I'm learning German!

As an avid language learner, going to Berlin inspired me to learn the language and be able to understand more of its culture and history. It was the very first time I visited a country without being able to understand ANYTHING at all, not even entry/exit signs.

I'd had some lessons with the incredible Taissa Brevilheri prior to going, but did some travelling along the way and couldn't dedicate as much time to the project as I wanted. And generally speaking, German is considered to be a hard language due to features like cases, 3 genders, among other things.

Upon returning home from my trip, I was decided to learn German on my own. I have since been dedicating 10-20 minutes a day to do exercises and expose myself to the language somehow. Honestly? It's hard. And not being surrounded by it makes for much slower progress than I had when learning French and English before. But I already see improvements in my understanding of the language and am still very excited keep learning.

Here are some of the resources that have been the most helpful so far:

Podcasts

- I found the Stress Free German podcast series to be incredibly helpful in my learning journey. The pace is great (not too slow), it introduces lots of vocabulary and concepts in a way that makes sense from the start. It's available on your podcast platform of choice.

Books

- I bought Café in Berlin by André Klein, which is a collection of 10 short stories in easy German containing a vocabulary reference at the end of each one. Halfway into the book I caught myself being able to understand sentences more often than not, and that was a huge realization! I totally recommend the series and will be buying more of it.

- I often have grammar reference books lying around since I'm a bit of a grammar nerd, but haven't been able to settle on one for German just yet. I did get German Grammar Drills though, which seems to be a solid practice tool with lots of repetition. Will be working on its exercises more often and update the post with my thoughts on it.

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