Monday 25th - Sunday 31st January
So, after the last couple of weeks, which were slightly lacking in interesting things, here is one entry, which features a trip out!
As per usual, school was pretty standard this week. Having said that something interesting did happen at my Gesamtschule (although I wasn't personally involved in dealing with it - we hear about these things in the staffroom.) - what happened was that the Headteacher caught some kids from the 8. Klasse (about 14-15) smoking cannabis in the toilets at school. When they were caught, the reason they gave was simply that they didn't want to be caught leaving the premises - this I found rather amusing!
Lidl, who, in case you hadn't realised, are a supermarket of German origin, have now developped not only the power of telepathy, but also the ability to translate from English to German. Lidl ran a "British Week" this week in their stores, meaning that they were selling a selection (not huge, but big enough) of quintessentially British foodstuffs - cheddar cheese, corned beef etc. All things which whilst living in the UK you take for granted, yet somewhat lacking in most other countries! So, needless to say, I went down to Lidl, despite it being right on the other side of the city, to stock up on Cheddar Cheese. I have since found out that it's running into this week a bit, so I shall be heading back there on Monday to collect more supplies of British food!
Now to our trip out, the location of which was suggested by Harriet (notice the pre-emptive apportioning of blame there!). We decided to go to Karlsruhe on Saturday using the DB Group ticket, meaning that the whole trip cost us less than 7,50€. Karlsruhe itself is a little under 3 hours away by train from Saarbruecken, so easily do-able as a day trip. The city is relatively close to the French border, not quite as close as Saarbruecken, but probably the closest city in Baden-Wuerttemburg (the federal state where it is).
We met at the Hauptbahnhof at about 8.45 and caught the train at 9.03. The train journey, as is becoming more typical in Germany, means it is not possible to travel in a straight line there, so we had to change trains twice. Once in Kaiserslautern (or K-Town as it's known by the US Forces stationed there) where we had then caught a train to Schifferstadt, before getting on a train to Karlsruhe itself. Once in Karlsruhe, we located the Tourist Information Centre, from where we acquired a map (simply an A3 sheet of paper). Then, as per tradition, we found a nearby cafe where we planned our day, with the aid of the map. I say "with the aid" of the map in the loosest sense of the word. The map was OK in that it fulfilled its most basic function - i.e. it showed where the roads were, but following on from that there was hardly anything to help tourists find anything. Thus, we walked to the Schloss, which is actually impressive, and naturally, it had the scaffolding, which I am becoming convinced is a legal requirement.
From the Schloss we headed over to a church nearby, which looked, on the map, to be the Cathedral (or at least an important church in Karlsruhe). It turned out that, whilst it was a nice church, it almost certainly wasn't a Cathedral or equally significant eclesiastical building. Slightly disheartened by this, we decided to head back into the city centre and nose around to see if there was anything else worth seeing. We found a couple of nice buildings, before sheltering in MediaMarkt (effectively an HMV/Comet mixture (or fnac for anyone in France)) to kill some time prior to returning to the train station for the return journey.
The journey back wasn't too fraught with difficulties, once we found the right platform (although I should hold my hand up for that one - I was reading the wrong sheet of paper, which could have led to us travelling south from Karlsruhe, when Saarbruecken is North-West!). The journey was only hindered in a minor way on the journey from Schifferstadt to Kaiserslautern, where we were delayed by about two minutes. This sounds like I'm simply moaning for the sake of it, but that two minute delay ate up 50% of our connection time for the train to Saarbruecken. Luckily, the train from Saarbruecken came in late, and went out late, so we didn't miss it, and indeed hadn't needed to run after all.
We got back into Saarbruecken at about 19.00 when we decided to go for a drink before going back home. We left the pub about 22.15 to get to the bus stop in plenty of time. When we got to the bus stop we waited, and waited, and then waited a bit more. After waiting for about 20 minutes we abandoned that plan and resorted to gehen-ing instead of fahren-ing (Germanists will know the difference - for non-Germanists the verb: they both mean 'to go', but gehen is used to describe walking somewhere, whereas fahren is used to explain going somewhere using some sort of transport; hence we walked home instead of catching the bus). Why was this necessary - well that comes next!
To revert, once again, back to type I ought to talk briefly about the weather that we've had in Saarbruecken over the week. It's been cold, but seeing as it's winter that's not a huge surprise, and it's snowed, and snowed, and snowed again once or twice. It's also been pretty icy at times. The roads have been becoming increasingly dangerous - the buses have been skidding to a stop at the bus stops on my hill (not because they're boy racers, but simply because they've been sliding on all the snow that conscientious citizens have cleared off of the pavement). But on Saturday night it was exeptionally icy - the roads were just awash (possibly not the right adjective, but it's being used so tough!) with sheet ice, as were the pavements in some areas. Because of this Saarbahn (the local bus & tram company for Saarbruecken) had decided it was too dangerous to run buses in these conditions - not an entirely irresponsible decision either, I might add! This meant that anyone who wanted to get anywhere in Saarbruecken had 3 main options: 1; take a taxi - but they are expensive, especially as they would be driving slower because of the ice, 2; take the Saarbahn (the tram) - this is good if you live on the north side of the river, but for anyone living on the south side this isn't terribly helpful as the tram doesn't come this way! 3; walk - not much fun, quite slippery, but free. I opted for number 3 and walked, and slid too at times, home. It was, in fact, easier to walk on the pavements where they'd not been cleared of snow than where the conscientious citizens had cleared them. Crossing the road was not very easy - it was done in little steps to avoid looking like Bambi learning to walk!
So why hadn't the Germans, masters of organisation, not gritted the roads - well it seems that Saarland, not reknowned for being the coldest of the Federal States were slightly unprepared for it, and had run out of grit to salt the roads. The motorway had been done, but sparingly. There is no real justification or supporting statements I can use here to explain or defend the situation. It was, as far as I can tell, a cock-up! That said, there was no sense of panic from the media - it was very much an "oh, well - life goes on" attitude. On the local news there were no correspondants stood in gritting depots foretelling the apocalypse of life without road grit, which I'm sure there was on the TV in the UK when they had their cold snap (which was pretty lame compared to the 2 month one we've had over here!).
So what has the next week got in store? A trip to Sarreguemines to pick up a train ticket, and perhaps a trip to somewhere in France (although not Strasbourg) at the weekend - who knows?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Chapter 20 - Normality continued
Monday 18th - Sunday 24th January
Firstly, I would like to give congratulations to...myself...for managing to complete this blog entry more punctually than previous entries! So, well done me!
Now I did claim, at the end of last week's entry, that this one would be slightly longer and more interesting, and it will be; but it probably won't be edge of the seat stuff (not unless you forgot to put your glasses on anyway!).
So, school was OK this week. On the Tuesday I had to start quite early (8 a.m.) and was a cover teacher for two double lessons with the 12. (Year 13/Upper Sixth (for you old fogies) equivalent) and 11. (obviously Year 12) classes. I had to do some preparation for this, which basically involves me playing around on the Internet for a couple of hours trying to find a suitable article to adapt and create activites for. Obviously, upon finding the articles I then have to create a lesson plan around them, which is the more time consuming part - as I have to try and remember what I could do at their ages, and then create activities of a suitable level (apparently 5,000 word essays aren't suitable!).
Also on Tuesday, I had my first private tuition lesson. That is to say (which is less clumsy in French) I was giving the lesson, and receiving payment, not being the student. What's more interesting is that the person I'm giving tuition to is a Referendarin (Trainee Teacher). The tuition is easy, from my perspective, too - all I have to do is sit there and be a guinea pig (I tried being a hamster, but the wheel just wasn't for me) for her lessons, which she runs through with me, and then I comment, suggest, and correct where applicable.
Friday saw some more recording taking place, I would tell you what it was about, but I wasn't invited this time, so I can't! I did meet up with the other assistants after they had finished for a drink. After this Harriet and I took the Saarbahn to Sarreguemines (which I won't describe again - because seasoned readers of this blog will likely be bored by it!(if you've not heard of it, go back to the beginning and start again!)), where we had a wander round some of the shops - looking for French things to boost our cultural knowledge at a low price. Our journey was largely fruitless, so we returned empty handed to Saarbruecken and disappeared into the night (by which I mean we went home!).
Saturday, the day of Brunch, arrived plenty early enough. Several of us were meeting at Harriet's for Brunch. Arriving punctually (this German thing is starting to rub off on me!) clutching my bag containing tomatoes, a cucumber and a red pepper, we spent several hours there; chatting, comparing lecturers, universities and experiences. We also met some Erasmus students from the University of Saarland, which I had hoped to do earlier, but other things came up (i.e. I forgot).
At the moment Saarbruecken is the home of the Max Ophuels Film Festival, which is up there, as you would imagine, rivalling Cannes in prestige and glamour. (Rather like David was rivalling Goliath). So, being the cultural beings we are, we decided to head into town on Sunday evening (well, what else is there to do?) and watch a film being shown as part of the festival. The film we opted for was U.F.O., which tells the story of a family living in Germany in 1986 (a year of explosions - with the Challenger Space Shuttle exploding during take-off, and the small matter of Chernobyl (or Tchernobyl) exploding. The story focuses on the mother's paranoia about danger from the sky/space. She appeared to believe that the above named explosions were the actions of aliens, who had also invaded Earth, and were posing a direct threat to her and her family. Needless to say, this caused a certain level of stress within the family unit, until she drives off in a car and has an accident, after which she is sectioned and treated for Schizophrenia. She is released, but refuses to take all of her pills, so has a relapse, and goes to jump off the roof of her block of flats. I fear that a cliche may be necessary here, but you did, really, have to be there to make much sense of that description.
As a review, I would say that it was no Disney film, it's not particularly comic, preferring instead to show the effects of Schizophrenia on a family (rather than directly on the patient) and how they try and cope with it, that said, it did have a happy ending. It was a good film though, and one I would recommend to others interested in experiencing modern German cinema.
So, that was this week. Those of you who have read this before will know that before Christmas it was not uncommon for a group of assistants to go and do something at the weekends, and you will also note that this hasn't really happened at this juncture. Fear not! We are heading off to Karlsruhe for the day on Saturday, so I will report back on that next week! (Hopefully on Monday, as I have the day off!)
Firstly, I would like to give congratulations to...myself...for managing to complete this blog entry more punctually than previous entries! So, well done me!
Now I did claim, at the end of last week's entry, that this one would be slightly longer and more interesting, and it will be; but it probably won't be edge of the seat stuff (not unless you forgot to put your glasses on anyway!).
So, school was OK this week. On the Tuesday I had to start quite early (8 a.m.) and was a cover teacher for two double lessons with the 12. (Year 13/Upper Sixth (for you old fogies) equivalent) and 11. (obviously Year 12) classes. I had to do some preparation for this, which basically involves me playing around on the Internet for a couple of hours trying to find a suitable article to adapt and create activites for. Obviously, upon finding the articles I then have to create a lesson plan around them, which is the more time consuming part - as I have to try and remember what I could do at their ages, and then create activities of a suitable level (apparently 5,000 word essays aren't suitable!).
Also on Tuesday, I had my first private tuition lesson. That is to say (which is less clumsy in French) I was giving the lesson, and receiving payment, not being the student. What's more interesting is that the person I'm giving tuition to is a Referendarin (Trainee Teacher). The tuition is easy, from my perspective, too - all I have to do is sit there and be a guinea pig (I tried being a hamster, but the wheel just wasn't for me) for her lessons, which she runs through with me, and then I comment, suggest, and correct where applicable.
Friday saw some more recording taking place, I would tell you what it was about, but I wasn't invited this time, so I can't! I did meet up with the other assistants after they had finished for a drink. After this Harriet and I took the Saarbahn to Sarreguemines (which I won't describe again - because seasoned readers of this blog will likely be bored by it!(if you've not heard of it, go back to the beginning and start again!)), where we had a wander round some of the shops - looking for French things to boost our cultural knowledge at a low price. Our journey was largely fruitless, so we returned empty handed to Saarbruecken and disappeared into the night (by which I mean we went home!).
Saturday, the day of Brunch, arrived plenty early enough. Several of us were meeting at Harriet's for Brunch. Arriving punctually (this German thing is starting to rub off on me!) clutching my bag containing tomatoes, a cucumber and a red pepper, we spent several hours there; chatting, comparing lecturers, universities and experiences. We also met some Erasmus students from the University of Saarland, which I had hoped to do earlier, but other things came up (i.e. I forgot).
At the moment Saarbruecken is the home of the Max Ophuels Film Festival, which is up there, as you would imagine, rivalling Cannes in prestige and glamour. (Rather like David was rivalling Goliath). So, being the cultural beings we are, we decided to head into town on Sunday evening (well, what else is there to do?) and watch a film being shown as part of the festival. The film we opted for was U.F.O., which tells the story of a family living in Germany in 1986 (a year of explosions - with the Challenger Space Shuttle exploding during take-off, and the small matter of Chernobyl (or Tchernobyl) exploding. The story focuses on the mother's paranoia about danger from the sky/space. She appeared to believe that the above named explosions were the actions of aliens, who had also invaded Earth, and were posing a direct threat to her and her family. Needless to say, this caused a certain level of stress within the family unit, until she drives off in a car and has an accident, after which she is sectioned and treated for Schizophrenia. She is released, but refuses to take all of her pills, so has a relapse, and goes to jump off the roof of her block of flats. I fear that a cliche may be necessary here, but you did, really, have to be there to make much sense of that description.
As a review, I would say that it was no Disney film, it's not particularly comic, preferring instead to show the effects of Schizophrenia on a family (rather than directly on the patient) and how they try and cope with it, that said, it did have a happy ending. It was a good film though, and one I would recommend to others interested in experiencing modern German cinema.
So, that was this week. Those of you who have read this before will know that before Christmas it was not uncommon for a group of assistants to go and do something at the weekends, and you will also note that this hasn't really happened at this juncture. Fear not! We are heading off to Karlsruhe for the day on Saturday, so I will report back on that next week! (Hopefully on Monday, as I have the day off!)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Chapter 19 - Returning to Normality
Monday 11th - Sunday 17th January
Again, I would like to apologise for the tardiness in this entry - it's been on my "to do" list every day for quite a while, but has repeatedly been overlooked or given simply a cursory glance!
So, after the first week of hand-shaking, snow, and trying to remember how to speak German it was time for life to return to some sort of normality. This week itself will probably be one of the shortest blog entries, simply because not a huge amount happened!
School was pretty standard, although I did start a 4 week project with the 8. Klasse (Year 9 equivalent) whereby they will produce 5 minute presentations about different counties. This should be quite interesting, not only for them, but I intentionally chose counties about which I have a limited and hazy knowledge - so hopefully I, too, should learn something new. I'll report back at the end of the project to tell you how it went!
Friday, my day off in the week, was an interesting day - I met up with one of my fellow Bathonians who I'd not seen since she was in Strasbourg, and we had a nice day just wandering round the town; seeing the sites. Here's a good time to mention that Saarbruecken is not a particularly big city, and so it can be difficult to drag out seeing the sites to a whole day - so I ought to own up to the fact that a fair amount of the afternoon was spent in a cafe; people watching and catching-up!
Saturday was the Open Day at my Gesamtschule, to which I had been heartily invited (which is one step down from being expected to go!) It involved having to get up at 6, and be in school for 8, and finishing at about 12.30. It was a knackering day; I worked with a class I hadn't worked with before, but they weren't really interested! Still, it gave the parents, remarkably few in number as they were, the chance to see the school. I, personally, have reservations about holding an open day on a Saturday. It is a compulsary school day for the kids (and teachers too, obviously), which immediately causes alarm bells. It's difficult persuading kids to see a Saturday as a school day - so many simply didn't turn in, others forgot to check the bus times, and as such turned up up to 45 minutes late. Also, the teachers were tired, and not really able to continue their normal lessons due to the high absence rate, so had to do something less productive. I think a system, similar to that which we did at Sheldon (my old secondary school) whereby the Open Days were held on normal school days gives a far more realistic overview of school life than opening at the weekend. Still, it gave me something to do on Saturday morning.
Sunday was my hermit day of the week, where I spent it inside doing some uni work, lesson planning, and catching up on TV!
Also, I'd just like to further comment on the weather situation over here in Saarbruecken. It's still winter, so it's still cold, it still might be icy and it still might snow - but everything is still carrying on as normal!
So, hopefully, in the next couple of days you should see the entry for this last week,which was slightly more interesting!
Again, I would like to apologise for the tardiness in this entry - it's been on my "to do" list every day for quite a while, but has repeatedly been overlooked or given simply a cursory glance!
So, after the first week of hand-shaking, snow, and trying to remember how to speak German it was time for life to return to some sort of normality. This week itself will probably be one of the shortest blog entries, simply because not a huge amount happened!
School was pretty standard, although I did start a 4 week project with the 8. Klasse (Year 9 equivalent) whereby they will produce 5 minute presentations about different counties. This should be quite interesting, not only for them, but I intentionally chose counties about which I have a limited and hazy knowledge - so hopefully I, too, should learn something new. I'll report back at the end of the project to tell you how it went!
Friday, my day off in the week, was an interesting day - I met up with one of my fellow Bathonians who I'd not seen since she was in Strasbourg, and we had a nice day just wandering round the town; seeing the sites. Here's a good time to mention that Saarbruecken is not a particularly big city, and so it can be difficult to drag out seeing the sites to a whole day - so I ought to own up to the fact that a fair amount of the afternoon was spent in a cafe; people watching and catching-up!
Saturday was the Open Day at my Gesamtschule, to which I had been heartily invited (which is one step down from being expected to go!) It involved having to get up at 6, and be in school for 8, and finishing at about 12.30. It was a knackering day; I worked with a class I hadn't worked with before, but they weren't really interested! Still, it gave the parents, remarkably few in number as they were, the chance to see the school. I, personally, have reservations about holding an open day on a Saturday. It is a compulsary school day for the kids (and teachers too, obviously), which immediately causes alarm bells. It's difficult persuading kids to see a Saturday as a school day - so many simply didn't turn in, others forgot to check the bus times, and as such turned up up to 45 minutes late. Also, the teachers were tired, and not really able to continue their normal lessons due to the high absence rate, so had to do something less productive. I think a system, similar to that which we did at Sheldon (my old secondary school) whereby the Open Days were held on normal school days gives a far more realistic overview of school life than opening at the weekend. Still, it gave me something to do on Saturday morning.
Sunday was my hermit day of the week, where I spent it inside doing some uni work, lesson planning, and catching up on TV!
Also, I'd just like to further comment on the weather situation over here in Saarbruecken. It's still winter, so it's still cold, it still might be icy and it still might snow - but everything is still carrying on as normal!
So, hopefully, in the next couple of days you should see the entry for this last week,which was slightly more interesting!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Chapter 18 - First week back!
Sunday 3rd January - Sunday 10th January 2010
Back in Saarbruecken; a new week, a new month, a new term, a new year, and a new decade...quite a new theme going on then! So, what was it like being back in this little Ecke (corner) of Germany? Well, not a lot's changed - somewhat unsurprisingly as I was only back for two weeks. Did it take a lot of time to get back into the swing of things? Err....no...because I didn't have any lessons to plan, nor anything to get up for on Sunday, so I was able to get up at a leisurely 10am!
So, let me just run over what I've been up to this week. On Sunday, as I just mentioned, I got up suitably late and did very little - including actually getting out of bed and getting dressed about 10 minutes before getting some lunch! The day was pretty much spent unpacking all the stuff I didn't specifically need for the Saturday night, which didn't take too long, and the rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on all the BBC Iplayer programmes I'd missed during the last week and knew I'd be able to watch back over here! So, as you can see I was a pure hive of activity on Sunday!
Monday saw my return to Ludwigsgymnasium, which was ably aided by the fact that our buses seem to run despite wintery weather (more about that later!). The first thing I discovered about returning to work after the new year is that the first week back is made up, primarily, of shaking your colleagues' hands and wishing them a Frohes Neues Jahr (happy new year)! This, whilst being a very friendly and polite way to implicitly congratulate everyone on surviving Christmas, is also a very time-consuming exercise. If you naively (I know it should have the umlaut on the i, but I'm on a laptop and too lazy to put it in myself!) chose to go into the main staffroom it must have taken bllody ages just to take your coat off. I would like to say that I chose to go to the quiet Staffroom (logically called Lehrerzimmer 2 (Staffroom 2) through sheer intelligence and forethought, but that would be a lie - I went there because that's where I always go, primarily because that's where my mentor teachers usually are, and I have a seat in there, instead of having to "borrow" someone elses in the main staffroom. This meant that it only took me about 5 minutes to sit down, and start reading my book, and talking to my colleagues (although not simultaneously - I'm a bloke!). This was going well until someone else walked in the door; then it became that unfortunate soul's turn to shake everyone's hand and swelter in their winter coat for a few more minutes. So, after all the hand-shaking and frohes-neues-Jahr-ing it was almost time to go home again! The four lessons I attended were painless enough, and required little in the way of effort from me - which was nice!
Tuesday was completely free for me, although I did have to pop into the Ludwigsgymnasium to do a bit of lesson planning; which I did for a couple of hours. However, on Tuesday, the buses had seemed to have taken a dislike to me - I managed to miss the bus to the school, from the station home again, and then from home to Harriet's in the evening. This meant that I did a fair amount of exercise today! I also managed to walk home from Harriet's in the time it would have taken me to wait at her bus stop and then sit on the bus to my bus stop, which saved sitting out in the sub-zero temperatures.
Wednesday was an early start for me, which wasn't much fun at all - it required me to leave the house at 6.50 (so as not to have a repeat of Tuesday and miss the bus). On the plus side I was finished at work by 9.55, so I went to the train station and bought some tickets for an adventure in March (more about that then!). Then I had the day pretty much free, so I went home and pottered around. NB: Pottering around is a euphamism for doing nothing of any real importance! Thursday was a pretty similar story to be honest, back at the comprehensive until about 12.30 when I came home via town as I had a few odds and sods to sort out there!
Friday, as you all know, is my day off during the week - hence a three day weekend, which isn't to be sniffed at (unless you are suffering from a cold, or the flu, in which case it's fully acceptable to sniff at whichever part of the blog you want/need to!). The day was to be spent going shopping - but this, bizarrely, wasn't as bad as it could have been - we were successful in finding a new supermarket. The supermarket, however, is on the other side of the city, and would require at least two bus journeys to get there, so, as such, isn't one I shall be frequenting apart from the odd occasion when I find myself on that side of Saarbruecken. The afternoon was spent at Harriet's again, where me and Claire joined Harriet in watching Slumdog Millionaire, which was particularly hyped when it came out. It was a good film, but at times the speed the lines were spoken made it difficult to understand (a lesson for anyone teaching a foreign language can be found there!). I had previously heard a Radio 4 dramatisation of the story long before it was made into a film, so knew roughly what was going to happen - still a very nice afternoon!
Saturday was a trip to Strasbourg to meet up with my fellow Bathonians (Not sure how it works - but bathmates seemed a little too intimate!) before they all head off to diverse corners of Europe. When I say diverse, I mean two different places - one is heading off to be an assistant in a small Austrian town in Lower Austria, and the other two are headed off to Konstanz (Constance in English) on the German border with Switzerland, near the the originally named Lake Constance (or Bodensee in German - I'm not entirely sure either!). So, I caught a train down to Strasbourg from Saarbruecken despite the fact that it was snowing - and what's more is that it departed and arrived punctually! We had a wander around for a bit, had a bit of lunch then decided we'd head over to one of their flats to watch a film - after the obligatory snowball fight on the way. For the record, I should not join a cricket, baseball, or rounders team ever - it was proven by my near complete inability to land one snowball on the intended target. I am quite good at catching them though - which being as they're made of snow and thus crumbled in my hands and splattered over me anyway - is possibly not the best technique to bring to the battle!
Sunday was washing day, and cleaning day here - I was hoping to make it last until next Wednesday without needing to be done, but I was beginning to run short of clothes, so spent the day around the house pottering again (see above for clarification!) while I was waiting for the washing to be done!
Now that I've finished describing how my week has been I feel that this blog entry has been a little too rant-free...so allow me to put and end to that state of affairs now!
SNOW...we've got snow in Germany, and have had for weeks and weeks of varying depths - does anything stop? Is there a shortage of salt for gritting? Do the schools (amongst other establishments) close? The answer to all of these is....NOPE! There's still snow outside as I write this entry - the buses still ran, so I still had to go to work...you don't see people panic buying, or fearing that the gas/oil/heating may break down, instead...being used to the weather, they look at the calendar and without even needing to switch on the radio/TV/PC or look out the window, they see it's Winter, and as such it might well be cold - so how do they cope? They put on extra layers, and then depending on the level of cold - they may wear a scarf (quite common), gloves (not uncommon, but not universal either), or hats (quite rare really!). In other words; they cope! The British Government need to look at this and see that when it's winter - it stands a good chance of being cold, and icy, and possibly snowing and instead of waiting until it has happened and going "oh, sugar!" they need to get the infrastructure prepared for winter...it's the only European country which really almost breaks down completely at the first sign of snow. (Except France maybe - but to be fair, they had the resources ready and would have been able to cope if the council employees hadn't been on strike!) If it had fallen in April, then I could go some way to understanding the unpreparedness - the Government and Councils need to remember the motto of Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting Movement "Be Prepared" - which I shall now paraphrase for them - it's winter, it's going to be cold, it may well be icy, and it mght even snow - so stop leaving it until March before reacting, and try and deal with the weather pro-actively for once!
So, that's my rant over, let's see how I manage in the second week back in Saarbruecken.
Back in Saarbruecken; a new week, a new month, a new term, a new year, and a new decade...quite a new theme going on then! So, what was it like being back in this little Ecke (corner) of Germany? Well, not a lot's changed - somewhat unsurprisingly as I was only back for two weeks. Did it take a lot of time to get back into the swing of things? Err....no...because I didn't have any lessons to plan, nor anything to get up for on Sunday, so I was able to get up at a leisurely 10am!
So, let me just run over what I've been up to this week. On Sunday, as I just mentioned, I got up suitably late and did very little - including actually getting out of bed and getting dressed about 10 minutes before getting some lunch! The day was pretty much spent unpacking all the stuff I didn't specifically need for the Saturday night, which didn't take too long, and the rest of the afternoon was spent catching up on all the BBC Iplayer programmes I'd missed during the last week and knew I'd be able to watch back over here! So, as you can see I was a pure hive of activity on Sunday!
Monday saw my return to Ludwigsgymnasium, which was ably aided by the fact that our buses seem to run despite wintery weather (more about that later!). The first thing I discovered about returning to work after the new year is that the first week back is made up, primarily, of shaking your colleagues' hands and wishing them a Frohes Neues Jahr (happy new year)! This, whilst being a very friendly and polite way to implicitly congratulate everyone on surviving Christmas, is also a very time-consuming exercise. If you naively (I know it should have the umlaut on the i, but I'm on a laptop and too lazy to put it in myself!) chose to go into the main staffroom it must have taken bllody ages just to take your coat off. I would like to say that I chose to go to the quiet Staffroom (logically called Lehrerzimmer 2 (Staffroom 2) through sheer intelligence and forethought, but that would be a lie - I went there because that's where I always go, primarily because that's where my mentor teachers usually are, and I have a seat in there, instead of having to "borrow" someone elses in the main staffroom. This meant that it only took me about 5 minutes to sit down, and start reading my book, and talking to my colleagues (although not simultaneously - I'm a bloke!). This was going well until someone else walked in the door; then it became that unfortunate soul's turn to shake everyone's hand and swelter in their winter coat for a few more minutes. So, after all the hand-shaking and frohes-neues-Jahr-ing it was almost time to go home again! The four lessons I attended were painless enough, and required little in the way of effort from me - which was nice!
Tuesday was completely free for me, although I did have to pop into the Ludwigsgymnasium to do a bit of lesson planning; which I did for a couple of hours. However, on Tuesday, the buses had seemed to have taken a dislike to me - I managed to miss the bus to the school, from the station home again, and then from home to Harriet's in the evening. This meant that I did a fair amount of exercise today! I also managed to walk home from Harriet's in the time it would have taken me to wait at her bus stop and then sit on the bus to my bus stop, which saved sitting out in the sub-zero temperatures.
Wednesday was an early start for me, which wasn't much fun at all - it required me to leave the house at 6.50 (so as not to have a repeat of Tuesday and miss the bus). On the plus side I was finished at work by 9.55, so I went to the train station and bought some tickets for an adventure in March (more about that then!). Then I had the day pretty much free, so I went home and pottered around. NB: Pottering around is a euphamism for doing nothing of any real importance! Thursday was a pretty similar story to be honest, back at the comprehensive until about 12.30 when I came home via town as I had a few odds and sods to sort out there!
Friday, as you all know, is my day off during the week - hence a three day weekend, which isn't to be sniffed at (unless you are suffering from a cold, or the flu, in which case it's fully acceptable to sniff at whichever part of the blog you want/need to!). The day was to be spent going shopping - but this, bizarrely, wasn't as bad as it could have been - we were successful in finding a new supermarket. The supermarket, however, is on the other side of the city, and would require at least two bus journeys to get there, so, as such, isn't one I shall be frequenting apart from the odd occasion when I find myself on that side of Saarbruecken. The afternoon was spent at Harriet's again, where me and Claire joined Harriet in watching Slumdog Millionaire, which was particularly hyped when it came out. It was a good film, but at times the speed the lines were spoken made it difficult to understand (a lesson for anyone teaching a foreign language can be found there!). I had previously heard a Radio 4 dramatisation of the story long before it was made into a film, so knew roughly what was going to happen - still a very nice afternoon!
Saturday was a trip to Strasbourg to meet up with my fellow Bathonians (Not sure how it works - but bathmates seemed a little too intimate!) before they all head off to diverse corners of Europe. When I say diverse, I mean two different places - one is heading off to be an assistant in a small Austrian town in Lower Austria, and the other two are headed off to Konstanz (Constance in English) on the German border with Switzerland, near the the originally named Lake Constance (or Bodensee in German - I'm not entirely sure either!). So, I caught a train down to Strasbourg from Saarbruecken despite the fact that it was snowing - and what's more is that it departed and arrived punctually! We had a wander around for a bit, had a bit of lunch then decided we'd head over to one of their flats to watch a film - after the obligatory snowball fight on the way. For the record, I should not join a cricket, baseball, or rounders team ever - it was proven by my near complete inability to land one snowball on the intended target. I am quite good at catching them though - which being as they're made of snow and thus crumbled in my hands and splattered over me anyway - is possibly not the best technique to bring to the battle!
Sunday was washing day, and cleaning day here - I was hoping to make it last until next Wednesday without needing to be done, but I was beginning to run short of clothes, so spent the day around the house pottering again (see above for clarification!) while I was waiting for the washing to be done!
Now that I've finished describing how my week has been I feel that this blog entry has been a little too rant-free...so allow me to put and end to that state of affairs now!
SNOW...we've got snow in Germany, and have had for weeks and weeks of varying depths - does anything stop? Is there a shortage of salt for gritting? Do the schools (amongst other establishments) close? The answer to all of these is....NOPE! There's still snow outside as I write this entry - the buses still ran, so I still had to go to work...you don't see people panic buying, or fearing that the gas/oil/heating may break down, instead...being used to the weather, they look at the calendar and without even needing to switch on the radio/TV/PC or look out the window, they see it's Winter, and as such it might well be cold - so how do they cope? They put on extra layers, and then depending on the level of cold - they may wear a scarf (quite common), gloves (not uncommon, but not universal either), or hats (quite rare really!). In other words; they cope! The British Government need to look at this and see that when it's winter - it stands a good chance of being cold, and icy, and possibly snowing and instead of waiting until it has happened and going "oh, sugar!" they need to get the infrastructure prepared for winter...it's the only European country which really almost breaks down completely at the first sign of snow. (Except France maybe - but to be fair, they had the resources ready and would have been able to cope if the council employees hadn't been on strike!) If it had fallen in April, then I could go some way to understanding the unpreparedness - the Government and Councils need to remember the motto of Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting Movement "Be Prepared" - which I shall now paraphrase for them - it's winter, it's going to be cold, it may well be icy, and it mght even snow - so stop leaving it until March before reacting, and try and deal with the weather pro-actively for once!
So, that's my rant over, let's see how I manage in the second week back in Saarbruecken.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Chapter 17 - Back to Germany
The return train journey to Saarbruecken
Saturday 2nd January 2010
Well, as regular readers of this blog will know, I'm not very good at updating punctually! So here, albeit a week late, is the story of my journey back to Saarbruecken. The good news is that it wasn't quite as eventful as the homeward journey. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the ride...
First off, I should make a mention to my sister whose birthday it was on the 2nd - annoying though it was to travel back on this date - it was better than travelling on Sunday where certain places' public transport is somewhat lacking on the day of rest! My train was due to leave Chippenham at 07.55, but because, as I found out later, the driver couldn't release the brakes at Bristol, the train left Chippenham at 08.12. This wasn't a problem in itself because I had 2 and a half hours in London to get from Paddington to St. Pancras International. The journey to London was relatively painless - we stayed about 15 minutes late, which was about as much as I'd hoped for!
Now it's worth pointing out that Transport for London (TfL) had decided that this weekend would be a good weekend to undertake some engineering works on some of the lines - i.e. the Circle Line and Hammersmith & City Lines in particular; which as Londoners will know are the two direct lines between the termini I wanted. Thus, I had to catch the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus, and come back up to Kings Cross/St. Pancras on the Victoria line. This part of the journey was actually problem-free; although I did feel like I'd walked most of the way by the time I got out of the Tube station at St. Pancras.
Seeing as I like to turn up at somewhere in plenty of time; I made my first port of call the check-in hall for Eurostar; which was substantially easier to find than its Parisian counterpart. The first thing that struck me was how busy it was! There were hundreds of people in the check-in hall, and no real sense of what one was supposed to do. It turned out that check-in opened an hour before the train left, so seeing as I was there 90 minutes before my train left, I hid at the back of the hall and read my book, and then joined a queue exactly an hour before my train left - i.e. 10.32. The check-in seemed slightly chaotic, to be honest; everyone was queued up together irrespective of what train they were catching, and the people on earlier trains were then being lassooed out of the queue by Eurostar staff and ushered to the front. I did eventually get to the head of the queue where once you have put your ticket in the machine, you find you find yourself immediately thrown into the security zone. The first thing you have to do is take off coats, fleeces, scarves, gloves, hats. All these, along with your luggage, go through the X-Ray machine, while you walk through the Metal Detector. Now, despite wearing almost the same clothes back to Germany as I wore home, I didn't buzz as I went through! The next stage is the PAF (see last entry for explanation) who had a cursory glance at my passport. There were also UKBA officers loitering with intent around the terminal area. Once I'd got through all those I found a seat and waited for embarkation to commence at 11.12 (20 minutes before scheduled departure time) - however, embarkation was to be delayed because the train had arrived late. We were only delayed by about 12 minutes in actuality and left St. Pancras at 11.45.
The journey to Paris was OK, I read my book, ate my lunch, looked out the window, changed my watch and phone times. Some 2 hours 45 minutes later we pulled into Paris Gare du Nord. Prior to coming back, we'd arranged that we would meet up in Paris. Esther was on an earlier Eurostar than me, so met me at Gare du Nord, from where we walked to Paris Est and used the left luggage facility there, so as not to have to carry our suitcases all around Paris. Then we purchased a carnet of tickets for the public transport network in Paris. From Paris Est, we took the Metro to Louvre, which I'd only seen in Tricolore (for the young'uns reading this - it was the book that we used before Metro!) beforehand. From there we walked in a random direction across the Seine, from where we walked through the cultural heart of Paris - Saint Germain des Pres. Then we walked over to Notre Dame, and looked at it; we didn't go in because the queue was quite long. We then ambled past the Hotel de Ville (where the Mayor of Paris works - somewhat more architecturally pleasing than the Ghurkin in my opinion), before catching the Metro back to Paris Est where we waited and met up with Claire and Harriet who had flown into Charles de Gaulle.
After we'd met up, and Esther and I had retrieved our luggage, we headed off to board the train to Saarbruecken (or Sarrebruck as the French call it). The train left promptly but then because of the snow, the line through Lorraine (or Lothringen as the Germans call it) had had its speed reduced meaning that we would be about 15 minutes late into Saarbruecken. This would make the connection to the bus very tight, and indeed when we arrived into the Hauptbahnhof we had 3 or 4 minutes to get to the bus stop. Luckily the bus hadn't arrived when we got there, and we managed to get on the faithful 121 home. I eventually got in about 22.00 before realising that I also needed to make my bed and unpack quite a lot of stuff before I could go to bed!
So, in the next installment I'll be talking about the first week back in Germany...
Saturday 2nd January 2010
Well, as regular readers of this blog will know, I'm not very good at updating punctually! So here, albeit a week late, is the story of my journey back to Saarbruecken. The good news is that it wasn't quite as eventful as the homeward journey. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the ride...
First off, I should make a mention to my sister whose birthday it was on the 2nd - annoying though it was to travel back on this date - it was better than travelling on Sunday where certain places' public transport is somewhat lacking on the day of rest! My train was due to leave Chippenham at 07.55, but because, as I found out later, the driver couldn't release the brakes at Bristol, the train left Chippenham at 08.12. This wasn't a problem in itself because I had 2 and a half hours in London to get from Paddington to St. Pancras International. The journey to London was relatively painless - we stayed about 15 minutes late, which was about as much as I'd hoped for!
Now it's worth pointing out that Transport for London (TfL) had decided that this weekend would be a good weekend to undertake some engineering works on some of the lines - i.e. the Circle Line and Hammersmith & City Lines in particular; which as Londoners will know are the two direct lines between the termini I wanted. Thus, I had to catch the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus, and come back up to Kings Cross/St. Pancras on the Victoria line. This part of the journey was actually problem-free; although I did feel like I'd walked most of the way by the time I got out of the Tube station at St. Pancras.
Seeing as I like to turn up at somewhere in plenty of time; I made my first port of call the check-in hall for Eurostar; which was substantially easier to find than its Parisian counterpart. The first thing that struck me was how busy it was! There were hundreds of people in the check-in hall, and no real sense of what one was supposed to do. It turned out that check-in opened an hour before the train left, so seeing as I was there 90 minutes before my train left, I hid at the back of the hall and read my book, and then joined a queue exactly an hour before my train left - i.e. 10.32. The check-in seemed slightly chaotic, to be honest; everyone was queued up together irrespective of what train they were catching, and the people on earlier trains were then being lassooed out of the queue by Eurostar staff and ushered to the front. I did eventually get to the head of the queue where once you have put your ticket in the machine, you find you find yourself immediately thrown into the security zone. The first thing you have to do is take off coats, fleeces, scarves, gloves, hats. All these, along with your luggage, go through the X-Ray machine, while you walk through the Metal Detector. Now, despite wearing almost the same clothes back to Germany as I wore home, I didn't buzz as I went through! The next stage is the PAF (see last entry for explanation) who had a cursory glance at my passport. There were also UKBA officers loitering with intent around the terminal area. Once I'd got through all those I found a seat and waited for embarkation to commence at 11.12 (20 minutes before scheduled departure time) - however, embarkation was to be delayed because the train had arrived late. We were only delayed by about 12 minutes in actuality and left St. Pancras at 11.45.
The journey to Paris was OK, I read my book, ate my lunch, looked out the window, changed my watch and phone times. Some 2 hours 45 minutes later we pulled into Paris Gare du Nord. Prior to coming back, we'd arranged that we would meet up in Paris. Esther was on an earlier Eurostar than me, so met me at Gare du Nord, from where we walked to Paris Est and used the left luggage facility there, so as not to have to carry our suitcases all around Paris. Then we purchased a carnet of tickets for the public transport network in Paris. From Paris Est, we took the Metro to Louvre, which I'd only seen in Tricolore (for the young'uns reading this - it was the book that we used before Metro!) beforehand. From there we walked in a random direction across the Seine, from where we walked through the cultural heart of Paris - Saint Germain des Pres. Then we walked over to Notre Dame, and looked at it; we didn't go in because the queue was quite long. We then ambled past the Hotel de Ville (where the Mayor of Paris works - somewhat more architecturally pleasing than the Ghurkin in my opinion), before catching the Metro back to Paris Est where we waited and met up with Claire and Harriet who had flown into Charles de Gaulle.
After we'd met up, and Esther and I had retrieved our luggage, we headed off to board the train to Saarbruecken (or Sarrebruck as the French call it). The train left promptly but then because of the snow, the line through Lorraine (or Lothringen as the Germans call it) had had its speed reduced meaning that we would be about 15 minutes late into Saarbruecken. This would make the connection to the bus very tight, and indeed when we arrived into the Hauptbahnhof we had 3 or 4 minutes to get to the bus stop. Luckily the bus hadn't arrived when we got there, and we managed to get on the faithful 121 home. I eventually got in about 22.00 before realising that I also needed to make my bed and unpack quite a lot of stuff before I could go to bed!
So, in the next installment I'll be talking about the first week back in Germany...
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