DSH Roulette

Two weeks got away from me pretty quickly.  Probably because I was so busy preparing for that big German test, the one that decides if I qualify to take actual classes at a German University, the DSH…hopefully that rings a bell.  You may be wondering, did she pass it!? Well, I will get to that later.

The week before Easter was our last week of grammar course with Herr Dörr.  We did all sorts of practice exams for the DSH.  DSH stands for "Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang ausländischer Studienbewerber" (German language university entrance exam for foreign students).  Anyway, we did listening tests, reading tests, grammar parts, and writing.  After all of that, I was pretty sure I was doomed. The practice listening test was about Gold, how it’s extracted from the earth, why it is an important element and expensive, how it could help in the future with cancer research.  Yeah.  Two straight pages of that in German, just listening and trying to scramble down notes.  Somehow I was able to understand that Gold can shrink down without losing or changing its properties and get inside a cancer cell and basically be heated up until it blows up the cancer cell, like a little bomb.  How cool is that, good job Gold.

That week we also had a small excursion into the Freiwilligenbörse in Heidelberg, which is a center that organizes volunteer work in the city.  So you go set up a meeting with them, tell them about yourself, and then they set you up with different options for volunteer work.  I had my meeting that day and am hoping to volunteer at an elderly home here, basically so I can spend more time speaking German to people and hearing it, and maybe also do some arts and crafts.  I am supposed to be hearing from the woman sometime next week.

Each week in class we have to give a presentation about our excursion, and this week Sam and I decided to do a skit for ours.  We role played how a meeting at the Freiwilligenbörse actually goes, since none of the other students had had their meeting yet, and Herr Dörr loved it.  We got a few good jokes in, like about how Germans can’t spell my name (Helgi, that is how the woman at the meeting tried to spell it). It was a good way to end the class and probably distracted from the fact that our German wasn’t perfect.  After that, I rolled my bag away to the bus and then got on a train to Salzburg!  Herr Dörr kept saying, if I was the director of this program, I would make a rule that says you can’t travel the weekend before the DSH! And I said tsk, tsk, Herr Dörr, I am and adult and I can do what I want and I will still ace that dumb test. So away I went, and I studied for at least 3 of the 5 hours on the train ride.

Kevin met me as I stepped off onto the platform.  We first went to Il Sole for pizza and a beer and it was delicious and also very strange to be back there together, with me no longer being a student in the program.  Then we dropped my bags off at the house and I was back in good ole’ Zimmer 7, the same room I had stayed in while I was a student.  We then went to Hangar 7 and met with the current director of the program and his wife, and then the two program assistants for drinks. That was an interesting place.  Planes all over, all sorts of colors, glass bowl of a building, to say nothing of the company. After that it was bed time because we had a big journey into the mountains the next day to visit Jim, the previous director of the Salzburg Program!  He was the director when Kevin was a student and also Kevin’s first year of working as the Program Assistant.  After two years of just hearing stories about Jim, all hilarious, I finally got to meet him and confirm that he was exactly like Kevin always said he was.  We laughed all weekend. 

And when I say mountains, I mean MOUNTAINS.  Bad Gastein a place like no other.  I think Kevin said it is where Kaiser Franz Josef used to vacation.  The mountains are so steep and huge and you are just right there in the thick of it all.  When we first got there, it was all green and the air was fresh as can be and I was having a hard time concentrating on our conversation at lunch because I just kept looking out the window and seeing the valley way down below us and the mountains straight in front of us jutting so high into the sky that you couldn’t see their tops.  Just google images Bad Gastein and you still won’t even know what I’m talking about, it is a different world.  Anyway, Jim has retired into the mountains and we stayed with him for two nights in his apartment, halfway up the mountain and above a farm house.  Dream life. I will include some pictures of the view, but it won’t do it justice.

Sitting on Jim's front porch

Whiteout is hiding the huge mountain just across the way

The next day we went to Sportgastein which is a little resort-like place where people were skiing down the bright, white mountains at incredible speeds and decline.  How do people do that?  I would literally die if I ever even tried.  I guess I’ll stick with golf.  We sat outside in the sun and the reflection off the snow was so bright that I couldn’t keep my eyes from watering.  It was one of the only times in my life when I have ever wanted sunglasses.  Otherwise sunglasses are bothersome.  Kevin and I walked over to one of the other restaurants and had a beer and not until we were almost finished did we notice that the Italian couple sitting across from us had a Newfoundland puppy sitting under their table! So as soon as they finished, we got the bill and finished too, and then followed them out of the restaurant and awkwardly tried to catch up to them so we could pet their dog.  Rocco was his name and he was four months old and on the same level of cuteness as my pets.  He was fluffy and he just kept diving into the snow and rolling around and I want one!  He was the greatest.  Luckily Kevin is good at striking up conversations with strangers, so we walked back and chatted with them the whole time.  I mostly just watched Rocco. 

Sportgastein, everything was white

When we got back to the first restaurant, we found Jim sitting with a table full of Austrians, just laughing and having a good time.  He and Kevin are one in the same.  We sat with them for probably two hours or so, drinking Schnapps and being merry, and they were all very nice, even if I couldn’t understand every single word they were saying.  It was like they had taken us in as part of the family.  As annoyed as I may get when Kevin says it all the time, Austria and Austrians definitely give off a different type of energy than most places and people.  Everyone greets each other when they walk into a room and there’s a sense of familiarity that is hard to describe. 

On Easter morning we woke up to over half a foot of snow outside.  We had to go back to Salzburg that day, but we got a few more lovely hours with Jim before that, eating at a nice little restaurant near the train station and sitting in his car, waiting for a big work truck to back up all the way down a windy, snow covered road because there wasn’t enough room for us to pass him.  Oh the mountain life.  I would never be able to drive up there.  We said goodbye to Jim and were soon back in Salzburg.  Kevin had some more work things to attend to after we went to the Stiegl Brewery for dinner, so I relaxed and studied some more so Herr Dörr would not later shame me. The next day we left to go back to Heidelberg and finally the sun was shining!  Oh but don’t let me forget to write about how the whole five hour train ride back, Kevin became acquainted with a 19 year old Austrian girl, and mother and her 10 year old daughter, and then an Irish-German couple and their daughter, basically anyone that came into our couchette was doomed. It was non-stop talking the whole way, about anything and everything, but at least it was German practice.  But I’m just giving Kevin a hard time; I think it’s cool that he can strike up a conversation with anyone.  Unfortunately, it just hinders my special talent, ability to sleep on trains.

We got back to Heidelberg and the sun was shining, still cold out, but not gray.  We met up with Sam at the AJY Center and then got some gelato, stressed about the DSH being the next day, and walked up to the Schloss together for a good view of Heidelberg and to breathe in some fresh air. 

Art

 That night I was supposed to study, but I wanted to talk to Emmy instead, so I did and just figured I know what I know at this point.  Tuesday morning, it was go time.  Our group of 13 all filed into the New University building, where all of the other foreign students who were hoping to be able to study at Uni Heidelberg that semester were lined up.  There were probably about a hundred students who took the test.  We all sat down in a lecture hall type room and had about four hours to do the written test.  The reading part was about social media and studies about how it affects people or the world, so fairly interesting, but I was really slow at answering the questions and so I had less time to do the grammar part, which there were a few out of 12 or 13 questions that I totally bombed and had no idea what to do.  Then we had a ten minute break.  After the first half of the test I was thinking, shit.  I am not going to pass this.  This is the worst.  And then the second half began with the listening part, which was about the future of the snow levels and global warming type stuff and how they have created snow machines to make more snow for the ski resorts.  It wasn’t too difficult to understand because they guy read it relatively slowly and the questions about it weren’t too hard to answer.  Then the next part was a graph about how many people use plastic grocery bags and don’t reuse them and environmental nonsense and we had to describe the graph and then write a composition comparing Germany to our home country with regard to plastic bags and being environmentally friendly, which I found to be the easiest part of the test, and I even used some of the new sophisticated sentence structures that I learned in class, booyah.  So overall, I didn’t know how to feel about the whole test, because I did bad and then good, maybe, you never know. 

We all rallied around in the AJY Center afterward and talked about how it was for us and how we thought we did.  Then, if we passed the written part, two days later, we would take the oral part, and then find out how well we did overall. 

On Wednesday, Herr Dörr took us to Speyer, a town about 40 minutes away, to have a little time away from studying or worrying about test results.  We went into a few churches and domes and towers, you know, the typical European things, but the best part was when Sam and I had lunch with Herr Dörr.  We were all about to split for an hour lunch break and Sam asked him if he knew of a good, cheap place to eat, and Herr Dörr knows everything of course, so he said why don’t you come see where I’m going to eat and see if you like it.  So I followed and crashed their date, but it’s fine.  He led us to a small Italian restaurant where they were serving pizza and a salad for only 5.50 and we dined together and learned some things and spoke German with him and got him to like us for the next hour.  It was amazing.  All sorts of amazing.  The rest of the day pales in comparison.

The next day, Thursday, we all had to be at the AJY Center at 10 am to find out if we’d passed the written part and if we did, to prepare for the oral test that afternoon.  Well, the results were posted and everyone was rushing around like mad to try to figure out if they’d made it to the oral exam.  Out of our 13, I think 8 people passed the written part, and thank god I was one of them.  Now, it’s interesting, because passing the written exam, doesn’t exactly mean you’ll pass the test overall, and even if you do and you end up with a DSH 1, as they say, you still aren’t qualified to take classes at a German University.  You have to get a DSH 2 in order to do that, and a DSH 3 for some of the more advanced Masters programs and classes.  So even though I made it to the oral test, I could still end up with a DSH 1, which would mean nothing to me.  I wanted that 2. 

All morning we prepared for our oral exams.  The structure of the oral exam is so, that you go into a room with two interviewers and one other student and talk for fifteen minutes.  Beforehand, you are given about ten minutes to read an article, and then you’re expected to be able to summarize it and answer questions about it.  When you first sit down with the interviewers, they ask you about yourself and to warm up your German you start with easy stuff like where you’re from and why you want to study at a German University. Well, when my interviewer heard I was from Oregon, he started talking about how he has friends that live in Oregon, around Portland, and what’s that other well known town south of there? Eugene? I say.  Yes, yes Eugene, right, now does that mean you go to the University of Oregon? he asks. And before I could stop myself, I answered very passionately, NEIN! Every Oregonian can understand exactly why I would react this way, but a German man has absolutely no idea.  So he sits and looks at me strangely and asks me why, and I go on to try to explain about the rivalry between the Oregon State University and University of Oregon, which of course is even more of a mess, because they don’t have any such thing as rivalry between universities and their universities don’t even have sports teams and I’m thinking, oh god, I am going to fail this test.  So embarrassing.  Meanwhile the other student I am testing with is from Cameroon, Africa. 

So we go on to talk about the article we both read, which was a debate about if TV makes kids dumb or not.  We were asked about our opinions on the topic and I talked a bit about how it’s a pretty big issue in America right now and lots of kids have their own TVs and that’s all they want to do, rather than go play outside, and then the question gets flipped to Cameroon girl and she goes, well not many people in my village have TVs back home. Boof.  Now I’m just going to fail on principal.  But other than those few mishaps, my speaking wasn’t too terrible, and I only messed up word order a few times.  Still I walk out feeling like I’m definitely not going to get a DSH 2. 

Meanwhile I should say that Kevin has begun his intensive German course at the Goethe Institut in Mannheim, so he has class every day from 8 to 1.  It is usually so that when we are out in public we speak German and when we are at home, it’s a mixture of both.  But we can go hours just speaking in German, and I like that.  So Thursday evening we just hung out and relaxed together and then he left early Friday morning for class and I slept in a little longer and waited for the test results to roll in.  They were posted online at 10.  A few minutes past, I went onto the website and pulled up the list.  Then I had to scroll through it find my number, 451176, and as I looked to the right of it, I saw a nice, shiny, DSH-2 staring back at me.  Thank. God.  Immediately I texted Sam, who was on a train to Berlin, to let her know that we both got DSH-2 and that we are awesome and official and awesome.  I was honestly so thankful to see that number sitting there, just to know that my German has gotten better and all of the studying and being here had really paid off.  It was a relief. 

I know, now nothing I say is going to be interesting anymore, because that was the big climax of the post, but still, a few more things have happened since.  Like when I went to Mannheim that afternoon to meet Kevin and we had lunch at the Eichbaum Brewery because his best friend’s last name is Ineichen, and he had to get some paraphernalia for him.

 And then later we met up with a German friend who did a year abroad last year at University of Redlands and was in Heidelberg for the weekend.  We had some coffee and cake and walked around a bit, it was really nice to see her and her boyfriend again. 

Then the most exciting part of Saturday was waking up and going to the grocery store with my boyfriend to buy cleaning supplies and spending two hours cleaning my whole apartment together.  But then the best part of that was that we have a vacuum in the apartment, but it is broken and no longer has the part that zooms across the floor connected to it, so I literally vacuumed the apartment with just the little neck part that is supposed to connect to the zoomer, which has the diameter of about a golf ball.  I told Kevin, this must be how elephants feel.  And now the carpet in my bedroom and the hallway are so clean, it’s unbelievable.  And we also bought new light bulbs for the kitchen and hallway, which had been out of commission for the past few weeks, and now I finally have light in my apartment again.  And the mopping and the new sponges and a broom!  We decided we are really adults now, because we spent all Saturday morning cleaning. 

Today it is finally sunny again and I want to go out and make a picture tour of Heidelberg and play on the mountain tops, but Kevin (aka my photographer) is, as usual, writing a paper last minute and I have to wait for him to finish. But I think I’m going to make him go out now, before we miss the sun.  It’s going to be amazing. Game on, Heidelberg! Here I come!

And since you stuck with me for this whole post, a special peek into what Kevin and I did last night:

HP!

I don't know if it's more embarrassing for him or me.