Thursday, July 8, 2010

New Blog

As promised, my new blog about my time on the road in the caravan through Germany and France is now up and running (although I've not yet written anything for it!) can be found on the following link: Musings des Campings. I hope you enjoy it as much as this one!

Acknowledgements

Now, I know that in a book, the acknowledgements would come at the beginning, but I don't have the ability to fiddle around with the website, so mine are coming at the end. If that's an issue, then tough!

There are loads of people I'd like to thank for the things they've done during my year abroad. In no particular order (partly because I'm too tired, and partly because I'm just too damned lazy!):

  • Sabine Kackert & Thomas Gross, for being my wonderful mentor teachers at Ludwigsgymnasium.
  • Kerstin Wittling, for her work as my mentor teacher at the Gesamtschule Ludwisgpark
  • Esther, Harriet, Claire, Jenny, Will, Tim, Greg, Lucy, Alec, and Lindsay for being my fellow English Assistants during the year; it would have been difficult to ask for a better bunch of people to spend the year with!
  • All the French Assistants, and Clara for much the same reason as above!
  • Niko & Priscille Halbach for being so accommodating and friendly during my time in SB/
  • Anne Binkle for being a fantastic landlady, and friend!
  • Anne Doktor for being a brilliant tandem partner, I learnt a lot of German through our meetings, and enjoyed our conversations greatly!
  • Herr Dr. Heinz Paulus, and all the staff at Ludwigsgymnasium. You really made me feel welcome!
  • Herr Stefan Doerr and all the staff at Gesamtschule-Ludwigspark. You made me feel part of a fantastic team.
  • Anyone else who I met during my time over there, if I've forgotten to mention you, don't take it personally, I'm just getting old!

Epilogue

So, as you can see from the title, this blog has come to an end! As I said in my last entry, I would make this entry to discuss things that the British Council, tourist websites, and indeed anyone else I knew didn't mention. This section will include hints and tips about living in Germany as an assistant; some learnt from bad experiences (some of my own, and others' too!), and others found through a streak of look and good fortune!

They'll be listed in no particular order, simply the order in which they come to mind!


1) German Efficiency
This is no myth, but it's no negative thing either. The Germans can be cold bloodedly efficient in almost every aspect of their daily life. Allow me to provide some examples from my own experiences: The bus will leave the bus stop if you're not there at the same time as it; running towards doing an impression of an epileptic windmill will not do you any favours (and will indeed get you some more strange looks!), Germans do not waste words being polite; it's simply not worth the oxygen; rather than saying, "That was a good effort, but you could have focussed more on a, b, c, and d", they would, instead, say "what about a,b, c, and d. You missed the aim of the task, and the work that you did is not entirely appropriate to the task set!". Both of these mean the same, you see, but the Germans see no need for unnecessary beating around the bush, they call a spade a spade, rather than a stainless steel garden tunneling instrument; as you can see, it saves a lot of effort. Naturally, the epitome of German efficiency is Deutsche Bahn, and to give them their due, I only had a handful (and although I've got big hands, First Great Western needed a shopping trolley) of bad experiences with them! German efficiency also extends to written forms of communication; if your e-mail, letter, post-it note, brick through a window doesn't directly require a response, then you'll be lucky! As I said, all this effiency is no bad thing, and I found some of it rubbing off on me, which will undoubtedly cause some culture shock when returning to the UK!


2) Rules and Regulations
The Germans are famed for their love of rules and regulations, and being a disciplined nation. This is also not an entirely inaccurate stereotype to hold! One of the most important rules that a foreigner in Germany must bear in mind is that it is a requirement to carry your Ausweis (papers) on you at all times. I believe shower and bed may be exemptions to this rule, but with the German police, you can never be too careful! For those of you who don't have a German Ausweis, your passport is sufficient, although I carried my registration confirmation (Anmeldungbescheinigung) around too, just to be on the safe side! In every German town there is an Ordnungsamt (Order Office), whose members of staff are responsible for issuing fines for the petty/nuisance offences. These are powers which these people relish! Examples of things their job entails are: Parking, Littering, Illegal posters, badly placed market stalls, noise, etc etc. As a rule, they won't really bother you, if you're not too irritating to German society! Another level of enforcement you will probably, no almost certainly, come across are the "Kontrolleur". They are the equivalent of Revenue Protection Inspectors, and they also relish their jobs, and like nothing more than to issue a 40€ fine for "Schwarzfahren" (literally, travelling black; equivalent "Fare Dodging"), and they can be remorseless in their search. Luckily, in Saarbruecken, they were slightly few in number and were easily recognisable once you'd seen them once, so if you were to consider fare dodging, you'd probably not find it too hard, providing you weren't in a hurry (as you'd have to get off the tram/bus when the Kontrolleur get on!). In spite of, or perhaps because of, all these different levels of enforcement, there is, generally, a fair amount of respect for these people with power. There seems to be a rather sporting attitude towards the police; very much "it's a fair cop" seems to be the way it works in Germany. People run the risk, and accept the consequences of their actions without too much resistance if they get caught; this was also my experience in school; kids messed around, they got caught and got issued lines to be brought in the next day, and usually they were waiting outside the staffroom the following morning to hand them in!

3) Travelling in and around Germany
This was somthing on which I became a bit of an expert, because I, along with the other assistants, was often away doing something every weekend. Below I've listed some cheap ways of getting around; some are more specific to Saarland, whereas others are applicable wherever you might happen to be!

Schoenes-Wochenende Ticket
This ticket is valid for up to five people, on any form of Deutsche Bahn's very extensive Regional Network throughout the whole of Germany, from Schleswig-Holstein down to Konstanz/Basel in Switzerland. It is valid from midnight on Sat/Sun until 3 am the following day (Sun/Mon respectively). The ticket itself costs around 35-40€ which sounds quite expensive, but when you divide the ticket amongst 4/5 people it becomes a very reasonable way of travelling around. The major disadvantage is the fact that you have to take regional trains (RB/RE/IRE/S-Bahn), which do tend to take substantially longer, so this ticket may not be so good if you want to go miles. That said, we used this ticket when we went to Nuremberg for a couple of days near to Christmas, and the journey took about 4-6 hours, but was substantially cheaper than buying individual normal IC/ICE tickets, which would have been towards the 100€ mark (each way)!

Saarland-Pfalz Ticket
This ticket is one of those that is particularly applicable to anyone staying in Saarland or Rheinland-Pfalz. There are both individual tickets (priced about 20€) and group (up to five) tickets (priced about 27€) available. These tickets are not just valid on Deutsche Bahn, although you'd find it easiest to buy them from a station, they're also valid on pretty much ALL PUBLIC TRANSPORT in the two Bundeslaender; buses, trams, trains etc. They are valid Monday-Friday (from 9 am until midnight), or weekends (midnight until 3 am the following morning). NB: Whilst this information only applies to the Saarland/Pfalz area, most Bundeslaender have their own Landesticket offering the same benefits. 

University Semester Ticket
I've saved the most financially advantageous until last for these travel options. By signing up to the local university, in my case Universitaet des Saarlandes, it may (and in my case was) be possible to get hold of a semester ticket which for a semester fee, 137€ in my case, provides certain travel benefits. The one for Saarland offers FREE travel on any public transport (DB regional trains only) within the state of Saarland. This proved quite useful on several Sundays when I was bored, and able to just turn up at the station and see where the first train was going! Now, obviously, not all universities will offer such generous benefits as free travel for the state, (Bavaria's HUGE!) but most will offer you some sort of concessions. On top of that, they're a useful way of getting student discount anywhere you go, without having to explain that your own university is in fact real, but lies outside the boundaries of the Fatherland. Oh, and another good thing for those of you who are constrained by time/will/energy/all of the above, you don't have to attend lectures...sure they'd prefer it if you did, but if it doesn't count for your uni, then don't feel compelled to. The German university takes the view that it's your lookout, and as such, don't harass you about it!

 4) Daily Life Etiquette

As I alluded to earlier, the Germans like efficiency; that includes punctuality. One of the biggest social faux pas is to turn up late, DON'T DO IT! First impressions count a lot in Germany, and tardiness is a massive social mistake. Only marginally better is turning up too early for an arranged meeting. The meeting was arranged at that time to me mutually convenient, if you turn up too early, you put the other person under pressure, which they won't appreciate in the slightest. Generally speaking then, punctual means punctual, not too early, and not too late. If, as I did a lot, you find yourself arriving early for meetings/parties/work, then walk around the block a couple of times until it's the right time for you to present yourself!


Jeans are acceptable working clothes for a school. For those of us who grew up within the sheltered embraces of the UK School system, jeans were a definite no no; both for teachers and for students. In Germany, where there is no student uniform, there is a generally far more relaxed attitude to work attire. 


Sie-ing and Du-ing. What a nightmare...prepare to get it wrong! It's inevitable; during the first few weeks you'll do it so often, it'll almost become your trademark! The German language, in a rather smug manner, provides three different ways of saying "you". There is Sie (Formal, both singular and plural), Du (Informal, singular), and Ihr (Informal, plural). All of these, naturally, take different conjugations of the verb, which you will inevitably not know when you need to use them. Working in a school, you will learn to become fluent in choosing the right one, almost instantaneously, but it takes time...so you will probably end up addressing your class of 12 year olds as your equal, and your head teacher as your drinking buddy...but you'll get there!


Queueing. The stereotype goes that the Germans don't like queueing; just think back to your most recent holiday in Spain...How many of our teutonic brethren had their towels on the sunbeds even before the sun had thought about coming up!?! It is therefore time to brace yourself. Queueing is a complicated issue in Germany, there are no set rules, nothing written down; so the Germans are slightly confused by the whole concept. Nevertheless, I think I've gone some way to fathoming it out. First off, if there is a queue in place, then the Germans are subservient enough to join the back of it, and wait patiently, until it's their turn. If, for example at a bus stop, there is no distinct queue, then there's a mutually acknowledged order for getting on, you look to see who was there before you, and get on immediately behind them, at any cost. Trains, planes, and indeed anywhere else, is entirely different. It's the survival of the fittest...you need to speak the loudest, stamp the hardest, and barge the most violently if you want to get somewhere this side of Christmas, be it getting on a train. Whereas in the UK, prams would probably get priority over others, this is not the case in Germany. You would have thought I had commited High Treason when I let a woman on a tram with a pram before me once!


So that's it really...all you could possibly need for living in Germany. Naturally, some (or perhaps most) of what I wrote is written with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but the general principles of what I say stand, according to my experiences, and it is those experiences that I've written about, I don't claim to be an expert on Germany, or life in Saarbruecken, but I've certainly learnt a lot, and if you take one piece of useful advice from this blog, then it's served half its purpose!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Chapter 32 - The Tony Blair Goodbye (i.e. very long!)

Monday 10th - Monday 31st May 2010

As I promised, here is the last of my diary-esque entries. Now, I will concede that, even by my standards, this one is quite late! (About 5 weeks in total!). There are several reasons for this, primarily everything needing doing at once, moving out, travelling around in a caravan and, not having a regular internet connection. 

For those of you with only a passing, or indeed non-existant, interest in politics, you may be wondering why I've selected this particular title for this entry. If you're sat comfortably, I'll briefly elaborate! Before the election on May 6th 2010, there was a nice scottish man in charge of the country, and whilst it may have looked from his facial expressions as though he'd been doing the job of running the country all his life, he had only been doing it from about 2007. He followed a younger, charismaticer (or indeed more charismatic) bloke who went by the name of Tony Blair. Tony Blair had managed to be Prime Minister for a whole 10 years before he realised he was quite unpopular, so after about 9 years in the job he said he would give it up. Then it began...the long goodbye...for a period of about 12 months, the British public and press were subjected to Tony Blair leaving, very slowly, dropping hints about exactly when, and who he wanted to succeed him. My time leaving Saarbruecken seemed to go the same way for me, although unlike the honourable Mr. Blair, my long goodbye was not entirely of my own making!

Let me start at the very beginning, for as Julie Andrews said (or perhaps sung; having never seen the Sound of Music I'm unable to be sure), it's a very good place to start. 

Following the excessive excitement of our Lille road trip, we had only three weeks left to enjoy our time in sunny Saarbruecken (the snow had finally gone for good, apparently!), we began the rather unhappy task of bringing things to a close. This meant organising the packing of our stuff, not as troublesome for me as for the others, for reasons I'll explain later. We also had to organise a mass of paperwork for various institutions, both German and British, to tell them we were leaving, and what we thought of our schools, and indeed what they thought of us! On top of that work was still a pretty much daily affair (well, as much as it ever was!). Being students though, we also had to fit some social events into our hectic schedule; simply to sample the culture (or indeed alcohol, as some may prefer to call it!). 


Now I'll try and deal with the various trials and tribulations of leaving Saarbruecken in the order I mentioned them above, simply to be as coherent as possible (well, I thought it was about time my musings began to make sense!). So, to packing then! Packing is rather a depressing thing to do, especially when you've spent the last nine months not paying attention to the fact that everything you have in your little room in Saarbruecken will need to be carried, by some means or another, halfway across Europe! It's only when you're packing that you really realise how much crap (or quality merchandise as my old boss in Woolies would have called it) it is possible to accumulate in a relatively short space of time. For those of you that have read this blog from the beginning (first off, have you nothing better to do!?!), you will know that the fact that I came in a relatively big car with my parents, which I had filled with stuff for my year abroad. This was a good idea, at the time, until it came to the repacking of it at the end of the year. Because I was heading off on a 10 week caravan holiday in Germany and France immediately after my time in Saarbruecken, I needed to organise all my stuff into two piles; one to take with me through France, and one to return home with my mum and sister in her little Citroen C1. Despite the miniature size of Mum's car, I was under strict instructions to make sure that the second pile was substantially larger than the first, in order not to have too much stuff loitering in the caravan. Still, I had it relatively easy, because my fellow assistants needed to cart all their stuff back either by plane, train, or indeed entrust it to the capable (hmm...) hands of Deutsche Post and Royal Mail. Still, after a week of evenings spent putting stuff in piles, and then moving the piles off of my bed (so I could sleep) onto the floor, and then back again (so I could get out of the door to work in the morning), I managed to gradually transfer the stuff I'd accumulated into a bloody great collection of containers (2 suitcases, 1 trolley holdall, 3 plastic boxes, 5 carrier bags, and a sports bag). This bloody great pile of stuff did eventually find its way into my Mum's C1 on my last day of school, Monday 31st May, from where it was sorted once again into stuff to go home to Chippenham, and stuff to come away to France with me. Needless to say, some stuff was put in the wrong place...still, not to worry, 90% ain't too bad!

Next comes the mass of paperwork I was required to complete for the various institutions that played a role in my time in Germany! First off, the paperwork for the British Council; I needed to get a form signed by both my mentor teacher and the headteacher at both of my schools. As anyone who has worked in a school will tell you; finding the headteacher can be more than a little challenging! After about two weeks of missing them both I did finally get that particular form signed by them. On top of that I had to fill out an online questionnaire that took about 20 minutes about my time in Gerrmany, and how I felt the British Council and their German partner organisation (PAD) organised it. When I'd done that there was paperwork to fill out for my university regarding Erasmus money (which as avid readers will know is basically free money from the European Union for being me, and for imparting (or perhaps inflicting) my knowledge of Britain and English on grateful (hmm...) German schoolchildren. For Erasmus, I was required to get another form signed by the headteacher, which, naturally, being disorganised, I didn't manage to get down at the same time. So, I had to devote some more afternoons to finding him, and getting this one done too! In addition to that form, I had to complete a form for Erasmus detailing what I'd done on my year abroad, and the more exact nature of the tasks undertaken. For those of you who are losing a) track, and/or b) the will to live, you'll be pleased to know that there's not too much more to go! There was also a form which my school were required to complete about me, grading me as an assistant, and detailing how helpful, punctual, organised (!), informative I was throughout the year. My German colleague also had to grade my standard of English, which we both found an interesting idea, but anyway! The final piece of bureaucracy I had to complete was a confirmation certificate which showed I'd actually been at the school for the required amount of time; the reason behind this form is entirely selfish though! Some LEA (Local Education Authorities) will count this year abroad as an assistant as a year's teaching experience when it comes to working out pay-rates; not an unuseful thing to have lying around I thought! So, once the paperwork was completed, you would have thought it was nearly over...err...no!


As I said, working at the school was still going on at this time, which meant I still had lessons to prepare, and, naturally, teach. Indeed, for some reason which I've not quite fathomed out yet, I found myself planning and teaching more lessons in the last few weeks than I had throughout the rest of the year! It wasn't too bad really; the best place for me is in the classroom it turns out, although I didn't mind doing teachers' marking for them either. On top of the daily grind of school life (well, working 12 hours a week is challenging, you know!), the headteacher had asked me some weeks previously to write a short report for next year's "Yearbook" for the Gymnasium. Now, obviously I'd not forgotten about doing this, I'd simply filed it in a safe area of my brain near the bottom of the list of things to do. In order to counteract this, the headteacher sent me a very polite e-mail with a cover sheet asking for my report...hmm...cue a few hours of manic typing, in German, and then another half hour of grammar checking, and making sure it makes sense. Still, before I went to bed that evening, Herr Dr. Paulus had my yearly report in his intray, as if it had been done for ages! On top of that, the Gymnasium had insisted on inviting me to dinner to celebrate my leaving (although I prefer to look upon it as a celebration of my year abroad, rather than the fact that I was leaving!). This was done in a very pleasant restaurant, helpfully entitled, the Potato, serving predominantly Saarlaendisch speciality dishes made out of...er...potatoes! When it came round to leaving day at the school, the kids and teachers at the Gesamtschule went all out and through me a party, and insisted that I went and said goodbye to all the kids I'd taught durign my time there...so much for slipping quietly out the back door! It was all very moving, and it may have brought a lump to my throat, although don't tell any of the kids that, they'll think I liked them! (PS: for the miserable brigade, this is meant in jest, I did in fact like most of the kids I taught; anyone who says otherwise as a teacher is lying!)


And now for the hardest part of the whole leaving process; the social events. There were plenty of them on offer from the other assistants. Rather than detailing them all individually, I'll try and remember some of them! There were several meetings down by the Saar in the sunshine with a beer in hand, along with a couple of barbecues, and the evenings spent in town too! There weren't many evenings in the last few weeks when I was sat at home with nothing to do or nobody to drink with. 


So, that's the pre-amble to leaving, now for a succinct (there's a first time for everything!) account of my last week in Saarbruecken!

My last week in Saarbruecken was as hectic as my first really! I still had a fair amount of German bureaucracy to cope with; things like de-registering, closing my bank account, and of course moving out! Let's start with the "abmelden"-ing process. Those who read the first few entries of this blog will know that it took me two attempts to anmelden (or register) at the local Town Hall. For obvious reasons therefore I was slightly apprehensive about the whole abmeldening process...for once, it turns out my worst fears were not to be confirmed! It was an exceptionally easy process, except for the difficulties my member of staff had with my address. (Apparently the British post codes are not compatible with the German computer system!) Nevertheless, I was eventually de-registered as a German resident, and took up my 'tourist' status again for the last few days in Saarbruecken. 

During my time in Saarbruecken I had the fortune to bank with Sparkasse, who I would heartily recommend.  Whenever I had a problem/issue/question for them, they were genuinely only too pleased to help. The same could be said for closing my bank account with them. I will concede that it took a little while (the transfer slip needed two tellers' signatures, and they were busy), and I did need to go to two different counters, but after about 20 minutes I was walking out of the bank with the remnants of my earnings from my year abroad in my pocket. So, from what would have been an entirely horrific ordeal in any UK bank that I've ever dealt with, I was very pleasantly impressed with them again!


Moving out was done in two stages. The first stage was the moving out of myself! This was done on the Saturday before my last day at school when Mum, Dad and Stacey came over to Saarbruecken in the caravan. This entailed me taking a fair amount of my stuff on the bus network to the caravan site on the other side of Saarbruecken. This would have a been a painless experience had I not missed the bus from directly outside my house by mere minutes (why are they never late on demand!?!) and had to walk to the next bus stop and try and find an alternative route to the caravan site. Being, as I was, equipped with my trusty Saarbahn Timetable book I was able to recalculate an alternative route without too much trouble, and arrived, in fact, a few minutes before the others (who had, admittedly, had a coffee break on the way down!).
As an aside, there will be more about my time on the road in the caravan to follow in a later new blog, probably entitled "Musings des Campings", which I'll, naturally, link to in this one when I get around to starting it!
The second stage of moving out took place after my last day of school, and required me to take my sister and Mum's car to my flat and load it up with all the stuff to go home to Chippenham for me to sort out upon my return in September (ooh, I can hardly wait). It was like a Generation Game challenge (for those of you who are too young, or had better things to do of a Saturday evening; ask your parents (or even grandparents; it's been around for a while!)). How much stuff is it possible to fit in a Citroen C1 with driver and front seat passenger. Answer: shedloads! We managed it with a little bit of nifty shoving, and heaving here and there, but it all went in and we managed to shut the doors too! 


So, that's that...the cases are packed in the car ready to go home, school's finished...my time in Saarbruecken has come to an end! I hope you've enjoyed reading about it as much as I've enjoyed living it and then writing about it! It's been truly a fantastic experience, which I would recommend to anyone (although it helps if you can speak a foreign language and like children!). There will be another chapter in this blog about the things the British Council/Travel Guides don't tell you; detailing things I found out the hard way, tips to make your life easier, and anything else I think of whilst sitting in front of the screen. But for now, to quote Tony Blair's final address to Parliament, (it was, after all, in honour of him this blog is named!). "Thank you and Goodbye...That's it!"