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!"
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