10 Phases of Watching German TV as an Expat

Moving to another country is a complicated process, and watching TV is an excellent way to have insight into the culture and improve your understanding of the language. Plus, true to Germany's "tax everything possible" policy, everyone has to pay a TV tax regardless of whether or not they have a TV, so you might as well use it, right?

I started learning German pretty intensively right around the time when I started dating my boyfriend, who can't speak much English. Due to external circumstances, we moved in together pretty quickly, and my German was still in its infantile stages. It was also the first time that I had access to a TV since coming to Germany. Alone at home while my boyfriend worked, I ended up watching several hours of TV each day. Note: I was also working out, cleaning the apartment, and getting outside when the weather was nice. No judging! While it was incredibly tedious at first, it played a HUGE role in improving my German very quickly.

For fun, here are the 10 basic phases of watching German TV:

1. You just stare at the TV, unable to pick out more than just a few words. At this point you're watching to get used to the sound of the language and not for comprehension. You are also still watching movies and TV shows in your native language, possibly with subtitles in German if you're being ambitious.
2. You've studied a bit and learned some more vocabulary. Most of what you hear is still gibberish, but sometimes you can understand an entire sentence! A small victory indeed, but you pat yourself on the back anyway. At this point you'll take anything you can get.
3. You're slowly increasing your vocabulary so you know what these crazy-looking subtitles mean. And you are realizing that German grammar has almost nothing to do with English, forcing you into a little black box of "I can't do this!" despondency. You finally realize you really can't do this on your own. Forget your hopes of magically learning German -- it's going to take some serious studying.
4. Take a break from the TV (it's not like you understand the shows anyway) and spend some time with actual books to learn this impossible language. You're pleased to realize that those viewing hours from step 1 - 3 were not wasted -- you have a slightly better understanding of the spoken language than you thought. You're still struggling to keep your head above water at this point.
5. OK! Break over. You've got the basic grammar down and you've memorized an impressive list of the most common vocabulary. Time to turn on the TV again.
6. You're watching your favorite TV shows and movies in German, with subtitles of course. And I mean movies that you have seen a million times and can almost recite by heart. A pocket dictionary is by your side at all times. You spend more time staring at the subtitles than watching what's happening with the actors. Frustratingly, sometimes the captions don't match up with what they say.
   Unforseen side effect:
   TV is no longer the relaxing, brain-numbing pastime it once was. You have to work to watch. A 20 minute sitcom leaves you feeling like you've been teaching yourself calculus -- which you have been, in a way.
7. You're slowly memorizing the German text from watching the same shows over and over. You don't rely on the subtitles anymore and can actually watch the action on screen now, jumping back to subtitles quickly for a bit of help.
   Unforseen side effect:
   You are really, really thrown off by the mismatch between the actors' lips forming words in English and hearing the German voice over. You never before realized how much you relied on mouth movements to understand what someone is saying. You have to train yourself to stare at their eyes. Also, while they usually find a German actor with a similar voice, sometimes you are totally thrown off by the voiceover. This happens way more often with cartoons, for some reason.
8. Fast forward in time. You've been studying since Step 4 and now it's time to leave your safe TV/movie reruns (thank goodness, you were getting so sick of them!) and venture into real German TV. You quickly realize that the news, and documentaries, are your new best friend. They speak Hochdeutsch (proper "high" German) and clearly. No confusing slang, mumbling, or accents. Also, while closed captioning is required for handicapped persons, the actual amount of captioned shows varies. And when the show actually does have captions, you realize that, like your favorite newly-hated TV shows, the captions often don't match up.
   Obvious side effect:
   You quickly become an expert on current world events and WW2 documentaries (which .is apparently all that Germany has, unless you stay up late and watch UFO conspiracy docs, imported from the US). Great for trivia nights!
   Unforseen side effect:
   See that cultural differences really do exist, especially towards nudity. Naked voluptuous women showering? No problem! Show it on the "Good Morning Germany"-type show when families are breakfasting together. "But it's just a human body," they say. "Kids see their parents and each other naked all the time," they say. Yeah, maybe -- but it doesn't stop my boyfriend from yelling "TITTEN!" whenever boobs flash on the screen.
9. Graduate to normal TV shows, but keep your training wheels, aka subtitles. You are getting better at understanding conversational German and learning all kinds of interesting expressions (and swear words, because they don't carry the same weight as they do in English and are used relatively frequently in normal conversation). You're also getting pretty jaded from seeing butts and boobs on screen.
   Unforseen side effects:
   Realize how many TV shows America exports, and how great they are compared to German TV. Become actually appalled at the quality of most German TV shows, with either a) are not funny; b) are just plain annoying; c) have terrible effects, acting, and plot lines; d) are a pitiful shadow of American TV shows.
10. Several months after your TV journey started, you graduate to the last and final step: watching whatever you want without subtitles (but let's not lie, most shows didn't have them anyway). No, you don't understand 100% -- but the balance is more like 90% for news shows, and 75% for normal TV. What you don't get is easily figured out by context clues on the screen. And there's always the "Ask a buddy" option if you're watching with a native speaker...unless it's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," in which case you need to just give up now because you're never gonna understand that show. Congratulations! You've persevered and now have a wonderful/shocking/shameful window into German culture whenever you want.
    Unforseen side effects:
    Become so annoyed by Germany's sitcoms, dramas, reality TV, and soap operas (other than GZSZ, which is the only soap opera I'd ever watch because it RULES) that you give up on watching them altogether, which is ironic because you started this whole process so that you could watch them in the first place. Luckily, they are pretty good at showing good, relatively new (American) movies every night at 8:15, directly after GZSZ -- so there's your evening TV program. 

Why you should stay away from pregnant women. Or why I was called Asozial today

So, I really shouldn't be writing this. I should be showering and heading to bed because my alarm rings bright and early at 6:30 am (and my boyfriend's alarm at 5:45) but I am rebelling against my better judgement.  When did I ever care about going to bed early anyway? (Answer: around 25, which is apparently the age where everything starts going downhill)

I was in the grocery store today. I wanted to get there "early," meaning, before the lunchtime crowd of local workers looking for a quick bite to eat hit the registers. Unfortunately either they were early or  I was late, and I ended up in a lengthy line anyway.

I picked out the ingredients for my lunch (a spinach salad with marinated artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes, for those who are interested) and headed towards the checkout line.

I got there at exactly the same time as a woman carrying a box of stuff. For those who aren't familiar with German supermarkets, food is simply taken off the truck and put on the shelves in the boxes it came in. If you want an entire 6 pack of 1.5L water bottles - no problem! Just grab a whole pack. The system is kind of like a) you want to buy a 12 pack of coke -- grab the whole pack. If you want to just buy 3, then b) open the 12 pack and pull out 3 cans.  If you don't need a ton of stuff, you just grab an empty box from an item that people previously picked out of and use that as your shopping bag. Also, it's important to note that you have to purchase your shopping bags here. And the cashier doesn't bag them for you. The whole checkout process is an extremely stressful situation in which you try to gauge exactly how many bags you need and pack them while simultaneously paying and getting your change and getting out of the way because the cashier is already ringing up the next person 1 second after she hands you your receipt and says "Have a nice day."

But I digress. Again, I knew I shouldn't be writing this late. Anyhoo, this lady was holding a box of foodstuffs and we got to the line at the exact same time. I arrived from the left, she arrived from dead-on straight. I didn't even really look at her. Germans either don't make eye contact, or go full on creepy. I am not comfortable with Option 2 so I always just kind of look everywhere except at that person.  As we waited, the person in front of us moved up about .678 steps. I waited a few seconds to see if she would take the spot. She didn't. So, per German custom, I did.

The conveyor belt with all the items from the entire line was slowly moving forward. The man in front of me was really dragging his feet and finally I had enough space in front of the conveyor to lay down my meager foodstuffs for the salad. There were probably about 2 centimeters between the end of the conveyor and the end of my purchase.

Suddenly someone shoved me from behind. The woman behind me was literally shoving me out of the way so she could set down her purchase items.

"Excuse me, I just need some space. I'm Hochschwanger [literally translated: high pregnant; figuratively: about to pop]," she sniped. Using polite words in a tone that threatened to punch me in the face if I suggested otherwise -- typically German. They love writing passive aggressive notes like "Dear neighbor: I noticed during the last World Cup game, during which Germany won (Go Germany!) that you and your friends were having a party in our shared courtyard. You left some beer cans, kept our children awake, and I also saw several people relieving themselves in the foliage. Thank you very much for not doing this in the future," meaning if you do this again they will come down from their apartment and punch you in the face.

Back to the story.. She shoved me aside and mentioned SPECIFICALLY that she is high pregnant. And that she is "fed up with asozial people." Asozial (or azzies for short) is an innocent sounding insult in English. But in German it's pretty strong. Like, rednecks who beat their wives all the time are asozial. Or people who just hang out in the corner stores (Spaetis) all day and drink beer and start fights. The low rungs of society are filled with them - so when you say it, you are seriously serious.

While I charted her rudeness up to fluctuating crazy pregnant woman hormones, it did piss me off.  Actually, I didn't realize you were pregnant. You were too busy balancing that huge box of candy and whatnot on top of your baby belly, hiding it from view. ON TOP OF YOUR BABY. Since when did using your stomach as a shelf become OK? How did you plan on carrying that shit home if you can't even hold it for 30 seconds in a grocery store? Believe me, if I could make the cashier go any faster, I would.  And since when did your growing a baby become my problem? It's not like I jumped in the only available seat on a 7 hour bus ride and refused to give it up. Wow, you had to carry your gummy bears 30 seconds more before the conveyor belt moved enough for your stuff. I've never had a baby, never been hochschwanger, but from what I understand -- birth is a pretty serious thing. If you're getting flustered because you have to carry your snacks for a minute more, I don't want to know what your labor is going to be like.

I just ignored her, reminding myself that she is basically growing a living moving tumor inside of her body -- but I just had to write something about it. Get it out of my system. And then a few years later look back and laugh at the time I was called Asozial.

Asozial.. Jeezus. Hopefully the first and last time in my life anyone ever calls me that.

Christmas

Christmas in Germany is pretty much the same thing as in America. Lots of family time, presents, lots of food. There's only one main thing that stands out: they give presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. I personally don't care much one way or the other, but it seems like the German way creates a lot more problems -- it's easy enough to convince kids that Santa came during the night while they were sleeping, but how do you convince them he stopped by on Christmas Eve afternoon?

I spent pretty much a huge chunk of the Christmas week with Mario's family. Christmas Eve - afternoon cake and coffee with his parents and brother, followed by dinner, presents, and more cake.  I was expecting to get a couple of things but not a lot, since we don't see Mario's parents very often and when we do see them, I am mostly just the quiet shadow in the background, too shy to say much in my bumbling German. Not this year -- I had just as many boxes under the tree with my name as the boys, which was quite a pleasant surprise. I've gotten less for Christmas from previous boyfriends' families whom I'd known longer (and actually had conversations with).

Among the spoils were: way over 100eur in gift cards for H&M and IKEA; two months' worth of toiletries and perfume; a 1000 page book (in ENGLISH!) that I devoured in a week; a key holder to hang by the door; and a bag of Christmas chocolate that dwarfs what any kid could hope to bring home for Halloween.

Mario and I were invited back over the next day (25th) for cake and coffee for his grandma Sonja. She's a sweet lady but has Alzheimer's and forgot where the bathroom was 7 times. She also signed Mario's Christmas card twice.

On the 26th we headed back again to his parents' apartment. This time we had dinner and exchanged presents with the extended family -- mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, 2 cousins, and an 8 year old nephew. They were all chatting away excitedly in Berliner but from what I could tell, the favorite topic was life in East Germany under the DDR.

They had lots of stories about how the children were left alone at night while the parents went out. The kids were scared, the parents came home to find every single light on in the house, etc.

I finally asked, "Don't you have babysitters here in Germany?" Turns out that under the DDR government, they were all too poor to afford babysitters. Everyone was in the same boat and helped each other out when they could. Instead of paying a babysitter they just put the kids to bed and gave the neighbors a key to the apartment. The neighbors could hear through the walls when the kids cried and would go over to comfort them.

Mario's parents were coming home from one such night out. Their route took them along the wall, which of course was still intact and heavily guarded. The Stasi were extremely heavy-handed about anti-DDR propaganda and it was normal for people to be taken in for questioning and just disappear. Fun fact: their former headquarters are just a block away from our apartment! Makes for a very cozy feel in the neighborhood.
Mario's dad decided just as they were walking along a checkpoint that it was a good time for him to start loudly voicing his [extremely negative and honest] opinions about the soldiers standing guard and the DDR. His wife had to clamp her hands over his mouth and drag him away, fearing that the father of her children would also disappear.
At first glance this story doesn't seem all that crazy. But when you really think about it -- can you imagine going up to a policeman and saying "Hey, you're a dick," and then he beats you and throws you into jail where you rot for the rest of your life -- if you're lucky? And to think it was happening until the late 80s in a country that is as modern as Germany!

After dinner they continued telling stories and we drank the night away until midnight or so, then said goodbye and piled into our cars (with DD's, of course. Germans are very strict about having a designated driver).

So, that was my Christmas. Warm and fuzzy and filled with family, just like in America. Except for the Stasi stories.

I cheat on you, you cheat on me

I was doing some cleaning and  listening to German music, humming along and singing when I knew the words. I found one particular song particularly catchy and kept playing it. I could only understand a few words here and there but I eventually learned the sound of the words enough to sing the chorus (although I didn't know what I was singing).

I was still bopping around the apartment, singing "Ich geh dir fremd, ich geh dir fremd, du gehst mir fremd, du gehst mir fremd," when Mario came home from work.

He started to give me a hello kiss, then heard what I was singing and stopped in his tracks.

"Ehhmm...Do you know what that means?" he asked.

"Nope, I just like the song," I replied.

"It means, 'I cheat on you, you cheat on me.'"

Oh.

"I just farted"

Originally this was supposed to be a quick post about a silly situation. I mean, when are farts not amusingly silly? But fart-related situations keep happening and it would be a shame to let them fade away into oblivion instead of sharing them with the world in all their glory... I'll keep updating this as they happen. If only for my own personal amusement.

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I was really sick for a week and a half. Not flu-like, thank goodness. No achy pains, no fevers, excessive snot -- just a persistent cough. Cough didn't really describe it. It was like smoking-for-60-years-and-I'm-trying-to-cough-up-my-lungs coughing.

It got worse at night, so Mario and I were sleeping in different rooms. Whoever went to sleep first got to the bedroom, and the other watched tv and slept on a temporary mattress in the living room.

On this particular occasion, Mario was in the living room. I walked in the next morning to say hello and get some morning cuddle time, which I'd been missing for the past 10 days.

"Good morning, baby!" I said.

"I just farted," he responded.

What a nice way to start the day.

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Him: I just farted
Me: You did?
Him: You didn't hear "pfffftttttttttt"?
Me: No. I didn't hear anything
Him: Oh, ok, then I didn't just fart

Smooth.

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Stupid things I've said in German

I've been here for a year but didn't actually start to speak German until about 5 months ago, when I met my boyfriend. He barely speaks English and since I'm not planning on leaving the country anytime soon, it was more practical for me to start learning German instead of forcing him to learn English. Easier said than done...

I asked today if I have an accent with everything I say, or if I actually sound German sometimes. Mario didn't even need a second to consider his answer. "You have an accent all the time. Except when you say 'nichts.'"

What the hell. "Nichts," German for "nothing," is actually a pretty hard word to say. You've got that soft ch sound, followed by the hard t, followed by the soft s. What about the easy stuff, like ja or nein? Is it even possible to say those words any other way than the German way?

I don't believe it. I'm going to ask "Did I have an accent?" after every single sentence I utter tonight.  Just to be sure. There has to be some other word I can say correctly. Has to be.

At least my accent can be understood, and maybe even charming to some. But what's really funny -- and sometimes embarrassing -- is when I screw up the words entirely.

Here are the translations of the stupid things I've said (offending words in red), along with what I should have said (in green).

When asked if I want more to eat at dinner:
No thanks, I don't want any more. My tree is full.
tree = Baum
stomach = Bauch 

When looking for my toothbrush:
Where is my toothbreast?
breast = Bruste
toothbrush = Zahnbürste

When talking about someone with acne on his scalp:
He has to pee in his hair.
to pee = pinkeln
pimple = Pickel

When asked about what I'm giving my boyfriend for his birthday:
I don't know yet.. I must buy him a poison.
poison = Gift
gift = Geschenk

When buying paper for rolling cigarettes:
Can I have the blue documents?
documents = Papiere
cigarette paper = Paper
I did this one for months and never understood why I got such strange looks until my boyfriend was kind enough to explain to me that I was actually asking for something like immigration papers, not rolling papers

Talking about breakfast, and not realizing that a slang term for testicles is "eggs":
Yeah, I love balls. I could eat balls every single day. They are so tasty and you can do so much with them.
balls = Eier
eggs = Eier
So, in my defense -- that one was actually correct vocabulary, but my boyfriend's brain is in the gutter. He got a big kick out of that one.

Yeahhh, don't bring me home to meet the family just yet.. Or, at the very least, keep me away from Grandma until I can get my sexual slang under control.  I'm sure the list will grow more in the future.. Stay tuned.

Pinkie Promises and Penis Fights

I don’t know how it happens, but my friends always attract the most colorful characters in Berlin.  There was that one old Italian guy who, while my boyfriend and I were waiting for the Ubahn, wanted to come over to chat with us. My boyfriend gave him an “Eat shit and die” look before the guy could get within speaking distance, and the man wisely took the hint and started talking to a trash can instead about how unfriendly we are.

Then there was that middle-aged couple who bought just two cigarettes from us. They were drunk and on their way to a concert at 7:30am (just as we were coming back from a club). The music they were going to hear? Indian-influenced techno, at a ridiculous 170 beats per minute. They invited us to come, but we politely declined. For your reference, here's a 160bpm track. I can only imagine what Indian-flavored techno at 170 bpm would sound like...

Oh, and then there was that drunk person who tripped UP the stairs at the Frankfurter Tor Ubahn station, recovered slightly, and then strolled away. Pretty normal, actually… Until we noticed he had a huge unopened can of soup in his hoodie pocket. Literally, the can could have fed four people. It was a Costco, Sams Club sized can of soup. The strangest part is that it was very early on a Sunday morning, and it is pretty much impossible to go to a grocery store so early on a Sunday, meaning he must have been carrying around with him for who knows how long.

BUT -- the more I think about it, the more that it makes sense. Birds of a feather flock together, and as the German saying goes, my boyfriend and his friends haben ein Vogel -- literally, have a bird. Figuratively, they are a bit off their rocker.  Combine that with very friendly and talkative personalites -- especially when combined with copious amounts of beer and Havana rum -- and actually I am not surprised at all that we stumble into hilariously strange situations.

Take this past weekend for example. Sergio’s birthday night, Saturday. It was a boy’s night, and my boyfriend and his BBF (Best Bro Friend) Olli were in attendance at the party. No worries -- rocker chick Jenny (Olli’s girlfriend) and I had a girls’ night and met the extremely drunk boys much later at a club.

Around 11 pm we got a Whatsapp picture from my boyfriend, Mario. He and Olli were holding their shirts up and pushing their crotches together. It looked almost like they were comparing belt buckles. The text read “Pinkie Promise!” Earlier I'd taught him what a pinkie promise is, and he pinkie promised me that “Tonight I will be really really drunk.”

Jenny stared at the picture, then at me. I explained to her the pinkie promise thing, and we wrote back “Congratulations.”

We didn’t think any more about it until we were heading home around 7:30 that morning. The sun was just starting to come up and Jenny and I were the only sober ones.

We were standing on a street corner near the Eberswalder stop on Schoenhauser Allee. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a fairly busy intersection. This morning the traffic was more of the drunken  pedestrian sort and less of the auto sort, but it was busy nonetheless.

Suddenly, Mario stopped and yelled “PINKIE PROMISE!” Olli’s face lit up and both boys started undoing their flys, leaving their belts and top buttons alone. Jenny and I looked at each other, thinking “Oh God, what are they doing now?”

The boys shoved their hands inside their jeans, struggling around, and finally poked their little fingers out of their unzipped pants. It really looked like baby penises wagging around. “PINKIE PROMISE!!” they both yelled, then pushed their hips together and started playing a weird game of fencing with their digits. Suddenly the picture we’d received earlier made a lot more sense.

A drunk guy walking by saw the fencing match and wanted in on it, too. “Hey, ja!” he said, unzipping his pants. Except he also undid his belt and the top button.  When we realized what was happening, it was too late. We all screamed “NOOOOOOOO!!” It was like everything was happening in slow motion -- you want to stop it, but you can’t. He was barreling ahead like a locomotive, unstoppable in his drunken stupor.

“PINKIE PROMISE!” he yelled, whipping out his penis and ready to join in on the fun.

I was hysterical, laughing so hard I was about to cry. Jenny was screaming about how disgusting it looked. And the boys were all yelling “Dude!! It’s just our fingers!!”

He stood there for a few seconds, then put the pieces together. “Oh…” He shoved the penis back into his pants. “You could have told me sooner that it was just your fingers, you assholes,” he mumbled, complete embarrassment breaking through the alcohol haze. But it was all good. We had a good laugh together, Olli gave him a high-five (Jenny sighed and told me, “Now I have to burn his hands. That penis was disgusting looking.”) and he took a group photo of us.

Indeed, upon retrospection.. It’s not a surprise at all that we attract such characters. What would you expect when having a “penis fight” at 7:30am on a weekend near Kulturbrauerei?

Let’s see what fun the next weekend brings..