Narrating the past

You can already build a past sentence. B1 asks for a past story — three or four sentences where the listener can tell what happened in which order.

Spoken German narrates in the Perfekt. Only sein, haben and the modals use the Präteritum: war, hatte, konnte, musste, wollte.

• Ich habe gestern lange gearbeitet.

  I worked a long time yesterday.

  ordinary verb → Perfekt

• Ich war sehr müde.

  I was very tired.

  sein → Präteritum, never "ich bin müde gewesen" in speech

• Ich musste noch einkaufen.

  I still had to go shopping.

  modal → Präteritum

The connectors are what turn sentences into a story. These come first in the sentence, so the verb follows immediately — position 2 still holds.

• Zuerst habe ich gearbeitet. Danach bin ich einkaufen gegangen.

  First I worked. After that I went shopping.

  two events, order unmistakable

• Als ich nach Hause kam, war ich sehr müde.

  When I got home, I was very tired.

  als for one past event — you know this from A2

Now the one new form. Sometimes an event happened before another past event, and German marks that with the Plusquamperfekt: the same Perfekt you know, but with hatte or war instead of habe / bin.

Plusquamperfekt = hatte + Partizip II, or war + Partizip II for verbs that take sein. It means "had done", nothing more.

You will almost always meet it after nachdem ("after"). That pairing is the reason to learn it at all: nachdem introduces the earlier event, and the earlier event goes one step further back.

• Nachdem ich gegessen hatte, bin ich schlafen gegangen.

  After I had eaten, I went to bed.

  nachdem-clause = Plusquamperfekt, main clause = Perfekt

• Nachdem der Film zu Ende war, sind wir nach Hause gefahren.

  After the film was over, we drove home.

nachdem is a subordinating conjunction, so its verb goes to the end — and when the nachdem-clause comes first, the main clause starts with its verb. The comma is the hinge: …hatte, bin ich…