"The Enemy at Home" Exhibition in the Museum of Sydney

Today I visited the Enemy at Home exhibition in Sydney. Not a large exhibit, but it was included in the $10 entry price of the museum, and it was a really quality exhibit. Congratulations to curator Nadine Helmi et al for the great work! I visited it with my Austrian friends and my parents, so a mixed-language group, but this time, unlike with recent disappointing encounters with German speakers where I have just been basically too lazy (and inhibited perhaps?) to speak German, especially in a mixed group, I decided to do my best and did find some good time to just speak German.

I had originally intended to stay to listen to Nadine's lecture/readings in German, but due to time constraints on our group, I skipped it and we had afternoon tea together instead. A very pleasant way to spend the afternoon and I can really recommend it for those interested in Australian modern history or of Germans in Australia. I'm not sure if Nadine is planning on doing her lecture in German again - perhaps check out the Sydney German Group on Meetup and see if she posts again on the subject.

As for the conversation - it felt good at times, especially listening to my Austrian friends, even with noisy backgrounds. And, as ever, they taught me some interesting new words and phrases! On the other hand, I almost felt like my German was worse than the last time. Maybe I just had higher expectations, maybe it's because I didn't speak German all the time and so didn't develop such a good flow, but sometimes I would just listen to myself and cringe at my horrible mistakes. It can be hard to block those out, but I really have to, because today I really felt like I was torturing my friends. Not a great feeling...

Come this Monday I'll be meeting up with a native speaker at my workplace, so that should mean the start of a more regular use of German. My Austrian friends have also offered to help me more specifically with my preparation for the B2 exam, which I will definitely take advantage of, even outside of just meeting up for a chat or for the upcoming rogaine in NSW that I managed to rope one of them in to :-) The only problem with taking advantage of their offer of specific B2 exam preparation help is that I don't really know what I'll need to do for the exam! I have past exams, and I need to practice those, and there's probably a million things I don't do right. I was kind of hoping that just improving my German speaking would tie lots of other things together, and I think it's starting to do that. It's also, unsurprisingly, improving my confidence and comfort with speaking (despite my negative feelings at times today). But what I would need to do for specific preparation - well, that I still don't know. I'm probably just too used to studying on my own now, but then it wouldn't be study so much as help refining specific problems while I speak, which is always a good thing!