Mad Dogs and Englishmen

But sort-of related. I went to the Imperial War Museum Holocaust exhibit with paramour today (whyyyy did I not take him there before? I fail) and was having a browse at some fo the old Der Sturmer newspapers, and... I could sort-of understand them. Bits of them anyway. Ok, it's like being proud that you can read the Daily Mail headlines, but fuck, it's not gobbledegook any more!

So, what with education in the UK being stripped of basically everything, and the PM cutting anything which has 'public' anywhere near it. I've been eying the old Deutschland more and more appraisingly. After reading that Masters degrees are next on the chopping block (First they came for the undergraduates, and I said nothing....), I decided to see just what it was like over the channel and far away.

I swear this is some sort of dumb plot.

The scattering of pages my google search: 'Germany education news' brought will be paraphrased as follows:

Germany proposes 'happiness index'!
Germany education minister pledges to spend more money in higher education!
Germany's impoving economy in trouble because of lack of skilled workers!
Germany proposes bringing in more foreign students to its universities to make up for lack of skilled workers!
Visit our amazing International university in Berlin! (okay, that one was a bit random)

Grief. I mean, I'm used to moments where then world seem to be scream 'YOU! DO THIS!', but I though that was usually limited to Holocaust related stuff.

Unfortunately Paramour's previous visit to Germany was as part of the occupying forces, and being of the baby boom generation I think he still has the 'kraut=nazi' shorthand. He says he'll probably get over it.
Which is good, I have two years to do this course, and unless things get turned around sharpish, there's not going to be much for me to do around here.

So, you peeps who live in Germanland, please tell me what education is like at your end (ps, don't tell me it's crap, everything thinks their education is crap). My German teacher tells me that the fees are something like £1,000 a year (or was it in euros?) and if that's true it's already miles better than the UK.

Ok, I won't be able to sing 'Night of the Long Knives' in public, but then I probably shouldn't have done that anyway.

It was our first lesson today, and we were working on pronunciation. The teacher remarked that we had all pronounced 'ich' correctly, this being somethin which native English speakers find hard to get right. I had a quick glace around the room and asked "Um, are there any native English speakers here?"
No, we didn't. But we did have:
A Frenchie (yours truely)
A mixed Ghana/German
A Moroccan
A Brazilian
An Indian
An Israeli
A Slovakian
A Chinese
and a bunch of others. I think every continent except maybe North America was represented. It's very, very weird.