Life has become a little more structured for me since beginning language classes at the Sprachenatelier down the road from our flat. Its been a wonderfully confusing, challenging but above all exciting couple of weeks- peppered with small victories and occasional audible improvements to tide me over in the harder times. Learning German has put me into contact which a whole range of interesting people (the brochure even said this would happen) from all over the place, except of course from Britain. This is a mystery worth resolving. There are hundreds of Americans here, and almost as many Australians, and even some New Zealanders, but we are all having to hold our own as the irritatingly accented English speakers here without the support of the British. How is this possible? My Granny would no doubt say "It's the war, love, the blitz..." but I still feel that there must be more to it than that. Anyway, here we are with or without them. Klaus (my language teacher) is a standout from the crowd, and I still am not over his attempt to teach us a whole range of verb conjugations in the present tense through the use of little wursts with feet that he'd lovingly drawn on the board. Over and over again.
Incidentally Klaus doesn't look like that at all, he looks more like Ricky Gervais, minus the collared shirts and plus ear studs and a wry grin. I am coming to the conclusion that one in four men of European ancestry look uncannily like Ricky Gervais, and I'd like to cite the Easyjet flight attendant that brought us here and my Dad as evidence of this.But I wouldn't want you to think that the only think we'd been up to was conjugating at likening those around us to celebrities. Oh no, we've been doing much more than that. Well, a bit more than that anyway. A standout evening was at the Babylon Kino in Mitte where we attended a screening of Sir! No Sir! (in Deutsch) on the closing night of a 1967-1977 Radical Film Festival.
It was great to be amongst a little of the left here, and the night was made all the more interesting by the introduction and Question and Answer session afterwards by two Vietnam Veteran's Against the War (who feature in the film) Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock.
Turns out they have made Germany their home in order to help US soldiers stationed for training here in Germany prior to their deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan to desert. Summers also helped set up the STOP THE WAR BRIGADE in Germany during the Gulf war to build support for anti-war GIs, and has made a whole series of films that he distributes to soliders that document a growing resistance in the US military. There were certainly debates going on in the room between the two men and different political groups in attendence. If only my German was a little better I might have known what they were! In any case, it was amazing to hear the same kind of things that get brought up in Australia brought up here, particularly the one that goes something like "Yeah, okay its all happening in ___________ (insert mythical land where it is easy to build against the war, on this ocassion it was Italy), but its not like that here in Berlin, the people are just too apathetic here". I never thought I would here that here, but there you go. 
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