead the way to put sex to things that doesn't have it anyway, as in Spanish. So, dude, you're screwed: every word has to be learned by heart. And as if that was not enough, you have to do it also with the plural, because each word has its peculiar way of being pluralized.

For example, I am a girl. But in German I'm a mädchen. Or rather, a frau, because I am not 15 years anymore and I already crossed the border of my 30s. Feminine. But a door is a tür, feminine. And the entrance is an eingang, feminine too. So, face it, no-German-speakers: there is no help.

Anyway, before going any further, I must confess that, actually, I'm lying. Beyond pass on my knowledge to the German-speakers when it was smoking, I found my motivation in a somebody else's eyes. A look, ironically, which it doesn't need any words. Men perhaps wouldn't look at us women in the eyes if they knew how one learns over time to decipher their looks. We are not talking, in any case, about the typical blue-like-the-sky or blue-like-the-sea kind of eyes, which usually Latin Americans girls fall in love with. As I said, I'm a little weird. I do not like blondes, really. These eyes were honey-colored. A childish look. A shiny look.

I haven't being in love for a long time. And when I look at that girl (because back then I was still a mädchen, not a frau), who used to be in love head over heels sooooo many years ago, I can not recognize myself. It seems like it happened in another life, when for sure I was blonde, and tall and I even spoke fluent German.

But I must admit that this look was the closest I've been so far to fall in love again. And not only I was about to fall in love with that look, but also with his big hands, big as the ones of a farmer, his back to which I could cling myself to, his silences, his way of walking down the Alps, his simple way of seeing this world he had traveled more than me. And especially I was about to fall in love with his childish and his well-mannered bitte everytime he asked for something. Soon, I discovered that there was nothing that I wouldn't do for that bitte. No please, no por favor, no お願い し ます. Moreover, I didn't even need a fucking reason for that bitte. It was the word whose answer would be yes, always.

Der Mann. Die Frau. I was sure that I would learn.

One afternoon in Austria, that will stick forever.

Akkusativ

The importance of learning these lovely articles is that you will need them later, when the accusative makes its glorious entrance. In Spanish that existed during the days when Latin was not increased itself in Romance languages, but continued omnipotent. If all great empires have fallen and Rome fell, so would the Latin, with all its accusative.

The accusative, for those who have not had to martyr themselves with cases in Latin and the litany of agricola, agricolam, agricolae, is a direct object that is declined. For example: if I say in German: "I have a pencil," I can not say "Ich habe ein Bleistift" which would be the first thing to pop into our minds with a basic knowledge of vocabulary. No: we must say "Ich habe einen Bleistift" because it is a direct object, therefore, accusative. And if it's female is another story and if it's neutral another one, and so on. Yes: be scared. This is actually an article to discourage people to learn German and boycott all German schools.

Okay, then, according to the accusative, I had an Austrian guy. Ich habe einen Österreicher, I was thinking naively, as I packed my backpack to go with him two weeks to Peru, where the hazel eyes of this nomadic were reflected on Lake Titicaca at that specific moment.

Sick of a job in a shitty call center (one of those jobs which we, aspiring writers, will be proud once we are seated on the Parnassus next to Borges, remembering it as a rimbaudean part of our lives that shaped our character to write as well as we will do), I impulsively quit on Monday afternoon, ready to go with all my savings towards south. Ich möchte einen Freund haben.

So, I went after him. I should already have known by now that these romantic and Latin impulsiveness do not fit into the Aryan world. In these countries, people think every little thing one, two, three, four times before doing it. And if they can, fünf.

So, at the end, I had to deal with watching his back sleeping next to me for two weeks. An Argentinian girl broke his heart weeks before and afterwards, this man didn't look at me the way he used to. There was no childishness, or brightness, or anything. I realized from the first moment as our eyes met in Cusco, meanwhile a smoker like me was struggling against the lack of air that you suffer when you are 3000 meters above the sea level and especially, that you suffer when you realize that someone does't look at you in the same way.

That was, then, the most that I saw during those endless days, as I was trying to do my best to marvel myself at the dizzying height that Machu Picchu was built (how the Incas would not going to leave that city? Who wants to go all the way up there, for God's sake?), how difficult it is to do sandboarding in Huacachina and how a llama can spit on you if she is very angry. His back. Since he is tall and Tyrolean, he walked a lot faster than me, a short-city- girl. And if you look at the photos of my trip to Peru, that's what you will see: his back.

When we finally said good bye in Lima, I watched him walk away with the knowledge that I would never see him again. Enough, I thought. He doesn't love you. Er liebt dich nicht. That is also accusative, not the way I dreamed it, but accusative anyway.

His back. Immer.

Dativ

Did you believe only the accusative was annoying ? Noooooo, unsuspecting no-German-speakers. Germans have more for you. Welcome to the dative's world. Another case, this time used for indirect objects. And, natürlich, we must decline it, depending on whether we are talking about something masculine, feminine, neutral or one of its bizarre ways of plural.

Anyway, such an Austrian negative on Peruvian land was far from discouraged me. I'm stubborn by nature and when I want something, I go for it. Resigned, I spent the following months studying alone at home, with a book and the automatic voice of the frau from Google translator. With her, I had a good relationship. Perhaps because she has no eyes, and of course, no back either. Anyway, I always understood her.

So when I returned to Germany this year, I was more than ready to challenge myself in all the possible idiomatic ways with any German, even if it was only to ask for a fucking cappuccino to fulfill my coffee needs. Puffffff, you, naive Costa Rican girl: reading German and be able to write it with a more or less decent grammar does not mean that you can speak it. I did not understand a shit. Not a shit, literally, because the well mannered textbooks had not even taught me some bad words in case I needed to defend myself.

In any case, the little that I knew was enough to locate the subway in Berlin (or U-bahn as they call it here) and meet a German friend who I didn't see for 15 years. What can I do... I have a weakness for men who speak German. And especially if they are tall, and if they have large hands and brown eyes, and if they are intelligent, and nice, and if they have traveled ... So you know then where this kapitel would end. There was no other way.

And as I was sleeping next to him, I realized that he didn't turn his back on me. He just hold my hand. A huge hand in which mine was so small ... A woman like me, frankly, does not need jewelry, clothes, or even a ride back home the next morning. I like to think I'm strong and independent. But sometimes, all I need is someone who gives me his hand. Gib mir deine Hand. Give me your hand. To me. Indirect object. I'm content myself with being indirect, not the center of your life. But please, bitte, give it to me.

That night I slept so calm... As I haven't slept in a long time.

The order of the words in a sentence

If you ask me, this is for me the most difficult thing that German has. I am totally and absolutely convinced about Yoda's Germanic roots by now. These people do not speak in a logical order. Take this case as an example: Wir haben uns schon so lange nicht mehr gesehen. Translated into English, roughly, this becomes: "We've us already so long no more seen." WTF? Genau: they speak like that! For them, it's important to say that something happened not so long ago just to, like a good story in that you have to read it all the way down to find out the end, what happened is that we didn't see each more anymore.

Likewise I had to travel many miles back to Berlin to find out the end of this story.

Absurdly motivated, I asked for a few days off in my job (I clean a hostel in Portugal, one of those jobs which I would be proud of myself when I would be seated next to Dostoevsky) and I came to spend a few days in Berlin. No, I'm not in love. The only thing I needed was to sleep again taken by his hand. As simple as that. To me, that was worth jumping over Spain, the Pyrenees, France, the Alps, Switzerland and all that would get in the way. Especially at this stage of my life, because I feel like Cinderella.

After wandering a couple of days in Leipzig and feel happy to be the protagonist of this story, walking the streets in search for cigarettes only to find Schiller's and Schuman's houses, finally I came to Berlin in a car loaded with Germans who did not talk too much in all the way, but with the little they did, I saw, with satisfaction, that I could understand them. Man, way to go: I can understand German and I have the chance to sleep with someone who will give me his hand. Yes, happy to be the protagonist.

After getting lost a bit in the neighborhood, always observed in any case by the Fernsehturm for further reference, I finally reached my destination: his apartment, perched on the top of a fairly Berliner building, which is accessed by an endless staircase, similar to the one who can take you from purgatory to heaven.

While I was climbing, I was trying to atone, then, my sins: some extra kilos, half-collapsed lungs for cigarettes of anguish and a stupid hope that maybe, maybe, for once, at least, I would be able to be with someone to speak German with and all beyond that.

And bam, I entered in his apartment, scared to death, but I entered. Me and my optimism entered, as well as my need to be cared at least for a few days, and as well as my fears of not being pretty enough, smart enough and nice enough, as it happened before, when I couldn't compete with the ghost of an Argentinian girl.

After an introductory and very polite conversation, and drink a couple of beers (this story has for scenario Germany, don't forget it), we decided it was late and it was better to go to sleep. Sleeping ... with all the connotative meanings that word can have. I do not know how it will be in German, but sleep together in Spanish can go far beyond of just closing your eyes and snoring within two minutes next to someone.

And it seems that this is, in fact, all it means in German. Sleeping.

Meanwhile, I saw his back. I thought the accusative was already an overcome stage in my life, but no. There it was again, so I could make a review, so I could understand the hard way, once and for all, that all I'm going to get is this: a back.

And I had not noticed it, but from his side of the bed and mine there was a huge space. An unbridgeable gap, an abyss where all my dreams started to fall down into a never. A place where there was not even a hand to hold me and save me to go straight to the bottom. And yet, the ghost of a German girl was sufficiently huge, gigantic, monstrous to fill that gap there, between the two of us. Gross. Much bigger than his hand, even.

And there, in the middle, was also your ghost. As always, as it has been for 15 years. At that moment, then, I had an epiphany, in that attic in Berlin: as long as I keep this brief space where you are not, there will be always a huge gap between my side of the bed and any man's who sleeps beside me. Perhaps they can hold my hand, but never hug me for good. It's time to leave that space empty. For anyone who wants it.

That night, he slept. I didn't. The next morning, as soon as he went to work, I took my backpack (easy, because I did not even unpack) and left, probably on the tram that followed his.

And since then, I'm sitting in this hostel, drinking coffee, smoking, and eating cheap pizza from the guy around the corner, who I like, because he speaks Italian and no German. The other night a kid of about seventeen, drunk as possible within his half-baked testosterone, approached me to propose having sex with him. I sent him to hell (yeah, zur Hölle, I already learned) and to my surprise, I realized that I had all this conversation in German.

Thus, dear readers, who have had the patience to read this text, that's how I learned to speak German. So think it twice before you ever consider to learn such a difficult language.

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