The Pace

Since I don't actually spend all my time rolling around Munich and cooking shallots in the kitchen, I should own up to the fact that I am actually here to study and learn German.  

The course goes something like this.  

Every weekday morning, people start waking up at around seven or eight in the AM and get ready for the day.  Then we leave the house around 8:20 in order to catch a metro (or S-Bahn) from Laim, our home station, to Karlsplatz in the city center.  Our lectures start at nine sharp.  Punctuality is a requirement in these parts.

Actually, it doesn't really seem to matter what time we show up to class; the whole operation feels more relaxed than classes at Princeton.  Anyway, we show up at nine and then have class until 10:30.  At eleven, we go back to class, and the day's seminar ends at 12:30.  Then, we either have an afternoon planned out, or we go back to the house for naps.  

Homework was assigned for my group almost the first day.  We do our exercises out of a book given to us by the Goethe Institute, the German-language-teaching and German-culture-sharing international super-entity.  Our Princeton professors have also assigned us The Metamorphosis by Kafka.  The book is in its original German and it is a bear.  Still, when reading it, I have the occasion to laugh out loud.  It's terribly dark, but Kafka can be so funny...