5 Real Reasons to Learn German

I'm sure you've read tons of articles before, on "reasons" to learn German. While they may be true if you're looking to expand your business into Germany, how many people are doing that? So I've decided to give you 5 of my own reasons. These are things I realised after coming back from Germany and things that wouldn't have happened without my knowledge of the German language.

1. Barmen will love you and Barman Love = Free drinks. Thats right, if you can dazzle German barmen with your witty German, you are guaranteed a few free shots or a couple of beers. You only need a few handy phrases to be able to do this. A couple of my favorites include "one is none", "Germans can't drink" and good old "Skol or you're Dutch". If you can pull one or more of these off, you can bet than barman love is coming your way.

2. You will be able to get directions home when you're drunk and you've forgotten how to get home. Imagine this, you've had a long day at the Oktoberfest, when you get asked to leave the beer tents and then realise you have to go home to sleep. It's ok until you realise that you can't remember how to get back to your hotel. You try and ask some random Germans, but not too many of them are in the mood to help a drunk guy speaking English. So you turn on the German and suddenly your guardian angel appears. He takes you by the hand and points you in the direction you need to go, even putting you on the correct train. All those hours studying online just paid for themselves didn't they?

3. You can actually sing along with songs at the Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest just isn't Oktoberfest without plenty of drunk singing. Normally you get kicked out of the pub for standing on the chairs and belting out "hey baby", but in Germany, it's a national pasttime. However, they also love songs in their own language. Now, theres nothing wrong with waving your stein around singing lyrics like "daa daa daa laa laa", but if you really want to get into the spirit of things, it helps if you understand the words. And, of course, this can only happen if you put in the effort to learn German before you go.

4. When a train takes a different route to normal, you will know. Normally in Germany, important messages are sent over in English as well. However, sometimes they don't and that can leave you in a bit of a pickle. Imagine heading into the centre of Berlin, like you have for the past few days, but instead of stopping in the heart of Berlin, the train decides to take a different route. So instead of walking around trendy Potzdamer Platz, you end up in the lovely city of Hamburg. Not quite what you had planned for the day, was it? Well, if you could speak German, then you wouldn't have to worry about it, would you?

5. To have the ability to understand obscure pub games. It's not everyday you walk into a pub and are handed a hammer and a few nails. At first I thought I had been mistaken for the local carpenter, but after listening to instructions from a lovely Austrian girl, I realised that the game involved hitting nails into a chunk of wood, using only the reverse side of the hammer. How stupid I would've looked, hitting a nail into some wood using the proper side of the hammer. Thankyou German language!

So if you have read through those reasons and still can't see any good reason to learn German, I think you need your head checked.

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