Tag Archives: Deutsch

Café Hawelka – a Traditional Place

Vienna’s coffee house culture is one of the UNESCO’s intangible world heritages. Coffee houses have a very special atmosphere „where time and space are consumed but only the coffee can be found on the bill“.

Café Hawelka is a traditional Viennese place in the heart of the city, close to the Stephansdom. It was originally opened in 1939 but, due to the war it had to close. In 1945 it reopened and it is open since then – like time has stopped there, it is a piece of history.

We wanted to go there because there is a famous Austrian song about it which was very popular when he was a kid and even before. Well, I can’t say anything, I wasn’t in Austria back then 🙂
This is the song:

It is really traditional, the way it looks, the service, the old pictures on the wall, the magazines on the table, the simplicity of the menu. Coffee is excellent, the Sacher is delicious but I prefer it at Sacher 🙂 Service is quite slow but the atmosphere worth it. Take your time 🙂

End of the Third Week

Time flies, today we arrived at the end of our third week. The next one will be the last for B1.1, then we can start B1.2. I will definitely continue and take a break in August maybe.

I see how much we could improve in a few weeks. Now we can ask help and recommendations in a store, talk about different opinions or write a complaint letter, even a presentation.
Every class we practice a lot and talk more and more. We were even learning about one of my favorite topics – pets.

Our group is great and every day we know a little bit more about each other by talking about exciting topics. I never thought that learning German can be fun 🙂

German is a very difficult language if you want to speak it well. I started to read a book, the „Little Prince“, and it is a very good practice. When I was learning French, My teacher recommended it to us because of its simple language. It was a great idea and it works with German as well.
I also started to watch a show, with subtitles of course, the Vorstadtwiber, it is very funny and entertaining. It is like „Desperate Housewives“ in the USA, but a little bit more dirty 🙂 It is very popular now in Austria and about five rich women who live in the fancy part of Vienna.

I can recommend to practice and try to talk even more from now on, because at B1 you already have the knowledge to have conversations so don’t be shy!

This is us yesterday in the Parliament

Our Class

Vienna is an international city, and you can see this in the Deutschkurs, too. People are from Romania, Iran, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, Mexico, Ukraine and Hungary (me). Different cultures and habits meet every day. Last month there was a woman from Tanzania. I love to hear the stories from all over the world like what their motivation is, how their hometown is or how they met their loved one.

People are studying at the university, writing their PhD, or just trying to find a better job. German is not an easy language and takes hard work to improve.

This is the second week of the course, it started a week later, but at least we had some time to go over everything again. At B1.1 we practice and talk even more, German started to become the part of our lives. I don’t use English anymore in the city and that makes me feel more confident. Though last time we went to a spa the waiter in the restaurant didn’t understand my „school German“ so I had to ask for help 🙂

Erinnert ihr an euren Urlaub als Kinder?

Im Buch „Lesen und Schreiben – B2“, das ich euch empfehle, habe ich einen Text über dieses Thema gefundet.

Dieser Text passt wirklich für mich, weil ich als Kind den Urlaub mit meinen Großeltern gehasst habe. Wir sind immer nach Cortina gefahren, dasselbe Camping, derselbe Ort.
Trotzdem liebe ich jetzt die Erinnungen daran und die Ruhe typisch in der Berge.

Natürlich… Mücken sticken, Dornen zerkratzen und manchmal regnet es… aber wolltet ihr sagen, dass es sich nicht lohnt?
Man kann die frische Luft atmen, im Wald wandern, Beeren sammeln (und essen zugleich!) und von der Gebirge die ganze Panorama genießen.

Und es begegnet, dass, wenn man sich in diesselbe Hütte der seinen Kinderheit setzt, vor einem großen Eisbecher, plötzlich geht das Gedachtnis in den Vergangenheit zurück. Und die Erinnungen neue Bedeutungen annehmen werden.

So jetzt kann ich nicht auf Freitag warten, weil ich noch nach meiner Hütte fahre 😀

 

Wie lerne ich Deutsch?

Hallo liebe Leute!

Alle wissen, dass der wirklichste Weg, um eine Framdsprache zu lernen, in vier Teilen geteilt ist:
1) Lesen
2) Hören
3) Schreiben
4) Sprechen
Die Punkte 1 und 2 sind „passive“ Fahigkeiten, während die Punkte 3 und 4 „aktive“ Fahigkeiten sind. Das heißt, dass die letzte mehr Einsatz brauchen.

Wie ist mein Alltag? Wie kann ich alle diese Punkte erledigen?

Hören
Also, jeder Tag stehe ich auf und frühstücke. Während des Frühstücks höre ich die langsam gesprochene Nachrichten von DeutschWelle. Ich versuche, alle zu verstehen, aber wenn ich Probleme habe, sehe ich die Texte beigefügt.
Dann ich ins Fitnesszentrum gehe. Wenn ich auf dem Tapis Roulant laufe, höre ich das Audiobuch „Harry Potter und der Stein der Wiesen“. Großartiges Buch!

Wiederholen
In der U-Bahn (wenn ich in die Arbeit gehe) benutze ich nur ein bisschen meine lieblingste App: Quizlet! Mit dieser App kannst du alle deine Vokabeln mit einer besonderen Methode wiederholen.
Ich habe fünf Schnellhefter gemacht, von A2.1 bis B2.2!

Lesen
Zum Mittagessen habe ich eine Stunde zu erholen. Warum nicht eine Zeitschrift oder eine Zeitung lesen? DerStandard oder WienerZeitung, aber auch mein „Der kleine Prinz“.
Wenn du liest, bitte nicht stopp jedes Mal, dass du ein neues Wort triffst! Gehe weiter und genieß!

Sprechen
Mit meinen Kollegen versuche ich zu sprechen. Vielleicht ist es besser, wenn wir auf einen Kaffee verabreden und dann wir raus gehen. So ich bin sicher, dass die Arbeit nicht beeinflusst werde.
Es gibt viele andere Möglichkeiten zu sprechen! In Wien kannst du im Sprachecafé viele Leute kennenlernen, wie Kontaktepool, Deutsch-Café oder LenZ. Schau im Facebook!
Persönlich liebe ich einen traditionelle Tanzkurs besuchen. Dort sind sie nur alte wienerische Leute, die froh sind, junge Personen zu sehen und ihnen zu unterrichten. Sie sprechen nur auf Deutsch! 😀

Mein Deutsch Kurs in Dezember! Sie vermissen mich :*(

Kurs
Sehr wichtig ist es einen Kurs zu besuchen. Es motiviert mich weiterzugehen.
Heute beginne ich die B2.2 Stufe! Obwohl ich ein bisschen müde bin, will ich Erfolg haben!
Die ÖSD Prüfung ist nicht so weit, so Schritt für Schritt folge ich meine Träume: früher oder später werde ich „De Mann ohne Eigenschaften“ von Robert Musil auf Deutsch lesen!

Schreiben
Und dann, sei mutig und schreib hier auf Deutsch!
Das ist die schwerste Dinge zu machen, wirklich. Aber diese ist mein dritte Artikel!
Bevor schlafen, schreibe ich manche Satze. Und dann mein Tag ist beendet. 🙂

LG,

Irena

Shout-out to DeutschAkademie

This Thursday was the final day of my B2.1 course here in Deutschakademie. In total, I’ve spent 2 months studying here, and one more is just around the corner, so hopefully I’ll reach the B2 level soon.

So, how can I sum up my experience here? In one word: just awesome. To be fair, I couldn’t imagine that my German would improve so much over these 2 months: I’ve learned tons of new grammar, trained my listening and reading skills, became more confident at speaking, and, of course, learned a huge amount of new vocabulary. It’s amazing how much information and knowledge has been given to me and my classmates during the courses, and even more fascinating was the way we were taught: fun, easy and informal. All this combined led to great productivity and awesome language improvement results for all of us.

Sounds like a cool environment to skyrocket your German skills? Then DeutschAkademie is the right place for you. Check out the next course dates and register now! Don’t believe the rumors, life is not too short to learn German.

I’m wishing every one of you a great time in Vienna and a lot of success in mastering German. Choose DeutschAkademie and very soon you’ll nail your coffee house orders or you’ll even be able to see the best theatre shows in German. Hope I managed to share some ideas about Viennese activities through my tips and observations, which I’ve posted during the last month. Anyway, the best way to learn Vienna (as well as any other place) is just to go out and explore. In Vienna you can do it endlessly.

Best wishes and good luck,

Viktoriia

B1.2 is over!

Yesterday was the last day of my B1.2 intensive course here in DeutschAkademie. Long story short: it was so, so, SO good! That’s why in this post I want to tell you more about my progress, the course itself and my impressions about it.

To be honest, before the beginning of the classes, I was slightly worried about the course level I was put into, but eventually it turned out to be a perfect fit. I have already done a couple of intensive courses in my home country before the beginning of this one, so I knew what to expect from it. An intensive course is usually a perfect and balanced mix of reading, listening, writing, and, of course, speaking: your brain works non-stop during the class, and even after the end of it you still think about German 🙂 However, don’t worry about the big amount of workload – doing an intensive course is easier than it sounds! The atmosphere in the class is very nice and informal, everyone has more or less the same language level – that’s a perfect environment to learn (also from each other’s mistakes!). And of course I totally must mention the importance of the teacher: my class had an absolutely professional, competent and super friendly one! He was keeping us motivated and concentrated during the whole course, and he was very supportive, which I find very important in learning. But I’m pretty sure that this description applies to all teachers in DeutschAkademie.

Class routine at DeutschAkademie

So, did I learn a lot during this month? No. In fact, I learned a massive amount of stuff! Finally all the grammar gaps in my mind have started to fill themselves, now I’m able to express myself much better, both in speaking and writing. One thing I need to work harder though, is my vocabulary. But this 100% depends on me: I can access all the possibly existing German words straight from my laptop, which can be used not only for endless Internet surfing 🙂 Just a little less procrastination and it’s all good!

P.S. The course was so much fun, that I’ve decided to continue further! Very excited to start B2.1 next Monday and to learn more of those cheeky grammar rules & verb conjugations!

Deutsch wanted!

Vienna <3

As soon as you land in Vienna and make couple of first steps outside the airport, you realize that everything is in German: billboards with advertisement, signs of grocery shops, people’s jokes…Simply everything! And the second you realize it, you feel lost.

At least that’s what happened with me, when I arrived in Vienna last year. Since that time I had a resolution to learn German. I should admit though, that in reality it turned out to be much more difficult that it seemed. And there are several reasons for it.

Last October I started my English-speaking Master program at WU where half of the students were Austrians or Germans. However, as they wanted to be nice, they never talked German with international students, thus I couldn’t practice my language skills (that were pretty low actually) since the very beginning. But let’s go further. As Vienna is the capital of Austria and quite an international city, everyone speaks English here. It doesn’t matter whether you go to Starbucks, WGKK (governmental insurance) or Bank, everyone who struggles to understand your poor German is eager to practice their English.

After I lost my hope to gain some German knowledge through everyday communications, I turned to Tandem partnership, which I thought could be beneficial for me as well. To my huge surprise though, time management problems appeared to be the hurdle that I couldn’t overcome on the way of successful German studies.

Rumor has it that one (and the best!) way to learn a foreign language is to find a native speaking boy/girlfriend with whom you could practice speaking and also learn grammar. Well, leave this theory to rumors. It simply doesn’t work that way.

After several months of useless attempts to learn at least something in German, I finally understood that I should find time for German courses. And here is when Deutsch Akamedie comes for help! Last week I have started my course there (it has been a year since I arrived) and I am really curious how it is going to turn out. One thing I could tell you for sure: at least now I feel the obligation to learn German in order not only to keep up with everyone in the group, but also to justify my monetary investments. Anyways, I will keep you in touch how it goes and in the next posts I will share some interesting experience that I have faced in Vienna.

Second Entry – First Course Day

dsc01538.JPGdsc01539.JPGThe first day at Deutsch Akademie was great. we began our lesson by introducing ourselves to the other group members and sharing our experiences in Vienna. In particular, I liked the diversity within the group and the interesting cultural input from each group member. We have got  students from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, Thailand, USA, Finland and China. Most of whom are around 30 years of age. Although I am by far the youngest student in our group, we all manage to help each other out and make German studies even more fun. Let’s hope it will stay this way!

Ich hasse die deutsche Sprache! (Aber ich liebe es auch)

Deutsch ist bekanntlich eine schwere Sprache zum erlernen, besonders falls Englisch deine Muttersprache ist. Sei aber nicht abgeschreckt! Lerne viel und mach immer deine Hausaufgaben (viele tun dies nicht) und habe keine Angst deinen Lehrer (oder deine Lehrerin) um Hilfe zu bitten. Benutze außerdem deine Eigeninitiative; es gibt viele tolle Seiten im Internet und auch viele Bücher die bestimmte Regeln der deutschen Sprache erklären (z.b. Nom, Acc, Dat, Gen usw.).