Chapter 21 - On we go...

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?