My Berliner Experience

Kapitel Zwei Berlin host family

It was a complete surprised for me to be able to find a host family in Berlin, because I honestly did not know much about the city and did not mind living in a city that was not the capital of Germany. Many challenges were coming up and I did not know if I was completely ready for them. My first frustration was not being able to communicate properly with the kids I was taking care of so I really needed to find a language school as soon as possible to change that. As the days went by and as I started getting used to being in a big city, I started to fall in love with Berlin more and more. People always told me (and still do) that this was not a real German city and that I could not learn German here, because this was more of an international city where you could find everything and survive by only speaking English. But I think that is, why I fell in love with this city, because having a range of variety in one city makes you learn more about the people and about their different countries and traditions. This is a unique city where people can walk around half naked during summer, where you can drink at the park and have a nice barbecue, a city full of life and colors. It is hard to imagine how different it was a couple of years ago and how amazing it is to be part of it now. I was so afraid of getting lost in the city and not doing my job on time or the right way and I think my fear was so much that I actually attracted the bad luck. I got lost one day and just started walking and walking until I got to Alexanderplatz. It was then when I finally stopped for a while and started thinking about how cool and lucky I was to be in Berlin. Maybe it was not the ‘perfect German city’, because it did not represent the country, but it was even better because as I walked I was able to listen to many different languages. I was able to see many different faces, hear the different accents, see the craziest street art masterpieces, and it was all in only one city!

Do you want to learn German successfully?