Ok, it sounds like a poorly envisioned reality TV show, but oddly enough it is my reality. Although our German language skills are at different levels, it is fair to say that none of us are fluent. This means that to communicate across cultural divides, we BUKAs have to sometimes be creative. We have to use a lot of hand gestures, and sometimes we have to simplify our word choice. Sometimes it takes a little German, a little Russian, and a little English to get the point across (and sometimes we still miss the point). A lot of times we end up sounding sort of like kindergartners. And so according to one of our German teachers, a collection of BUKAs together is a BUKAgarten.
Some highlights from this week´s BUKAgarten.
One of the American BUKAs requested that we host an international food fest. Chinese food from the Chinese BUKAs, Russian food from the Russian BUKAs, and... burritos from the Americans? In truth, this particular American BUKA really just wanted to make Burritos, and who is to say what is or isn´t American cuisine. Burritos are North American and arguably Tex-Mex I suppose. In the end the Russians and Chinese requested a bit more time to prepare their authentic national dishes, so international food fest was rescheduled. We Americans still had our burrito fest. One of the Chinese BUKAs came to join us, and offered that she had a game to play. It had been a gift from a friend in China that she had been assured westerners really like to play. But, though her English is fantastic, she hadn´t been able to understand the point of the game or the rules or the strategy.
UNO.
True. There is no point, very little strategy, and the rules of UNO are so simple one might honestly think he/she had misunderstood. We explained to her, yeah, you really just match colors and numbers. Hence, BUKAgarten. I later had a similar experience when the Russians attempted to teach me to play a board game. I couldn´t for the life of me figure out how to keep score. Nevertheless, I apparently came in second place!
Birthday cakes. We celebrated an American BUKAs birthday on Friday with a surprise breakfast Birthday cake. According to Wikipedia, the tradition of adding candles to a birthday cake originated in 18th century Germany. Unfortunately after that point, it seems that American and German birthday cakes went in different directions. So, one of the BUKAs put together her own version of the birthday cake, made of iced wafers and German style icing, which is very sweet and so drippy that the writing, which orginally said Happy Birthday Em, migrated to various other parts of the cake. Still a delicious way to start a Friday.
Schimpfwörter: Literally, dishonorous words, idiomatically, curse words. Yes, we actually had a full class, several hours, devoted to learning this important element of Umgangsprach, slang. I won´t share any here, but I will tell you how to say `ready set go`.
Auf die Plätze.
Fertig.
LOS!
And we´re off to another adventure in Germany. This time, four Russians, a Frenchman (husband of one of the Russians) and I headed off to the Mosel Valley. We took a train to Koblenz, where the Rhine and the Mosel Rivers meet, and then another train to Moselkern. For the first time since coming to Germany and befriending my Russians, I found myself in the midst of a Soviet Sing-a-long. Fortunately, having received a proper and dynamic Yiddish education, I at least know some of the words (the yiddish ones at least) and the tune to The International, socialist world anthem and anthem of the Soviet Union until 1944.
Here is a brief video as the train rides along the Mosel river and I am serenaded by my former Soviet Young Pioneers, aka Russian Communist Boy and Girlscouts. Note all of the RVs along the river. We have seen RVs camped all along the Mosel and the Rhine everywhere we go. Also note the hand motioning of one Russian suggesting that they wear their pioneer neck kerchiefs (red of course) on our next excursion.
We then hiked to Burg Eltz, a castle up in the woods surrounded on three sides by the Eltzbach, a small tributary of the Mosel. The Eltz castle is one of the only castles in Germany that is still owned by a branch of the original family that built and owned it around 850 years ago, 33 generations back. The type of castle is known as a Ganerbenburg, which basically means that it was divided between three branches of the same family who all shared it and had joint residences within the same huge building. Now THAT is a close family.
After our day of hiking we headed back to Koblenz to visit the spot where the Mosel meets the Rhine.
As playtime continued, I discovered a wonderful thing about hanging out with people whose first language is not English. They actually appreciate, better yet, enjoy, corny jokes and plays on words in English. And so I shared one of my favorite bad jokes which I will share with you now: A guy walks into a restaurant and says to the maître d’, ´how do you prepare the chicken?´The maître d’ says ´ I just tell them, you´re all gonna die!!´ Yup, in BUKAgarten, this got laughs.
No comments:
Post a Comment