It means “I don’t understand” in German. I have written about this many times in this blog that we are raising bilingual children. As you might have guessed, that means English and German.

My wife leaves on September 11 to Hamburg Germany with the girls. Because of work obligations, I will not be able to follow until September 24th. Don’t even think about robbing us because we will have a house sitter.

Anyway, I am very bad and lazy about learning German. I will be the first to admit this. I would say, right now, my spoken German is at about 10% fluency and my understanding, when spoken to, is about 65%. My 2 1/2 year old kids, on the other hand, are already at 100% fluency. What the F@%&! How can a friggin 2 1/2 year old trump the old man who has struggled for years already be friggin fluent?

So when I arrive in Germany in a few weeks, my kids will be speaking exclusively German and I will just stand around and say “Ich verstehe nicht”.

That is in between the couch surfing that will be going on. You know, house to house with nothing really to do but listen to people speak in a language you barely understand and drink beer, and eat, and sit, and rinse and repeat. Hey come to think of it, I can just drink lots of beer and then I won’t care that I have no clue what people are saying.

Excellent, I can’t wait to leave.

[tags] Bilingual children, Hamburg Germany, Stupid Fathers [/tags]