Komputeren

One issue that has taken some getting used to is that the computers here speak German, and I don’t. An interesting point in the translation of English and German is that there are many words which have analogues; for example, the word for shoe is schuh and the word for hand is hand and the word for glove is…handschuh. Which isn’t exactly an analogue, but if you’re paying attention at least you can figure it out.

Computer terminology, on the other hand, is NOT the same and appears to have few overlaps. One exception is kopieren, which means (not surprisingly to those of you still reading) copy. But drucken for print and speichern for save are not immediately obvious, and I won’t begin to try to recall words for “move file” or “log out.” Thank goodness for universal icons like a little disk or a little picture of a printer. And really all of this would be fine if everything were in the same place—you know, there’s a drop-down menu called “file,” and that’s where one finds commands like print and save. Next to that is one called “edit,” and while I can’t name those commands off the top of my head past cut, copy, and paste, I pretty much know how to find what I need without worrying about what it says. I figure it could be in Russian and if the commands were in the same spot, I would find them OK.

Here is where we’ve been thrown the proverbial curveball. Our school has nothing but the best, of course, which (naturally) includes updated software like (again, natch) Windows and Word two thousand-whatever which are new and improved and totally different. Everything’s all like spiffy and streamlined and fancified and looks nothing like it used to. Which, (and now you’re starting to see my point) would be fine IF IT WAS IN ENGLISH. Which it’s not. It wouldn’t even help to have one of those Dummies books, because not only am I a dummy I’m a dummy who’s functionally illiterate. Thus rendering the book functionally useless, except maybe as a doorstop or perhaps on the kitchen table to hold a hot bowl.

Even typing a simple line of text requires mastery of something new. The keyboard is in German, too, and to make room for all the different letters with umlauts, and the fact that German hardly ever uses a “y,” things have been moved around. “Today is Monday” suddenly becomes “Todaz is Mondaz;” the apostrophe and colon turn into umlauted a’s and o’s. I spend minutes looking for a question mark or a slash. Not to mention the @ sign, which turns out to be on the Q but you have to use the “Alt Gr” key, whatever that is.

SO…tasks which used to be simple become time-eating missions on the starship Impossible. “Can anyone tell me how to insert a page break?” I say, and immediately a crowd gathers around my computer with people suggesting various combinations of left and right mouse clicks, pointing to German words in unfamiliar spots, and asking each other what that icon means. “What do you want to put a break in for anyway?” someone asks, and three other people recommend that I just find some other way to do it while everyone else wanders off muttering. Eventually someone who speaks German (but not computer) happens by and, after mulling it over for about ten seconds, says “try that one,” and of course it works. At home this would have taken all of 6 seconds for me to do; here, it’s taken about 6 of us 10 minutes which accounts for one human-hour of work time. Gads.

Needless to say, when a variety of things that look like error messages (“Achtung!) pop up as I’m trying to Abmelden, I generally click “ja” or “nein” or “OK” as quickly as possible in the hope that I can get away before the computer begins to smoke and I get blamed. So far my strategy has worked and nothing has broken for which I can be held responsible. I do most of my email and type these posts at home where I can happily sit in front of my own laptop, which listens to me when I tell it what to do.

Which brings me to the other problem, which is that my own computer apparently doesn’t speak German either. In this day and age internet use and email seem essential for communication, and we thought it would be fairly easy to link up somehow. When we arrived, our upstairs neighbor offered to help us get connected, and when after a couple of days we were still struggling, we took him up on his suggestion. He told us there was a wireless network in the building (in fact we could see a number of them, but all were security protected…darn) and he’d get us the password. Only this particular network wasn’t available. We searched. We tried again. We went up and got his key to the other guys apartment and went in while they weren’t there and sat next to the stupid wireless router with the computer and…nothing. Meanwhile his iPhone is happily talking to it. ???? Apparently our computer doesn’t speak enough German to communicate with the router. Do you suppose it gets frustrated, too?

Einschulung

Einschulung always has a “Zuckertute.” I don’t think you know about it. A Zuckertute is like something where you get a lot of candy and things for school. You can choose whatever you want to be on your Zuckertute. Mine had Hot Wheels on it. It’s like a giant ice cream cone but it’s cardboard. Some have pictures of things or the name on it and they all have chocolate and candy and gummy bears inside.

I went to a theater and I stood on stage and got a sunflower on Einschulung Day. There were a lot of people there. Some people wear nice ironed jeans and a fancy shirt. Other people wear fancy clothes like fancy new pants, new shoes, dresses, fancy shirts… Afterward you go to school and meet your teachers and play for a while. You also get to read books and have cookies and juice for snack. The day before you meet your classmates. It’s really fun and afterwards you might be able to get some balloons. Then you go home and you’re able to open your Zuckertute and you eat the candy!

PS The boys don’t wear dresses. And that’s all!