Before moving to Germany, I often wondered what Germans were actually like. And of course, I had countless stereotypes flying through my head, like “the bats,” in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

When I first moved to Munich, a year ago, I thought my German was pretty good. I had studied it at university and spent 6 months in Tübingen, and I thought I was reasonably well adapted to the German way of life – I now no longer panic when my food comes through the check-out faster than a Formula 1 car. But, this past year has taught me a lot of things I didn’t know about the German language (and German culture, but I’ll leave that for another time), and has made me forget a great deal I did know about the English language.