Whenever I visit Germany or the Nordic countries i’m always surprised at that the way everybody just assumes i speak the language. It’s kind of nice, but a little weird too. My mom’s family immigrated to the US in the 1880’s but only switched to speaking English at home because of WWII. For obvious reasons of not being down with the politics of Germany at the time. After the war, they didn’t go back to speaking German, except for songs and keeping cultural traditions.
It’s really interesting to be in a place where your ancestors come from. A few years ago I went to the tiny village of Plath, a couple hours north of Berlin. As far as we know that’s where my family came from. It’s a very small place, a couple hundred houses, a church, a bunch of farms, and no shops or restaurants of any kind. Honestly it didn’t look like any buildings had been built in the last 150 years.
Now when I’m in Germany, like I find myself today, I just feel kind of weird and incompetent when i have to explain that i don’t speak german to everybody I interact with. A few times today, getting through the airport in Munich, they’ve just ignored my protestations that I don’t speak German and went ahead trying to tell me something in German anyway. Maybe they think i’m acting the way German’s claim they don’t speak good english but then proceed to be entirely fluent. Germany isn’t very helpful a language to speak in New Zealand, I’m going to try Te Reo first, but maybe someday i’ll spend more time with focus in a german speaking country and try and learn.
