german night: session 1

You may remember from previous posts the Lewis Pass tramping trip that we took in the snow six or so months ago with Ann-Kristin, our German friend, and her boyfriend Josh, a Kiwi. Since Ann returned to Berlin in September, Josh has been planning his own overseas trip to visit her and has finally purchased his tickets for a six-month trip leaving in April. I'm sure he'll have a fantastic time visiting his Liebchen, working, sightseeing, and maybe even doing some climbing...but the only problem is that Josh doesn't really speak German.

And he's not the only one wanting to learn - being overseas is a constant reminder that knowing only one language is an intellectual and cultural weakness and that I am in the minority for it. I brushed up on some vocabulary with Ann while she was here ("Der Schmetterling? The butterfly is a masculine noun?"), but am eager for opportunities to move beyond my kindergarten speaking level and develop the language into something that I can legitimately put on a resume...not to mention that trip to Germany that Bryan and I intend to take...eventually.

Thus begins an official series of German Nights, in which Bryan, Josh and I work through a chapter of exercises in the book that Ann so hopefully sent him for Christmas, sample a menu of "traditional" German food from a library book of Central European cuisine, watch a movie set in Germany (lots of war films to choose from), and play some Settlers of Catan. That last one doesn't have any cultural significance, but it should always been included in any enjoyable evening.

As we have only recently instituted the German Nights program, we have so far only met once for this purpose, but I believe we could easily call it a success. We mastered the alphabet, were introduced to the idea of formal and casual pronouns, and heard over and over from the dialogue sound clips that "Aynur" is a Turkish name.

But the highlight of the evening was the success of our meal: Schnitzel with Spaetzle (inconveniently similarly named for our group of beginners). Being on a budget and acknowledging the danger of spreading our limited cooking skills too thinly, the Schnitzel was the frozen kind that we merely threw in the oven, while the Spaetzle with bacon, mushrooms and poached celery was fully homemade. Spaetzle are a sort of knobbly pasta made by scraping little bits off of the wet dough into a pot of boiling water, an art which I cannot yet claim to have mastered, as many of mine came out in big dumpling-like clumps that weren't all that appetizing. Fortunately, we had enough decent Spaetzle to go around and were all pleasantly surprised to have genuinely enjoyed our new dish.

With these two dishes we've exhausted the good-looking recipes in our Central European Cuisine book, so we're now taking suggestions for future meals. Maybe next week we'll skip dinner and go right to dessert - German chocolate cake? Apple strudel? Black forest cake? Plenty of options in the sweets category...

-Rachel