Welcome MattK!
My son just spent a year between high school and college as an exchange student in Hannover. He absolutely loved it. He had a terrific family whose teenager was also spending the year in the US. I keep trying to get him on the boards but so far he hasn’t taken the bait!
Welcome aboard!
Hey, is my name Crusoe now, too? This is getting confusing…
No, the marzipan thingies here are very good. Too good, if you know what I mean. 
Good idee. Should ich usen in meinen Translationen. So cann man time saven. Und time is geld!
This is my favorite thread ever. I’m just sitting here touching myself…really.
jarbabyj, could you at least even try not to be so predictable?
Hi German Guy!
Just this week moved to your country (not far from Düsseldorf) from England! I like the beer, I like the people, I don’t like the bloody sauerkraut they keep dumping on my plate in the canteen…
And one day soon, my German skills will improve enough so that I don’t have to keep waving my arms and pointing at stuff like a crazy fool.
I must follow my heart, Fiver.
A young strapping German boy is looking for SDMB guidance. What do you expect?
Wow, quintilingual! Reminds me of a joke:
Someone who knows three languages - trilingual
Someone who knows two languages - bilingual
Someone who knows one language - an American
You type English better than most Americans I know. Sadly, my German is nicht so gut, so I won’t try too much. (One of the best things about knowing what little German I do is that I laughed first at Val Kilmer’s joke in “Top Secret”: “Ist die Tochter achtzehn, bitte?”)
One sign of my German competence: I understood a German woman completely as she was having a conversation. With her 2-year-old children. So that’s my gauge: I can converse in German with toddlers. :D:D
My dad’s sort of in the same boat. He only spoke Russian until he was 5, then had to learn English. (You wouldn’t know that English was not his first language, though.) As an adult, he can converse with Russians and understand Russian in movies (which is almost always very simplified.) But every once in a while he gets lost on some words that a 5-year-old wouldn’t know. When we skied in Colorado, he would often talk to a Ukrainian family, usually their 5-year-old daughter. And she was starting to surpass him in language skills. :D:D
Welcome to SDMB!
(swaying in time with the music, hand-in-hand with fellow dopers)
BOORRRRNNNN FREEEEEE…
Stop it, Ethilrist. Stop it stop it! No singing!
You can’t, but our humble Administrator Tubadiva can. If one wishes to have a different SN, he can send her a polite e-mail request to have it changed.
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome. It will be a lot of fun here…
sirjamesp: Did you move temporarily or are you gonna stay for a longer time? I´ve been in a British host family for a few days a while back. They were from India so it was a weird cultural mix.
AWB: I actually know some Swiss, too. Gruezi!
MattK: Long term move - I’m gonna be here for a couple of years.
This means that I’ve now moved into a two-way smuggling operation: on trips to England, I take fags out for my mates (5 DM a pack here, 15 DM in England!), and on my return I bring loads of Heinz Baked Beans for me…