German woes

I was standing in the Vienna subway recently, reading a poster about Sprachreisen ("language trips") for university students, and absently thought to myself, "Yeah! That's what I need! To take a 'sprachreise' to a German-speaking country!"

Uh, I live in Austria.

(Of course, Germans - and I - might debate that this is a German-speaking country, but that's another post altogether...)

Anyway, my frustration indicates a few things - first, the high level of most Austrians' English. When they hear my accent, they switch automatically, to be helpful. But that's not helpful! My spoken German now fluctuates between insecure-but-functional to speaking only with verbs!

This also indicates how weak I am. I don't push on in German, as I should. I see my Austrian friends a couple times a year and don't want to "waste" time speaking slowly in German to get practice - I want to see them and catch up with them and laugh and tell jokes and understand subtleties. They aren't my guinea pigs - but I guess they should be.

But to go back to my moment of insanity - I was reading a sign IN GERMAN. I read German fine. What happened to my speaking abilities?! When I left Austria, I was confident with my spoken German, and worried about my reading. Now, it's reversed. I seem to have left speaking skills somewhere between Worcester and Sterling.

Today, I browsed the webpage of Middlebury College's world-famous language summer schools.

http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ls/german/

"That's what I need!" I thought, "6 weeks of German language instruction in Vermont!"

Oh, my God...