Thursday, July 12, 2007
Stammtisch
Every Thursday night, the Schiller Center hosts a Stammtisch. The online dictionary I prefer translates this as "regular's table," although I think that "happy hour" would suffice for this particular setup. Apparently, the center used to reserve a table at a nearby restaurant for dinner and drinks near the downtown U-Bahn and S-Bahn stops. This was convenient for everyone because after a long day of studying German, no one wants to schlep across town.
But then the restaurant stopped letting the Schiller Center reserve space, so now we have to wander to an out of the way pub nowhere near any major public transit lines. I walked there with a fellow graduate student from Old Ivy and despite having a map, I found the route confusing at best. Thankfully, the drinks were of high quality...as one might expect at a German tavern, even one run (as this was) by a bunch of Irish expatriates. The conversation was muddled at best, however, partly due to the alcohol and partly due to the varying Germany fluency of the various students. I found it very difficult to maintain a strict German-only policy, for example, when chatting with an Oxford philosophy student in a beginner level German class about the relative merits of Heidegger and Kirkegaard. Neither of our vocabularies lent themselves to this level of conversation. On the other hand, I found it similarly difficult to switch from an English conversation back to thinking entirely in German...and likely ended up sounded like some sort of Faulknerian (or perhaps Grassian, given the Teutonic locale) idiot man-child to people with greater fluency.
I suppose that sounding like an idiot is an important part of learning any language. Better to try, after all, than sit silently at Stammtisch, sipping on lager and wishing that my German would improve.
Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera to tonight's event, so for those of you who only read these posts for the pictures...you'll just have to imagine a smoky, crowded, swelteringly hot pub filled with students of varying ages. That about captures the mood.
Every Thursday night, the Schiller Center hosts a Stammtisch. The online dictionary I prefer translates this as "regular's table," although I think that "happy hour" would suffice for this particular setup. Apparently, the center used to reserve a table at a nearby restaurant for dinner and drinks near the downtown U-Bahn and S-Bahn stops. This was convenient for everyone because after a long day of studying German, no one wants to schlep across town.
But then the restaurant stopped letting the Schiller Center reserve space, so now we have to wander to an out of the way pub nowhere near any major public transit lines. I walked there with a fellow graduate student from Old Ivy and despite having a map, I found the route confusing at best. Thankfully, the drinks were of high quality...as one might expect at a German tavern, even one run (as this was) by a bunch of Irish expatriates. The conversation was muddled at best, however, partly due to the alcohol and partly due to the varying Germany fluency of the various students. I found it very difficult to maintain a strict German-only policy, for example, when chatting with an Oxford philosophy student in a beginner level German class about the relative merits of Heidegger and Kirkegaard. Neither of our vocabularies lent themselves to this level of conversation. On the other hand, I found it similarly difficult to switch from an English conversation back to thinking entirely in German...and likely ended up sounded like some sort of Faulknerian (or perhaps Grassian, given the Teutonic locale) idiot man-child to people with greater fluency.
I suppose that sounding like an idiot is an important part of learning any language. Better to try, after all, than sit silently at Stammtisch, sipping on lager and wishing that my German would improve.
Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera to tonight's event, so for those of you who only read these posts for the pictures...you'll just have to imagine a smoky, crowded, swelteringly hot pub filled with students of varying ages. That about captures the mood.
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