A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 5

It has been 17 months since I last posted on this subject, which perhaps gives you a sense of how thoroughly I have been pursuing this particular personal goal.

Well, let me tell you how I have been getting on in the meantime:

1. Since my iPod packed up, I have transferred all my Michel Thomas German CDs onto my iPhone. I haven’t listened to any of them yet. By the way, Amazon are offering me £15.90 to trade the course in – and yet, I have it all in electronic form now! HA HA HA.
2. While we were in Barcelona last weekend, Elvira and I went to see Rammstein...who are German.

One of the problems I always experienced with language learning at school was that learning to read and write something is in no way a guarantee – or even particularly helpful – in learning to understand what someone is saying to you.

That made the marks I achieved in different exams somewhat erratic: explaining the C I got in AS Level French – back when that was a proper exam, not just a certificate for getting through the first half of sixth form - as the outcome of my inability to do French listening with any degree of accuracy.

So I have been honing my German listening skills by playing a lot of Rammstein. This has expanded my vocabulary into many areas left out of the pre-GCSE syllabus, like cannibalism. 

As a parent, one has to be careful about the rock music one exposes one’s kids to. I was horrified to hear Tancred sing back some Turbonegro lyrics to me after I had been carelessly murmuring them to myself.

But Rammstein have the advantage of singing in German – so that with a handful of exceptions, one can relax about the lyrical content: my kids are ENGLISH! They will NEVER speak a foreign language properly! And it is frankly hilarious to hear 2 and 4 year olds impersonating Till Lindemann booming “Amerika ist Wunderbar”.

Anyway, on to the gig review.

• Rammstein live – Awesome. Especially the keyboard player’s treadmill. I was transfixed.
• Rammstein’s audience – Old and very respectable. Lots of neatly tucked in tour t-shirts (which, I might add were priced from a minimum of 25 euros). Somehow, we ended up with tickets in a section that had been sold exclusively to middle aged Germans. The thoroughness of their jaunty familiarity with Rammstein’s more gruesome lyrics was disturbingly at odds with their general appearance.  
• Palau St Jordi – Great concert venue. It’s got balconies you can get outdoors on. Ample toilet facilities (although not as ample as La Sagrada Familia). Weirdly, the seat numbers on our row went 13, 15, 14, 16 – this was a relief as for three months I had been a little anxious about having asked for seats together but in fact getting tickets for seats 13 and 15. In the end though, I was just relieved they were real.