All posts by Rebecca Michelle

Educator, traveler, reader, blogger. Loves learning, black coffee, and friendly people.
On My Mind

The Question is Free

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Before moving to Germany, I thought I knew a few things about cultural differences. I’d lived in Malaysia for a year and Singapore for five, travelled widely across Southeast Asia and elsewhere, taught students from dozens and dozens of countries, and considered myself reasonably culturally competent. In many ways this was, and is, the case. However, moving to a small town in Germany, meeting German friends, and teaching mostly German students have taught me more about culture than I expected.

To begin with, I really hadn’t thought there would be as many cultural differences between Germans and people from my part of North America. There are plenty of cultural differences between Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans, and Germans just seemed so much closer to people I knew. Unsurprisingly, I was mistaken and, as any moment of pause would suggest, I really should have known better. There are cultural differences between people who live in cities mere hours apart; obviously I would find cultural differences between people continents apart.

Additionally, I didn’t know any Germans prior to moving to Germany. I knew a little bit about Germans, or thought I did based on blogs that I read and language courses that I followed, but most of that was just a willingness to peel back stereotypes until something close to truth emerged. But as with anything, there’s only so much one can learn out of a book. And when it comes to people, that amounts to very little.

Something I knew before coming here is that Germans are extremely direct when speaking, but I didn’t know how that actually played out in social situations. I have found relatively little beating around the bush (at which I am an expert), but rather honest questions simply asked that demand honest answers. Social niceties do not play the same role as in my part of North America and as a result, so I gather, social bonds in Germany are quite different than what I have known before. Germans have many Bekannte (acquaintances) and it is special to be accepted as a friend. Friends are not made overnight.

To take a different example, last night I was asked a serious question that required a serious answer. I had thought for weeks about asking the question myself and had decided against it without really coming to a conclusion. I just didn’t want to put anyone in a potentially awkward position, so I hadn’t asked. When I heard the question and gave my answer I added my reasoning for not having asked myself. I was told, “In German we say, ‘the question is free’.” Of course it is. In Germany, the question is just a question and the expectation is it comes from an honest place. No awkward situation required.

For as direct as I am in my professional life with students and colleagues, I tend to be quite the opposite in private. I find forthrightness difficult and this has been a problem in a range of relationships. I have a similar problem with making decisions that involve other people, though I am quite decisive when something only affects me. I’ve been getting better at decision-making, trying to think about choices in terms of simple questions and answers. “Where do you want to go on a bike ride?” merely requires me to state where I want to go; I don’t need to first wonder what the asker would like me to say and then try to say it.

The same logic then ought to apply in other situations, such as asking hard questions and engaging in hard conversations. This requires honesty rather than conforming to whatever expectations I think might be there. Conversations are a different dance under new conventions and I suppose better to learn this late than never. Better to actively learn how to behave in a new culture with new people than to assume that what I have always done is just the way things are to be done.

If the question is free, ask the question. And if the question is not free, as challenging as I find it, I still have to think it is worth asking. As many of us know, if you don’t ask the question, it never really fades away. We might not like the answer, but at least we don’t end up wondering what would have been had we asked. If we ask the question, we know.

The implications are then clear: The way to build a relationship is to approach it with openness, clarity, and the courage it takes to say what needs to be said, ask what needs to be asked, and listen to the response. If I learn nothing else from my time here, I am glad to have learned this.

On My Mind

Swingset

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At the end of the forest, or at the beginning depending on where you start, is a lovely little playground. It was empty when we arrived a few nights ago, a weekday shortly after suppertime. We stopped our bikes and looked at the swings.

“I’m just going to go on the swings for a minute.”
“Me, too. That’s why I stopped here.”

It’s easy to fly in a swing and I laughed when I reached the point where, twenty years ago, I would have jumped off when the school bell rang. Jumped, dusted myself off, and run across the yard.

“Jump off?”
“Not anymore!”
“Yeah, I think I’d break.”

Laughing, kicking heels in the woodchips to slow the swing and then spinning, first one way and then the other as the chains unwound and wound again.

“Whoa.”
“I know. I didn’t used to feel dizzy.”

Head tipped all the way back.

“To think I used to do flips on the swings.”
“Try it!”
“No way!”

We watched the trees, looking up at canopies of leaves. Watched the sky, slowly darkening.

“Nice to know that all the school games were the same.”
“I was just thinking that.”

We got back on our bikes, left the forest. The air had changed, growing cooler. Summer ending and fall beginning. We’re often in the forest (“Want to go hug some trees?”) and the swings are not far away.

Lovely to know, indeed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. – George Bernard Shaw

Germany

Yoga auf Deutsch

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I’ve been living in Germany for slightly over a year and it seems like my language skills are slowly improving. A friend asked recently how long I’ve been learning German (about a year and a half) and complemented my fluidity when speaking, which I think was a generous remark. It certainly doesn’t feel fluid and I often only catch the grammar mistakes after I’ve made them, assuming I catch them at all. But I am starting to get a sense for the language and I can make more meaning out of what I read and hear without knowing all of the words, which suggests a gradual improvement.

One thing I’ve been trying to do is hear as much German as possible, for example, on the radio, in films or TV shows, and eavesdropping closely when the opportunity arises. It is for this reason that I started following a German yoga instructor on YouTube. I’ve done YouTube yoga for well over ten years and it seemed like a natural progression in language learning. The idea is immersion, after all.

It helps that I am intimately familiar with yoga after years of practice and it helps that Sanskrit is used for many postures. It helps that yoga sequences are deliberately repetitive and that all yoga teachers talk (slowly and calmly) about breath, stillness, movement, and stretching. They use imperative language, which is not always obvious in daily life, and speak as explicitly as possible without simplifying, which is otherwise hard to find. I hadn’t realized all of this when I first began looking for yoga videos in German and perhaps it wouldn’t have taken me so long if I had.

Brand new when I began practicing yoga auf Deutsch were some anatomy words and the German translations for names of postures that I’m used to hearing in English. These are the things one doesn’t typically learn out of textbooks, but also the things that make the difference between living in German (when I try to do that) and learning German. And if experience is the best teacher and language learning requires repetition, yoga is a beautiful way to practice.

A benefit I did not expect is that doing yoga in German requires me to focus in a way that a yoga class in English does not. I’ve done plenty of yoga sequences with my mind accidentally elsewhere the whole time, breathing automatically rather than intentionally following the breath. After such a practice, the body feels better but the mind remains in a whirl. But when the instruction is in German, my whole attention is on listening because I cannot passively absorb language the way I do in English. As a result, I am more engaged when practicing and recognize immediately when my mind has wandered because I lose track of the sequence and literally cannot continue. At the conclusion of practice, my body and mind are very much aligned.

Naturally, there are things that I miss in these videos, perhaps elements of philosophy that go beyond my current vocabulary. But the benefits, both for language learning and for yoga practice itself, are far greater than that, and far greater than I anticipated. The biggest reminder here, I think, is that it is always worth trying something new because you really never know what you’re going to find.

You live a new life for every language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once. – Czech proverb