Don't be rude! Speak Italiano!

That was the beautiful view from our terrasse at Lake Garda. We stayed for two weeks in August at a holiday apartment in a small town up a mountain and all our neighbours were Italian. Prior to travelling there, I asked on italki, if it would be possible to communicate in French or Spanish in Italy. I have tried that already when I once went to Bologna many years ago and couldn't find help when asking for the way in English. So I asked in French and with my knowledge of Latin, I somehow deciphered the reply in Italian. But some (non-Italian) italki users told me that it would be extremely rude to ask the way in another language than the local one. A user asked me if I wouldn't find it rude if someone asked me the way in Dutch instead of German. No, I wouldn't feel offended at all. I don't expect tourists to learn German. But since I don't want to be rude, I started to familiarise myself with the Italian basics two weeks before the holiday and took two online classes.

Then during the stay in Italy, I tried to communicate as much as possible with our Italian neighbours. One of them, an elderly gentleman, knew a handful of German words, that he remembered from the war: nein (no), gut (good), raus (out), kaputt (out of order) and Bunker (bunker). Actually, you could have a full conversation with those words:
A: Bunker gut?
B: Nein, kaputt!
A: Raus!

Anyway, since the area around Lake Garda is strongly in the hands of German tourists, it was not really necessary to learn Italian. The waiters and shop-vendors all spoke English and German. But it definitely put a smile on the faces of people when I tried to say something in Italian and it was definitely a rare sight for them since there weren't any other Asian looking Germans around. In the area where we stayed, we hardly saw any Asians at all. Only at Sirmione and Verona, we saw other Chinese-looking tourists.

In the apartment, I found this book "Italian in 30 days" from 1955 (!) and worked a bit with it and also wrote little texts which I uploaded on italki. The book advertised a "brand new method" for language learning. Now, more than 60 years later, the method still worked for me, even though, some of the words are outdated now and topic-wise it was also different than contemporary books. Unfortunately, I had to leave the book in the apartment, so now I am back to working with modern material.

Our Italian neighbours were so nice and it was fun to have little chats with them, so I decided, that next time we go there, I want to be able to have real conversations with them. After our holiday, I started to take Italian classes regularly. My teacher holds the classes entirely in Italian right from the start and whenever I don't know a word, I use Spanish as a crutch. It's helpful and confusing at the same time. Now I just have a big Spanish-Italian mishmash in my head.

My teachers

I take private lessons on italki. The first two lessons I took with Susanna (Susanna's italki profile), who is a great teacher and also offers an Italian podcast: http://www.arkosacademy.com/category/podcast/.
But I needed a more flexible schedule, so I switched to my current teacher Clemente (Clemente's italki profile) and am enjoying his classes very much.
If you are looking for online Italian teachers, check them out. They are both great!

The music

Italian music always has been very popular in Germany. The first concert I ever went to was a concert by Eros Ramazzotti. His song "Ma che bello questo amore" was the very first single, I ever purchased. I was 12 at the time. Finally 30 years later, I understand the lyrics...
Eros Ramazzotti: Ma che bello questo amore

Two other Italian singers, who are currently on my playlist are Francesco Regna and Luca Carboni:
Francesco Regna: Il mio giorno più bello nel mondo (The city in the video is Berlin/Germany)
Luca Carboni: Bologna è una regola

And who could ever forget the great Adriano Celentano? The hippest hip of the 70ies. Check out this hilarious video: L'Unica Chance.