An attempt to keep in touch with everyone: 1 Year!

Hi,

I have trouble believing it, but, according to my calendar I arrived in Germany a full 13 months ago. I was meant to write a big retrospective piece on the anniversary, but (as usual) it slipped my mind, and here I am a month late.

When I arrived, I remember I had 2 days of sunny weather and then winter hit with a vengeance. So this year, the weather has definitely taken a turn about the same time. I took this photo in Berlin about a month ago, when it was still warm.

It was an omen of things to come. Last week we turned the central heating on in the flat, I take my jacket with me whenever I go outside, leaves are rapidly yellowing and disappearing. Xmas decorations are appearing shop windows, and at street festivals they are serving gluhwein (mulled wine).

Although it feels like this year has passed really quickly, when I think back to what it was like at the beginning, I realised that it has really been a long time. Those early days I was really completely clueless about everything - German, supermarkets, buses, Berlin, my project, Germans. I feel like the language thing is the biggest thing that's changed. I'm definitely not fluent, or even competent, but I can survive using just German now. When the German knows that my German is rubbish, and they are very patient, we can usually understand each other. Living with 4 Germans definitely helps (although soon to be 3 Germans and 1 American), at parties and things people tend to speak German. So yea German has gone from a 1/10 to maybe a 5.5/10, which is good enough for me at the moment.

In other news, I'm worried I may be becoming a little bit too German. The things that I scoffed at when I first got here now seem pretty normal, like the not-talking-to-people-at-the-busstop kind of culture. And before it was "Wow, beer is really good and cheap here", but now it's "Beer is really bad and expensive in NZ". And I get really annoyed when a bus is more than 2 minutes late, just like a German. I also was talking to someone (German) at work, and he said he went to England for 6 months, and when he came back, people would complement him on how good his German was because he had picked up an English accent in his German. So I hope that I don't talk funny in English now. I think I definitely talk slower, and don't use as much slang, because otherwise noone would understand anything I was talking about.

But you'll be able to find all of this out first hand in a couple of months - I've booked tickets for Christmas and New Years in lil old NZ - arrive on 18th December, leave 11th January. Will be great to see all of you again, and escape another white xmas!

And just to pad this out a bit, here are some random photos from the last few weeks: