Der Standard arrived in vast packets from Europe and the pictures told stories that were greater than the stories you read
in the Belfast Telegraph. We all went off to the
University Book shop and bought a German dictionary and looked up religiously
all the words that kept us in the dark ... poured over the German Grammar and
did our exercises daily for about one year.
Then afterall it was time for
literature and Brecht was an absolute must on the time tabling of German Literature and his plays were all dutifully
translated and acted out
and we learnt the words of some of the lines translated from German into English.
The prize winners were there too watching our every moment and thought in a moment
of insanity we had abandoned local Culture and replaced it with German Language
and Literature .... we quickly finished the exercises and read all the copies of Der Standard and went to bed, slept soundly and got up the next culturally enriched but in cross community terms as well as locally ..... great literature and great language .....German .........