Thema 2: Mein Alltag – heute und gestern

In Thema 2: Mein Alltag – gestern und heute, our focus will be on talking about your Alltag (daily life), from your morning routine to your college schedule, hobbies, and meeting up with friends. This should provide some review of previously learned topics, while introducing you to the language necessary to talk about these things in the past.

Talking about the past in German is, in many ways, much easier than in English (or in any of the Romance languages). It may not feel easy to the English native speaker, because we generally do not have to think about whether “Yesterday, I went to the movies with my new boyfriend.” or “Yesterday, I was going to the movies with my new boyfriend.” is correct. We instinctively know that the second sentence is not complete. If we say “I was going” instead of “I went” then we have to add more information, e.g. “Yesterday, I was going to the movies with my new boyfriend when I ran into my ex-boyfriend. Yikes!” By contrast, talking about either of these situations in German is much simpler: Both “I went” and “I was going” are “Ich bin gegangen“.

By the end of this Thema, you will be able to talk about the every day activities you do and have done yesterday, a few days ago, a week ago, a month ago, and so on.

Los geht’s!