Monday 9th - Sunday 15th November
So, school was pretty normal this week - the same old things going on, nothing particularly interesting to report from that aspect my time over here.
My weekend, by contrast, was a truly European experience. Three different countries in three different days!
So Friday came around, and I somewhat squandered the morning, but I was determined to go out in the afternoon, so I opened my Saarland Guide book at a random page, and a place called Perl came up. Off to Wikipedia I trotted, and did a bit of research on it. Perl itself is not exceptionally interesting...what is more interesting though is the fact that it is on the Mosel, which, at this point, marks the border of Germany with Luxembourg. So, I thought, why not...it might be nice...then I found out the place the other side of the border, in Luxembourg, is Schengen...home of the agreement, which allows free border crossing between EU member states. It was, for an MLES student, a pilgrimage I had to make. Howard White would be pleased! To say that Schengen is quite small and, excepting the treaty, unimportant, would not be nice...however it is true. It is just like any other small riverside town, only this one was lucky enough to be close enough to the confluence of France, Germany and Luxembourg - really the heart of the SaarLorLux region, and indeed Europe.
On Saturday, me and a few of the assistants headed out of our comfort zone...i.e. out of Saarland, and ventured to the murky depths of Baden-Wuerttemburg. Depths is probably, no definitely, and overstatement...Mannheim was our destination. Mannheim is a very commercial city, which appears to be fantastic for shopping and banking, but isn't really a city basing itself around tourism. Nevertheless, we found the Schloss, and it's quite impressive...as it was a bit cloudy, and looked like it may be about to rain, we decided to go in it and have a look round. Several hours later we came out again! So after our castle escapades we went in search of lunch...which we also enjoyed, before heading back to Saarbruecken. So, whilst it may seem like we didn't do a lot there, I would plausibly argue that there isn't a huge amount to actually do in Mannheim, which is particularly historically, or culturally interesting!
So, Sunday, to complete our european extravaganza saw me heading off to Strasbourg on the first train of the day. It was, needless to say, dark when I left, but luckily by the time I arrived it had brightened up sufficiently for me to see my friends from Bath who were meeting me at the station. They took me on a nice tour of Strasbourg, and we saw lots of different and interesting sites there; like the cathedral, the EU Parliament, and various other French institutions. After lunch, we had another wander, before having a game of football between some english speaking people and some french speaking people...which we won...then, when it started getting too dark to see the ball, we headed back to one of my friends' for some pasta before I caught the train back to sunny (well dark) Saarbruecken.
Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend of fun...I seem to developped various flu-like symptoms since then, and have generally not been feeling 100% - but more about that next week!
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