Taksi!

On my first day in Germany, I got the best Vietnamese food of my entire life. I hadn’t eaten anything but grilled cheese, plain pasta, and fries my entire time in Istanbul, I’d just gotten off a flight, and I was starving. I went to the restaurant recommended by my local TA and it was so delicious that I almost started crying. The awkward moment came before that when that when I ordered very slowly and with a lot of miming, used to the waitstaff in Istanbul who rarely spoke English. Turns out that waiter spoke perfectly fine English, as have pretty much everyone I have spoken to here in Germany. The lack of a language barrier has made things a lot easier. Even if the language does cause me trouble, people are happy to step in and help. On the first day I was here, a German woman helped me with the subway ticket machine that was half in English and half in German. The next day, someone helped me differentiate the body wash from the shampoo in the grocery store. Just yesterday, I had someone give me subway directions. Overall, it hasn’t been a challenge here at all. The hardest part has been the pronunciation of German words. Who would ever guess that ß is a double s? Luckily my roommate Clara knows a little bit of German so I mostly rely on her for telling me these things.

This is a huge change from Istanbul where it was impossible to communicate with most local workers. Mostly it involved a lot of pointing and people writing down prices for me. I was really proud of myself for actually getting where I needed to go alone in a taxi (or taksi in Turkish) with a driver who only spoke Turkish.