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.