German of the diligent student of Palestine.

His heroes are called Beckenbauer, Matthaeus, Klinsmann - now he learns their language. At the young Palestinian Muhammad was a football from a voice-Tick-Tick. He learns busy and hopes for a scholarship to Germany. It would also be breaking out of a prison.

 

Languages you exercise in the classroom or in an exchange program. Mohammed exercises when he goes to eat pizza. He runs the runway pothole high, the main call them here in the small pizzeria on the outskirts of Abu Dis and welcomes Said pizza maker with a cheerful "good day". Said then laughs and starts with Mohammed in a chat. In German.

Said has nearly 20 years in Germany, is fluent and sometimes without a decimal point, and - just want to Mohammed, 22, may also once.

Still, he speaks ruckhaft, with long pauses in which he committed, as determined by the correct vocabulary studied. But the Palestinians Mohammed has won this level. Between the idea to learn German, and his small-talk with Said lie hundreds of miles with yellow collective taxis and four years of hard work.

Mohammed sits in the back seat, in a taxi to Ramallah, pull out the bare mountains of the West Bank over. Since the rear is the desert, left, down the road we go to Jerusalem. On his knees is a Vocabulary for the German lessons at the Goethe-Institut Ramallah. Mohammed, brown eyes, short dark hair, not only learn German, he has - and this is not evil intentioned - a Germany-Tick, especially his football-Tick is owed.

German for trailers

He knows every outcome of the Bundesliga last weekend, and can choose the clubs, where the National German striker Karl-Heinz Riedle in the nineties has kicked in sequence and length correctly enumerate. In his room hangs a big Bayern Munich Flag on his door, he has written that all Germans for the 2010 World Cup luck wishes. It hangs a black-red-gold flag. In the same colors he has on his Facebook picture wrapped.

His enthusiasm for football is also the reason why he has begun to learn the language: "I wanted to comment on German television the games of the national team finally understand." Mohammed is a moment as if that which he has just said, an entirely plausible answer. Then he laughs and pushes quickly afterwards: "Well, maybe not the only reason."

IMAGES-BY JERUSALEM TRAVEL

Impressive photos of a fascinating city

Mohammed lives in Abu Dis, a neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, he studied at the Palestinian Al-Quds University of Information Technologies. Actually would be the next Goethe Institute and German so that the next lesson, not far away: only a few miles to the west, in the city of Jerusalem - that would be much closer to him than Ramallah.

But between the house his family in Abu Dis and the city has been almost six years of an eight-meter high
Wall, with barbed wire and guards. In Jerusalem, the West must not Mohammed. He is a West Bank residents: Palestinians, young, male. No chance that the Israeli authorities to issue him a permit, and certainly not for a language course.

Four years ago, reported that Mohammed is why his first course in German in Ramallah. At any moment he drove the 30 kilometers from Abu Dis to Ramallah by taxi - and when the evening fell, he was sometimes more than three hours because of the army checkpoint was already closed and the taxi a long detour had to go.

Learn German, the cage escape

That was 2005, just the second intifada erupted, the tense situation in the country, the border guards were irritated. And the wall that Israel around the West Bank was made of Abu Dis day more to a cage. Learn German, and perhaps even go to Germany - this is for Mohammed, the dream of the procedural situation here at the top of the mountains once judäischen forget them.

INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS

Click here to learn more about the living conditions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to learn.

"Most students who come to us, only make the course for the first or second stage, for a visa for Germany to get," says Berit leg, 38 It organizes for the Goethe-Institut language teaching. Mohammed is reported immediately after the first course for the next, and then again for the next and so on.

Eventually he sat virtually alone in the classroom, because there are no other students were more who were able to maintain its level. Mohammed's friends tried to talk, even to learn German, but that did not. He had to wait until a course was full. One month, two, three, at the end of all seven.

"It is very rare that someone as long as he durchhält," says Berit leg. "And we seldom have students who are so for the German language and inspire our country." Because Mohammed at the end came more than any other, it suggested the Institute for a scholarship, with whom he was a few weeks after Germany was able to drive.

Learning from Beckenbauer and Klinsmann

He proudly displays the images on his computer from the workshop a year ago in Bonn: He met other young people from around the world, in the courses of the Goethe-Institut had shown outstanding performance. Here they are in Bonn before the castle Poppelsdorfer since before the Cologne Cathedral, and the image that is in Hanover, in the football stadium. "A great time was," says Mohammed. He would prefer the entire course with the same taken to Ramallah in order to continue to learn German. After all, he invited them all. But whether they come from?

At home in Abu Dis is now waiting for Mohammed again until enough students for a new German course have reported. In order not to come of the exercise, he regularly goes to the institute, just like that. Then he sits in the library, reads by the German books, look in the newspaper.

It meets on a chat with Ursula Gutscherian, 64, of the Institute Mediathekarin: You gave him tips, he can read, and he helped his first messages to write in German. At the moment it helps him a scholarship for his studies in Germany. In Aachen, perhaps, or in Berlin.

Mohammed is among the shelves, his fingers wander over the spine: Goethe, Grass, Kleist, Lessing, Schiller. Then he kneels down and pulls right off the shelf a book that he knows: "History of the German national football team." It scrolls a little back and forth. There is a chapter on Beckenbauer, here is something to Matthew, comes Klinsmann.

"Can you learn German fine with," says Mohammed.