Young people are abroad now learning more Italian, French or German or Spanish at special courses for foreigners organised by universities or language schools. The courses are fine in themselves, but the good, interested landlady can beat them all. One such student, now rather an old geezer, said he learned more German under the guidance of his intelligent, if not bluestockinged, landlady than he did in any institution. She was a jewel, discovered by intense querying among people at home who had been on the same trail. She was glad to get you out of the flat for your morning course at the university to have housework done, but your morning lectures did not end your working day. No, early in the morning she had decided that no one coming to Heidelberg could possibly return home without having seen this or that ducal palace, or medieval church or beautiful rural village or notable gardens within 20 miles. All of this would be filled out by her personal reminiscences of the places, or stories brought back by her previous paying guests. She was not the typical hausfrau of imagination, but a stylish, slim sixtyish woman of some wit. One of her suggestions, more than a suggestion, was that you must get the proper accent, and a friend of hers, daughter of a general, would take pupils on for an ambulatory couple of hours, going around Heidelberg and its environs, recalling some history, pointing out special places of beauty, and all the time conversing in German. A stop for a cup of coffee, maybe, otherwise two to three hours of dialogue.
Another aspect of Frau T's education course was the regular musical evenings, where her friends came to sing or play violin or flute; and conversation (in German, of course) was lively and general. She used to say to her young charges that you knew you were doing well when you dreamed in German. Then, she believed, you had got the rhythms, the sing-song of the language into your head. It helped that her apartment was very big; she usually had three or four students in the summer (each with own bedroom), and in the winter Germans attending normal faculty studies at the university, allegedly the oldest in the country. Are landladies as good today? We will hear in a few weeks time when the language learners come home. Y