This post was left as a draft since 2015-09-07. Finally publishing it on 01-12-2025 (almost 10 years later). I’m taking a retrospective look at my journey learning German language in this post.

I’ve been learning German officially since 2015 July. I joined the Goethe Institut in Kochi for the A1 level course. The intensive course that I enrolled in was pretty good. People from different backgrounds and age groups were with me learning German - priests, nuns, students, working professionals etc. When I look back that was a great batch, I think we were one of the first batches in Kochi as well. Out teacher Rajmony Antony was extremely good and gave a good baseline for us to build upon. He was so good that he even acted (as himself, a german teacher) in a movie with Fahad Faasil in it!

At this point in time I remember that I was extremely confident with the bare minimum that I had learnt in the A1 course. I could introduce myself, ask for directions, order food in a restaurant etc. I was pretty happy with my progress. I moved to Germany a month later for my masters, and spoke quite a bit of German with my landlords mother who spoke no English. For some weird reason I felt less confident speaking to people my age. But then again I was not full time in Germany yet - I lived in Kehl which is a small town just across the border from France. And for the first semester we were required to take our courses in Strasbourg, France. So I was not really in a German speaking environment all the time. In Freiburg, I lived in a very international environment and barely learnt any German - I did take the A2 course at the Uni though. I felt the basis was so good that by the time (2020) I moved to small Austrian town (Leoben) I was pretty ok speaking German. But realized soon enough in Austria that the dialect and vocabulary was quite different. Not sure how I made terms with it but managed to get by and get things done. Asking for a “Tüte” (Bag) and not a “Sackerl” was probably the second thing that the lady at the supermarket noticed about me, after my skin color.

I also distincly remember there was a student (Gayatri?) in our Goethe course who wanted to move to Austria and she was always curious to know about the differences in the Austrian German and the standard German. I didn’t care much back then but now I have to, this is some full circle moment for me.

Apart from a few awkward instances at work, I managed to get by pretty well in Austria. Recently I resumed the classes again at B1 level with an online teacher as he offers 1-1 classes with flexible timings. The classes are going good and I’m trying to be consistent with my learning to take the B1 exam sometime next year.

We’ll see how that goes.