Remembering Mario Gomez and My German Fiasco
Saw an old clip the other day, you know, Mario Gomez smashing one in. Takes you back, doesn’t it? Proper striker. Always seemed so cool, so efficient on the pitch.
Anyway, watching him got me thinking. This was years ago, mind you. I got this idea, thought it’d be neat to, you know, learn some German. Seemed like a cool thing to do. Gomez speaks German, looks cool. Maybe I’d look cool speaking German? Yeah, silly logic, I know.
So, I actually went and did it. Got myself one of those beginner German books, the ones with CDs. Remember CDs? And downloaded some app on my phone. Full of enthusiasm, I was. Ready to conquer the language.
- First week: “Hallo,” “Guten Tag,” “Ich bin…” – feeling like a genius.
- Second week: Started hitting those weird grammar rules. Der, die, das… what’s that all about? My brain just couldn’t wrap around it.
- Third week: The app started sending me annoying notifications. The book gathered dust.
It was tough. Much harder than I thought. Like trying to assemble IKEA furniture with instructions written in Klingon. Honestly, I spent more time complaining about how hard German was than actually studying it.
Then, life happened. Work got crazy busy, had that whole issue with the leaky faucet in the kitchen that took weeks to sort out properly, plumber cancelling twice. You know how it is. Suddenly, finding time for “der, die, das” felt impossible. It just completely fell off the radar.
So, did I learn German? Absolutely not. Not a sausage. Total failure on that front. The book? Pretty sure it’s still in a box somewhere from when we moved house. The app? Deleted long ago to free up space for more cat photos.
It’s funny looking back. Started with watching a footballer, ended with me becoming an unwilling expert on plumbing fixtures for a bit. Never did get cool speaking German. But hey, at least the faucet stopped dripping. Still enjoy watching those old Gomez goals, though. Proper finisher.
