Another house and eine kleine fisch

AnnaMK called this afternoon and said Toni has found another house, and we can see it on Saturday afternoon. We were going to look at Ikea furniture with Laurie B (one of John’s coworkers), and since that’s in the morning, we can do both. We were going to buy furniture for the wood house in Schondorf, but since that fell through, we are only going to get things like towels of a neutral color that will go with whatever house we end up renting. Also, we’re going to get another set of the same Ikea flatware we have at home in Auburn, which we will bring back when we leave here in a few days. That way, we’ll have a good amount of flatware for get-togethers.

I am increasing my knowledge of the German language, although it’s mostly nouns and verbs and very little grammar. I expect I’ll take some German lessons, as I don’t really feel right just fumbling around for my whole time here. At the very least I should learn some simple sentences and be able to converse at a basic level with people here.

i thought I’d be very inhibited about trying to converse with people, very inhibited about using what German I’ve picked up, because I’m normally a shy person. So I am surprised that I have absolutely no fear about going into a store and figuring out what certain items are, or trying to get help and using my few words of German and many gestures. The German people I have blurt out words to and gestured to so far have been pretty tolerant of my attempts, and if they aren’t, I am blessedly oblivious of it.

It’s clear that I’m obviously mispronouncing some words, and get some words completely wrong. (I am also sure I am misspelling German as well as any other non-English words in this blog, but hey, everyone who learns a language gets it wrong at first.) For instance I had a hankering after anchovy pizza the other day, and we went to Leonardo’s here in Geilenkirchen for some Italian food. Leonardo is from Napoli, and has been in Germany for decades and decades, so of course speaks German fluently, as well as his native Italian. The first time John and I were there (last week), we managed to converse with a mix of broken English (from Mr. Leonardo) and broken German and Italian (John and me), and I managed to get across that in the U.S. we don’t have tuna fish (thunfische) on our pizzas, we have anchovies, and also quatro formagio pizzas. Mr. Leonardo’s face lit up--“ah, ah yes, achovi, quattro formaggio! Can make for you, next time, ja?”

So of course the next time we came to eat there, I asked the waiter to put anchovies on my pizza. I said it the American way: “anchovies.” I think in Italian (I don’t have internet connected at the moment, so I’m not going to look it up right now--it costs by the hour here at the hotel) it’s pronounced “achovy.” The waiter--not Mr. Leonardo--looked puzzled. I tried to explain in what little German I could muster: “eine kleine fisch.” (I remembered eine kleine means “a little” because I remembered Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachmusik means “a little night music.”)

He asked me, “sardine?”

“Nein, nein,” I said. “Anchovies.”

He still looked puzzled, then left. I shrugged. Oh, well, if he just brought me a cheese pizza with fresh basil leaves that was fine--I wasn’t going to be picky. However, in just a few minutes, he brought a small dish of anchovies! “Ja, ja, pizza mit anchovies,” I said.

He grinned. “Ein Deutsch, sardine. Ein Italienische, achovi.”

So now I know Germans call anchovies “sardine” and Italians call them “achovi.” Fun!

The next time I go to the grocery store and want to get a bottle of anchovies, I’ll make sure to look for “sardines” instead of anchovies.