One row per week: theme, grammar focus, and the brief the storyboard is generated from. Weeks beyond the built range are the planned design.
| 1 A1 | Arrival & introducing yourself sein (ich bin / Sie sind), heißen, kommen aus; es gibt; subject pronouns ich/Sie/er/sie; wie/wo/was questions and yes-no questions with the verb first (Sind Sie …?) Maya's arrival day in Berlin, knowing no one — stepping out of the airport into a dark January evening with one large suitcase and a bag. Across the day: she lands and asks the way to the taxi rank, takes a taxi (giving her new address), lets herself into a temporary room in an old building with a courtyard, takes in the unfamiliar city from the window with a pang for Mexico, makes a quick audio call home, and meets her neighbour Sabine on the stairs with her dog Bruno. |
| 2 A1 | First day & the Anmeldung Present tense of regular verbs (ich arbeite, Sie arbeiten); numbers 0–100 as words; haben; age with sein (ich bin einunddreißig Jahre alt) Her first days getting settled — her first day at the software company, where her colleague Jonas welcomes her and shows her to her desk. Standing in the office on her first morning she takes stock of her age and how far she has come to start again. The next morning, before work, she keeps the Anmeldung appointment she booked from Mexico weeks ago and registers her address — which is what unlocks everything else. Only then can she get a German SIM at lunchtime, since the shop wants her passport and her registration; she reads the new number back to check it. The number is spoken once, there. A celebratory Currywurst after work when the errands are behind her. |
| 3 A1 | Family back home Possessives mein/meine, Ihr/Ihre in the nominative; the indefinite article ein/eine; wer questions A slow Sunday shaped by the call home — her first proper video call, afternoon in Berlin, morning back in Mexico. Before it, a small errand: the shops are all shut on a Sunday, so she picks up a treat at the Späti round the corner, something to show the family. The call itself: her mother and father, her little sister Sofia, her big brother Diego, and the family dog Lola — a little show-and-tell both ways, a glimpse of her room, a glimpse of home. After the goodbye she walks her street in the Sunday quiet, a touch homesick, the voices still with her. |
| 4 A1 | Moving into her own flat Prepositions of place with the dative (in, auf, unter, neben + dem/der); the placement verbs stehen/liegen/hängen; the definite articles der/die/das Moving day — Maya leaves the temporary room for her own permanent flat in the same building; her real home at last. She lets herself in and carries in her bags and suitcases, settling into the small furnished flat room by room — high ceilings, tall windows onto the courtyard — deciding where everything goes, with a light touch from Sabine. |
| 5 A1 | Food shopping & the kitchen The accusative case (den/die/das); ich möchte and ich mag; negation — kein before a noun, nicht for everything else Her cupboards are empty, so Maya stocks her new kitchen. She works the aisles of a supermarket and the little shop on the corner: bread and cheese, vegetables she knows and one she has never seen, what she likes and what she wants for the week. She carries it all home. |
| 6 A1 | Settling into a routine Separable verbs (aufstehen, anziehen, einkaufen) and their split word order; reflexive sich waschen; verb-second word order when a time phrase comes first One ordinary weekday for Maya. She gets up, washes and dresses, takes the U-Bahn, and settles at her desk; at midday she eats with her colleague Jonas; in the evening she cooks, relaxes and goes to bed. |
| 7 A1 | Time & appointments Clock time (um halb sechs — German counts half towards the next hour); weekdays & months; frequency adverbs immer/manchmal/jeden Tag Maya fills her calendar for the week: the gym on her regular evening, a haircut she books over the phone, a bicycle repair. A coffee with Sabine, added midweek, lands at the same hour as another appointment, so she moves one. Not every time is on the hour. No prices — money belongs to week 9. |
| 8 A1 | Getting to know the city Polite imperatives (Gehen Sie, biegen Sie ab); directions geradeaus, links/rechts; zu + dative A Saturday out in the city. Sabine sends her off with a route; from there strangers direct her, and when she gets lost one of them shows her the way back. She reaches the river and the museums on the island, watches the water a while, and rides the S-Bahn home able to picture her part of the city. No prices — money belongs to week 9. |
| 9 A1 | At the market & prices Prices — Was kostet das? / Das macht …; amounts as words; plural noun forms (ein Apfel / drei Äpfel, eine Karte / zwei Karten); ich hätte gern / ich nehme at the stall A morning at the weekly market — Maya goes stall to stall for everyday food and a few non-food things. Vary the transactions so no two stalls are the same — a taste offered, an item too dear that she skips, a weighed per-kilo price, change from a note — not the same ask-price-pay each time — and vary how the price arrives too: sometimes she asks, sometimes a chalkboard shows it, sometimes the trader names it unprompted. |
| 10 A1 | Clothes & the Berlin winter Systematising adjective endings after the definite and the indefinite article (nominative and accusative, singular) — learners have been hearing these since week 1, and this week is where the pattern is laid out and drilled rather than met for the first time; anziehen/tragen; joining clauses with und / oder / aber / denn (schön, aber zu teuer) March, and it is still properly cold. Maya shops for warm winter clothes — a real coat at last. In one shop she tries on and buys a few things — each garment its own complete scene (she picks it up, tries it, decides) — with sizes, colours and prices. One she likes but it is too expensive, so she leaves it. |
| 11 A1 | Berlin weather Weather expressions es ist kalt / es schneit / es regnet / es ist sonnig; the future with werden for the forecast (es wird regnen) Late-winter days. One ordinary day told through its weather: Maya wakes in the dark, checks the forecast, and dresses for the cold. Out in it, the day turns — grey and sleety by the canal, then the sky clears and the first real sunshine of the year brings the whole city outdoors onto benches and steps. She closes the day at the window in the long, late light. |
| 12 A1 | Free time & meeting people The modal verbs können and wollen; gern + verb — landing inside varied actions and exchanges, not as declarations To get active and meet people, Maya joins a local badminton club on her own — she has played for years back home. Club evenings are Thursdays; from this week her Thursday gym slot becomes badminton (gym continues Tuesdays). She finds the club, signs up and rents a racket, then joins a doubles game with three friendly players, Timo, Lena and Max (new faces), and arranges to come back. |
| 13 A1 | At the café Polite requests — Ich hätte gern … / Könnte ich … haben?; bitte and danke; asking to pay A café stop out of the cold, with polite ordering as the focus — Maya finds a seat, orders a coffee and a slice of cake at the counter, later asks for one more thing and then to pay at the table, and thanks the staff. Each exchange its own complete scene, with small moments between. |
| 14 A1 | Public transport einsteigen / aussteigen / umsteigen; mit + dative (mit der U-Bahn); the modal müssen (ich muss … fahren) Maya crosses the city by public transport — she buys a ticket at the machine, stamps it, and rides the U-Bahn, changes onto the S-Bahn, and steps off by the river for an errand. Solo, plus a ticket-machine bystander who helps, a fellow passenger and a shop worker at the errand's end. The S-Bahn is the last leg. |
| 15 A1 | A1 review — a day in the new city Mixed present-tense narration; consolidation. BOUNDARY: no past tense anywhere — the Perfekt opens week 16 A full ordinary weekday, start to finish: morning routine at home, the commute, a stretch at work, an errand or two that echo earlier weeks without repeating them (a shop, a bit of transport, a tourist asking the way), with Jonas at work, and home in the evening for a neighbourly catch-up with Sabine next door. |
| 16 A2 | Talking about the past The Perfekt with haben (ich habe … gemacht, gesehen, gekauft); time phrases gestern / letzte Woche / im Januar (the Perfekt with sein is out of scope — week 17 owns it) After badminton, Timo and Lena ask why she chose Berlin and how she found the job, and Maya tells them: the advertisement in the autumn, the long wait for papers, meeting Sabine on the stairs, her first day at the office. On a call home later, Maya mentions the storytelling, and her mother — who lived that goodbye herself — asks to hear Maya's telling of it anyway; the story comes out again, warmer, with her mother adding her own side of the airport morning. |
| 17 A2 | A trip out of the city The Perfekt with sein (ich bin gefahren, gegangen); past-tense narration; time expressions (the Präteritum war/hatte is week 26 — keep the telling on actions, not on descriptions of states, which would reach for it) Spring is here, and Maya takes a weekend S-Bahn trip out to Potsdam, told in the past as a travel diary: the train through the pines, people-watching on board, a long walk through a park and along a lake, and the ride home tired and happy. |
| 18 A2 | Health & the doctor mir tut … weh; body parts; mir geht es gut / nicht gut; advice with sollen; giving a reason with weil and its verb-final word order (Ich komme nicht, weil ich krank bin) The turn of the season brings Maya's first ailment here — a heavy cold as the weather flips back and forth. She calls the practice and books an appointment, tells the doctor where it hurts and how she has been feeling, and picks up something at the pharmacy on the way home. |
| 19 A2 | Work & colleagues Perfekt consolidation; professions; seit + dative for how long (seit fünf Jahren) A real project lands at the office, and Maya works closely with the whole team for the first time: Jonas, and the colleagues she knew only by face — the designer Nele, the tester Sven, the team lead Katrin — Nele and Sven explaining what they do and how long they have done it, Katrin welcoming her aboard. She presents her part at the team's short morning meeting. |
| 20 A2 | Volunteering at the café Perfekt and present mixed; lernen + zu-infinitive; ordinals erste/zweite Maya starts volunteering Saturday mornings at a neighbourhood café — to meet people, she takes the counter side of that world. Her first shifts, told as they happened: the experienced hand Elif shows her the machine, her first coffee comes out wrong, her second better. |
| 21 A2 | Buying clothes Comparatives (größer als, kleiner als); umtauschen (exchanging) A warm Saturday in May: Maya shops in town and buys a light jacket and a shirt for the coming summer. At home the shirt is too small. She goes back with the receipt for an exchange: asks for a bigger size, tries the bigger one, and it fits better. |
| 22 A2 | Cooking & local food Imperative sequences; quantities (ein halbes Kilo, zwei Esslöffel); zuerst / dann / danach Maya cooks Kartoffelsalat mit Bouletten for Lena and Timo — the plainest, most Berlin thing she could pick. She finds a recipe, shops for the amounts it calls for, and cooks it step by step. Her friends arrive and they eat together at her small table. Solo cooking, then the shared meal. |
| 23 A2 | Making plans & friends The future with werden; the dative as an object case (ich gebe ihr …, ich helfe dir); dass-clauses and their verb-final word order (Ich denke, dass …) Nele, from the project in week 19, invites Maya to her home for dinner. Maya plans the visit — what to bring, when to leave, how to get there, talked through with Jonas at work — and brings something along. Over the meal they talk as friends for the first time. |
| 24 A2 | Looking after Sabine's dog Imperatives + accusative pronouns (ihn/sie/es); rules with müssen and nicht dürfen Sabine goes away for a weekend and leaves her dog Bruno with Maya, with a few rules for his care — when he's fed, what he may and may not have, where he must stay on the lead. Maya looks after him across the weekend: she feeds him, walks him in the park, and calls him back when he wanders off. |
| 25 A2 | A Sunday in the city Demonstratives dieser/diese/dieses against plain der/die/das; vor for "ago" (vor zwei Monaten); time adverbs A slow June Sunday with nowhere to be and every shop shut. Maya wanders the flea market in the park, stopping over this and that, then spends an hour out of a rain shower in a museum. Threaded through it is how long ago things now feel — she thinks back over her arrival and her first months here. |
| 26 A2 | Summer in the city & her birthday The Präteritum of sein and haben (war, hatte) set against the Perfekt — heard already in wk25's looking-back; this week lays the pattern out High summer — the long light evenings Berlin waits all year for. Two things fall in the same week: a barbecue in the park with Jonas and Nele on the warmest evening yet, and her own birthday — her first away from home; she turns thirty-two. Friends mark the day with her, and she looks back over her first months against the day in front of her. |
| 27 A2 | Phones, internet & admin online Habitual normalerweise / meistens; instructions; the passive of official language (wird bearbeitet, wird geschickt) Maya updates an account detail on a public self-service website — the small admin everyone puts off. She usually does this on her phone in the evening: she logs in, works through the form, and waits for a one-time code. When the first code never arrives, she works around it and finishes. |
| 28 A2 | A2 review — a week in the new life Consolidation across all A2 grammar A full ordinary week in the life Maya has built, start to finish — a morning at the office with Nele, where the big project is now just work, a badminton evening against Lena, a quiet errand, a Saturday café shift, a meal cooked, and dinner with Sabine. Threaded through, the odd backward glance at how far off January feels. |
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