globalization - one never knows who is listening

The language school has a 30 min Coffee break stuck in the middle of the morning of classes, and all classes take this pause at the same time. It offers a chance to mingle together with all the students, in particular because it seems they purposely mixed the classes so as to not have overlap of students with the same nationality together, so it's a welcome break to return to the familiar.

Of course it's cacophony in the break area, a huge mix of languages heard because people often resort back to their local tongue after an intense morning, or just that the beginners don't have enough German yet to fully express what they want to say. Further, you'll have someone tap your shoulder on the way out, if they've heard you speak, and turns out they lived/studied/whatever in your region of the world and want to chat for a minute. Or there are big groups of English conversations among English and non-native English speakers, often it's quicker and sometimes the only possibility for arranging social events for later. ;-)

I had gone up to the Danish girl I know there, we often chat during the breaks, she's here for her gap year living in Germany as she has a German boyfriend. Next to her were a few members of her class, they were having a discussion in English about what they wanted to do for lunch. It was two South Americans, a Serbian, and another American. One of the South Americans then switched to Spanish to talk to the other South American across the table. I was chatting with the Dane, she was asking me about the girl across the table, I confirmed she definitely sounded like an American to me (it was the first time I heard her speak), although when I saw her on the first day she struck me as part of the Asian contingent which is here, both in clothing style and actions.

At one point the one of the South Americans turned to me and asked in English, 'so where are you from.' Of course I had to shoot back the answer in Spanish. She instantly froze, I imagine racking her brain to make sure nothing incorrect had been uttered during the previous few minutes. (It hadn't.) The other South American was delighted. She is an absolute beginner in German and her English is poor so she's been having a hard time to have more than the most basic of conversations. She went to the movies (which are dubbed into German in Germany), just to have something stress-free to do, but only understood about five minutes of the show.

The other interesting point--the rest of the table also understood Spanish. The Serbian knew it (I have no idea how), and the Dane had spent a few months work/study in Spain (which is where she met her German boyfriend). And that American sounding girl? She's actually not an American but is a student at an international school in Shanghai, she's very excited to be going to a San Francisco University in the fall. As her English is absolutely fluent she's here taking German as a foreign language. Huh, go figure.