Ein Zwei Drei Pause

The beat is Mambo, and the language is Deutsch. I am learning both.

I am not sure what really happened. This was not my plan. I was never keen on learning German. Heard a colleague of mine was enrolling, and the next thing I knew was I had enrolled too! Just like that!!!

At 150 Euros, 2 classes a week from 7:45 to 9:15 PM, for 15 weeks - that is the program. It is amazing fun! The class has 5 Indian, 3 Iranian, 2 English students along with 1 each from South Africa, Russia, Poland, Italy, Vietnam and Sudan! And a German born Russian as a teacher. What a potpourri!

It is so amusing to learn, or rather re-learn, nay unlearn and learn, the alphabet. Most of it sounds the same as English alphabet but with a different ending sound, and with 4 extra sounds thrown in. In English, most consonants ends with the “e” sound – B, C, D etc. In Deutsch the alphabet “e” is pronounced as “ei” and everything ends with “ei”…..OK that’s a rule of the language I just discovered while writing this post. The 3 of the 4 extra sounds are the umlauts – ä, ü and ö, which are difficult to pronounce cause the tongue should be in the mouth somewhere midway to the regular a, u and o sounds. (Oh, stop trying that, silly!) The 4th sound is the etzet – ß. No it’s not beta but has the use of a double ess.

The verbs are funny too. Well, actually not. Its just that the normal constructs of the two languages that I know are so much DNAed now that when I was told that Deutsch has three verb forms - masculine, feminine and neutral, my jaw dropped at the imagined complexity. Only later I realized that I have been doing the three forms of verbs forever and this one is no different.

So, the classes have made me look at languages in a different light.

The students are funny. There is this Iranian chap – Muhammad, who has been speaking only Persian all his life and now suddenly has to deal with strange characters as alphabets and an alien language. Poor thing cannot read “a” from “b” but is required to spell them all out. He is such an entertainment – repeats the teacher’s words every time – even when he is asked a question. Even said “Ich heiße Alex” because that’s what the teacher had said when introducing himself! He makes such blunders that the class looks forward to his turn for speaking out the lesson just taught. He knows that he is blundering and takes all of it with such a charming smile that all of us can only laugh even when it takes eons to get a single correct sentence out of him!

Then there is the Polish woman who is just slow. No offence, but she just doesn’t seem to get it. When she is asked a question in Deutsch, first she looks at the teacher, pauses, squints her eye, cranes her neck, looks at her notes, looks at the teacher from the top of her glasses, and gives up. The teacher prods with some hints and the lady mouths the question that she was asked. This happens each single time she is asked a question.

In Deutsch, V has the same sound as English F. So Vornamme is pronounced as fore-namm-e and means Forename. When the English woman was asked her vornamme, she began thus – “Mein phone nummer ist drei null null….” And the teacher went “but I didn’t ask for your phone number!”

Depending on the numbers people want to practice, they decide to have a different number of “kinder” (kids) and “geschwistern” (siblings) each day. Also some of them are married one day and “nicht verheiratet” (not married) the other!

So, it’s a crazy and fun bunch. I am having a lot of fun learning a new language, more than I imagined, and my learning gene that had almost gone extinct feels rejuvenated!

Now, talking about the Mambo…..

Do not jump to say “Mambo No. 5”. People, Mambo is a style of music and also a style of dance belonging to the same family as Salsa and Cha Cha, only a tad slower. It pauses on the 4th beat and hence the pause – One Two Three Pause!

This was not as much of an impulsive decision as the Deutsch lessons but it is fun still.

Imagine being in a small sized disc with a tall single-filamented trainer resembling an ostrich’s neck wearing a shirt patterned so as to make a peacock pouting pink, surrounded by cooing couples, old round bottomed women in tight pants, bespectacled bald gents, giggling girls, and me - standing in the middle scratching my head. Get the picture? I don’t blame you for guffawing out loud.

Ok, its not so bad. There are some pretty, single ladies and I got invited for extra classes by the trainer because he did not have enough men to go with the women. Are you laughing still?

Haven’t yet learnt much. Only the basic front and back step, and one swing. In salsa, the man pushes himself on to the woman, the woman retracts a bit and pushes the man back….In mambo, the man pulls the woman to himself, pauses and then pushes. So it’s a lot of pulls and pushes with underlying sexual innuendos. There – that was Latin dance forms de-mystified for you.

But all that happens with professional people. In the motley group that I am in, when expected to dance, people march, sway, look heavenwards or downwards concentrating hard, and pretend to enjoy. And being the in-love place that this is, couples kiss each other at the end of each step as if they have accomplished a major feat that deserves celebration. Singles like me just pout and look at the corners of the room.

But the music is so upbeat. It is very sad that my dance gene resides in my neck and not in my feet. So, when the tempo increases and the music encourages movement, my neck gets a life of its own and my head goes berserk with one two three pause. The pause reminds me I forgot to move my feet. Hence I am always late. Well….I always knew I wasn’t cut for disciplined dancing. Though the world tells me that at the end of the discipline lies fun, I am too impatient and too Bollywood-bred to care much for the subtleties of hinted coitus. I’d rather do the pelvic thursts full on.

Oh wait, the music just changed and I should be doing ein zwei drei pause….

Oktoberfest

The annual beer drinking festival in Munich actually happens in September, and ends on the first Sunday of October!

I landed there on a sunny afternoon, in traditional Bavarian attire – Lederhose and Jacket, with boots to boot! What a crowd!!!

Beautiful women in amazing dresses – also traditional – but fashionable still; amazing burst of color everywhere; and never ending one-liter mugs of beer! Of course you cannot blame the men for the little hooliganism that is bound to happen.

The festival place is close to the hauptbahnhof and you just have to follow the crowd to end up there. Traditional German Festival shops selling food and attire are the first thing that you’d notice. These are interspersed by rides – not the usual Mary-Go-Rounds but their more thrilling versions. This time even the free fall ride was present.

After you take in the enormous crowd, you’d notice the never ending “beer tents” which are really high roofed sheds, each stretching over almost a football field or may be more. Each brewery or ‘brauhaus’ has one and all of them are jam packed. Queuing begins for each of them as early as 7 AM and if you are lucky you can get in afterwards. I could not.

So I did the next best thing – got into a “beergarten” – which is the area in front of the tent. It’s almost the same as the tent only that it is in open and minus the live music! There are scores of benches and tables lined up, each served by a dedicated waiter. So, you just plop yourself on one of these and start guzzling.

Imagine a table with absolute strangers who begin talking with you immediately in a babble of all foreign tongues imaginable. My table had a Spanish, a German, a French, two Italians, two Chinese and several others a bit further way to which my only contact remained “Prost” – the Deutsch for cheers! Thankfully I had a Radler to drink - it looks like beer, is served similarly, has 2% alcohol, and is a saving grace on a table where you do not belong if you are not drinking!

One has to be there to know just how contagious the air is! With beer that is 8% alcohol and with drinking being the ONLY thing to do, people turn into such characters that you get entertained full on! There is singing, dancing, hugging, smooching, jumping, yelling, guffawing – merry-making full blast. Someone starts singing on one table, some one else joins in from two tables away and suddenly everyone is bellowing the same song. I yay-ed to the German lyrics which seem filled with a lot of Ale, Ole and similar non-words so that I did not feel too lost for words. I envied the people who were inside the tents. I did try getting in, but was not lucky. So I got back to my multinational table.

Yes, amid all this there is a little unpleasantness sometimes when some one too drunk or a brawly guy has to be evicted by security personnel. This happens pronto and people go back to their beer mugs. And when they get tired of drinking, they go out to one of the numerous lawns/gardens in the city to sleep some. You can see scores of people lying everywhere in all states of inebriation. And well, vomit is also a common sight!

I had a great day, and hopefully I can go there again next year. Now since I know the fun first hand, I’d be looking forward to the Oktoberfest 2010.