Language course

Monday 11-9: I found a language course! That is, I found several, but one of those actually had the right conditions for me to enter. I found a few that would start in October, at various institutes, and I found one that was full, at the Internationale Studienzentrum, and I found one that had started one week ago and still had place left, at the Heidelberger Pädagogium.
I had to do an Einstufungstest, which meant they wanted to know how good my German was. Having completed that, I was told I would be placed in the Oberstufe, i.e. the highest level of the three. The lady who did the placing wondered where I had learned my German, and asked me how long I had already been in Germany. When I said 'three days', she looked rather surprised, and complimented me on my pronunciation :).

The next day, being Tuesday 12 September, I had my first class, and found the following:

• The teacher, Herr Heim, fits my stereotype about German teachers relatively well
  
  
  
  • He knows lots of things about linguistics, speaks English, Spanish and French and reads Italian; a deutschgründliche Ausbildung, in short
    
  • Very careful Hochdeutsch pronunciation
    
  • Looks quite serious
    
  • What doesn't quite fit is that he isn't authoritarian at all, even seems a little insecure
    
  
  
• The other students are from Taiwan (1), Ukraine (1), Hungary (1), Italy (1) and Spain (2). As far as I can see, they are nette Leute, nice people :).
  
• Relief: my German is certainly not the worst of the class, but not the best either. At least, Claudia (Italian) and Shu-ming (Taiwanese) know their grammer better than I do.
  

The language course is every morning from 9 to 12:30 or thereabouts, which is good. It makes sure that I do something at least every day, and leaves the afternoon for doing nothing, reading up on physics, cycling around town, doing bureaucracy, doing homework, etc.. The only slight problem is that many university offices are only open between 10 and 12 a.m....