Germany turns gray in autumn, as if life had slipped into a black-and-white film. I leave home in the dark and come back in the dark. Every morning I whisper, “Winter is coming,” feeling like Jon Snow—only without the sword or the dragons.
And no, these aren’t pretty days. They’re the kind you survive with cheerful music, a conspiracy podcast, and a scandalous audiobook that at least keeps you awake. Still, there’s always that one week when everything seems to go wrong: the milk runs out, there’s no coffee, my dog doesn’t bark, my cat doesn’t meow, and all that’s missing is a pink unicorn coming to pee on me.
Then I remember, “It’s Thursday. I’ve got German class tonight.”
I’m not thrilled about conjugating modal verbs in the past tense, nor about the Konjunktiv II— that linguistic torture that even Germans barely use, unless they want to sound like bar philosophers. But I go anyway. Not for the grammar, but for them—my group of anonymous foreigners, our collective therapy disguised as a German class.
There’s the one who swears they speak perfectly and no one understands them. The one looking for a German boyfriend but with little success. The former teacher who now trains bodies instead of minds. We all wrestle with something: loneliness, nostalgia, the winter that slowly begins both inside and out.
We laugh at our tragedies, celebrate our small victories, and mix our languages. We invent a new one—the language of those who haven’t given up yet, who face life with humor and quiet stoicism.
That’s why so many repeat the course. Not because they’re slow, but because, in the end, we’re human. Learning German, with all due respect to our teacher, becomes secondary. What we truly learn is not to be alone, to carry on, to stay grounded in the country that opened its doors to us.
And that’s why, on Thursdays, I start believing in luck again. Because my mood is already better. And because, finally, tomorrow is Friday.
