Take me to your Umlauts!: An American goes back to his German Roots

We have ways of making you talk ... German!
In 1996, David Bergmann voluntarily moved from Chicago to Germany (the country of his 32 great- great-great-grandparents). His mission: a year- abroad to go "back to the roots" - both physically and linguistically. Since then he has come to terms (well, almost) with the past-tense, cute yet tough "Umlauts", powerful prefixes, "Doinglisch", idiosyn-cratic idioms, and the twelve (or was that thirteen?) possible plural-forms. Furthermore, he has tackled the eternal questions posed by native English speakers of "How do you ,du'?", "Where's my Fahrvergnu"gen?", and "Der, die, WAS?!". Through it all, he has both confused and amused the natives. But most importantly, he discovers that German is not at all an awful language - as Mark Twain once mistakenly wrote - but rather an awfully cool one!