Studying German in Hungary - or: Why coffee, cats and Túró Rudi are part of everyday university life. An experience report from Szeged.
by Julia Pater
Graduate of the binational Master's program, University of Kassel
Friday morning, 8 a.m.: Szeged is slowly becoming quieter. Everywhere people circle puddles that are almost small lakes - remnants of the previous evening. When it rains here, it really rains. Today, however, the sun is already providing a pleasant warmth. And that's in October! It's not for nothing that Szeged is called "the city of sunshine".
We are on our way to university. That's right, Friday morning at 8 o'clock! Normally unimaginable, at least in Kassel, but in Szeged the clocks tick a little differently. We sleepily make our way to the literature building first. The goal: the coffee machine! Students bustle around. The porter nags that the doors are always open. Let's get out of here quickly before we are told in rapid Hungarian that doors are there to be closed.
Our seminar takes place opposite in the linguistics building. On the way, we pet the obligatory "university cat", which, like every day, lets the students scratch its belly outside, and we are already sitting in Mr. Bassola's lecture. The topic: valence. The coffee is slowly but surely having an effect and Mr. Bassola does the rest to prevent us from falling asleep again. As native speakers, we are often asked whether the sentence examples are also used in "real" life. This is often not so easy to judge. We sit pondering in lectures and sometimes no longer know ourselves how and why we are actually using our language correctly. If there is a "slip of the tongue", is there also a "misspelling"? Why is it "die Frau", "die Gattin", "die Dame" but "das Weib" and "das Mädchen"? My goodness, somebody help the Germans to understand their own language! As a Hungarian, Mr. Bassola does his best to compare our mother tongue with Hungarian. And we feel a little proud when we understand simple Hungarian sentences straight away and don't have to have them explained to us.
After 90 minutes, we finally head back over to the literary scholars. Time for coffee no. 2 and a delicious Túró Rudi! The small chocolate bar filled with quark is to Hungarians what the Germans call the Ü-egg. When it comes to our Túró Rudi consumption, after a short time we can be described as real Hungarians. No, we've actually already beaten the men and women of Hungary at it!
We have a quick chat with our new fellow students and then Mr. Csuri arrives. The lecture is about the fin de siècle and the various "isms". It feels like being in a lecture in Kassel, except that instead of 100 to 300 German studies students, there are about 30 people in the room. So a seat is guaranteed! And here, too, people are happy to have us - the native German speakers who are sometimes asked to read poetry.
After the literature seminar, it's time for the weekend. We ring in the weekend at Pívo, a café right next to the university, with a chocolate snail and a latte macchiato, which the waitress decorates with colorful sprinkles. Oh really! - They just know what's good here!
