Musings from Saarbrücken

New Blog

2010-07-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

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!

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

2010-07-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

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!"

STOP PRESS, err TWO

2010-06-21T06:07:00.000-07:00

Just in case people thought I had forgotten about doing this...this isn't the case. It's just I'm in France at the moment with limited Internet access. My next blog entry should be coming in a week or two which will be all about my last weeks in Saarbruecken.

Following on from that, I will be doing "le blogging" about my time in France too!

Chapter 31 - Road Trip to Lille

2010-05-13T04:16:00.000-07:00

Monday 3rd - Sunday 9th May

This week features the most eagerly anticipated of all our trips away! The road trip to Lille, more about which will follow very shortly. Firstly though, the rest of the week...as ever, a normal week at school. Now that's out of the way, we can move on to the story!

The Road Trip began for us early on Friday morning. My first job was to head over to the car hire place and pick up the car. I'd arranged to pick up the car at 7.30 when the office opened. This meant catching the bus from home at 7, necessitating waking up at 6. Not particularly unpleasant really, given that I get up then two mornings a week anyway. So, the bus and tram journeys to the office were as normal as they get!

We'd booked a car in their "Economy" range, because it had enough room for 4 people and was cheap too. The website said it would be a Volkswagen Polo or similar; so I expected an Opel Corsa, or a Ford Fiesta etc. To my surprise, neither of these was the car I got. The car I got was a Peugeot 308 cc. Still, it was a car..how impractical and annoying could it be?

The first drive in the car was very short, about 3 feet in fact, at which point I stalled it. Still, I expected that, unfamiliar clutch biting point etc, so I'd got my stall out of the way, so off I went. For about 6 feet, when I stalled it again. Never mind, it takes a bit of time to get used to a new car. The next journey took me the 15 feet to the exit of the Car Hire car park. Here I had to be quite nippy to get out on to the road without being involved in an accident. I fluffed it up again. I stalled on my first attempt, and had to wait about 5 minutes for a big enough gap in the traffic. Eventually I made it on to the road to the Hauptbahnhof, where I was meeting the others. Now I should point out here that I have never driven a left-hand drive car before, so judging the width of the car was a bit of a challenge at times. Hence why I might have bumped it over a couple of curbs, and maybe the tramline too. Still, I arrived at the station at 7.45, where I saw the others waiting dutifully outside with their suitcases.

Now, the first concern was the size of the boot. I wasn't sure it would take all the suitcases we had. In fact, I needn't have worried, the boot was almost as big as the rest of the car! So, we managed to get everything in the boot. And then came sorting out seating arrangements. I thought it best if I took the front left seat. In fact, I insisted upon it. When we'd managed to get into the car, which was neither elegant nor dignified (certainly not for me). Despite sitting in the front, I had a getting-in issue; that the steering column and my right leg collided every time I got in! Still, we all managed to get ourselves seated, and then came setting up the GPS. We set Lille as the destination, and we settled down for a relaxing morning meander through the EU heartland.

After about 10 minutes driving, I found a flaw with the SatNav. It was in German, which may not sound like an issue, but when you're driving round an unfamiliar city, you don't have time to translate the instructions or ask stupid questions, so we changed it to English. Problem solved...almost! The SatNav insisted on telling me to "Enter the Roundabout", which is not an instruction with which I am overly familiar. Aside from this minor irritation it was a tool without which we may never have found Lille city centre!

After about 2 hours of driving, we had passed through Luxembourg and had entered Belgium. Now, anyone who has ever driven on a motorway will confirm that motorway driving is the most boring of all types of driving. Irrespective of where you are, miles and miles of concrete with limited exit points and nothing exciting to look at cannot ever be interesting. In Belgium, they have taken measures on this subject. They have planted trees on both sides of each carriageway, thus providing a green wall on both sides of your side of the motorway. So when the SatNav pipes up "Continue on the motorway for 189km" you can understand why I began to lose the will to live! If that wasn't bad enough, the maximum speed was 120km/h, which is 10km/h less than in France and Luxembourg, and infinitely less than in Germany.

After what seemed like two lifetimes of tree-lined motorway, we arrived in Lille, the capital of the Nord Pas de Calais region of France. It was in Lille I was reminded of the style, finesse, and skill of French drivers. As I was going round a roundabout, in the correct fashion, a car appeared off my nearside wing and showed me that his horn worked, naturally I was pleased for him, and expressed my gratitude for his musical display in some clear, yet concise, French adjectives. Shortly afterwards we found a street in front of a car park, where people appeared to be parking for free. So, being British, and therefore not keen on rocking the boat (unlike Hazel Blears' brooch), I followed suit and parked behind a remodelled Renault 5. By remodelled I mean dented.

As ever, our first aim was the Tourist Information Office, which we found. Then, following our Standard Operating Procedure, we headed for a cafe, where we enjoyed some of the French cafe culture, and consulted the map. We did a circular walk of Lille, taking in some of the sights, including the Cathedral, the Citadel, the Place de la Republique (obligatory in every French town), the City Hall. The walk ended in the shopping centre between the two Lille train stations (Lille Gare Europe [handles the TGVs & Eurostar] and Lille Gare Flandres [handles the normal trains]), where we popped into Carrefour in order to get food for the morning, and the following day. About five o'clock we decided to head for the hotel.

This should have been relatively easy...I'd consulted the map on the website of the hotel and wrote down the junction where the hotel was. I input this into the SatNav. I followed the instructions to the letter. We found ourselves in a town, which wasn't too much of a problem, from my experience of staying in HotelF1's before I knew that they can are often on industrial/commercial estates. So we drove round a bit, this didn't help. After about 30 minutes of driving around aimlessly, I pulled over and accosted a man putting his rubbish out. He gave me some pretty good directions (in that they took me to the right town). When we got to the other town, we reached a T-Junction, and being whimpish and slightly annoyed at the whole saga, I did a U-Turn and drove to the Novotel we'd previously passed to ask them for directions. (They're both part of the Accor group, so I figured, correctly, that they'd know). After finally receiving adequate directions we got to the hotel, some 90 minutes after leaving Lille. We checked in and went off in search of food. After food, we popped over to the Auchan, just to see what it was like. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards before heading to bed relatively late.

Saturday was the trip to the beach. This was Harriet's main reason for wanting to go to Lille! We set off for Calais about 9.45, and arrived about 11. So it wasn't too far. On arrival in Lille, we drove following Harriet's sixth sense for finding the sea. We arrived, shortly after, at Calais/Bleriot Plage, which is just South of Calais, and has a long sandy beach. The beach itself, though, was swathed in an unidentified white foam. Still, it was a beach, by the seaside. Even I deicided to go paddling in the English Channel. The Channel is not the Med, nor is it the Carribean. It was bloody freezing, but after a while you stop being able to notice it, largely because your toes have dropped off and are feeding the fishes! As we walked along the beach we saw some of the German pillboxes and beach defences that have collapsed down the dunes in Calais. After taking in the view, and enjoying the feeling of sand under your feet, we headed back to the car and set Boulogne as the destination (when we'd worked out how to spell it!).

After about half an hour of motorway driving we arrived in Boulogne, from where we walked down to the town for a spot of lunch. After lunch we walked down to the harbour, and turned right towards the beach. We spent a bit of time sat on the beach passing the time of day, or in Harriet's case, burying Esther's hand!?! On the way back to the car, we came across a seal show in an aquarium-esque place. We watched it for a bit, before heading back up to the Old Town in Boulogne. The Old Town in Boulogne is very picturesque. If you took away the cars, it could have easily been a scene from the immediate post war period. It looked almost unchanged! We walked back to the car, and began the drive back to the hotel, which I had saved as a favourite, to save the hassle of trying to find it again! The journey back avoided the motorway most of the way, which meant that it was quite an interesting drive, with plenty to see on the way. Another evening of cards followed a very nice day out.

Sunday was the final day of our road trip, and the day we'd decided to spend in Brussels. Brussels was on the way back to Saarbruecken, and only about an hour away from the hotel. So, at about 10.30 we set off from the hotel, and I got used to looking at trees for a while. We got to Brussels in good time, probably because it was a Sunday! Then came the issue of parking. I imagine this problem is the same for every capital city. Finding a space was the first challenge, but that one was solved after only about 10 minutes, which I thought was quite quick. The next, and biggest problem, was actually putting the car in the space. Now, as anyone who has been in a car with me will know, reverse parallel parking is not my biggest strength. Now remember that I'm on the other side of the car, and trying to do it. Three attempts later, I'd managed it!

Following the parking debacle, we undertook a walk around Brussels. Taking in sights such as the Grande Place, Le mannequin pis, Cathedral, National Palace, Royal Palace and a series of churches. The weather for this was perfect, it didn't rain during the day, and was actually a very pleasant and warm day. We spent a bit of time in the afternoon sat in the park reading our books and enjoying the sunshine. After we'd finished our walk, we headed back to the car, to try and find the EU Parliamentary buildings. This wasn't too difficult, nor was it too difficult to find somewhere to park nearby. They are quite impressive buildings, and somehow not out of place in the midst of a park, and older residential buildings. So, that was Brussels, we did do it in quite a whistle-stop way, and saw an awful lot there. It was more of a taster-tour...it would be nice to go back at some point, maybe for a couple of days and take it in a little more slowly. It was a very nice city, but it lacked a certain "wow" factor. I can't explain what it lacked, but it just didn't make me fall in love with it, like Berlin did.

After enjoying the sites of the Belgian Kingdom's capital city, it was time to head back to Saarbruecken. Back to trees...the most depressing thing was when the GPS told me I had 201km of Belgian motorway to go. There's only so much time you can spend looking at trees. And I think I had more than my fair share! We filled up with Diesel at Schengen in Luxembourg, because it's substantially cheaper there than in Germany, and headed for home. I dropped the car off at 21.30 and headed for the train station to catch the bus home.

Some of you probably think that was the end of my fun & games, but no SaarBahn & Bus hadn't played their role yet. I was waiting for the bus at 22.17 which should have got me in about 22.30, which never arrived. There was a 123 (mine is the 121) that had been through, but that doesn't go in my direction, so I didn't get on. About 22.35 I saw a 105, which would take me to the bottom of my road, and while we were going along, we passed the 121, which, it turned out, was the bus masquerading as the 123. So, it had run, but had lied about its route! So, after a bit of a walk up my hill, I got in about 23.15 and was in bed shortly afterwards. Exhausted, but very happy! Ready for another week of fun and frollicks at school, albeit a short week this time!

As ever, you can see my pictures of the road trip here!

Chapter 30 - Sunshine, Saarbruecken, and a trip to Bonn

2010-05-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

Monday 19th April - Sunday 2nd May

So, with the Black Forest barely behind me, it was time to return to school! Monday saw me doing my normal lessons; no covered required this time, which made a pleasant change! However, that record was no longer standing by the end of Tuesday! Tuesday saw me doing 2 full cover lessons, with little more than 5 minutes preparation for both of them together. Wednesday was a pretty standard day at the Gymnasium, although I had the chance to work with a new class (to make up for the 12. Klasse kids who've left. My new class is a 7. Klasse (Year 8 equivalent/12-13 year olds) and they're a charming class, who are very curious, and seem to be keen to learn and practise their English. I'm looking forward to working with them more in the last month of my placement here. Thursday was my busiest day of the week; I had 5 lessons straight through at the Gymnasium. Luckily, all the classes with whom I work are pretty good kids really!

As you can see, work wasn't overly exciting this week. But, and I'm reverting to type here, the weather has been pretty fantastic this week. I read in the local paper that Saarland is the Bundesland (Federal State) in the whole of Germany, which has seen the biggest change in climate due to global warming. Now, I understand that Global Warming is a threat to the planet, but, in a purely selfish and tongue-in-cheek way, I'm more than happy for people to bring their 4x4s and drive them round Saarbruecken for the rest of the month if they want! The average high temperature last week was 19.7 degrees celsius, and the sun has been shining almost perpetually. It's now at the stage, where I can leave for work at 6.45 and not require anything more sustantial than a short-sleeve shirt. That said, the weather today has been a little bit hit and miss; we've had some very nice sunny spells, but also a couple of very loud and wet thunderstorms too.

Because the weather has been so good, I've spent a fair amount of the week outside! Wednesday evening I met up with a colleague from my Gesamtschule who wanted me to meet her daughter and her friend who were visiting from Paris. There was no alterior motive here! She suggested it would be a good opportunity to practise listening to and speaking some French, and she was quite right! Thursday afternoon was spent by the Saar with a few friends, which wasa very nice way to spend the time. It was easily warm enough to remain by the Saar long past the half 8 we were there until, but I needed to have something to eat!

Friday saw me make a trip to Homburg in the evening for Will's birthday party. He has had the misfortune to turn 21, and leave me in the 20-club alone! It was actually my first trip to Homburg properly, excepting changing trains. On the train coming back to Saarbruecken there was a Ticket Inspector who was raking it in with 40€ fines being given out willy-nilly. I had already bought a ticket, so saved myself some money there; but because the majority of DB's Regional Trains are unchecked many people like to play russian roulette with the Inspectors. As one philosophically said to the Inspector; "you win some, you lose some" - or a rather more complex German equivalent!

Saturday, as the previous week, required an early start, which was fine. Lucy and I were going to Bonn for the day, and were taking the 7.02 train. Last Saturday it was perfectly possible to catch a bus into town at 6.14 and walk to the train station in plenty of time. Yesterday was different though. Saturday was the 1st May. In Germany the 1st May is a Public Holiday; that means places only open their Sunday hours - largely none at all, and buses only run a Sunday timetable; this is not helpful when the earliest bus round by me is at 9.32! Luckily, with a quick check using their text service I was able to see that there was a bus from the bottom of my road to the train station at 6.32. With a bit of a jog, I made it in time and managed to safely get to the train station. The train from Saarbruecken went to Koblenz, and does some have some fantastic views over the Saar and Mosel on the way; and it's double decker, which still hasn't worn off yet! From Koblenz we changed to a train directly to Bonn, which took about 45 minutes. We got there about 11ish.

En route to the tourist information office (always the first port of call; for a street map) we got distracted by an artisan's market in the Minster square. Some of the stuff there was good, some was quaint and other bits were bordering on "Why?" standard! After looking around the market for a bit, we headed over to the tourist information office, got our street map and then trotted off to explore Bonn.

The first thing we went to see was Ludwig van Beethoven's birthplace, which was pretty much a house, with a plaque on the window. It has a museum on the ground floor, but seeing as it was a Public Holiday it was closed! Shortly after Beethoven's house we came across the Communists/Socialists/Trade Unions all having a parade, which from what we could grasp was not authorised by the place, yet was still taking place. The parade, was actually not parading at that moment, instead it had turned into a stationary protest about the police arresting one of their contingent. So, as nothing exciting seemed to be happening we moved on, and returned to the tour of Bonn! The next focus of which was to be the River, after a drink! After we'd replenished our liquid levels we walked down to the River, which is a river I saw last Sunday in Basel....can you remember what it's called? (if no, it's the Rhine). We walked along the Rhine to see the old West German Parliament building and the Post Tower. While we were there we discovered that there was a trail along the river side of the planets, with little signs about them all the way. The planets were distanced to scale, and the overall trail probably went on for about 5km. We walked all the way to Neptune from the Sun, before we came across a building site and the industrial port in Bonn. And as Pluto is not technically a planet any more (it's, in fact, an asteroid), we abandoned the search there and headed back into the city to find somewhere for lunch. We got back into the city about 15.30 when we decided to have some lunch. After lunch I had to go and rendez-vous with the main reason for coming to Bonn, Ruediger.

It would be useful, I realise, here to explain who Ruediger is, and why I had to meet him. So, that's what I'll do, but I shall answer the key questions in reverse order. (Partly because it makes more sense like that, and partly because I can!) But before I can even explain why I had to meet him, you need yet more information! You need to know that Dad collects clocks, lots of clocks, but that he prizes his modest collection of "Perpetual Motion" Atmos Clock. Now rather than me try and explain to you exactly what they look like, or how they work - I counsel you to click here to find out more! I had to meet Ruediger to collect one of Dad's Atmos clocks off of him, because Ruediger repairs them and restores them. Ruediger was previously a senior diplomat in the UK working for the German Government and it used to be much easier to take stuff to him in Wimbledon. He was then re-posted and now works in Bonn, so as I live in Saarbruecken, the decision was taken (not entirely by me, if I remember correctly!) that I would go and collect said Atmos Clock and bring it back to Saarbruecken for Mum & Dad to collect when they come over in a few weeks time! Needless to say, the clock managed the train journey home unharmed, which is good for two main reasons: 1) it's very valuable, and 2) I like breathing!

So after being a very cheap courier, I spent Sunday moping! I did do some useful things like clean the bathroom, and prepare a couple of worksheets for lessons next week! But my main achievement of the day was avoiding the thunderstorms that arrived in Saarbruecken today!

Now, for the avid and attentive reader, you will notice that this blog entry was actually written on time! So enjoy, it doesn't happen very often!

Next week comes the expedition of the year - Lille!

Chapter 29 - Journey to Paradise

2010-05-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

Monday 19th - Sunday 25th April

This week started the same as any other week! I had to get up relatively early on Monday for a couple of lessons of fun at the Gesamtschule, where I was a cover teacher for several of my lessons on my days there. Despite not being in my job description, I see no reason to turn it down, it's all experience at the end of the day! The Gymnasium has been pretty standard too, working with the older kids, and doing marking!

Several of the afternoons were spent, during this week, sitting outside enjoying the Saarlaendisch Sunshine - and coming out with a healthy glow!

Friday was Mum's birthday; so being the dutiful, and caring son that I am, I decided to send a card. Now, I thought I'd buy the stamps from the automated machines in town, when I was there on Saturday evening, before meeting my tandem partner. This was a flawless plan, except for one minor thing that I overlooked! That was the chance that the person who was using the machine before me was converting his life savings into Deutsche Post Postage Stamps. I kid you not, he was at this machine for a good 15 minutes. Every time I thought he was finished, he seemed to start the process all over again! Now, as everyone who knows me will undoubtedly say, I'm a patient soul, but this guy was beginning to push his luck! Eventually though, he'd independently prevented Deutsche Post from going bust, and I was able to buy the stamp I needed (a procedure which took about 90 seconds!), and the card arrived only 1 day late; which I will obviously be blaming on Royal Mail!

The highlight of the week, though, was undoubtedly the trip to Freiburg that we made at the weekend! The only bad, and it wasn't that bad really, thing was that the train from Saarbruecken left at 7.02 on Saturday morning; thus necessitating an early start! The first train journey took us to Pirmasens, which lies over the border in the Pfalz. From there we had a two minute connection (which, although it sounds tight, is pretty standard for Deutsche Bahn) on another train to Landau. From Landau, another train brought us to our old friend Karlsruhe, where we had a brief respite from train travel, before boarding another train to Offenburg. The final train brought us Offenburg to Freiburg-im-Breisgau at about 11.55; the total journey taking just shy of five hours. The first thing we did in Freiburg was to find the hostel, which wasn't too difficult in itself. The hardest thing was avoiding being run over by trams, cyclists, and buses - all of whom seemed to come from every direction possible! After about 30 minutes we found the hostel, and we decided to dump our stuff before heading back to Freiburg station for a little exploration of the Black Forest.

The journey back to the train station from the hostel was a little bit of a run towards the end; hindered slightly by the car-friendly pedestrian crossings! Nevertheless we made it, albeit slightly out of breath, onto the train. Whilst on the train, the driver announced that if you wanted to go all the way to where we wanted to go, you had to be sat in the front three coaches...we were in the fourth, so had to change coaches at one of the stations. The journey was another hour on the train, but it was truly part of the experience; I spent most of the journey in awe of the surroundings. One minute you would be going through a pretty dense wooded area, then through a tunnel, and then on the wall of a gorge, uphill, downhill - just fantastic views all the way. On the way to Aha, our destination, we saw snow on the tops of the mountains within the Black Forest, which was surprising considering the outside temperature was definitely not below 20!

After about an hour we arrived in Aha, which is on the edge of the Schluchsee. Schluchsee is the largest expanse of water in the whole of the Black Forest. It's a reservoir which has a walk all the way around the outside. The walk is about 18km, although we didn't do it all! We did spend about three hours walking along the beaches, and paths bordering the lake. The views were fantastic, the lake itself was tranquil, and serene! The weather was perfect too - the sun was shining, the sky was cloudless. After several hours, we headed back to Freiburg on the train, and found somewhere to eat. The evening was spent playing cards, until about 10, when we thought it would be sensible/necessary to have a relatively early night!

We got up about 8 on Sunday, and were out by 8.45. We decided to spend the morning looking around the city of Freiburg itself. The first thing we did was to climb up to the observation tower, which is about 460m above the city, the views you got from the tower were magnificent; the city and the forest were both spectacular. The city itself is very nice, it has plenty of pretty buildings, and nice little streams running down both sides of the streets within the city centre.

After a couple of hours, we went and caught the train to Basel, in Switzerland. The train journey itself was about an hour long, and after about 45 minutes, both Harriet and me came to the realisation that Switzerland is not a member of the European Union. I know I study European Studies as part of my degree, but I can't be expected to remember everything! The fact that they aren't part of the EU means that they don't use the Euro, preferring, instead to use the Swiss Franc. This is quite annoying when you have a wallet full of Euros! It was a perfect photo opportunity - that moment!

Basel itself is the third largest city in Switzerland, and lies on the banks of the Rhine. The city is quite pretty, and a rather eclectic mix of French, German, Italian and Swiss influences! Whilst walking round the city, it's possible to hear a selection of European languages! We spent a few hours walking round the city, taking in the sights, and taking some photos!

We caught the train from Basel back in a Saarbruecken direction at about 15.35. The first train took us to the Deutsche Bahn station in Basel, where we changed onto a train for Offenburg. From Offenburg we aimed to follow the same route home as the one which we'd taken to Freiburg. This was all going swimmingly, until Karlsruhe, where the train to Landau was delayed by about 10 minutes (about 7 minutes longer than our connection!). So, we sought advice from the Deutsche Bahn automated ticket machine. The machine advised us to travel to Neustadt, from where we caught a train to Kaiserslautern, where we changed to a train to Saarbruecken. Despite the travel complications we arrived back in Saarbruecken a mere six minutes later than we would have done if we'd taken the original train. Back home in good time for a nice early night in readiness for another fun-filled week at school!

As ever, you can see the pics from my Black Forest & Basel Bonanza here!

Plans for the next week are not overly numerous; a party in Homburg, and a day trip to Bonn!

STOP PRESS

2010-04-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

This isn't a proper blog entry, although I know one is due soon. But I've been busy on Google Maps this afternoon, and have created a map showing all the places I've visited so far. I will update it as I travel to different places on my year abroad...so keep checking back onto it!

Here's the link!

Enjoy!

Chapter 28 - Back to school

2010-04-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday 10th - Sunday 18th April

This title is not named after the retailing season, although it will surely be appearing in shops soon! Instead, it is an unsarcastic, unironic statement about my first week back in Saarbruecken.

As at Christmas, I made the decision to travel on the Saturday before work started again on Monday. Two main reasons for this: SNCF, and sleep! SNCF because it's a Sunday, and their service is sometimes a little sketchy on Sunday, even if they had to decided not to partake in a mouvement social (a strike to you and I), and despite the fact that the majority of my journey is spent on my laurels reading a book, listening to my MP3 player, or simply admiring the view (albeit at 270 km/h), travelling halfway across Europe (well, through France anyway) can take it out of you - so I travel on Saturday so that I can catch up on a little bit of train-lag before going back to work, where it's expected that I'm not still rubbing sleepy dust out of my eyes!

So, the journey started about 7.55 at Chippenham railway station, where it was a very nice day, and I had far too many layers on (simply to save me having to put them in the already bulging suitcase!). Now being a seasoned traveller I'd half expected the train to be late into Chippenham, but it had managed not to be. So, we left on time, and powered our way towards the only London station named after a bear who likes marmalade sandwiches. All was going tickety-boo (well clickety-clack, but you get the idea) until just outside Reading, where we seemed to stop for a while in the middle of nowhere. The Train Manager told us that there was an issue on the line in the Slough area, which was why were being held up before Reading. We eventually crawled into Reading, where the Train Manager was able to find out that the delay had been caused by someone jumping in front of a train in the Slough area, and the line was duly closed to allow a clear-up operation to begin, and then the lines were only gradually re-opened, which meant that the signalmen (and I daresay women) had to sort out the backlog. This they managed, and then we continued on our way to London, arriving a mere 45 minutes late. I would like to take this opportunity to do something which I don't do very often, and that's to have a bit of a rant!

My chosen topic this time is "People who jump in front of trains". Now, before I start I should say that I accept that suicide is not an easy decision to take, and the people who choose to end it all, are desperate and at their wits' end, and this rant is not about suicide itself, simply about the choice of someone to jump in front of a train. For this reason, I would ask people not to jump down my throat for what's about to come!
Jumping in front of a train is one of the most selfish ways of committing suicide that I can think of. On the very basic level, you will cause delays to the rail network, but let's face it the Train Companies can do that on their own without the help of someone standing in front of a train. So, all in all, the delays it causes are not my primary issue, merely an annoyance. That said, I seem to take delays better than others; one day when I was commuting to Bath, the trains had been cancelled, or severely delayed because of someone jumping in front of a train, and a lady comes down the stairs onto the paltform, and says "I hope he's dead!". I don't get that annoyed by it, instead I find an alternative way to uni. But, as I said that's not my main problem with it, my biggest issue is the effect it has on people who are innocent, and who have to deal directly with the person's suicide - people like the Train Driver, who may never be able to sleep at night again, the Police Officers of the British Transport Police who have to attend what they call 'one unders', along with the Network Rail employees who have to clear-up the line so that the trains can run again. All of these people have to deal with sights that are simply awful, and could cause untold psychological trauma. Or, in the case of Stanley Martin, the ultimate price, because someone decided to kill themselves by parking their car on the line and waiting for a train to crash into them.
Now as I said, this rant was about the effect that 'jumpers' have on others who were otherwise going about their normal daily business, and have had to deal with such horrors.

Now I've got that off my chest, I shall continue with the story! I got to St. Pancras, where I had arrived about 3 hours before my train was due to leave, so I went to a cafe and read my book with a mug of coffee in the sunshine whilst waiting for check-in to open. The Eurostar left, pucntually, and had an uninterupted journey to Paris, except for the planned stop in Lille. We arrived in Paris about half five, and as I walked to Paris Est I found somewhere to eat some tea, before meeting Esther at the station. We travelled back on the ICE together, where we also arrived on time, which is a rarity amongst the trains to/from Paris! After a short bus journey home, I was in bed by 11 o'clock!

Sunday was spent unpacking, well, rather putting away the stuff I'd already unpacked (onto the floor) and I had a private lesson in the afternoon. Otherwise, it was a quiet day, involving me pretty much catching up on a weekend of stuff I'd missed on iPlayer!

The first week back at school was full of the usual post-holiday chaos! With the ash cloud posing problems all over Europe, I was impressed that none of the teachers had been silly enough to get themselves stranded in a really hot, sunny country, instead of being shut in a room with 30 excitable children! I also rose to a certain level of fame, or the negative form thereof, because it was during this week that the English Abitur (A-Level) exam took place, on the higher tier of which all of the students in Saarland would have been told what to do by yours truly. That said, I still haven't heard it, and my ask one of my teachers if I could have a copy of it, so I can enjoy my slurring of the letter 'r' in a typically Westcountry manner!

It was this weekend in which Esther and I had originally planned on going to Munich, but time constraints let us down. It was only on the train back from Paris that we were supposed to be going then, and as nothing had been booked or organised, we shelved it, perhaps for another year! Instead, I took advantage of the fantastic weather which we've been experiencing in Saarbruecken, and spent most of the weekend by the Saar in the sun! Over the weekend there were also a couple of evening get-togethers too, in which I took part.

So, what's coming up next week? Not a lot regarding school, it's been a pretty quiet week really. There is a weekend trip to Freiburg im Breisgau (on the edge of the black forest, near the Swiss & French borders) for me and Harriet to look forward to.

Chapter 27 - Jena

2010-04-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

Monday 15th - Friday 26th March

Astute readers of this blog will realise that this entry is for two weeks. There are two main reasons for this; 1) Not a lot really happened in the first week (what did will be explained in this entry!), and b) I'm too lazy to write two separate blog entries in one afternoon, so thought I'd include the few things that I did in the first thing with the week in Jena! Those of you with nothing better to do than read this (Hi Dad!), will also realise that, as usual, this entry is late! I could come up with some excuse about being eaten by a hungry lion rampaging through the streets of Chippenham, and having had to wait to pass through its digestive tracts before I could get on the laptop, but you might find it lacking in plausability, so I will therefore just tell the truth, I forgot about it!

So, without any further ado, let's look at what happened in the first week of this double-barrelled entry! It is, in fact, so long ago that I'm writing this with my diary beside me to try and remind me what I did! It would appear that I taught some lessons on topics as varied as: Classroom Phrases, Weather Words, Holiday Words, Corrupt MPs and their slightly dubious expenses claims, and using question words as connectives. And I did my washing and tidied my room in preparation for my trip to Jena! Saturday was spent packing, being generally lazy, accompanied with a bit more cleaning! So, that was the first week of this double barrelled entry, this one wasn't very long, (continuing the shotgun metaphor), consider it a warning shot for what is about to come!

Then we come to Sunday, which is the day of my departure from Saarbruecken. My train doesn't leave until 14.30, but being me I'm up ridiculously early, so spend the morning in bed, lolling around, and double checking I've got everything, and then double checking the double checking! The majority of the trip was made by ICE, which is just as well really, as Jena is almost as far away from Saarbruecken as it's possible to go in Germany! Now, for those of you who don't know ICE is the very Germanically named, Inter-City Express; they're sleak, white with a red stripe down them, pretty comfy and can reach speads of up to 300 km/h. They are the pride of Deutsche Bahn, and I'm sure the only reason they run them to Paris is to show the sill people at SNCF how silly their rectangular TGVs look! But, as Ronnie Corbett was famed for doing during his monologues, I appear to have digressed slightly! I got on the ICE in Saarbruecken to Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof. This journey took about 90 minutes - although we did experience delays of about quarter of an hour because of engineering works. I'd like Network Rail to note that the trains ran DESPITE the engineering works, and experienced only MINOR delays, no rail replacement was required, no-one really minded, after all it was a Sunday, no-one goes to a meeting, or work on Sunday in Germany! Anyway, in Frankfurt, I got on another ICE, this time to Weimar (more about this historical city later!).This trip took about 2.5 hours, and I'd be lying if I said I was pleased to get off, if only for the opportunity to stretch my legs properly! Before I go further than Weimar, I'd like to refer back to my description of the ICE, where I said it can reach speeds of 300 km/h. Neither of mine got anywhere near this speed - the second ICE never got above 160 km/h, which, as those who are good at maths will notice, is only 100 mph. Now I'm not one to complain (stop that sniggering) but the train I catch from Chippenham to Bath normally manages about 125 on the way, and they date from the 1970s. Needless to say I felt a little bit disappointed that DB hadn't built high-speed lines to where I wanted to go (how damned inconsiderate). Anyway, back to Weimar Hauptbahnhof! I got on a Regional Express, semi-fast stopping service, to Jena (only 2 stations away) and was picked up by Christin, my former German Assistant, at the train station. As it happens, that despite engineering works on most parts of my journey, I still reached my final destination on time, punctually, as is to be expected from Deutsche Bahn.

So, Monday morning comes around, not too early, thankfully, and I'm able to fully appreciate where I'm staying in Jena. When you look at the window of her flat, which is on the 7th floor, you see equally tall tower blocks of flats, all built in the same style - a project of the former GDR Government; that said, they do the job they were intended for, and unlike the Palast der Republik (now, thankfully, demolished) in Berlin, they're not riddled with asbestos or any other such toxin! After a leisurely breakfast, I left Christin to write some of her uni work and agreed to meet her on the train to Weimar around lunchtime. I spent the morning wandering around the city of Jena itself. Jena is a city, which has been built up around the university, which was in fact the main reason there's a city there at all! walking through the city it is possible to see the difference between the old town and the new town. Later in the week I did a walking tour of Jena, so I'll talk more about it then!
After a stroll around Jena, I made my way to the train station, and caught the train to Weimar, where I would meet Christin. The train was made up of three separate DMUs without corridors between them, so rather than try to guess which one she would have got on, it seemed to make mroe sense to just meet at the final station! We thought it would be nice to do a walking tour of Weimar, as this way you can be have some of the interesting buildings explained to you, as well as the history of the city itself. Weimar is an important city for people with all sorts of interests. Its most cultural claims to fame are that both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller lived in Weimar for a substantial part of their lives. For those of you who haven't heard of Goethe or Schiller - they are possibly the most famous literary masters from the whole of Germany, so, quite rightly, Weimar is proud to celebrate them! They also have a plaque for J.S. Bach who spent a short time in Weimar. Bringing it more up to date - thinking primarily about the immediate post World War One time, Weimar was chosen as the seat of the new Government. Why Weimar instead of Berlin? Bascially the people from Weimar weren't as troublesome and prone to protesting and rioting as their Berlin counterparts. The Theatre was chosen as the new Parliament building, and so began the foundations of democracy in Germany. Out of this new political world, came the Bauhaus movement, which was, in it's day, revolutionary. Bauhaus influenced not only architechture, but interior design, and furniture amongst other othings. Bauhaus was banned and the Bauhaus Insitute in Weimar was closed down upon Hitler's accession to power, as it was seen to be not German enough! Hitler was also keen on spending time in Weimar, despite its links to the detested Weimar Republic! So, after a very pleasant afternoon in Weimar, we headed back to Christin's flat in Jena!

So, Tuesday was the trip to Leipzig. The good thing about Jena is that it was pretty central for all the places we wanted to visit (perhaps that's why we went there!). Leipzig was about an hour's drive from Jena. Now I should say I have been to Leipzig before, but only to the train station and an italian restaurant to have some dinner, so I may have missed some of it! We started off by visiting the Panometer in Leipzig. I ought to explain the concept of a Panometer - it's basically a decomissioned Gas Store which has an exhibition inside it, but more impressively a circular 30ft high photographic quality artwork of a certain theme. The one in Leipzig is of the Rainforest, and the lighting there was done to reflect different times of day and weather conditions, and there were sound effects too; it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say that if you shut your eyes you really could imagine that you were in the Amazon. You may not have really understood quite what it was by my explanation, so here's the website (unfortunately the German one only as English one doesn't seem to work at the moment!) The website does have a slideshow of some pictures of the one we visited. Click Me After spending a good two hours walking round there, we headed into Leipzig and undertook another Walking Tour. The guide was very enthusiastic about Leipzig, and full of interesting pieces of information, and stories about Leipzig. Leipzig started as a crossroads of the fur trade, and grew out of the fur industry. The station in Leipzig used to be the biggest, in terms of numbers of platforms, in the whole of Germany (now, following renovation of Leipzig - losing them two platforms, Frankfurt am Main now holds this record).
Following a nice afternoon in Leipzig we headed over to Altenburg where Christin had her dance training in advance of her competition at the weekend. After that, we went on to her parents' house in Goesnitz, where we would spend the night.

On Wednesday, Christin's Dad, Dieter, took me for a walk around Goesnitz, which is a relatively small town (about the size of Corsham for those of you from my neck of the woods). It also has the longest station platform in Germany, and is a changing point for several different trains. The afternoon saw our return to Jena, where Christin had Private Tuition in the afternoon. While she did some more of her uni essay, I did the walking tour of Jena, which told me more about the history of Jena. Jena developped out of the foundation of the university, the city was quite badly destroyed by the allied bombing during World War Two. The city was generally rebuilt in the post war, GDR era including a shiny glass tower in the middle of they city built in the 1970s, which complements the less aesthetically pleasing tower blocks built on the outskirts. After the tour, I went to Christin's Private Tuition where I helped a bit. In the evening, after having something to eat, we went back to Christin's Parents' in preparation for our trip to Dresden on the following day!

So, as I said previously (one sentence previously in fact!), Wednesday saw our trip to Dresden. Christin's Dad accompanied us on this trip. We did a double decker bus trip of the city; for two main reasons, primarily because it saved us having to drive around it in a car, and it told us more about the places in Dresden than we would have been able to find out from just driving around. Following the 90 minutes we spent on the bus, we then went on a walking tour which lasted about another 90 minutes. The walking tour took us around the Zwinger, the Opera House, and the Parade of Saxon emperors. Following the guided tours, Christin's Dad and I went for a walk by the river, and looked at the Frauenkirche, which was severely bombed out by the allies in the Valentine's Day raid of 1945. It was left as rubble by the GDR as a monument to comemorate the people killed in the bombing raid. There was another reason for this; the Government didn't have enough money to replace it. Following the fall of the East German Government it was decided that it would be rebuilt. It was rebuilt using a lot of the rubble from the original cathedral. They used a complicated computer programme to work out where the blocks came from on the original Cathedral, and replaced them in their original places. You can see this in my pictures, for which I'll post the link later! After a very nice day in Dresden, we went back to Christin's Parents' and I made sure I'd packed everything I needed for the flight back to the UK on the following day.

So Friday arrived, and was my last day in the Federal Republic before the Easter holidays. I was to fly back from Altenburg with Ryanair. I will comment on Ryanair later, but first let me describe Altenburg airport. To put it into context, Saarbruecken has 4 gates; A-D, Altenburg has 1, not called A, or 1; instead simply called The Gate (except in German, obviously!). The taxiway to the runway seemed to be poorly laid concrete slabs, slightly uneven, and in need of a little bit more cement in places! This stems from the days when Altenburg was a Soviet Airbase, which was closed off to the population from the area. Now back to Ryanair! Now I'd heard horror stories about Ryanair, mainly from the press, and watching Rhod Gilbert too much! That said, they met all three of the compulsory conditions which I require from an airline; 1) They took off [on time], 2) the plane stayed in the air, 3) the plane landed [in the right place], and what's more my luggage arrived in Stansted at the same time as me! So, I can't really fault them.
From Stansted, I caught an Easybus, which is an orange minibus, which cost me more to pay by credit card, than for the ticket itself! The journey took me to Baker Street, from where I went to Paddington and left my luggage in the left luggage office. From there I went to the British Museum, because it was open until late, and free, and then about half seven I returned to Paddington, collected my case, got some food, and then boarded the First Great Western train to Chippenham, and by 22.00 I was back in Chippenham, and 15 minutes later I was at home!

So, as I promised, here's the link for my photos from this trip. Click me. There will be another blog entry next week about my relatively painless journey back to Saarbruecken, and my first week back at school! See you soon!

Chapter 26 - Nearly the holidays again!

2010-03-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Monday 8th - Sunday 14th March

So, this time I decided I would be more punctual, and I'm actually writing this in a computer room at school on Wednesday. This means that I won't have so much to write on Sunday! As the title suggests, it is nearly the holidays again - I only have one week left of school before my Easter holidays. The school holidays start in two weeks, but I'm going to spend a week with Christin, my German assistant from when I was at school (some three years ago now!), before I go (or come, depending on where you're reading this) home to good ol' blighty!

So far, this week has been pretty average. Monday was a busy day with a whole two lessons, and little else! Tuesday was somewhat more manic at the Gesamtschule, I had to take two cover lessons for the Schuldirektor (one of which I was prepared for, the other was sprung on me with the worst class (not ability-wise, but behaviour-wise)). With the unexpected, and as such unplanned, class I came to an agreement which, whilst not being the most condusive to learning English, meant that I could do English with some of the class, because otherwise, put simply, nothing gets done, except the hoarsening of my voice! So the compromise/agreement we came to was that they could either do their homework or play English games. This actually seemed to work, because they were aware that if they didn't do either they'd be copying out the Hausordnung (Code of Conduct/School Rules) at least 3 times.

Tuesday afternoon I had quite a bit planned - well two things really - meeting up with my tandem partner (with whom I practise my German, and she practises her English), and a private lesson. As is usual, these plans fell through within about five minutes of each other. The others had planned an afternoon in Völklingen, so I thought I would join them there. We had all intended to climb up to the top of the steelworks to enjoy the view - instead we got distracted by an interesting exhibition about the brain, memory and senses. It was quite interesting, and not what I expected. I had to leave Voelklingen just before the others went up the steelworks because my private lesson had been re-arranged for later in the evening.

So, here we are on Wednesday, which presently appears to be pretty standard - normal school lessons, normal weather, and even the buses are running normally punctual! We shall see if anything exciting develops, and I'll add it on Sunday!

Where was I? It's now Sunday, and I'm writing this at on my bed, after having watched the Bahrain Grand Prix on RTL and a few episodes of Yes, Minister too! So, what happened between Wednesday and now? Not a huge amount; a few things, but not a lot particularly exciting!

Wednesday evening I went out with Esther, and as usual, it went on longer than foreseen, i.e. we met about 3.30 and I caught the last bus of the night home again at 00.17 Thursday morning. Somehow though, I felt better after having less sleep than normal, and was fresher and more alert in the morning. That said, this is not a method I plan on introducing on too regular a basis! Friday was not an overly exciting day, I did the washing, I wrote some more of my essay, and I watched a bit of TV, that was pretty much it really! Saturday involved a pretty lazy morning, and then meeting Harriet in town in the afternoon for a drink! Sunday, as I said previously, has been spent watching the Bahrain Grand Prix on RTL, in German, which was interesting - but there's so many new teams, it took a while to get my head around it!

What does next week hold? My last week of school before Easter, and the preparations for my trip to Jena; at the moment, not a huge amount is planned - but we shall see what develops!

Chapter 25 - Two for One!

2010-03-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

Monday 22nd February - Sunday 7th March

As the title suggests, this entry is rather like a supermarket promotion. You're getting two weeks worth of blog for the price of one entry! The simple reason for this is, as usual, I forgot! Luckily, I didn't do too much over these past couple of weeks; so this shouldn't be too long a read for you!

So, where did we leave the story? I'd just returned from Berlin, where I had a fantastic half-term. The first week back at school entailed a massive timetable upheaval (in that I swapped the days I worked at the schools), but once I'd got my head round it, it was a doddle! This half-year's timetable isn't quite as student friendly as the last one - I have 1 early start, and 3 starts in lesson 2. This means more early mornings, but as always, there is a plus side - I finish work by the fourth lesson on every day!

The rest of the first week was pretty much spent chasing my tail, trying to catch up on planning my lessons for my private students, and preparing for a project on addiction at the Gymnasium.

On Wednesday of the first week, we all headed out to Saarlouis to have dinner with Jenny, one of the assistants, who was leaving at the weekend to begin her next half-year placement in Paris. We went to a nice italian restaurant, and it was a very good evening. It was only slightly dampened by the driver of Bus 404 who decided that it was perfectly to stop at the Bus Station (not just any bus stop) for a mere 5 seconds, and then to drive off like a maniac despite the group of people running for his bus. Still, I got the chance to practise my complaining skills in German - and, touch wood, they seem to have been relatively successful.

On Saturday we saw sunshine - real unhidden, unblemished sunshine - it was really there! I could hardly believe it! Still, I soon realised that the appearance of the sun had had a similar effect on most other people. I went in to town to meet up with the others, and found that every man, woman, child, and all their dogs were in town enjoying the sun, and clogging up the main street. On Saturday, we organised our future weekend trips away, and we decided upon: Munich, Freiburg/Basel, and Lille. So keep your eye's peeled for those, although they're not until after the Easter holidays, which are remarkably close! Then we ended up stuck in Sarreguemines because Saarbahn decided that les Francais don't need a half-hourly service after 16.00 to Saarbruecken!

That was a brief summary of what I did duringg the first week - I may have done more, but nothing particularly memorable!

The second week, on the face of it, has a similar level of excitingness (I may have created this word, but can't be bothered to check!). The schooldays themselves were pretty normal except for Wednesday.

Wednesday saw the beginning of the 10. Klasse (Year 11) English project on addictions. This meant I had a full day of lessons (Periods 1-6), which is something almost unheard of for me. Never mind, though, I managed to cope! The students spent the whole day working on a mini-presentation on the topic of Alcholism, through which we guided them, and gave them support/advice. They now have to work on a series of other addictions over the next two weeks and produce some sort of handout, presentation and vocab sheet, which will help prepare them for their exam, as well as providing useful presenting skills - which, as anyone who has been through second year at Bath will know, are vital!

Friday was the other interesting day of this week - a trip to Heidelberg. Firstly, let me make reference to the weather; it was a fresh day (i.e. not terribly warm), but the sun was shining and that made all the difference. Looking at the weather forecast for Saarbruecken when I write this tells me that it's going to get down to -11 tonight - I may have to dig out the thick coat again! Anyway, back to Heidelberg, it is a very pretty city, especially the Old Town area, and the views from the Castle on the side of the valley are just fantastic. You could really see for kilometres (or miles if you refuse to me metricised!).

The weekend was used, sort of, to do household chores - i.e. cleaning up my room, doing the washing, and cleaning the bathroom - I know how to live!

Back to the topic of weather, it has snowed again - now I though we had got past the snow, but it would appear not. I'm a little sick of the white stuff, and have developed a nervous twitch in my fist when someone says "isn't it pretty/fun?".

At present, next week doesn't seem to be too interesting at the moment, but I'll see what I can do! We shall see!

Chapter 24 - BERLIN!!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-26T01:57:00.000-08:00

Monday 15th - Sunday 21st February

In case the title hadn't made it clear enough for you, I was in Berlin for this week! I had high expectations for this trip, and was about as far from being disappointed as it's possible to be! Refelcting on it, I would say that it currently holds, with quite a secure lead, first place in the list of my favourite pplaces I've visited in Germany! To revert briefly to my native westcountry - t'wer brilliant!

Now, an apology, for those regular readers of this blog, you'll notice this entry is slightly late (by about 5 days!). There is actually a relatively good reason for this; during the week in Berlin i had no access to internet, nor any will to do anything for school - I preferred spending the time with my parents and exploring a fantastic city. Consequently I have spent this first week back at school chasing my tail, trying to get on top of everything - which I have now managed!

So, my journey to Berlin started on Monday, at 15.45. I had to catch a bus to the airport, which runs every two hours and was free, seeing as I'm a student! The bus journey got be in about 20 minutes later, leading me to be at the airport at 16.05. The flight didn't leave for another two and three-quarter hours, but as people who know me will testify, I do have a rather annoying habit of turning up ridiculously early! So I was waiting at Saarbruecken Airport; which is Saarland's only international airport. It is effectively a barn with a runway! The terminal is a metal hangar-like construction, with 10 check-in desks; serving all four of the companies that use it, there are four gates; A-D, and one cafe pre-security, and one post-security! Check-in for my flight opened two hours before the flight, so checked in and went to go through the security area. I, stupidly, forgot I had a pocket full of loose change which had to be emptied out into a tray! I still set the detector off, and had my shoes x-rayed too (maybe I was walking too gingerly!). Once through the security area, I sat in the gate and could see the plane - it was no more than about 200 metres away. Yet, when the time came to board, they sent a bus to collect us and take us the short distance from the terminal to the tin bird.

The take-off and cruising of the flight were good, I'd forgotten how exciting it is to be taken up to 20,000 feet in a metal sausage with arms! We made good time too, we arrived in Berlin Tegel after 45 minutes, instead of the scheduled 75 minutes. Now when it came to the landing of the flight, I think the pilot forgot that he was flying a jet-liner not a harrier jump-jet, and that a Boeing 737 is not designed to land vertically. At least my spine thought that when it was bashed around! Maybe he was eager to get home to Mrs. Pilot - who knows!

At the airport, once I'd waited for my suitcase at the carousel, and then walked through the, obviously empty, customs (it was an internal flight, and whilst Saarland has had a checkered histroy as part of Germany, there are no trade restrictions these days!), where I met Sarah. Sarah is a friend from uni, who has the (mis)fortune to live in Calne, near Chippenham in Wiltshire. From there we headed back to her flat in the south of Berlin. (Tegel finds itself in the North West). I got the chance to experience Berlin's public transport in most of its forms; a bus, then a short trip on the U-Bahn, followed by a stint on the S-Bahn. I spent the night at Sarah's because the hostel was booked from the following night, when my parents would be there too!

The Tuesday was the day of my parents arrival in Berlin, and the first time I would really see Berlin in daylight. The first thing we did was to go and find the hostel and get it sorted, so I could leave my suitcase there. This meant travelling right across the city towards Alexanderplatz, which lies in the shadow of the Fernsehturm (TV Tower). The hostel wasn't too far away from that, and was fit for purpose, once all the beds had been made up! From the hostel, we Sarah offered to show me the main sites of Berlin, after we'd had some lunch! So we headed back to Alexanderplatz for a pizza and then walked down the main boulevard in central Berlin, Unter den Linden. On this walk we saw a lot of historic and interesting buildings/building sites! The first thing that you notice is the Fernsehturm, unless your visually impaired or looking at your feet. The tower was built to wave, an almost literal, two fingers at the West Germans. It was a symbol of East Germany's technological advances. There is a viewing platform and a restaurant at the top, which was rather expensive to go up to! After the Fernsehturm, you notice the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), so called because, rather unsurprisingly, it's built of red bricks! Walking along towards the Brandenburger Tor (the most obvious image of Berlin),we passed many other old and interesting buildings, like the Cathedral, the site of the Palast der Republik, which is being rebuilt as the original Berlin Castle. After crossing the, frozen, Spree we passed the Humboldt, the memorial to the Burning of the Books, the embassies of Russia, the UK, France, and the USA before arriving at the Brandenburg Gate. From there, we went to the Reichstag Building, with its dome designed by Norman Foster. After taking pictures of it in the snow, we headed over to Potsdamer Platz, and the Sony Centre, which is a remarkable new-age construction. On the way, we paused and reflected upon the Holocaust Monument, which is worth a look, just because of what it symbolises. After taking in the Sony Centre, we went for a coffee, before running an erand for Sarah. When that was done, it was time to head over to Schoenefeld Airport to collect Mum & Dad. Now, the hostel had provided directions on how to get from the Airport to Alexanderplatz,so I thought I would follow them in reverse, which turned out to be a bad decision, as a few days earlier, the Berlin Transport Group had re-routed one of their S-Bahn trains. This meant I needed to get a Regional Train to the airport. I caught a train which would give me plenty of time to get to the airport and find them, except that my train took it upon itself to stop in the middle of nowhere for abotu 20 minutes, just to add to the tension I think! Anyway, when I arrived, it turned out that their flight, too, had arrived in Berlin early and they were already waiting for me! So, we then caught the train back into Berlin and headed back to the hostel, where we put our heads down for a relatively early night!

Wednesday arrived, and was the first whole day my parents had spent in Berlin. For this reason, I thought it would be nice if I took them on a similar walk to the one me and Sarah had undertaken the previous day. Fear not, though, dear reader, I won't repeat it all again! So, it was going well until we got to the Reichstag building, where it turned out Dad's sugar was a bit low, despite having had a sugary drink not too long previously. We walked on slowly, after giving him some more high-sugar drink, where, after about 250 metres, he began to suffer from a hypoglycaemic attack (a hypo). This causes him to lose control of his muscles, and for them to spasm uncontrollably. We tried giving him more high sugar drink, and some "Hypostop" (basically a very sugary gel, which acts quickly and gets sugar into the blood). None of these were having the right effect, and people were starting to become concerned. At this point, when there was nothing more I could do, and the stuff we'd tried had had no noticeable effect, someone called an ambulance for him. The ambulance arrived after about 10 minutes, just before which a doctor on her way home passed by, to see if he was OK. The ambulance crew, who it turned out, were part of the army, gave him some clugose solution intra-veinously, and then needed to take him to hospital (it's a legal requirement, because the ambulance crews are effectively technicians and need their treatment to be signed off by a doctor). So we all went to one of Berlin's hospitals where we met a Captain. Dr. someone, who wanted to run a series of tests, which weren't really necessary, so Dad discharged himself, and we headed off to get some dinner. This was, needless to say, some excitement I hadn't planned on, and wasn't part of my itinerary!

So after the excitement of Wednesday, we decided to try and do a vaguely DDR themed day. The day started with a visit to the Soviet Monument, which is in Tiergarten. After the wall had gone up, two Soviet Soldiers would march out and stand guard over the Soviet Monument, which was in the American section of the city. Following that, we climbed up to the top of the dome on the Reichstag building and enjoyed some fantastic views out across the city. Following looking at that, we headed over to the DDR Museum, which was quite interesting, but more so because I had my parents there, who were able to give me an insight into how similar living conditions were for them. Albeit without the threat of the Stasi and overbearing government control, but in terms of how the houses were equipped, they were pretty much the same to houses that the grew up in. After that, we had some lunch, before heading off to Checkpoint Charlie, which I know isn't the original one, but thought it would be a nice addition to the DDR Day. We took some photos of it, and then we headed off into the back end of East Berlin to visit the Stasi museum. This museum, I thought, wasn't quite as interesting as it could have been, it seemed to lack information on how the Stasi worked, and the sort of effect it had on ordinary Germans living within the confines of the DDR. Moreover, it was nigh on impossible to find, as it was in a courtyard, in a relatively anonymous building (probably the intention really!).

Friday was a day, in which my Dad wanted to be impressed by some sort of important building. So, we started gently, with Museuminsel (Museum Island), which is largely under restoration, or scaffolding (naturally!). From there we headed over to Gendarmenmarkt, where there was an interesting exhibition about the journey to German democracy in the Deutscher Dom there. The French Dome is used for religous meetings for francophone synods. From there, though I decided we would head out of the city a little, and we went to Schloss Charlottenburg, which was a very ornate, imposing, and impressive building both on the outside and on the inside. We spent a few hours there taking in the building, and some of the history of the building, which was interesting. From there, we headed back into more central Berlin, to see Schloss Bellevue, which is the Presidential Residence (rather like the White House). It looked quite impressive in the dusk light, when we saw it. Following that, we headed for dinner, and a beer or two, before contemplating our exciting trip to Colditz on the following day!

So, Saturday arrived with a bite! We left the hostel quite early and armed with a Schoenes-Wochenende Ticket, we began our journey to Colditz. The first journey involved a train to Falkenberg, from where we had a connection with a train to Leipzig, from where wed had another connection to Grossbothen, from where there was a bus to Colditz! The journey itself was relatively uneventful going this way, it took just over 4 and a half hours in total, but it was worth it as it was one of the few places I really wanted to visit during my time in Germany. When you arrive in Colditz, you have to walk a little bit before you can see the Castle. But when you get to the river, you can see it standing rather imposingly above the town. From there, all that's left to do is to walk up to it! When we got there, we went in and had a look around the museum, which was genuinely fascinating. It detailed the majority of escape attempts from the supposedly insecapable POW camp. It is something I would highly recommend. Along with going on the tour, which the lady in the ticket office didn't tell us about. On the tour, you got taken to to different areas of the castle, which are not normally open to the public. After we'd finished at Colditz, we headed down into the town, and had a coffee before heading back to the bus stop to begin our journey home. The first part of the journey to Leipzig was OK. When we arrived in Leipzig we went to an italian restaurant and had a very nice pasta meal together, before returning to the Hauptbahnhof for the train to Rosslau (Elbe). This train was double decker, and seemed to have real difficulties going over points; indeed, the first time it went over them I wasn't sure it hadn't become derailed. It was juddery, very noisy (almost like it was falling to bits!), and slightly concerning too! The journey back from Rosslau suffered from a similar ailment! Still, at least it stopped me falling asleep! We arrived back in Berlin at about half eleven, when we returned to our Hostel and put our heads on our pillows!

So Sunday, the last day of the Berlin Extravaganza. We had to be out of the hostel by 10, which wasn't too much of a problem. We packed everything up and then headed to the station, where we left our luggage in the locker, and headed off to Berlin Zoo. It was only, originally, planned to spend the morning going around the zoo, however when we got there, it was plain to see why it would be easily possible to spend a whole day there. We spent the morning looking around some of the animals, for example the gorillas who seemed to have fallen out with each other, and the lions who were sleeping (quite senisbly!). But for me the highlight of the zoo was seeing Polar Bears, which I don't recall ever having seen before The afternoon we spent looking around the aquarium, which was equally as interesting. We left the zoo about half three, and headed back to Alexanderplatz, where we partook in a coffee, and reclaimed our luggage. Mum & Dad then got on the train to the airport, and I headed off to the bus to Tegel (which went from about 200 metres away). I estimate we probably arrived at about our respective airports at roughly the same time, but they had to wait another 1 after me until their scheduled departure time. At Tegel it was all very easy, I checked in almost as soon as I'd had something to eat, and went through the security checks without any problems at all. Then I had to sit and watch for my aeroplane to arrive, which it did in due course. We boarded and left punctually (very German), and on this plane there were computer screens which told you where you were, how fast you were going and when you would arrive. It also provided computer generated images of what you could see out of the windows on both sides, which I thought was very interesting and far more advanced than anything I remember from previous flights. The flight itself took about 1 hour, we seemed to have more of a headwind, which took us a little longer. The landing, this time, was, to quote the Air Stewardess, "Enthusiastic" - which is a euphamism for too fast, and bouncy! From the airport, I had to get a taxi, seeing as the buses had stopped running some four hours before. I was home by about 11 and in bed by half 11.

So, what about Mum & Dad, well, they weren't quite so fortunate. Because of snow in Switzerland (!) they hadn't left Berlin by the time I had made it home and was on my computer. They arrived very late the following morning, and my sister had to wait to pick them up from Bristol Airport.

To conclude this rather epic blog entry then, Berlin is a fantastic city, and a week definitely isn't enough time! There are soooo many interesting things to see & do there, that I had to prioritise as it was - as such Berlin is definitely on my list of places to go back to (although not this year, it's too expensive to get there again - it's, ironically, cheaper to fly there from Bristol than Saarbruecken.

So, now the blog is done, I can get up and have a shower and some breakfast! The next blog entry concerns itself with the first week back at school, and me chasing my tail to try and catch up with everything! I'll try and make it a little more puenktlich!

Chapter 23 - The last week of term

2010-02-14T12:03:00.000-08:00

Monday 8th - Sunday 14th February

As the title suggests, or in fact explicitly states, this week is the last week of term before the half-term holidays. The holidays mark the changeover point in my year abroad. Not in that I'm moving countries, simply that after the holidays I'm changing the days at which I work at my schools. This is quite exciting because I will get to work with some different classes, and have a different timetable! The only downside was the organising of the new timetable - primarily because it meant I had to chase teachers down; finding out when they were teaching English. But, nevertheless (which, for some bizarre reason I wrote as three words on my first attempt!), I managed to sort it out, and my timetable isn't too bad; no days scheduled to finish after 4th lesson, and only one early start a week!

So, what have I been up to this week? Not a huge amount during the week - a couple of private lessons, a tandem meeting, and having a few drinks with friends! Also we sowed the seeds of some longer journeys we may go on, but more about those when they've popped their heads out of the "wouldn't it be nice to go to...?" phase, and they enter the "Planning" phase! Needless to say, it could be quite an exciting three months!

Thursday saw the beginning of the exodus (by exodus, I'm referring to the four British Assistants who are leaving Saarland to its own devices for a week). Harriet headed off to Marseille, via Paris. As we're beginning to expect when Harriet tries to go anywhere, her train was late, and she missed her connection in Paris, but SNCF being reasonable sat her in First Class on the next TGV to Aix-en-Provence!

Saturday saw a day trip to Worms; which, for the record, is not so named because of any link to a blackbird's favourite meal. Worms, it has been argued, and is still being argued, is the oldest city in Germany. Whether or not this is the case, to me is somewhat irrelevant, for Worms does have a couple of 'claims to fame' without the need to be recognised as the oldest city. The first and, probably, most famous reason for its historical importance is its links to Martin Luther. Those of you who are not up to date on the Reformation or the foundations of the Lutherian Church may think I'm talking about the dream-filled American Human Rights campaigner, if you are thinking that....you are wrong! The American was Martin Luther King, the famous German Christian reformist was Martin Luther! So, back to the story, Luther was called before the Diet of Worms (a sort of religious court for the Catholic Church) to defend books that he had written, and opinions that he held regarding the need to reform the Church. In case you hadn't noticed, the Reformation isn't my strongest area of German History, so I shall provide a link to a Wikipedia Page, which explains the Diet of Worms better and more eloquently than I can! Yer t'iz
The other reason Worms is famous, or well-known, is because it is the home of the oldest Jewish Cemetry. Worms used to have one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany, if not the whole of Europe (excluding Russia). The Jews suffered in Worms, as they did all over Germany, on Kristallnacht (9th November 1938). The Synagogues were destroyed, the Jewish cemetery was desecrated, Jewish business were robbed, and trashed, Jews' homes were pillaged, vandalised, and, quite often, set ablaze. Following Kristallnacht, life for Jews became increasingly unbearable in Germany - as I'm sure everyone's aware! After the war, the Jewish population in Worms had been reduced by a huge percentage, and to this day remains very small.
Here endeth the History lesson!

Worms was a nice city really, with a charm, which I can't quite describe or put my finger on! Navigation around Worms was made somewhat challenging by the fact that the tourist information centre was closed on Saturdays (arguably the day when a city would get the most visitors!). This left us navigating my signs with maps on them, which was fine - you simply headed in the rough direction, and when you came upon the next sign, you adjusted your route if necessary! But, on the whole it wasn't too bad to find our way round! I would dispute one thing that Worms advertised about their city - they gave the impression that Worms had a nice promenade along the banks of the Rhine. This, I feel, might be the case if you worked for Wincanton logistics, or had a penchant for the smell of petrol refineries! There was, however, a nice bridge over the Rhine with a castle gatehouse on the Worms end. This bridge was closed though, because it was too dangerous to cross. The new bridge now takes the strain of the traffic leaving Rheinland-Pfalz and heading to Hessen.

After walking back to the centre of Worms, we decided to head back to Saarbruecken, but stop off in Ludwigshafen on the way, to see what was there, while we were out in that direction! There was, it turns out, a Hall in Ludwigshafen called Bugger. The Hauptbahnhof is situated a far away from the city centre, and is surrounded by big hotels. So, after a somewhat disappointing visit there, we got on the train to Kaiserslautern, where we would have half an hour before the train back to Saarbruecken. Now, we thought we would go and find a cafe where we could get a coffee and keep warm. We were somehow out of luck - there is a cafe that's open on Sunday, but not Saturday afternoons! So, we found a machine in the station that sold hot chocolates, in which we partook, before catching the train back to Saarbruecken.

Sunday, the day of St. Valentine, was spent packing a suitcase and getting organised for my evacuation of Saarbruecken. I am spending the half-term holiday in Berlin, where I will meet a friend from Bath, and where my parents are coming over on Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it for a multitude of reasons; it'll be the first time I've been on an aeroplane in years, it's BERLIN (that should need no further explanation!), also there's a day trip to Colditz planned too! All in all - it should be a fantastic week - and I'll be sure to take lots of photos, and have plenty to say about it - so brace yourself for a ridiculously long entry next week! Until then, adieu my friends, and adieu Saarbruecken!

Chapter 22 - Nearly the holidays again!

2010-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

Monday 1st - Sunday 7th February

As the title suggests, it is, indeed, nearly time for the holidays again! It doesn't seem like I've been back at work very long at all to be honest, and certainly I haven't been to many places! I have only got one week until the holidays arrive, during which I shall be heading to the Berlin, which I'm very much looking forward to!

School was pretty standard this week. One of my 7. Klasse at the Gesamtschule have now been divided from a class of 31 to classes of 15 and 16, which is apparently a 'normal' class size for languages. The teachers were somewhat surprised to discover that 31 was a pretty average class size when I learnt French at school!

I have also begun to to undertake some private tuition. The reasons for this are two-fold; the primary reason (seeing as I live in a capitalist society) is financial gain - I offer my services and receive money. The second, somewhat less fiscal reason, is that it gives me something to do in the evenings. One of my students is a trainee English teacher, and the other a psychology student from the uni. It's nice to get to meet some new people, and certainly from the teacher learn some new things myself (e.g. teaching methods, materials etc.).

The Gymnasium at which I work held its Tag der offenen Tuer (Open Day) on Saturday, which involved me being at work for 8 in the morning! I shan't discuss my thoughts about holding open days on a Saturday on here again, those of you have read this blog up until this point, will undoubtedly be bored by them! I was able to actually teach a lesson on Open Day. I taught a 6. Klasse (Year 7 equivalent), who had only been learning English since September. It was an eye-opening lesson; the kids were pretty much able to understand everything I said, and the lesson was conducted wholly in English for my part - something of a difference to the Gesamtschule, where they are able to understand a fair bit, but they have been learning English for one year longer, and are probably not as good! What was also interesting about Open Day was the different amounts of effort the teachers went to in terms of deciding what to wear! The Schuldirektor (Headmaster) had a suit and tie on, other teachers had also dressed up a bit (i.e. suit without tie), some had dressed as if it were a normal day (shirt and jeans), and others had got up, gone "It's Saturday, all my work clothes are in the wash, where are my DIY clothes?" (Naturally they would have said this in German, but as it's a ficitious, imagined occurence, I shall allow you the ease of having it in English).

Following the Open Day, I met up with Claire and Esther and we had a nose around the Art Gallery in Saarbruecken. This was OK, there were certain things that were eye-catching, interesting, some more traditional works of art, and some that I could have done (and I missed the artisticly talented gene when I came onto this Earth - my sister seemed to get my share!). Following the art gallery we headed for lunch in the city, and had a drink there, when we heard that Will was coming into Saarbruecken to watch the rugby at the Irish Pub. So, we thought we'd do the friendly thing and tag along! So, the evening was spent watching the England v. Wales match in the Irish Pub, drinking some Stowford Press Cider! Those of you who know me, will know that Sport wouldn't be my Mastermind Specialist Subject. However I learnt more about the rules of rugby in that one evening than from the 5 years of compulsory PE I did at school. The key principle, which, to be fair, I did already know, is that you run forwards and through backwards. If you have the ball, it's a good idea not to stand still as there are likely to be some rugby players with the finesse and elegance of a Tomahawk cruise missile homing in on you! Still, the result was approved by the majority of the pub (mainly English and Irish ex-pats, who took the mick out of the sole Welshman there). One thing that did become apparent is that during the time when Wales had the ball, Jones and Williams stood a good chance of having posession!

Sunday was a day spent tidying my room, I decided that it needed doing, and as everything is closed on sundays I set about it. It actually didn't take as long as I had envisaged, and so I had intended on writing this blog entry then, but just forgot about it, so here it is, slightly late again!

Coming up next week, is the day trip to Worms, and the preparations for my week in Berlin during the holidays!

Chapter 21 - On we go...

2010-01-31T01:35:00.000-08:00

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?

Chapter 20 - Normality continued

2010-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

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!)

Chapter 19 - Returning to Normality

2010-01-23T07:07:00.000-08:00

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!

Chapter 18 - First week back!

2010-01-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

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.

Chapter 17 - Back to Germany

2010-01-10T02:34:00.000-08:00

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...

Chapter 16 - Homeward Bound

2009-12-28T08:54:00.001-08:00

Coming home on the 18th December

Firstly, may I apologise for the tardiness of this entry - this is due to a number of reasons; Christmas, fatigue, having a poor memory and working long hours filling Morrisons' shelves with alcohol. But it's here now, and I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas, and as we hurtle towards 2010 (already a tenth of the way through a century!), let me wish you a very Happy New Year! So, if you're sitting comfortably, I shall begin...

The journey home was to take about 10 hours from start to finish, about 5 of which would be spent on trains, and the rest loitering without intent. Was it a simple and straightforward journey....err...don't be silly - when does anything go as smoothly as I plan it?

I had planned on getting up at 5.30 in the morning, but for some reason I decided at 5 o'clock that 5 would be fine! My train didn't leave until 8, but I had to catch the bus to the train station at 7, so had to leave my house about 6.45. I still had a few odds and sods to get finished in the morning ; packing the last few things, sorting out my bedding, basically making sure the room was completely clean. Having completed all of my pre-departure jobs, and checked I still had my tickets, passport, keys, and suitcase (although I'd have to be rather muppet-like to forget this!), I left the house and walked to the bus stop. The first thing that struck me, as I stepped out of my house for the last time for a couple of weeks, was...how bloody cold it was! It was truly freezing! Whilst waiting for the bus I kept walking around to try and warm up a bit - it didn't really work, but it may have helped minutely! The bus was, as per usual, a few minutes, which was the reason I had caught the one an hour before my train; which would give me 40 minutes at the station instead of ten. Nevertheless, about five minutes later I saw the trusty 121 ambling up the hill, winding its merry way to the Hauptbahnhof (which is a word I've used so many times during this blog, that even non-Germanists will understand what it means!).

The bus arrived at the Hauptbahnhof a mere three minutes late; such is the combination of the skill of the driver, and, more importantly, the fact that only two other people got on all the way to the station. This meant that I had about 35 minutes at the station, which meant I had enough time to go and buy a coffee; somewhat necessary considering the time I got up in the morning. At the station I met up with Claire and Lucy who were both catching the 08.00 ICE from Saarbruecken to Paris, calling at Forbach (which is possibly the least important town in France to be served by a TGV station!). At Paris we were all going back by Eurostar, but we'd managed to book 3 different ones!

The journey to Paris started with a sense of foreboding tardiness...the train was to be about 10 minutes late into Saarbruecken, which wouldn't be a problem as we all had at least 45 minutes in Paris to travel to the Eurostar Terminal. On the train, I exchanged a "bonjour" with a member of the Police Aux Frontières (PAF for short; French Border Police arm of the National Police), as they walked through the train looking for anyone who looks to be both un-French, and un-European! The PAF alight at Forbach and, I presume, wait for the ICE going the other way and do the whole thing again! The journey to Paris started OK, but as we got further into France, the snow thickened, and the snowfall was increasing. Both of these combined meant that our train had to cover substantial parts of the journey at a reduced speed. (I suppose that it's difficult to clear thick snow off of the windscreen at 230km/h, and braking may be slightly impeded by the ice too!)

It was on our way to Paris that I found out that we would overtake Harriet on our journey home. Harriet had left on Thursday, and had planned to fly from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, however the snow had a much more catastrophic effect on planes and airports than on trains. As such, she didn't fly home until the Saturday; so in effect her journey took 3 days. So, whilst snow might look nice and pretty, and you might dream of a White Christmas; please spare a thought for those who are travelling and who may be stranded!

As we approached our scheduled arrival time in Paris an announcement came out over the tannoy explaining that we would be about 30 minutes late arriving into Paris. This was reassuring, because at 09.50 (the scheduled arrival time), we were still in the middle of the countryside...and I've only been to Paris a couple of times, but I remember it wasn't that green! Their prediction did prove to be relatively accurate, and the train did pull itself (for you grammar freaks; note the inappropriate use of a reflexive verb there - and then note the uncaring look on my face!) into Paris Est at about 10.20. This wasn't too much of an issue for me because my Eurostar didn't leave until 12.15. Claire had even more time, so was going to explore the French Capital a bit before she went home; so we sorted her out with maps, and a day ticket for the public transport network (not all of which was on strike surprisingly; given the proximity to Christmas!).

The journey from Paris Est to Paris Gare du Nord was a journey that, according to Google Maps, was 600m long. This meant it was walkable; indeed walking was a damn site more preferable than heaving my case down to the underground metro station, forcing my way onto a train filled with Parisians and then heaving it upstairs again about 2 minutes later. For the sake of 5-10 minutes I walked; with my hand-drawn map - which looks like I was drunk when I did it...which I wasn't!

Arriving at Gare du Nord, I had forgotten something else that is quit prevalent in Paris; beggars, who try and guilt-trip you into donating - by asking first of all - "Do you speak English?". In all honesty, it was easier to reply to them in German than English anyway - their English may have been at an equal standard to mine. Leaving them behind, I strode confidently into Paris Gare du Nord station. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "How hard can it be?" - I've been to train stations before, I've crossed national borders before, I've caught trains across international frontiers before, I've even caught the Eurostar before (about 6 years ago and from Waterloo to Lille)...so given that I had accomplished all four of the above criteria I imagined it wouldn't be very hard....I was wrong! My first mistake had been striding too confidently into the station - it turned out, later, I had walked right past the Eurostar ticket office. The queue for which was loooooooong and had only one cashier working it! I wasn't entirely sure this was where I wanted to be, so I waited for a bit, in a stationary position, before digging out the relevant paperwork from my bag, and reading through the whole blurb accompanying the booking reference. The blurb directed me to check-in, where I would find some automatic machines for collecting my ticket. So, I left the queue, not that I'd gained any space, and headed off in search of the check-in. This, I found eventually, after walking aimlessly for a bit, in search of a Eurostar logo. The check-in procedure itself is not too time-consuming. You hand in your ticket to the person at the counter, who then waves you through to more PAF (my second lot today), who had a rather thorough look at my passport, who then wave you onto to the UKBA (or whatever they call themselves these days!), who, after a much briefer passport check, wave you onto the Douanes. Regular readers of this blog will know that I've had a couple of encounters with the Douanes already. I was about to have my third! After passing through the UK Border Agency control, you have to walk through a metal detector and put your bags through an x-ray machine, but you're not allowed to have the following things on your person: mobile phone (I had 2), MP3 Player, Cameras, Keys, Memory Stick, or coins - all of these had to be put in your bag...which, if you're like me, was pretty full already! Nevertheless I complied with these regulations and walked through the metal detector, which buzzed, so I took off my coat (metal poppers) and walked through again - I buzzed again. The Douane at the detector suddenly had an evil glint in her eye - out comes the wand (that genuinely isn't a euphemism!) and then I have it waved over me to try and pinpoint the metal - which narrows it down to my belt (which, I wasn't planning on removing). Still, not entirely satisfied, she decides that I need to be frisked, which she does while I look do my best star impression. After this search reveals nothing, I'm allowed to continue. Why didn't I put up a fuss I know you're thinking to yourself - the answer is very simple - I was in France, she was a French person in authority - you should never rise up against them...they like nothing more than to be more annoying and disruptive than is actually necessary, which they will do if you argue with them.

So, after surviving yet another encounter of the less than pleasant kind on the French frontier, I head to waiting room B, where there are no seats left. This isn't a problem - having lived in Germany for four months, the next thing I do is almost natural now. Seeing there were no seats, and that we were scheduled to embark in about 20 minutes, I went along to the door to the station and waited until it was time! After about 15 minutes an announcement comes over the PA system informing us that embarkation will be delayed by about 15 minutes because of the late arrival of the train. Ah, well, I had about two and a half hours in London to get from St. Pancras to Paddington - I wasn't too concerned. Indeed, after about 15 minutes we were allowed to get on our trains. It's worth boring you with one fact about the Eurostar - the whole train is about 1/4 mile in length - which is fine, unless, like me, you're in coach 3 - which felt like it was pretty much in Lille anyway! Still, having eventually got on the train, and found my seat, I got into my book and waited for departure. We left about 15 minutes late (at least Eurostar are consistent), and were told that we would probably have another 20-25 minutes added onto our journey because of speed restrictions that had been imposed because of the bad weather.

We left Paris in a northerly direction and were soon heading out towards St. Pancras International racing through the gloriously white French countryside. All was well, or so I thought! All of a sudden the train started braking quite sharply - not at an emergency stop level, but still quite sharply; the train had developped a fault, which the driver would attempt to fix. After about 20 minutes of lights flickering and being passed by TGVs in the opposite direction we set off again - with the total delay now running at about 35 minutes. Still, we managed to make it to Lille, then on to Calais, Sangatte and into the Channel Tunnel. Now you will almost certainly have heard about the horrendous problems that Eurostar were experiencing on this Friday in the Channel Tunnel - something to do with ice getting in the air vents or something - which caused the trains to break down in the tunnel; where it's dark and not a huge amount of fun to be stuck for hours. Luckily, I managed to avoid these delays. We made it through the Chunnel (as it's affectionately known among anoraks) in a pretty average 28 minutes, before heading off towards St. Pancras International. We'd been told we'd be in London about 40 minutes, which, whilst eating into my transfer time, left it in a pretty healthy condition. This was until we had to make an unscheduled stop in Ashford International - because they had to pick a member of the train crew up! Quite why they couldn't catch a conventional train to London is beyond me - I don't flag down Morrisons lorries on my way to work if I'm running a bit late...

Anyway, we arrived into St. Pancras International about 50 minutes late in the end - leaving me 1 hour and 40 minutes to travel across London to Paddington Station. Now I've not been to London a huge number of times, and I've used the tube twice before this journey (both on the same day!) - but as in Paris, I thought, I've caught trains before, I've used public transport before - I had the added advantage that whilst I don't quite have the London dialect down to a T I can make myself understood by using my mother tongue (and maybe not too many Rs)! As it happens it was a very easy journey to make - the underground trip was very easy - even with a suitcase. There were very few people on the carriage, and I was only on it for about 10 minutes.

On arrival at Paddington I realised what Esther meant when she talked about the steps....there were lots of them, and no real organised system to go up/down them - perhaps I expected too much! I had some time to kill in Paddington, so I sat down, topped up my UK phone, read a book, and waited until they announced which platform my train would leave from. At about 15.53 they told us the platform, from which the 16.00 was leaving. This train left on time, and was not held up by any snow; and there was some until about Didcot where it just became wet! The train pulled into Chippenham at 17.08 - running a couple of minutes early, where I was met by my parents in the car and whisked away!

As you can tell, a lot happened on this journey, but I was very lucky, and I'm very grateful for that. Whilst I had some minor inconveniences they were nothing compared to those of Harriet and Jack who were stuck in Paris, and the Channel Tunnel respectively for very long periods of time. So, whilst I may seem like I'm complaining - I'm really not! I actually enjoyed it - it was an adventure, and whilst I'll miss being at home, I'm looking froward to the journey back - simply because it's an adventure - and yes, I'm a child at heart!

The next instalment will be done after I get back, hopefully a little more promptly than this one was! As I said at the beginning, have a fantastic 2010, whatever you're doing! Thanks, also, to the people who have left kind words on my blog, and my Dad, who has left sarcastic ones!

See you in 2010!

Chapter 15 - Reverse Cultural Differences

2009-12-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

Challenges facing a returning Brit after four months away!

So, there was a lot of stuff explained to us before we came out here by the the Lecturers at Bath about cultural awareness, and how life in Germany may be different from life in the UK. Now, it's my turn to return the gesture, and explain the challenges that are facing me, and my fellow assistants on our return to our home country!

The first, and certainly most dangerous, cultural difference between Germany and the UK, is that when you cross a road in Germany you look left first...I'll give you a couple more minutes to think it through before nodding to yourself in agreement......whereas, because in the UK we drive on the left, you look right before you cross. Now, when you're at home you don't give it a second thought, but for about the first two weeks over here, you have to force yourself to think "Look Left, you muppet"...based on this cultural difference alone, I would like to apologise if there are no further blog entries on this blog - it will have been because I will have been killed by the UK being different to the majority of mainland Europe!

Secondly, and this is only applicable if you live outside of London in the UK. All buses over here have a door at the front (as do they at home I know, I'm not dense), but over here that door serves as an entrance only, with a door in the middle of the bus as an exit. Now, it's only a matter of time before I get on a bus at home, press the buzzer, get out of my seat and walk back towards the middle of the bus, before attempting to make it look planned and not like I was being a bit dim. This cultural difference isn't dangerous, but seriously runs the risk of damaging your pride!

During my time over here, you may have noticed that I socialise quite regularly with other English assistants. During these meetings, it's true that we speak 99% of the time in English. This does not however mean that our German suffers, in fact if we didn't speak in English, our English standard would diminish substantially over the time we were out here. Indeed, presently, my English is at a lower standard than when I left...I quite often find my saying English sentences using German word order, which is nowhere near similar for you non-Germanists! Not only has my English proficiency decreased, we, as assistants, have developped our own take on English. We, invariably, interject English sentences with random German words - not out of any attempt at humour...it just seemed to develop out of nowhere. One example of this is that I would find it difficult to say: "We'll meet at the train station"...instead, you're more likely to hear "We'll meet at the [Haupt]Bahnhof" cross my lips - now over hear with other fellow Germanists that's not a problem - we all understand each other, but at home...this could be a problem...I could end up looking a twit!

On the subject of language, I would like to comment on a similar issue. When we, as assistants, do go out together, we find it very easy to pick up on each others' mistakes in English - but we all make similarly stupid mistakes. It is not uncommon for me not to now the English word for common everyday items anymore, but to be able to tell you what it is in German without too much hesitation! This means, that despite English being my Mother Tongue, I may appear as a bit of a foreigner, or just a moron, on my return - if I do, please bear with me...I will get there...it might take a minute or two though!

Another, quite obvious, point is that in Germany the currency is the Euro (€). Now this, in itself, is not too big a problem, you get used to that. But the biggest difference between the Euro and Sterling is the coinage - why, oh why, is Sterling coinage ridiculous shapes? What's wrong with having round coins? I am now at the stage, where I'm recognising the coins by their size in my pocket without having to look. So what I hear you ask? Well, during the holidays I'll be working in a supermarket; and if I'm put on the tills, I'm going to spend the first few minutes just looking at the coins in puzzlement! So, if you see me at the till, and you're paying cash - choose another till!

The final cultural difference, which springs to mind, on this my final evening in Germany before Christmas, is one which I'm entirely guilty of! (I know that's not proper English, but I don't care!) When you wait for a bus at home, you turn up at the bus stop a few minutes before the bus is scheduled to arrive at the bus stop, you wait patiently until the bus turns up; which when I was at home could be anything up to 25-30 minutes. You did this in a British way, i.e. without complaining and just accepting that this is the way life is sometimes...and that there's nothing that you can do about it - indeed you, deep down, expected it to happen like that! Now, in Germany, where, generally (although there have been a few exceptions), public transport runs punctually, it is not uncommon to arrive at the bus stop about 2-5 minutes before the bus is scheduled to turn up, and then it starts. The discrete watch checking - until the scheduled bus time passes, then it's acceptable to do it visibly and also sigh in a complaining manner, and after about 2 minutes, it's acceptable to doubt the bus' arrival at all. After 3-4 minutes, you start complaining to other passenger about it. If the bus does turn up with a delay, say about 5-6 minutes, it's as if it's completely ruined your whole schedule for the day! Now, I'm not sure it would be a good idea for me to use public transport in the UK - I'm not quite patient enough anymore!

So, as you can see, whilst it's difficult setting up life in another country, where life is quite different - coming home poses just as many challenges, although they are somewhat more frustrating because 4 months ago, I would have had no problems with any of the challenges listed above!

I'll sign off now from Germany. My next entry will be written from my room in Wiltshire, and be about the trip back. During the holidays I'll be taking up my old job in Morrisons! Check back on the 10th January for the first entry of my time back in Germany!

Auf Wiedersehen, Froehe Weihnachtszeit und ich wuensche Ihnen alles Gut fuer's neue Jahr!

Chapter 14 - The End is Nigh! (well, Christmas holidays, at least!)

2009-12-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

The Last Two Weeks in Saarbruecken
(Monday 7th - Friday 18th December)

So, because I've had a lot to do during the last couple of weeks, I may have decided that the blog wasn't my highest priority - or I may simply have forgotten to update it!

Quite a lot has happened over here during the last couple of weeks, which I shall now attempt to chronicle!

The week following our Nuremberg adventure was slightly more interesting than normal. On the Thursday, I had been summoned (well, invited really, but summoned sounds more important) by the Ministry for Women, Families, and Education to record some instructions for the German equivalent of A-Level listening exams this year. Naturally I could disclose in a public forum what the topics to be covered are...but that would render me somewhat (to coin a French phrase) dans la merde. So, as such, I shall refrain from detailing the topics and types of activities to be covered here; lest somehow it got into the wrong hands. (I know it's not National Secrets, but it wouldn't be fair for some kids to know the topics and others not to!). What I can say though is it took me about half an hour, and involved me speaking slower than I would normally speak, whilst simultaneously (nice word there!) trying to make it sound natural - this was not the easiest thing in the world. However, the Ministry decided that it wasn't challenging, and I would have to work a bit harder to earn my money - so they wrote it in English, which we, or I at least, simply wouldn't use - but my job was simply to read the script - and like anyone with a good GCSE Drama result - I know how important it is to forget about whatever crap it is you're actually saying and concentrate on how you actually say it! Needless to say, I managed to get through the 30 minutes and earned myself a little bit more money.

On Friday, it was the turn of some of the other assistants to go and do some recording for the Ministry. They were, however, being paid twice as much as me, and subsequently I hoped they had to work for it - which I'm reliably informed they did - they actually had to think about what they wanted to say...I'm not cut out for thinking - especially not in English! After the others had finished at the Ministry (some five hours later) we decided we'd head into Sarreguemines. The reason for this is two-fold; we hadn't been there for a little while, and certainly not in the run up to Christmas, and secondly because they had a Christmas market and I was curious to see what a town like Sarreguemines would produce under the banner of a Christmas market! I was neither surprised nor overwhelmed! As you will now from my previous blog entries (which, obviously you've all read), Sarreguemines is a distinctly small, but pleasant French town (probably about the size of Corsham, for those of you who are from my neck of the woods). Their Christmas Market consisted of about 13 stalls, which were all located in front of the train station and the Courts. Throughout the town there was also Christmas music being played through loudspeakers! After a brief wander, the obligatory cafe visit, and a look at the Market, we headed back to Saarbruecken on the tram and prepared ourselves for our adventure to Strasbourg the following day!

Saturday came around, and today was the day we'd decided to head back to Strasbourg to savour what is supposed to be the best Christmas Market in France. We caught the train at about 10.35, which was due into Strasbourg at about the 12 o'clock mark. Now, as a commuter at home I'm used to busy trains...but I've never been on a train that was so busy that the train crew were preventing people at the stations from boarding the train. Luckily the four of us travelling there had managed to get seats; unfortunately the seats faced the toilet - but beggars can't be choosers! On arrival in Strasbourg we found a cafe - as is compulsary wherever we go - from where we looked at where we wanted to go. We decided to do the things further out of the city centre and then work our way back into the centre, where the main part of the Christmas Market was located. We got on the trams, which if I'm honest aren't quite as efficient (for efficient read fast) as the faithful Saarbahn. We first stopped off at Place de la Republique, which had a large number of official looking buildings, and according to Harriet, 14 Tricolores flying - just in case any random German soldiers walked in and were unsure as to who Strasbourg belonged to perhaps? From there we went out to look at the European Parliament and other European Institution buildings. Now, I can mind-read, the European Parliament is in Brussels I hear you say - well, yes, you're right...but basically there's one in Strasbourg too, because the French President at the time wanted the European Union (or EEC, or whatever it was called back then!) to be based in France; not an unreasonable request you might think. However, it is important here to realise something about the French psyche here...France and her people are like small children...give them a centimetre and they take a kilometer (measurements duly changed for realism!), and when you say no to them they throw their toys out of their metaphorical tram - either by threatening to refuse to take part (as in the case of the EU), or by striking (there are to many examples of French strikes to list here!). The former is exactly what happened in Strasbourg; because France threatened not to play the game any more, the EU gave in and let them have a Parliament building - it is used about once a month, or maybe even less...but it keeps the French happy, and that just makes for a quieter life for everyone! Thereafter, we had a look at a few other interesting looking parts of Strasbourg, before heading back into the centre.
In the centre of Strasbourg there were, and at the time of writing, probably still are, lots of small markets (I understand there to be about 12 in total), which alltogether make up the Strasbourg Christmas Market. We had a brief look through the market on our way to a "Tudoresque" area of Strasbourg, called La Petite France, which is very nice. From there we headed, again, back into the centre and went to the Cathedral. The Cathedral is pleasant, but not as nice as some of the ones I've visited previously. Moreover, there were so many people there, it made it more of forced procession through, rather than walking through at your own pace, and enjoying it. So, we left after about 1/3 of the way round. From here, we had a good look at the Christmas Market. I'm not going to describe the market too much, it's similar to most other Christmas Markets; full of; brightly coloured sheds selling stuff, mulled wine, people pushing their way through, and a bloody cold night too! Despite all of these things, it was a very pleasant day out; I do like Strasbourg, and I like Christmas more this year than I have done for a few years now! If you want to see my pictures from Strasbourg, then click here.

Sunday was set to be a rather uninteresting day; I'd planned to sort out my pictures and write my blog, and generally be lazy! However, something exciting happened to us here in Saarbruecken...............................it...............................SNOWED!!! Proper thick snow, that wasn't melting as soon as it hit the ground!

I woke up about 8 ish, as I usually do on Sunday, turned on the computer, and popped out to the bathroom. On the way, I looked out of the window and then I saw it...white snow all over the garden and still falling from the sky! So, I stayed in bed and did my photos and then decided I couldn't let this opportunity pass me by, so I went out with my camera and a pair of waterproof boots and walked all over the city taking photos of the snow. It was very pretty, and somehow, in an almost childlike way, exciting. After being out for a couple of hours I got a message from one of the other assistants about going to play in the snow - now as a mature 20 year old, working in a position of responsibility in a school, I jumped at the chance! We met on an almost untouched area on the bank of the river and threw a few snowballs, prior to building a snowman. The snowman, whom I should refer to by his name; Rudolf the Red Nosed Snowman. You can see my photos of the snow, and of Rudolf here.

Monday was a pretty normal day, I went to school, went shopping and then went home! Nothing interesting there!

Tuesday morning was just as usual at the school, but in the afternoon some of us assistants had organised to go Ice Skating. It didn't start well for me...admittedly it's been nearly 10 years since I did it last! But I didn't fall over for at least an hour, by which time I'd improved (not quite to Torville and Dean level, but going in the right direction!). In the end I fell over three times, without any serious injuries - apart from to my pride, luckily though, the kids who had been watching from my Gesamtschule had long since left!

After a couple of hours ice skating, it was time for me to go to the Gesamtschule Christmas Dinner. A pleasant meal in a restaurant under the town hall was had, and a good opportunity to get to know my colleagues a bit better! (i.e. learning some of their names!) Back home by 10, in bed by 11...ready for a 6am start the following day - it's a tough life!

Wednesday, again, was a normal day at the Gesamtschule - although it was my last day there of 2009! After work, I met Esther for lunch, as she's going home after work on Thursday. Again, an afternoon of genuinely intelligent conversation followed (terrorism legislation, ID Cards, Knife Crime, Theme tune from Playdays, Favourite children's TV programmes!). After lunch, I came home and tidied my room, and did the majority of the packing for my homeward trip on Friday.

So, today, Thursday 17th December, is my last full day in Germany before Christmas - and quite a lot was undertaken. I went to my Gymnasium for the second lesson, where I took part in a tutorial session with Sabine (my mentor teacher), after which we went to the Christmas Church Service, which was very good (although I declined to sing, or pray aloud for fear of looking more of a muppet than normal). I found that it was relatively easy to understand and follow. After the Church Service, all the teachers went for a meal (which was, obviously, the main reason for going into work today!) at a restaurant on the other side of the hill where I live. The restaurant overlooks a lake, which because of our cold snap (since Saturday afternoon, the temperature's not managed to rise above 0 degrees), was frozen over. During the meal, the snow started again, which just looked serene!
After lunch I headed into town and met up with Claire and Lucy, and whilst there we waved off Esther and Harriet on their ICE to Paris. The exodus has begun!
So, what of this evening; I've got a suitcase to finish packing, I've got to dust and mop my room, and then maybe think about sleeping, but not before putting my phone on charge for the morning!

Tomorrow, I take the train from Saarbruecken at 8am, and get home at 1710 GMT. I'll update you on the journey when I get home, between working shifts at Morrisons!

Chapter 13 - A Christmas Adventure

2009-12-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Adventure to Nuremberg
(Week: Monday 30th November - Sunday 6th December)

So, this was the week of our adventure to Nuremberg for the Christmas Market. But, before that, let me just consider if anything as exciting happened before that....err.....not really! The week was made up of school (obviously), talking German, watching TV, going out with friends and having a few drinks...what could be better!?!

So, to the weekend then. We'd originally planned to leave about 6.50 on Friday morning on a cheap group ticket that Deutsche Bahn offer; but there was a slight hitch with this cunning plan! We hadn't realised that the tickets weren't valid until after 9am...but being resourceful and quick-thinking we managed to re-jig it so we could catch the 08.52 train. How could you do this, I hear you ask...well, if you've been reading throroughly (and I hope you have, there'll be a quiz at the end of the year!), you'll know that I signed up to the University of Saarland in order to gain free travel within our little Bundesland...so, even though Saarland is small, it's not quite possible to leave it in less than 8 minutes, so until 9 we travelled on our uni cards!

So, we all met at about 8.30 at the train station and bought the tickets, and got on our means of transport for the next few hours! The train wasn't overly busy, so we had seats for the whole journey to Frankfurt without any problems. What's more, the train was punctual, which I know you think is normal in Germany, but by the end of this blog entry, I'm sure I'll be able to persuade you that it's not too different to how it is at home!

We arrived in Frankfurt at about 11.45. We'd planned to have a bit of time wandering round Frankfurt, seeing what it had to offer. According to Wikipedia, which means it is definitely right, Frankfurt is the only city in Germany to have a significant number of Skyscrapers. It currently has 10, and has two more under construction. It is also Germany's fifth biggest city, and was not chosen as the capital of the FRG (former West Germany) because the officials feared that it would be too difficult to move it back to Berlin if they put it in such a big and important city...so Bonn got it.

In Frankfurt, we walked down to the river, surprisingly called the Main (given that the full name for Frankfurt, is Frankfurt am Main), which was very nice and quite picturesque. Frankfurt, is definitely a financial town, and it is in the financial district (or in German, the Bankenviertel) where you'll find the majority of the skyscrapers. Now, being as I'm a rural country bumpkin from the Westcoun'ry, I've not seen many skyscrapers in my life...so, they were pretty impressive, and it really brings home the scale of devastation that was inflicted on New York City on that fateful Tuesday 8 years ago. We also had a look in the Cathedral in Frankfurt, which had, almost certainly, been rebuilt after the War. The Cathedral was smaller than I imagined it would be, but was pleasant and quite pretty inside.

There was, of course, a Christmas Market in Frankfurt, but we decided to largely ignore it because we were travelling on to the home of the biggest Christmas Market in Germany, so it would have been a little bit of a disappointment. On a more pragmatic note, the stuff we bought, we would have had to carry for the next two days, this seemed a little silly; our bags were quite heavy enough as it was!

So, we headed back to the Hauptbahnhof for our train at 13.30. A brief note about the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt, it's pretty big, as we found out on Saturday (more about that later, if you've not got too bored and gone to read e-mails or watch TV). It's huge, with over 20 platforms, all of which are covered over by a massive arched roof. (Think Paddington, or Temple Meads...and then enlarge it!)

We got on our train, which went direct to Nuremberg, and would get in about 17.20, so just under 4 hours later. But I found out some of the timetables I'd printed prior to departure, and realised if we changed this train at Wuerzburg, we could catch another train and get there about 50 minutes earlier! So, obviously, this is what we did. The train from Wuerzburg left about 10 minutes later, but went a different way, so we arrived at the town where our hotel was about 16.20.

Fuerth is a lot bigger than it appeared on GoogleMaps; it's more like a town than a suburb (which is what we originally thought it was!) - it's got it's own Registration Plate code - so it must be a town! We checked into the hotel, which was very impressive, the rooms were more than just rooms! They had a sitting room area, including a sofa, which, if we'd realised, someone could have slept on and saved us the cost of a room! Nevertheless, it was a very nice place to stay. We decided that, it would be worth going into Nuremberg in the evening, so that we could go the Tourist Information and get a map, and have a look at the Christmas Market. So, we trotted off to the Bahnhof in Fuerth, and caught a train to Nuremberg - a journey of a whole 6 minutes!

When we arrived in Nuremberg, the first challenge, which wouldn't have seemed out of place in the Krypton Factor, or the Crystal Maze, was trying to get out of the station. It seemed to me a maze of passageways and shopping areas, with so many different signs. To give you some sort of idea of size of Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof; it has 25 platforms, two underground stations, trams from outside it, as long as buses too! It's truly impressive, and makes Saarbruecken look more like Chippenham!

But, we did eventually manage to get out of the station, and emerged into a random street in Nuremberg, just in the old town, which, by pure fluke, was right opposite the Tourist Information Centre. Now, seeing as it was only about 5ish, the office was still open, so we went in there and got a free map of the city, and headed on down to the Christmas Market.

"WOW!" is the only word that I feel can accurately sum up the Christmas Market in Nuremberg. As you walk down the main street into the old town, everything looks so Christmassy (for the benefit of my sister, Christmassy is a word....because I said so), but not plastic and garishly Christmassy like it is usually in the UK, but more plain, yet classy than at home. To borrow the advert of a well-known retailer, "This isn't just Christmas, this is a German Christmas" (My apologies if this isn't the advert anymore...it damned well was in August, and they've got no right changing it!). There are very few coloured Christmas lights, and even fewer illuminated pictures; everything is just plain white lights, some flashing, but not normally, and it just sort of works...it is, for me, pretty much exactly how I imagine Christmas should be done! You can see some photos of it on the link at the end of the entry. (Don't scroll there now...read through the rest of this first, otherwise the pictures won't mean as much to you!)

We walked round the Christmas Market, which was much nicer than the others I've visited; I'm not entirely sure I can explain why, but it just was! We learnt, eventually, the reason there were some queues at some stalls...these stalls were sellign Gluehwein (Mulled Wine), or food (most commonly sausages - we are in Germany, after all!). So, we spent a couple of hours wandering round the stalls, deciding what we wanted to buy. We didn't buy much on Friday, for much the same reason as we didn't buy anything in Frankfurt, we would have to carry it for the whole day on Saturday! After going round the main Christmas Market, we had a look at the stalls selling stuff from Nuremberg's Twin Towns and Sister Cities (I've just noticed how much unintentional alliteration and assonance was used in that sentence!)...now when we consider that Nuremberg's British sister city is Glasgow; what do we think they were selling...whisky (obviously), hot toddies, shortbread along with lots and lots of tartan!

After that part of the market, we headed over to the Children's Christmas Market, as, let's face it, we're pretty much all children at heart! We had a look around the things there; mainly serving food, and offering the chance to get your photo taken with a slightly annoyed looking Santa Clause. Oh, and on top of that, you could ride on a carousel too...which we did...it was a slight squeeze...I'm not sure the cup we were in was designed for three 20 year olds!

After the slightly tight ride, we headed back towards Nuremberg station, and then tried to find our platform. Once we'd managed that little challenge, we went back to our hotel, and set about planning what we wanted to see in Nuremberg on Saturday. Once we'd sorted out a plan, we all retired to bed and prepared is for the long, but exciting day to come!

So, after meeting at 8, we checked out of our hotel and headed off to the station to go back to Nuremberg for our day of sightseeing. Once we got to Nuremberg, I resumed my function as Mapman and handled the navigation side of things, and we started our walking tour of Bavaria's second city. The first thing we came across was the Opera House, situated in Richard Wagner Place. From there we headed back towards the Old Town area in Nuremberg, including looking at the Holy Spirit Hospital (Heilig Geist Spital), which was all but destroyed, along with a large number of other buildings in the city, by the allies during World War Two. We walked on, up the hill, to the Imperial Castle, from where the view across the skyline of Nuremberg was very nice. We then walked down towards the centre of the city, coming across Albrecht Durer's House. At the time, none of us had absolutely any idea who this bloke was; since returning though, it turns out he was a medieval philospher, artist, and general thinker.

After a short detour, we found ourselves coming back towards St. Sebaldus Church, inside which there was a display about the effect that the War had on the church; and how it was rebuilt and renovated since 1945. From there, we went in search of heat, in the form of a hot drink. In a rather untypically English manner, I have failed to mention the weather in Nuremberg on Saturday. It was very cold, and there was a bitter wind too, which didn't help, but it didn't rain, so I was thankful for that! After our hot drinks, we headed over to Frauenkirche (The Church of Our Lady), which finds itself in the centre of the Old City, at the head of the Market Square. This church was less impressive, and was being used by the organist for her practice, which I would say she needs quite a bit more of, using my rather (i.e. very) limited knowledge of playing the organ. On the way back to the Bahnhof to do the other places we wanted to visit, we went into Lorenzkirche, which was an unusual combination of a church that was originally built as a Catholic church, and then after the Lutherian period, became a Protestant church, and the inside of the church has this unusual combination throughout.

Now, you may think that I've forgotten about Nuremberg's slightly darker history...quite the contrary, the Third Reich period in German history genuinely fascinates me, and has done for about the last 10 years! We were all agreed, that it would be a complete waste of a trip, if we didn't go out to the Nazi Party Rally Area, which, luckily, was available using the normal railway (and as such free!). We walked out to the Kongresshalle (Congress Hall), which was started but never finished, because the Nazi's stopped holding rallies in 1938. In fact, they were due to hold a Party Rally in Nuremberg on the 2nd September 1939, the day after the invasion of Poland, and before Britain declared war. This Rally was, ironically, to be called the Congress for Peace.

The first thing that struck me about the Congress Hall, was, simply, it's size...it's huge and very imposing (there are quite a few pictures of it on the link at the end of the entry). There's an exhibition in the Documentation Centre (€2,50 for students...bargain) explaining the rise and fall of the Nazis, and the role Nuremberg played in it. It was done in a very honest, and frank manner, not shying away from any areas of the Third Reich or what went on under that regime. When we left, our mood had changed slightly, we were much more reflective for a while, we had a discussion about the Nazis, and how they were able to come to power, and get away with the things they did.

After walking over to the rally square, where the parades were held (Zeppelinfeld), we headed back into Nuremberg to buy the things we wanted from the Christmas Market. Now, when we visited the night before, it was busy, but absolutely nothing compared to how it was about 2 o'clock on a Saturday. Now, I've never been shopping in London, but to put it into some sort of context, we came to the conclusion that it was like trying to walk down Oxford Street on Christmas Eve....i.e. nigh on impossible! It was stressful, and certainly not as much fun, or as Christmassy as the night before! But, despite these challenges, we got the things we wanted to get and headed back to the nearest underground station.

We decided that we ought to deal with Nuremberg's dark history in chronological order, so after seeing the Nazi monuments and displays, we headed out to the Justizpalast (Courthouse), which is the one used during the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials were the trials of Nazis who were accused of various war crimes; including leading Nazis such as Hermann Goering, and Karl Doenitz, and were presided over by 4 judges, one from each of the occupying powers (USA, UK, USSR, and France - in case you were struggling!). Unfortunately up until last year the Courthouse used to provide tours about the Nuremberg Trials, and from next year there will be a museum about it...this year, though, there was nothing. So, we took some photos from outside and headed back to the main train station.

The train journey back should have been fine. The plan was to leave Nuremberg at 16.04, and have a 15 minute changeover in Wuerzburg, before heading to Frankfurt, where we had a one hour connection to make (not planned to be so long, but it would be long enough to have a nice sit-down meal, so it worked out quite well), and then we'd head back to Saarbruecken, arriving back at 23.11. That was the plan...it would appear, we were not going to be lucky. The train arrived into Wuerzburg about 5 minutes late, which wasn't a major issue because we had 10 minutes to walk across a platform to the other side...we could have hopped it in that time! As it happens though our train coming in was delayed by about 5 minutes, again not a problem, we had plenty of time in Frankfurt. As it happens, our train arrived into Wuerzburg about 15 minutes late, and left about 20 minutes late...still plenty of time. But somehow during this 1 hour and 49 minute journey, we managed to get later and later, until we arrived in Frankfurt a total of 55 minutes late! Now, if you remember, we had a one hour connection in Frankfurt, with this delay, we now had 5 minutes, yes 5 minutes. We also needed to buy some food, as we hadn't eaten since about 3, and were getting in at 11. We decided that as there was a later, although less direct, train we could catch if necessary, we would buy food there and then run for the train - there was no point in dawdling. Hmm...we did run...we got some odd looks, and nearly had a couple of collisions with innocent people. But we managed to buy sandwiches, and get to our train (which was 17 platforms away!) before it left. I'm not sure how we managed this in 5 minutes, and I would strongly advise against it...especially as the station was full of Polizei cuddling riot helmets for the arrival of some football fans! But nevertheless, we made it...and then we were on our way back. The train journey back was also running late, somehow it had accrued a 7 minute delay, thus meaning I had to run again in order to catch the bus home!

Still, it was truly an adventure, and a fantastic couple of days; we had a lot of fun, felt more Christmassy, saw a different area of Germany, which was substiantially more Germanic than my little corner of the Federal Republic, we even did some strenuous exercise in the station.

Now, as I promised: Here is the link for the photos!

Chapter Twelve - the beginning of Christmas...

2009-11-30T09:25:00.000-08:00

Week 12 (Monday 23rd - Sunday 29th November)

So, another week of school, which was just as exciting as ever, just with quite a few more teachers off sick. The flu bug is still going round my colleagues, and for this reason I had quite a bit more free time this week, about which I can't really complain!

"So, what did you do in your free time?" is the question I can tell you're all begging to have answered. (and if you're not, then you probably ended up on this page by accident...)

Well, as the title suggests, it's the beginning of the Christmas season in Germany...in the shops it's been Christmas for quite a while, but the Christmas lights and decorations have only recently been put up, and illuminated. On top of that, the Christmas Markets are starting to begin (if you can say that...and if you can't, well tough, I did!). So, a few of us assistants have been out to see the Christmas Markets nearby.

On Thursday evening I met up with one of the assistants in Saarbruecken city centre and we had a look around the Christkindlmarkt in the main street in Saarbruecken, and in the main square. It was a nice little Christmas Market full of various Christmassy things...as well as food, mulled wine, schnapps and some music too! All in all, a nice Christmas Market, despite not being particularly expansive.

Friday wasn't particularly exciting, I went to Sarreguemines and had a short wander...nothing particularly interesting undertaken there, but, a day out, nevertheless.

Saturday was slightly more interesting...albeit substantially wetter (which curiously is the German word for weather). A group of us went to Trier for the Christmas Market there, as well as a general day out. The market was quite a bit bigger than the one in Saarbruecken, and it was primarily made up of stalls selling Christmas related, err, gifts. It was a nice day out; on top of the market, we had a look at the Cathedral and a few of the other sites in Trier. As I said, it was a smidge damp...by that I mean, my trainers took a day or so to dry completely.

After our trip to the Trier Christmas Market, we organised our little trip to Germany's most famous Christmas market next weekend. It'll be a true adventure, so keep an eye out for it!

Sunday was set to be a nice day, the assistants had arranged to meet up in the morning, because this weekend in Saarbruecken there was a second Christmas Market (we're not really greedy, but when you've got space, you might as well make use of it!). This "one weekend only" market was to be found in front of the Castle (in the logically named: Schlossplatz) and was actually, in my opinion, quite disappointing because it had relatively little Christmas related stuff there, and the majority of the stallholders weren't from Saarland at all!

The afternoon, though, was right up my street (not literally...that would be silly as I live in a one-way, narrow, access-only road!). In the afternoon I headed out to Merzig to visit an Eisenbahnmuseum (preserved railway). For those of you who don't know this about me...I'm an anorak (I like trains). So, the opportunity to travel on a German preserved railway was far too strong for me to resist going...so I gave into temptation, and went!

The railway is 16km (10 miles) long and is situated on the east side of Merzig (about 20 minutes from the main DB train station). Merzig Ost station is just a platform, with a car park and a seat...there is nothing else there! I got there in plenty of time and waited for the train, which was very likely to be steam-hauled. It was steam-hauled, not only that but it was top-and-tailed (for those of you who are a bit lost: steam-hauled means pulled by a steam locomotive, and top-and-tailed means that it had a locomotive at each end!) Another good thing about the railway was the type of old carriages they used...they had an area at each end of the carriages where you could stand outside. This was, despite the persistant rain and slightly cold wind (by which I mean to replace the word slightly with bloody) , fantastic. I couldn't see very much, but you could hear and smell it...which as any anorak will tell you is half the attraction! So, all in all a fantastic afternoon out, and one which has reminded me to look out for other Railway Museums and Preserved Railways to visit during my time here.

So, what does next week's installment contain? Probably not a huge amount about school, as that's pretty standard at the moment, but it does contain a pretty impressive adventure. A few of us are going to Nuremberg early on Friday morning (i.e. about 6.40 - that's 5.40 for those of you at home in the UK), staying in a hotel just outside Nuremberg and then returning late on Saturday night (early Sunday morning is possible). Sunday's entry, can almost be predicted now...I slept...

Chapter Eleven - Eleven Weeks in!

2009-11-24T01:42:00.000-08:00

Week 11 (16th November - 22nd November)

So, completely exhausted from my European weekend, last weekend, I returned to school. School has been a bit funny this week...not in the hilarious Jack Dee style, more in a peculiar , unusual way! Swine Flu is a word you hear a lot working in a German school (well, obviously you hear Schweinegrippe, but you get the idea)...and it's playing havoc with teachers and students' ability to turn up to school!

That said...on Tuesday, I came down with one of the worst colds I've had in a long time...it was lucky my colleague text me to say her lesson was cancelled because she was ill...I could barely get out of bed, I had a sore throat, an horrendous cough, I was lathargic (although this has been happening a lot recently - I put it down to old age). Still, I was feeling slightly better the next day, and not wanting to have jokes about ManFlu made in German about me...I went back to work...which wasn't much fun!

Still, I made gradual improvements over the week - and a week later I'm almost completely over it...just a slightly tickly cough every now and again, so nothing too terrible.

The weekend wasn't overly exciting...partly because I still wasn't feeling grrrrrrrrreat (in the words of Tony off of the Frosties advert), and partly because I'd been putting off doing my room for the last couple of weeks...and anyone that knows me will know that I'm not the tidiest of people...so I was living in a bit of a bombsite (yet another allied bombsite in Germany). Still, I did go out...we went to Metz on the train on Friday and had a very pleasant day there, doing random walks around Metz and seeing bits I'd not seen before (hard to imagine, as this was my third visit there!).

Saturday was dedicated to tidying my room...which didn't take as long as I thought it would, so I watched some DVDs as well!

Sunday was dedicated to the trains again...off to a village called Saarhoelzbach, which is the furthest point north in Saarland from Saarbruecken reachable by train! There is nothing there...so I came back and did some more work!

Chapter Ten - the tenth week!

2009-11-18T07:52:00.000-08:00

Monday 9th - Sunday 15th November

So, school was pretty normal this week - the same old things going on, nothing particularly interesting to report from that aspect my time over here.

My weekend, by contrast, was a truly European experience. Three different countries in three different days!

So Friday came around, and I somewhat squandered the morning, but I was determined to go out in the afternoon, so I opened my Saarland Guide book at a random page, and a place called Perl came up. Off to Wikipedia I trotted, and did a bit of research on it. Perl itself is not exceptionally interesting...what is more interesting though is the fact that it is on the Mosel, which, at this point, marks the border of Germany with Luxembourg. So, I thought, why not...it might be nice...then I found out the place the other side of the border, in Luxembourg, is Schengen...home of the agreement, which allows free border crossing between EU member states. It was, for an MLES student, a pilgrimage I had to make. Howard White would be pleased! To say that Schengen is quite small and, excepting the treaty, unimportant, would not be nice...however it is true. It is just like any other small riverside town, only this one was lucky enough to be close enough to the confluence of France, Germany and Luxembourg - really the heart of the SaarLorLux region, and indeed Europe.

On Saturday, me and a few of the assistants headed out of our comfort zone...i.e. out of Saarland, and ventured to the murky depths of Baden-Wuerttemburg. Depths is probably, no definitely, and overstatement...Mannheim was our destination. Mannheim is a very commercial city, which appears to be fantastic for shopping and banking, but isn't really a city basing itself around tourism. Nevertheless, we found the Schloss, and it's quite impressive...as it was a bit cloudy, and looked like it may be about to rain, we decided to go in it and have a look round. Several hours later we came out again! So after our castle escapades we went in search of lunch...which we also enjoyed, before heading back to Saarbruecken. So, whilst it may seem like we didn't do a lot there, I would plausibly argue that there isn't a huge amount to actually do in Mannheim, which is particularly historically, or culturally interesting!

So, Sunday, to complete our european extravaganza saw me heading off to Strasbourg on the first train of the day. It was, needless to say, dark when I left, but luckily by the time I arrived it had brightened up sufficiently for me to see my friends from Bath who were meeting me at the station. They took me on a nice tour of Strasbourg, and we saw lots of different and interesting sites there; like the cathedral, the EU Parliament, and various other French institutions. After lunch, we had another wander, before having a game of football between some english speaking people and some french speaking people...which we won...then, when it started getting too dark to see the ball, we headed back to one of my friends' for some pasta before I caught the train back to sunny (well dark) Saarbruecken.

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend of fun...I seem to developped various flu-like symptoms since then, and have generally not been feeling 100% - but more about that next week!

Chapter Nine - Nine weeks in!

2009-11-08T13:16:00.000-08:00

Nine weeks in! (Monday 2nd November - Sunday 8th November)

Due to the fact, that now I'm back at school and just doing pretty much the same stuff each week, I've decided that this is going to become a weekly review (well, weekly-ish!) of anything different or interesting that happened during the week.

Seeing as this is the first week I'm doing the compact version - here's a summary of the more mundane activities: went to school, had a few drinks in town with some friends, did some lesson plans, and tidied up a bit!

Now, for the more interesting ones! I'll keep it as chronological as I can!

On wednesday of this week I was invited by the Ministry for Women, Families and Education (they've got some slightly unusual combinations in Saarland!) to go and do some recording for the Gesamtschule leaving exam. (Rather like a GCSE level exam). For this I will be given €50, whether or not they use my recordings! All the English Language Assistants were invited there to take part.

The first challenge was trying to find the place; it was in a distant suburb of Saarbruecken called Dudweiler. One of those places that people who actually live in Saarbruecken call Dudweiler, and the people that live there call it Saarbruecken-Dudweiler! Where I live is the complete opposite, everyone around here calls it St. Arnual, but everyone in the city calls it Saarbruecken-St. Arnual! So, back to the story! After waiting for one of the other assistants at the train station, who never materialised (we later learned he had had to get a Bus Replacement Service due to a train cancellation), me and Claire were forced to make our own way to this place. The main problem was that the person we were waiting for had a map...we had to make do with a rough sketch made from the back of a Bus Shelter! This was OK for getting to the town centre, and then we were slightly lost. So we asked a bus driver, after all, who would know the area better than someone who drives around it all day...as it turns out, absolutely anyone...he didn't have a clue! So, we adopted plan B; we asked at the chemist, the girl behind the counter didn't have a clue either, but luckily a nice old woman in the queue looked upon us kindly and furnished us with some directions. I would be being over generous to say her directions were spot on - but they helped point us in roughly the right direction! Needless to say, we did eventually get there, arriving only 3 minutes later than the scheduled meeting time...not too bad considering!

The recording itself consisted of us doing a lot of sitting around and talking, whilst preparing a paragraph on what we thought of Talent Shows, and after that had been recorded we prepared one on eating habits. Not a lot of effort really required, and quite an easy €50 to earn! So, after the recording we trotted back to Saarbruecken (trotted simply being an abstract verb meaning to go - rather than actually behaving like horses) where I still had a sixth form lesson after school to do!

To Friday then! To set the scene, I have a recurring problem with one of my toes (it seems like to become ingrowing quite a lot, despite having been operated on twice!) and this toe had recently been causing me severe pain (reducing me to between 3 and 4 hours sleep one night, instead of 7-8) and has been quite badly swollen too. So, I decided to go and see a doctor. I sought the recommendation of one of my colleagues who recommended his GP. I phoned the surgery at 7 in the morning, hoping to get an appointment for that afternoon, or if not Monday...two weeks, yes, weeks, was the earliest I could get an appointment! This, I decided was too long to wait!

I had noticed the day previously a doctor's surgery at the bottom of my hill, so I thought I'd give him a ring. I rang before the office hours, but found out he has like a drop-in clinic thing in the morning from 8. So, I popped down their at 8 o'clock and was waiting about 45 minutes to see him (a while, but not as long as 2 weeks!). He decided that it was ingrowing (I can see how he's a Dr.), and he gave me some cream for it, and some plasters! Now, I'm not entirely sure what's in the cream, but whilst it hasn't solved the ingrowing problem, it has reduced the pain by about 95% (the exception being when I stub my toe on something!). I've got an appointment on Monday afternoon with him, and we'll see where we go from there!

Another rant, I feel it necessary to have here, is about the quality of bus drivers on the 121 route. This is the bus that goes past my house, either to the train station, or to the town hall. I had one driver that was distracted first by looking for somewhere to put his pen, and secondly by trying to find change for a €20 note, whilst we were going along. With this driver we ended up on the wrong side of the road on numerous occasions...one of the few times I've been so concerned I nearly walked! The following morning the driver was using his phone whilst driving; which as those of you that know me will know, is a real pet hate of mine, and he crawled along whilst doing it - thus delaying the bus further! (I've become a right German when it comes to punctuality of public transport...I start tutting if it's two minutes late!) And the bus home that evening, the driver seemed to be suffering from a certain level of road rage...he was of the opinion that he, as a bus driver, has the full right of the road, and that anyone else should move out of the way...those that didn't incur his wrath!

On Saturday Claire and I went to Mainz. Mainz is the capital of the Saarland's buffer state, Rhineland-Palatinate. The weather was not great...which is typical British understatement. But the first thing we decided to do was to try and find the Tourist Information Centre - it has to be the most inaccessible tourist information centre I've ever tried to go to! The signs to it pointed, often, in the direction from which you came...it was a frustrating time! But, we did eventually find it, and got hold of ourselves a free street map, which meant we could have a look at some of the things there! Things we looked at included: the Cathedral, the Land Parliament, the Citadel, a few other churches, come nice squares, and we also had a look around the Germano-Roman museum, which was nice. (By nice, I mean it was better than standing in the pouring rain!). My general opinion of Mainz was one of disappointment, I'm not sure what I expected, but after comparing it to two other, non-state capital, cities in the same state, it just wasn't up to the same standard! Never mind, it was a day out, and another bit of Germany seen!

So, that was that...the first of many condensed blog entries. This should make it more interesting for you, the reader, and a damned sight easier for me!

I shall sign off in the words of Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, "Bonjour".

Chapter Eight - the Eighth Week

2009-11-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Monday 26th October

So, this is the first full week of my parents' visit to Germany. So what did we decide to do to celebrate the fact that they will be enjoying the full German Experience...we went to France (again). I like Germany, really I do, but I genuinely feel it would be negligent to allow myself not to take advantage of the proximity of the borders with the former Saar protecting power.

Today we took the car to Metz. (Those of you astute readers who have been paying attention to my blog entries will know I've already been there once before with the staff of my Gesamtschule). Now, as I've mentioned previously the French Customs Officers (Douanes) are a little seen species of French officials...but not at the border crossing of the motorway between Saarbruecken and France. These seem to be the less shy type of Douanes. Why do I say this? Well, for the second time in as many visits to Metz I was stopped by the Douanes and asked some questions!

I semi-expected it this time, I saw the look in her eyes when she saw a British car driving towards her...she wanted some English practice, which being the Europhile I was, I declined to give her and answered her in French. This seemed to surprise her, and we were allowed on our way with little fuss this time. I'm beginning to think I may simply have one of those faces, which the French dislike!

So, on arrival in Metz, we encountered the first hurdle, which we'd not had with the coach trip...parking! There was parking available, and finding a space was a little challenging, but not too stressful...the problem was once we'd found the space, it was remembering where we'd left the car! To solve this problem we took the GPS out of the car, saved its location, and planned to use that to get us back!

After leaving the car where it was we headed for a coffee, and then we walked around the cathedral. I still found it as awe-inspiring as the last time I went there. (You can read more about it in the Thursday part of this entry)

After visiting the Cathedral again, we headed into the tourist information office, where they gave us a town map, on which, using the GPS, we marked the location of the car! Following this little breakthrough, we decided to embark on a walking tour of the town, for which I was the guide! (I had, unfortunately, forgotten my red umbrella and bad dress sense, but apart from that I was like any other town guide!) . We had a look at some gardens in front of the barracks, then we walked down by the canalised part of the Moselle (Mosel for the Germanists!) and across the little Paris-esque island in the middle of the River, before heading back up to the Cathedral square, and in turn the car.

We thought it might be nice to have lunch in the botanical gardens in Metz, which shouldn't have been a problem; we knew where they were, we knew where we were and we've got a pretty reliable GPS system...hmm, no quite as easy as it first seemed. Why so? Well, Metz is quite a small city, with quite a lot of people living there, so the buildings are quite tall - the GPS struggles to get a signal surrounded by tall inanimate objects (remember it was originally US Defence technology, if that helps explain it!), but nevertheless, with a certain amount of what I would call intuition and logical thinking (others would probably call it guesswork) we made it to the gardens, where we had lunch and wandered round, before heading home via the E. Leclerc over the border from Saarbruecken to do some shopping for the week.

After dinner, we wandered down into town again for a couple of drinks before enjoying the bus ride home! Long Live Saarbahn!

As a fore-warning, we did do quite a lot this week, so there's a chance this could become a long blog entry...so get yourself sitting comfortably!

Tuesday 27th October

This morning we did my favourite thing in the whole world. (As with the bit from last week, that would also have been written in the sarcasm font if I had one). We went shopping in Saarbruecken. Now, I, being a bloke, am not a fan of shopping, I go shopping when I need stuff - like food for example...I don't traipse around the supermarkets because it's fun, rather because I need something! But anyway, that's what we did...we went round some of the smaller shops, had a look around Saturn, then Dad wanted to rekindle his younger years (so, we tried to go somewhere that was Sepia coloured) so we went to C&A, which he was disappointed with, so we didn't stay too long!

After our morning of fun and games, we headed over to a small town called Voelklingen. At Voelklingen, there is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city of Bath is a World Heritage Site, the Cathedral in Cologne is also a World Heritage Site, as is Stonehenge...so what delights awaited us in Voelklingen - an old steelworks!

The main reason for going this afternoon was that it's free on a Tuesday afternoon - instead of €10 each...this struck me as quite a good deal! It was quite an interesting afternoon - it was interesting seeing how much it had both deteriorated (i.e. become very rusty, and in some places rotted through), and in other places it had flourished - there is a part of the works, which the owners have left as a wilderness to see what develops. It was a throughly enjoyable afternoon - perhaps if I'd understood the steel making process in a little more detail (i.e. if I'd listened a bit more to the details explained to me at GCSE science), I would have got even more from it.

That was about it for Tuesday, with another European journey planned for the Wednesday!

Wednesday 28th October

So, today we were off to Luxembourg (or as us Germanists spell it - Luxemburg). We decided it would be easier to take the bus from Saarbruecken to Luxembourg - that we wouldn't have to find somewhere to park there, which I had heard was truly an horrendous experience bound to cause stress to even the most placid people! At €14 each, it wasn't too unreasonable either! The coach took about an hour and a quarter to get there, and was driven by someone who looked like he was on his holidays from school. (Maybe I am getting old after all!).

The journey was pleasant enough (most of it was on motorway, so there wasn't a huge amount of interesting things to report from the journey itself!). We alighted from the bus in the heart of the old town, as this was where I'd been told it was nicest in Luxembourg. The first thing we did was get coffee...well it seemed to make sense! After that, we headed down to one of the bridges over the gorge between the new and old town. We took some photos from there, and then we headed over to the Cathedral to have a look inside. On the way to the Cathedral we passed the CitySightseeing booth, and we thought it would be worthwhile having a tour to make sure that if we hadn't the opportunity walk around everything, we should probably have seen it from the tour. We opted for the Noddy Train tour, because it was cheaper, and less likely to get caught up in the traffic jams, which seemed so prevalent in Luxembourg.

The Noddy Train ride was as uncomfortable as ever, and my spine is still recovering (everytime I sit down it sounds like someone playing a xylophone down my back!). It took us down into the gorge, from where you could see the old fortifications clearly and it told us a little of the history of the city, sorry Duchy. The only problem was that the majority of the roads were cobbled, and my teeth were chattering as we were going along!

We also looked at the Cathedral, which was nice...still not as nice as Metz, in my opinion, but nice nevertheless. We then did another unofficial walking tour of Luxembourg (i.e. I held the map and chose where we went!). We saw quite a lot there, which I shall attempt to list now! We saw: the Finance Ministry, the Royal Palace, the Parliament Building, the Red Bridge (originally called because it's a bridge, and it's red...I don't know how they do it!), the Municipal (or should I say National, because in Luxembourg they're pretty much the same thing!) Library, the National Bank, the Municipal Park, and Old People's Home (that looked more like a palace to me!), and the Town Hall amongst other things.

Then we caught the bus back to Saarbruecken, before having a meal out in the pub, which I have come to call my 'local'; despite it being nearly 800 miles from my actual home! The food there reminds me of good quality, cheap, pub grub - which I'm a big fan of!

Thursday 29th October

Another day out on public transport today. But, today, at least, we stayed in Germany! We went to Trier on the train. We visited many of the same places as we visited last time I went there with some of the other assistants. You can read about those experiences here if you haven't already! Basically, to summarise, we visited the following places there: The Porta Nigra, the Cathedral, the Electoral Palace (Trier's answer to Versailles), Woolworth (I know, I know, but it was for old times sake!), down by the Mosel(le), then back up past some churches before catching the train back to Saarbruecken. Again, it was a pleasant day, and the weather seemed to hold out, which was nice too!

After dinner, we headed down into town for a couple of drinks at my 'local', before heading back and preparing for a nice day in and around Saarbruecken!

Friday 30th October

Today, we stayed in the environs of Saarbruecken; in the morning we walked out to the pub at Guedingen and had a coffee or two before walking back to Brebach, from where we caught the tram back to town. We did a little more shopping (can you imagine the amount of joy I felt at that prospect?) in Saarbruecken, and I got the new edition of the bus timetable, to find that in fact my local bus service is staying the same as it has been since I've been - still it might work out to be worth it in the long run!

For lunch, I took the old folks out to what we in Saarbruecken affectionately know as the DFG. (Deutsch-Franzoesischer Garten (German-French Garden), which, funnily enough, lies on the border of France & Germany. (Some more outside of the box thinking going on there!) We had lunch there, and had a wander round; it was nice, but with it being the end of autumn, the majority of the plants have gone over, and it was looking slightly folorn. I'm sure it'll look fantastic in the spring/summer though! So, I'll definitely be heading back there! The garden itself came about, basically, because after the war, the people on either side of the border (who had for the last 5 years or so been bitter enemies) decided that they would plant a garden together, and as such the garden is managed by both the Saarbruecken municipal works and the Lorraine authorities.

After lunch, we took another exciting trip out to E.Leclerc supermarket over the border, which was OK. I realise I may be appearing as a little contradictory over my opinion on shopping, so let me briefly clarify; I dislike "going shopping" for the sake of having something to do - I think there are better ways to fill your time like redecorating and then watching it dry, but I don't mind shopping when I need to get something - like food!

Tonight, after dinner, I had my hair cut, and then we had a relatively early night, because we were up early the next morning to head to Koblenz.

Saturday 31st October

For our Hallowe'en day out we decided to travel to Koblenz on the train. The journey itself takes just a little over two and a half hours, but it's worth it. Between Trier and Koblenz the views over the river are very nice - rather like a picture postcard of how I imagine Germany to be! It features the railway running directly next to the river, with steep hills on both sides, completely full of vines - exactly how they harvest them I'm not sure! Oh, I forgot to mention that we took a double decker train, and because the novelty will never wear off, we sat upstairs.

When we got to Koblenz, we had a coffee...this, I ought to add, is pretty standard procedure for us - when we arrive somewhere, it's nice to sit down and decide what we want to see over a coffee! We then headed to the Toursit Information Centre; conveniently hidden next to a Sparkasse. I also checked the T&Cs of the ticket, which meant we could use buses to get around the city - so rather than walk to the Old Town, and the confluence (join) of the Rhein and Mosel, we took the bus, which saved us about 30 minutes or so!

The joining of the two rivers is marked by a statue of a bloke on his horse; not John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, but Kaiser Wilhelm I. The statue is huge, and looks out over what is known as Deutsches Eck (German Corner). From there we did the usual...I took the map, and we had a nose around the city. It was a nice city, with many very nice buildings in the old town, and it was obviously a town where a lot has historically taken place, but the tourist map didn't really provide much information. Luckily, I had consulted Wikipedia the night before, so I was up on some of the details! So, after much walking, much photography, and much coffee, it was time to return to Saarbruecken.

The train I'd planned to take should have been straight through, however because of some sort of engineering works, the train we were on was terminated at a town called Merzig, from where we had to change to the stopping service, running about half an hour later. So, that was just enough time to head to the station bar, and have a glass of the local beer.

To illustrate the difference between the RE (Regional Express) trains, and the RB (Regional Bahn - stopping) services one only needs to look at the number of stops they make between Merzig and Saarbruecken. The RE has 3 stops until Saarbruecken, and the RB has about 10. However, because the German railways are run in a more efficient way, the trains stopped, normally, for less than 45 seconds at each of the stations - none of this doors will be locked 40 seconds before departure rubbish over here!

So, after returning to Saarbruecken about 30 minutes later than originally planned, we headed to the usual place and had a nice dinner out.

Sunday 1st November

Today is the last day of my parent's visit here. I'd left today pretty much blank in the itinerary to go to a few places I thought were worth a look, but not worth a whole day! So, to start the day we headed up to the University's Botanical Garden, which was nice, but quite disappointing - less of a botanical garden as one might imagine it to be (a smaller version of Kew), more an open space with some trees dotted around!

So, not to be put off, we headed off to Ottweiler, again a place I'd been before, where not a huge amount goes on; especially on a Sunday! Still, it was a nice stroll, and we had lunch there before heading off to St. Wendel, which is a slightly bigger town, but still as busy as Ottweiler! There's a nice church there, but that's about it really! After St. Wendel we took to Illingen, which is the only place I can honestly say I've seen chalk for sale! We had a coffee here, and a quick stroll around what is pretty much a ghost town on Sunday!

We then came home, relatively early, so that Mum & Dad could pack and load the car for their departure in the morning. Additionally, my landlady had invited us out for dinner at a restaurant just over the border in France, which is like the Ritz of Saarbruecken; not as posh, and more rurally French, not even the best food in the area, but it is the place to be seen if you weild power or money, or want to climb the greasy pole of influence. Another pleasant evening was had by all, with me acting as an interpreter between my landlady and my parents, after having consumed a couple of alcoholic beverages!

So, in summary, a very interesting week, albeit slightly tiring. It was, obviously, lovely to see Mum & Dad again, and to be able to take them around the place where I've found myself!

Chapter Seven - The Seventh Week

2009-10-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

Monday 19th October

So, today we headed off to Trier, which isn't actually in Saarland, instead it is in Rhineland-Palatinate (or as the Germans call it Rheinland-Pfalz). Rhineland-Palatinate is effectively a cushion for Saarland against the perils of the rest of Germany - it surrounds our little Bundesland on all its internal borders.

Trier is also the oldest city in Germany (according to Wikipedia, which is always right!), the birthplace of Karl Marx (him of communist manifesto fame, rather than a brother of Groucho!), as well as having some roman buildings too!

We caught the semi-fast train there, which took us just over an hour, which wasn't too bad. The views along the side of the river are pretty nice...what I would describe as picture postcard Germany. In fact, when we went along there this morning, the mist was just rising off of the river, and it was quite eery (I'm not sure how we'd spell that in English, so that's how it stays!).

When we got to Trier we thought we'd have a look around. There were a few places we thought we ought to see there, for example; Porta Nigra (an old Roman gateway to the old city) - still looking quite impressive considering its age, The Dom - which is a real mish-mash (that technical term again) of historical periods, with the main part being built during the Roman times, and other bits added on through medieval times. We also thought we ought to visit Karl Marx's house, which, if I'm honest, was a bit of a let-down. I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but it didn't really live up to it!

So, we did have a look at all of the above places, as well as wandering aimlessly (although we had a map, in case it wall went askew) through the streets of Trier; some of which were very pretty. There was also a market there today, and a mini-Versailles. Then we headed towards the river, which is the Mosel (Moselle in French) and walked long there for a bit, admiring the views on the other side.

Then we headed back to the Bahnhof, and enjoyed a nice train journey back to Saarbruecken from Trier, again enjoying the views from the train window!

This, ladies and gents, is why I came to Germany!

Just to make it easier, and to save uploading photos to two different places. You can see my Year Abroad photo album here.

Tuesday 20th October

Sorry, it's taken me an age to get round to updating this....this can be explained simply by saying "Microsoft Windows". I shall explain more about this later!

After our trip to Trier yesterday, we had originally thought about going by tram to Sarreguemines and then taking an SNCF train further into France. This idea, typically, encountered problems! This time in the form of a national strike by SNCF (who else!). Not being deterred from a day out in France, I thought we might go to Forbach (which I think is just one big housing estate full of HLM (council flats, for non-French speakers)) and if we go as a group we may find something else worth visiting...so we arranged to meet at the train station to catch the bus to Forbach in the morning. I have travelled to Forbach by bus before without problems using just my university semester ticket...however, for some reason best known to the driver, we weren't able to travel on this bus...so again, determined to visit France today, we waited quarter of an hour for the tram to Sarreguemines.

We had another wander around Sarreguemines (although, it was still pretty dead), had a cup of coffee, looked at the cinema to see if there were any films worth seeing (there weren't any on until the evening), and then headed over to Intermarche to grab a few groceries before heading home.

So, all in all, a typical day - brick walls, more brick walls, and a couple more just for good measure! Still, the tram ride was pleasant!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the computer problems....so when I got home from Sarreguemines I flicked on the laptop, went and put the kettle on, came back ready to log-in, to find it had a corrupt boot-up file...being a technical whizz-kid I knew what this needed, so I switched it off and on again! Erm...this didn't work, and I was out of ideas! So, this wasn't a pleasant evening all in all...and a day in which Obstacles seemed to be the word of the day! You'll be pleased to know the computer problems were solved later on in the week!

Wednesday 21st October

Today I had my final round of bureaucracy in Germany...after this, no other German authorities need to be told about me! I had an appointment at 11am at the Auslaenderamt (Foreigners' Office) to get something called a Freizuegigkeitsbescheinigung (which I now know is effectively a piece of paper, saying that I can do as I please in Germany as I'm a citizen of the EU). I walked there from home, and got there about 10.35, and my number was called (another one of these ticket and number systems) at 10.45. The process involved me handing over pretty much every other piece of paperwork I had accumulated during my time here and the man in the office photocopying it. Then he gave me this piece of paper and I was free to go. I left the office at 10.55 (5 minutes before my original appointment time) - this was a true example of German efficiency at work!

Following my appointment, I decided to have a random day out on the trains, so I travelled on the train to a town called Dillingen, where I'd seen there was a branch-line, which I thought I'd take; just to see where it goes really! It goes to a place called Niedaltersdorf - which is, as I realised, just a small village with a church, a river, and a pub (which was closed for lunch!). Thus, it was a difficult place in which to kill 45 minutes waiting for the train to come back - so I sat down and read some of my book! After going there, I headed back to Saarbruecken, with the intention of going shopping...this I didn't do, preferring instead to head home and do very little!

Thursday 22nd October

Today, I had a lot to do! With Mum & Dad arriving in the evening, I felt it was necessary to do some tidying up! So, I started in earnest to do that about 10 am, after being distracted by the internet far too easily! After tidying for a bit, I decided it would be a good idea to iron the clothes that had been languishing on my clothes horse for the past few days - when at the same moment, I realised my laundry basket was full...so off I trotted to the washing machine with my bag full of clothes.

After I'd started the whole washing process, and begun to iron...I remembered I had to go shopping too. So, down to the bus stop I went with all my bags and shopping list. I had a bit more shopping this week, what with having to feed two other mouths and all, so it was a bit bloody heavier coming up the 67 steps to my house!

When I got back, I finished the ironing, and fetched the washing from the machine, and reloaded my clothes horse (so, really my room was just as full this morning, all I had achieved was to put some more of my clothes back in the wardrobe!).

During the afternoon, I had the fun job of dusting and cleaning my room! Ladies & Gents, please take note - as nice as laminate flooring looks, it is a right pain in the backside to keep clean, as it attracts dust like nobody's business!

As you can tell, the bulk of my day was well planned, well executed and generally was a lot of fun. (I've not got a sarcasm font, but if I did, this last sentence would appear in it!)

When Mum & Dad arrived, we had some tea, and spoke to my landlady, and then we went for a walk down to the Schloss, and had a beer before enjoying the bus ride home!

Friday 23rd October

So, on the first day of my parents' being here, we decided that instead of enjoying some of Germany, we would have a trip to Sarreguemines. We wandered around there for a bit, had a nice walk around the market, and then had a coffee! We then walked down by the side of the Saar (or Sarre, if you're a patriotic Frenchman), before heading off to Kleinblittersdorf for lunch and to repeat my walk from Kleinblittersdorf to Guedingen.

I should, at this juncture, briefly mention the weather (well, as there's three English people here - it would be negligent of our stereotype not to!) - it was a drizzly and cloudy day, but not exceptionally cold.

The walk was broken at Guedingen, where they conveniently left a pub, with a couple of drinks, before walking back to Kleinblittersdorf. It would appear that in this part of Germany they have employed the same person to count the distances as they have in Devon. (For those of you who don't know - Distances in Devon are often far further than the signs tell you they are - e.g. if a sign tells you it's 5 miles to Modbury, be aware it could be 8 actual miles!). How do I know this? Well, at one end of our walk, it purports to be 5km to the other end, whilst at the other end walking back along the same path will be 7.5km...where do the extra 2.5km come from? Who knows!

After walking as far as we did today, we decided to stay in and watch a film tonight.

During the film, we decided to use my computer's own rescue and recover system - this basically reformats my computer and then kindly installs Windows back on it. This might sound awful, but luckily I had saved a lot of my work on a memory stick, so that wasn't so bad! What's more annoying is that I now have to re-install a lot of my software back on the computer, which is more a time-consuming problem than anything else! Damned computers!

Saturday 24th October

Today we went to a couple of towns not too far away from Saarbruecken - indeed actually doing something in Germany! One of these was Saarlouis, which I had already visited with some of the other assistants; here we walked around the market and the infamous Tedi shop (basically a poundstretcher). We also had a walk along the side of the moat around the old fortifications in Saarlouis, which was very nice. At the moment, it is a perfect time to get some fantastic pictures of the orange, and red leaves on the trees!

After lunch in Saarlouis, we headed off to Merzig, where we actually went in a Woolworth (not quite the same thing as the ones which closed in January, but started by the same American). After walking around the town, which is nice, but there really isn't a lot here (except for two train stations!)...there is, though, a hill, from which you can have some fantastic views over the Saar and over the valley. (I've already put some photos on the blog in one of my September entries, if you're interested!)

This evening my landlady cooked a typical Saarlaendisch dinner for us. It consisted of a rare Saarlaendisch delicacy...err...maybe, not rare....in fact, not normally a delicacy....potatoes. The meal started with Potato soup, followed by pureed potato with cabbage, followed by a Lyoner sausage (which is originally French, but the Saarlaenders like to claim ownership for it!). This was finished off with stewed apple, and a few pieces of french cheese. All of this was washed down with a little (or, in fact, quite a lot) white wine! I would also like to add my name to the list of people (mainly students) that argue that alcohol makes languages easier and more fluent!

All in all, a very pleasant evening to end a pleasant day! It was also an opportunity to get to know my flatmate a bit better, because prior to this, we had often passed like ships in the night (me early in the morning and her late back in the evening!).

Sunday 25th October

So, today, we went out to see some more picturesue places within Saarland. The main reason for this was that everything is shut on a Sunday. The first port of call was a small town in Northern Saarland called Mettlach. Near to Mettlach is a famous bend in the Saar called the Saarschleife (Saar loop)...it is basically the only thing that normal Germans would recognise from the Saarland! I'm no geographer, so I'll explain it in layman's terms - it's basically a bend in the Saar, which almost goes back on itself. (I will put some pictures up when I put that piece of software back on my newly reformatted computer!).

From Mettlach, we thought it would be a good idea to walk along the river, to see what the loop was like from the bottom of the hill. It is pretty unimpressive to be honest. Admittedly, the river finds itself in a very deep wooded valley, which at this time of year is very pretty with the autumn colours, but in terms of noticing the actual bend, it's negligible because you are on the bend for so long, it becomes normalised.

So, after walking around the bend and back, we decided to head up to the viewpoint, from where there are some pretty good photo opportunities to be had of the view over the Saarschleife. We took some photos and decided that it was well worth the journey!

It was a little bit early to go home, so we headed over to Losheim am See, where there is a railway museum (which I knew would be closed, being a Sunday and all). It was surprising how easily accessible the museum property was; you could walk pretty freely around the main platform areas, and they are running trains along their preserved line at the end of November - so guess where I'll be then!!!

After briefly walking round there, we headed home and had a nice stroll down by the Schloss (castle) in Saarbruecken before catching the friendly bus back!

Several European, and intra-German excursions planned next week...I'll keep you posted!

Chapter Six - The Sixth Week

2009-10-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

Monday 12th October

We're back using Firefox now, which is good, and is my preferred browser, as Opera started to play silly beggars! Although, it would appear it is now seemingly impossible to underline things on the blog in Firefox, but such is life!

Anyway, the first day back at school after my Introductory Course (jolly) at Altenberg. Would they still remember who I was, would they have forgotten I was supposed to be a cover teacher for Fr. Zils, who has gone on the exchange to Barcelona? Alas, they still knew who I was, and indeed I was still down to do these cover lessons.

Now, before I go on, I feel I should say something about abbreviations in the schools in which I work. In both Secondary Schools and Uni, names are abbreviated to initials - for example Mark Lister, becomes MRL, Karoline Von Oppen becomes KVO...thus I would be AJV. This makes sense, this is a standard, universally understood way of doing things. However, in Germany it is not. Germany, the land where rules and order are at their most prevalent, has adopted a completely different system for abbreviating names. Although, system may be a bit of an exaggeration, because the word 'system' implies a standard way of doing things, a pattern, if you like....Examples include Fr. S. Zils, who has the abbreviation Zs, and Hr. T. Gross, who has the abbreviation Gs. This might seem like a pattern, but then someone like Hr. J. Leistenschneider comes along and stuffs it all up by having Ls. How is a man supposed to cope? So, the dilemma for me was, how do I sign my name? Easy, AJV...they'll get used to it sooner or later!

Returning to the course of Monday, I attended Hr. Leistenschneider's lesson as per normal. This lesson is always a nice way to break into Monday morning, because I can sit at the back of the classroom (normally) and only need to say something every now and again to clarify a language/pronunciation point! Today, though I committed a cardinal sin in Germany...I arrived a few minutes late. To be fair, I had been in the school for the last 45 minutes, but had had to fight with a photocopier in preparation for the following lesson. Why are photocopiers so damned complicated, and why are they so slow when you're in a hurry?

After the lesson with Herr Leistenschneider (which I still maintain is the most quintessentially German name I've ever heard!) it was my turn to be the teacher! I had to cover a lesson with the 6. Klasse (year 7) and today we did alphabet revision - nothing too complicated, and they seemed to be a good class on the whole. I seemed to judge their ability about right, which wasn't bad considering I'd not met them before.

The next lesson was with the year above, who I covered the topic of school with, and it seemed to go very well actually. They finished the work faster than I expected, which, for a teacher, is a damned sight more annoying than not finishing it (they can finish it at home, i.e. no more work for you). We had been working on a fun poem about school, which they understood really quickly. The homework I had planned on setting them (i.e. learn a verse off by heart) had been duly changed to learning the whole thing off by heart - that'll teach them to work faster than my lesson plan!

The last lesson of the day was with a 9. Klasse (year 10), with whom I normally work. Today we did work on Emergency Services - I was slightly concerned that it would be a little bit too basic for them, but again I seemed to have judged the level about right. Maybe I should think about becoming a teacher! ;-)

Again, as for every day until Thursday, I had a class in period 9 (between 1515 and 1615) with the Oberstufe, which is always a pleasure to do, because the students are so good at English, and intelligent!

Tonight, there was the first Stammtisch meeting at the brewery in Saarbruecken - it was a pleasant evening with the French, American and one Spanish assistants, and not too pricey either, which was nice!

Tuesday 13th October

So, today I had an early start at Ludwigsgymnasium - I caught a bus at 7.00 (that's 6am for those of you reading this in the UK!) and was at the school about 7.25. I couldn't risk taking the later bus; it's bad form when the teacher's late - especially as I have to unlock the door to the classroom to let them in - I wouldn't even be able to hide the fact that I was late! Still, it's been a while since I've had to go to work in the dark! Although, I'm gonna dig out my gloves, scarf and hat for tomorrow!

My first lesson went well, as it happens, we revised numbers, simply by playing games! This was good for the kids, and a relatively stress-free lesson for me too! Just what the doctor ordered at that time of the morning!

The second, and last of my cover lessons this week! We worked on the British school system today with the 7. Klasse (year 8), using a letter, which I wrote purporting to be from a year 7 at Sheldon School. This worked well, and they seemed to understand it quite well, and they've got the whole of the holidays to write a reply - so there'll be no excuse for not having it done!

The next formal lesson was with the Oberstufe class of my Betreuungslehrerin. I was supposed to start with a 10 minute discussion about the Emancipation of Women - this turned into a whole lesson talk. I was surprised at the opinions of some of the young lads, they were almost out of the 19th century! So much for the New Age Man - I'm not sure that it's got to Saarbruecken yet!

Over lunch I went to the station, where there is a comemorative "Zug der Erinnerung" (Train of Remembrance) which includes a display about the trains used by the Nazis to deport people to the Death Camps. It was quietly moving, (although purely on a metaphorical level - it wasn't going) - it makes you think, and put things in perspective in life. For you Germanists, here's a website link for it!

This evening I went to dinner with a colleague, and it was a very pleasant evening! Another early night coming up though, because I've got to go out early again in the morning!

Wednesday 14th October

Back to the Gesamtschule today for the usual thing! 2 lessons; one witgh a 5. Klasse, where I take a small group to another room and cover the classwork with them - we usually get through it quite quickly! Then I work with another teacher and her 6. Klasse for my second lesson. Today I had to oversee some people doing their tests, because they hadn't had the opportunity to finish them during the first lesson. So, it was a nice quiet morning for me!

After the hard work at the Gesamtschule I ambled into town and met up with one of the other assistants for a coffee.

This afternoon I'd agreed to do some work with one of the Gymnasium teacher's students - she wanted help on her pronunciation, and seeing as the teacher had helped me conquer the Secretariat for a Photocopier Card I thought it only right to do him a favour in return!

I also had an Oberstufe Class during period 9, which, as per usual, was a pleasure to do!

Another early start tomorrow, because I need to go to the station on my way to work tomorrow to get my tickets to Paris for Christmas. At present, I can get home from Paris, and back again, but not actually from Saarbruecken to Paris and vice versa.

Thursday 15th October

The last day of school before the holidays! :-) Not a particularly long day either, in terms of lessons!

As I said yesterday, I would have to get up early to buy my tickets to Paris for Christmas. So, up I got at 5.30 and logged on to t'internet and checked Deutsche Bahn and SNCF for ticket prices. It turned out to be 20€ cheaper to buy it from SNCF, and includes free seat reservations. It did mean that I needed to have a trip to Sarreguemines to pick up my ticket from the nice people there.

School was pretty standard, I spent most of the time working with smaller groups and covering the majority of the classwork quicker than the teachers and their big classes. This meant that my kids had less homework than their counterparts - so even if they don't really want to come and work with me, there's a very clear advantage of them doing so!

So, after work, I sent a message round some of the other assistants asking if they wanted to go to Sarreguemines. Otherwise, it's a slight extravagance (despite the fact that it's free) to go all the way there just to pick up a ticket. So, Esther and I went to Sarreguemines, had a wander round, and had a couple of cups of coffee (Beer is more of a summer drink, and it's definitely not summer here anymore!). So, after waiting an inordinately long time at the guichet (ticket office booth thing (see, my French translation skills are still there!)) I was able to get my ticket, and then we headed home.

I would like to revert to stereotype now, if I may (and let's face it, it's my blog, so I may), and comment on the weather here. It's gone from being fantastic 23 degrees sunny days, to 6 degrees overcast damp days almost overnight. I had to find out my gloves, hat and scarf the last couple of mornings to go to school. As Esther described it: "It's gone from Spain to Siberia in 24 hours". We haven't had snow though, which I know a couple of people in Germany are experiencing!

Friday 16th September

Today was the first day of the holidays as far as we, assistants, are concerned. So, we planned a rendez-vous (a multi-lingual blog this one!) at 11 am (who thought 11am was a good time...I've had to get up at 5.30 three days this week!) in front of Johanneskirche. The plan, if you can call it that, was then to walk to the Hauptbahnhof, and get on the first train going somewhere in Saarland! So we did, we went to Saarlouis, which is about 30 minutes away on the train. Now, Germans are generally practical people, and they like things to work smoothly....maybe Saarlouis is an exception! The Hauptbahnhof is 4.5km away from the town itself....so if you've not been there before it's very easy to go there, walk around the few buildings near to the station (although avoid the toilets) and think that that's all there is!

We nearly did this, but then we decided to catch a bus into the town itself, and have a look round. Saarlouis is actually quite a nice town, there's more there than I imagined. It's not really quinitessentially German, but instead has strong franco-germanic-luxembourgish influences...it's is, to use a technical term, a mish-mash. We had a look around some of the shops there, before heading out to IKEA, which is not very far on the bus.

I've never been to IKEA; both of the other assistants have, and they were determined to show me what it was all about. Now, I didn't need anything, and I was expecting to be bored out of my skin - imagining it as a cross between MFI, DFS, and B&Q (other furniture & DIY retailers are available, but their names were too long). I was pleasantly surprised....the attention to detail in IKEA is fantastic. Looking at it from the perspective of someone who has worked in retail for the last 4 years, it was clear to see what they'd done and why...and it really worked. Basically, for the people that haven't been, they have displays of how rooms could look, and I mean loads of them...and the attention to detail is just spot-on. There's also a "suggested route", which has a different colour on the floor, and it's expected that most people follow it.

Also, the stuff in there, isn't too pricey either (some stuff is dear, other stuff looks cheap and nasty, but generally it's OK), and it has everything you could need for setting up a home. So, it's easy to see why it's become so popular, and successful!

Saturday 17th October

So, today I played a game. An interesting game in the city. I found about the game from a fellow assistant whose church group was organising it. The game is called "Scotland Yard" and is effectively a grown-up version of the playground classic "Cops and Robbers". The rules were quite simple, the 2 pairs of fugitives would be using public transport in the city, and you had to track them down! You could only use public transport too, and weren't allowed to walk other than to the nearest bus stop/tram stop etc. Every 20 minutes, we would give our location to the central control, and shortly after would receive a message from control giving us the location of the fugitives. Naturally, we didn't know which buses they were on, or in which direction they were travelling; so a lot of it was down to trying to second guess the fugitives.

We found the first pair quite easily (after going in completely the wrong direction to start with!) on the tram, by meeting them at a tram crossing point. The second group, though, were much mroe challenging to track down, but we did eventually find them, purely by chance by getting on the first tram to come along. The only problem was that Harriet's group had got on at the tram stop before (no more than 500 metres up the road) and found them first.

Still, it was a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and we saw some different bits of the city!

To revert to type again, I feel I must comment on the weather; when I walked down into town today, it hailed...and not the 5 minutes worth of hail we're used to in Britain, this was about 15 minutes of it, and when I was walking along, I could here it crunching under my feet on the pavements! Other than that, it was a cloudy day, and still cold here!

Sunday 18th October

I waited in this morning, because I had accumulated so much washing, that I had nothing to wear tomorrow! Two lots of washing took me up till about 1 o'clock. Then I decided I wanted to go somewhere outside of Saarbruecken. I have a book of things to do in all the different towns in Saarland, so I simply opened it at a random page, and then asked Deutsche Bahn how to get there!

The place I landed was, was a place called Sankt. Wendel. It's about 30 minutes away by train, and was a nice little town. The shops were open there, although I would presume this was for a special occasion rather than the norm, as nothing in Saarland is normally open on Sunday, excepting a few cafes! I had a nosey round there, took a few photos and then decided I would call in at Ottweiler on the way back. Ottweiler is a much smaller town, but, in my opinion, a prettier town...literally nothing was open there, and I saw about 3 people wandering round. There is a museum railway running along a 21km line to a railway museum, which leaves from Ottweiler Bahnhof, however today was the last running of the year, so I'll have to wait until the new year to have a look there!

When I'd finished in Ottweiler, I took the train back to Saarbruecken, but it was still quite early, so I decided to head out to Voelklingen to have a look around! Although I walked in the direction of the Voelklinger Huette rather than into the town itself. Again, I took a few photos there, before heading back into Saarbruecken and off home!

Tomorrow, I'm heading off to Trier with a couple of the other assistants, which should be nice, especially as we can travel the majority of the way for free!

Chapter Five - The fifth week

2009-10-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

Monday 5th October

Off to Altenberg today! Shock horror, the train was late - I blame this on the fact that it was a TGV, which came from Paris this morning! There were also a surprising number of people trying t board the train at Saarbruecken considering it left at just before 11am. A seat reservation would have set me back a couple of euros, and I decided I probably wouldn't need one. I still stand by this decision, because the train was so busy, I think it would have been too difficult to get through to my reserved seat! So for the first part of the journey to I travelled in the buffet carriage of the TGV. No proper seats, but somewhere to lean and not very busy either. It was only for about 75 minutes anyway!

So, on arrival in Mannheim, which is apparently in Baden-Wurttenburg (that may be a slightly tenuous claim in my opinion!), we waited for our train to Koeln. The train was 2 ICEs joined together. Yet again, we had a mad search for a seat, and I was successful...momentarily. After about 3 minutes, I was evicted again - so off to the vestibule I trotted and sat there! (It's like being at home again!). I was sat there for about an hour or so, until Frankfurt Airport, where quite a few people got off. Back in the carriage, there were seats free - so down I sat. To be turfed out again moments later - never mind, I like the vestibule anyway! There's a clever screen there, that tells you how fast the train goes - we were generally travelling about 290-300 km/h. After a bit in the vestibule, the train manager came down, and told me there were seats towards the back of the train. So, off I trotted, and I sat down, only to have to get off the train at Koeln 30 minutes later.

We got to Koeln really quite early (14.05 for a 15.30 Meeting) so we set off in search of a toilet. The ones at Saarbruecken Hbf. cost 50cents, in Koeln €1 (which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase to spend a penny). So, in the end, we waited in a cafe until the allotted meeting time.

After seeing the huge group of assistants in the station foyer, we knew we were in the right place, so we, like sheep, joined the flock and waited patiently. Going to this Altenberg were assistants from Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Mecklenburg West Pommerania), Schleswig-Holstein, Baden-Wurttenburg, and, of course, Saarland.

We had to wait at the station for a second double decker coach to collect all the people. And when it did finally turn up, we were still waiting around for another 40 minutes or so, for some people whose trains from North Germany were late!

On arrival at Altenberg, in the rain, we did the usual things: Rules and Regulations, Introduced ourselves (although, this wasn't much of a challenge for the Saarlaender!). Our tutor was a teacher cum civil servant in the Saarland Ministry for Education. We then paid our €30 towards the cost of the course!

Tuesday 6th October

Today was the first day of proper teaching at Altenberg, but before we get to that I feel it would be a good time to mention something about Altenberg itself.

Altenberg is a cathedral (albeit in the middle of literally nowhere), which is still in service (possibly not the right word, but it'll do here!). This means that people still pray here, and that they are stilled called to prayer. But, I want to tell you a story about a man at Altenberg, let's call him Quasimodo. Now, Quasimodo has decided that the local people, who are all aware of the Cathedral's presence, need a reminder about attending church. But because Quasimodo's a conscientious bell ringer, he knows people like to get to church punctually (we're still in Germany, don't forget!). Moreover, Quasimodo's a little bit old, so he can't quite master the phones, so he decides to ring the church bells. He first does this at 5 am (until about 5.30), then, almost as if you pressed snooze, he starts again at 6 am (for about half an hour again), and then once more about 7 am (when the service itself begins). My room at Altenberg was about 50 m from the bell tower - and, as I'm sure you can imagine, it's very loud, and annoying - especially at 5 am! But all things considered, you've got to feel a little sorry for Quasimodo, he always looks quite upset whenever you see him - it's been said he's got the hump! (sorry, I couldn't not put one in!)

So, having eaten breakfast, we started the proper course today! But before the proper teaching, we were given €100 travel expenses (as we'd already travelled to Germany, and had to travel again across Germany to get to Altenberg). So, just to break this down:

I paid €68 for my train fare

I paid €30 for the course

I received €100 allowance.

So, I've therefore gained €2 by turning up at the course. What was more impressive was that the money was paid in the form of a €100 note. (they are green, and it was the first time I'd ever seen one, let alone had one in my possession).

The day itself was basically taught in Bundeslaender, which for us was a massive qadvantage! We started after breakfast, with a 1 3/4 hour session on the school system in Germany, and more specifically Saarland. We also covered the rules and regulations of what you can and can't do as a Language Assistant.

We then watched a video of a couple of assistants teaching classes, and went back into our groups to discuss them.

Following lunch, which was reputedly fish (although I'm not quite convinced!), we started discussing our lesson plans and looking at the materials for the simulated lessons tomorrow.

After dinner I decided that instead of going to the bar tonight (although at 1€50 a bottle of beer - it's very cheap here). I watched "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" (The Edukators) again and very pleasant it was too!

Wednesday 7th September

So, today we had to teach our prepared lessons to the other assistants in our group. This went OK, but as a group we'd decided to make it more interesting by behaving like pupils of the age we were supposed to be. This meant, pronouncing words wrong, reading badly, talking in German, passing notes around the classroom, asking to go to the loo, chatting amongst ourselves, and even throwing things across the room. Needless to say everyone was absolutley shattered by the end of the day, but it had been generally fun and had passed the time quickly!

After dinner, there was a pub quiz, in which I learnt that Saarland is the smallest Bundesland (this is rubbish, there are 3 city Bundeslaender, which are all smaller than Saarland). Then back to the bar, for a couple of beers and a wake-up time of 6 the next morning!

Thursday 8th October

So, that was that! Altenberg's over! We got up at 6, packed our stuff away, put our linen outside the door, and went down to breakfast for 6.30. Coffee was definitely necessary at breakfast! The coaches left promptly at 7.30 for the journey back to Koeln station, where, as I had a fair amount of time before my train journey, I went to the Cathedral. It's height is impressive, but it was very dark and dingy inside! Metz was much nicer! The train back was scheduled to take about 3 1/2 hours. First we travelled to Koblenz on an Intercity train (not an ICE, but the next one down). We got into Koblenz 6 minutes late, and our connection time should have been 7 minutes. So, we had 1 minute to get off the train and run, yes, run, to the correct platform! It was slightly Top Gear-esque, and probably looked rather amusing! The train we got on was going to take us about 2 1/2 hours to get to Saarbruecken - quite a long time. The journey itself though is wonderful, for the most part the railway runs directly alongside the Mosel, and if you were to picture a German river scene, it would be a replica of the view from the train. It was truly fantastic! So, I'll be going back there soon!

Friday 9th October

I had quite a bit on the administrative front to do today! I had to go the bank to collect the relevant stuff so that I could do Internet banking with them. This was a painless process, which took 5 minutes, which was much less than I expected! I also had to go the Hauptbahnhof because I have decided to indulge in a Bahncard 25 for those journeys I'll be making outside of the Saarland, which entitles me to 25% off fares for 4 months. I also went into the Tourist Information Centre to try and find information about B&Bs or Guest Houses in Saarbruecken. This turned out to be the most challenging thing I had to do, as they weren't able to help me, other than to direct me to the stand with the hotels' leaflets on them!

I was planning to go to Neunkirchen (Saarland's second biggest town) today, but instead met up with one of the other assistants, where we had a couple of drinks in town, and had a nosey around, followed by a nice meal out (Moules Frites), which was very nice indeed! Whilst we were sat down after eating, the other assistant's flatmate saw her and came over to chat, along with a couple of his friends, one of whom is the girl who lives in the flat with me! It's a small world here in Saarbruecken!

Saturday 10th October

Today it rained! This is the first day of proper rain I've experienced in Saarbruecken since I arrived over a month ago! This meant our planned trip to Saarguemines was called off, so instead we went around my friend's and watched Harry Potter, after making Pancakes! Following the film, we tried to work towards solving the problem my friend has with a lost passport. The first stage of this is to go to the Polizei and report it as missing, which we did. Then we ambled up to the Train Station, on the off chance it had been handed in - but the office is closed until Monday now! If it hasn't been handed in, it will mean a trip to Frankfurt for my friend to the British Consulate there to work on getting a new one!

Sunday 11th October

Today I'd planned to visit Homburg by train. And technically I did visit Homburg. I had a very quick look round, but it's very difficult to appreciate places like that properly when you go round on your own, so my visit was rather short. So I returned to Homburg Hbf, from where I planned to return to Saarbruecken, using an indirect route. I caught a train to Neunkirchen (12 minutes away) and then had to wait for a Schienenersatzverkehr (bus replacement service), which in atypical German fashion left late. Now, I would have thought that as the train and the bus were both run by Deutsche Bahn, it would have been possible to hold the train to meet the connection. Err...no....it's not the train driver's fault the bus was running late, and just as the bus pulled into the train station, I could see the train screeching round the corner on its way to Saarbruecken. So, here I was in Illingen, a town I'd not even heard of before, so I ambled down into the town - into the middle of their town festival. As you'd expect, there were plenty of sausages and beer around, with some music too! It was a nice amble round the town; there was also a car boot sale (consisting of about 12 cars) in the town. The most exciting there, though, was a shop that sells chalk! I don't need any at the moment, but I had been looking for somewhere in Saarbruecken for weeks that sells it, without success!

After wandering round the town, I went back to the station, and caught the train to Saarbruecken, then I travelled ut to Merzig and back on another train; just because I could really!

Two things struck me today - one is that the Semester Ticket is really good value for money, as the tickets today would have cost me about 20€, instead I travelled free! Second was that there is a much less stringent, yet more sensible, approach to Health & Safety on the railway here; the railways are seldom separated by big fences to stop people walking on them, and the trains don't have yellow ends either (to make them more visisble). Maybe it's because the Germans are intelligent enough to realise that walking on a railway line is not a clever (klever in German) thing to do, because it'll hurt if you time it wrong.

Back to school tomorrow, for one week, and then it's the Autumn half term!

Chapter Four - The fourth week

2009-09-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Monday 28th September

Well, I survived my lesson on London with the 8. Klasse. It went surprisingly well, we managed to do most of the work I'd planned, although I planned too much to realistically get through, so it's not really a failure in that respect! The kids took to it really well and were really responsive! After that lesson, I was in the 10. Klasse lesson, which was pretty uneventful, although I learnt a new technique for vocab learning, which was quite interesting. Following that lesson, I worked with another 8. Klasse, where I was invited, by the class tutor, to go rowing on the Saar with him and his tutor group on their "Wandertag" tomorrow, which should be nice! Then I worked with another English class, whose teacher will be away in Barcelona for a week in a fortnights time - so I have been drafted in to work as a cover teacher for her lessons. This will entail working with the 5., 6., and 9. classes for 5 lessons over the Monday and Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it, I do like a challenge, and it should be another interesting experience - taking me slightly out of my comfort zone. As classroom experience goes, it will be a second to none opportunity!

Today was the first of my lessons with the Oberstufe classes too. That also went well, we discussed a wide range of topics, and again, as per usual, I was very impressed at their English proficiency. I tend to approach these lessons in an informal manner, as I believe that the way for me to get the best out of the sixth form students, who are the most self-conscious about their language in front of a native speaker, (I know I was one not very long ago!), is for me to make the lesson a relaxed lesson, which gives me, also, the opportunity to raise my game a bit if they are still proving difficult to work with!

After work, I met up with another of the assistants in Saarbruecken for a drink, and a general chin-wag. I enjoy the time spent with other English speakers, it is a nice way to relax. I don't feel it's detrimental in any way, because I spend the whole day communicating through German with everyone else around. That doesn't just mean speaking, I listen to a lot of German here too, and obviously have plenty of information to read (especially bureaucracy!), while I'm here too! So it's nice to have a bit of time to relax without having to remember what case to use, and where to put the verb in the sentence!

So, tomorrow, a nice row on the Saar, followed by a little pic-nicking by the river, followed, in turn, by a trip to the Cinema! All in all, a very stressful day tomorrow methinks. Not to worry though, I can use my Kollegiumausflug on Thursday to Metz to recover!

Tuesday 29th September

Today I felt like Ratty out of the Wind in the Willows. I spent the morning rowing a dragon boat on the Saar with one of the English teacher's tutor groups for their Wandertag. A Wandertag is basically run twice a year for the tutor groups to get to know each other in a more relaxed and fun environment. The reason for the dragon boat rowing was because the class wanted to do something team-building focused, and it was that! The first challenge for some of the kids was deciding which boat-related club to wait outside...the Rowing Club or the Canoe Club? The correct answer was, in fact, the Canoe Club; so having got over the first hurdle, we then approached the second hurdle head on. (I fear that may be a mixed metaphor, but who's checking!?!) This involved moving the dragon boats from the stands where they looked quite comfortable, and putting them on a trolley, and then plunging them into the Saar. This sounds like a relatively simple procedure, but the dragon boats weigh 250kg each (a quarter of a tonne) and there were 5 adults and 26 children (who were of varying levels of excitement; from "I don't want to do this, I might get wet" to "I'm in the boat first") to move them. Still, after much huffing and puffing (either like the Big Bad Wolf or a Steam Engine; whichever comparison is easier for you to imagine!) we managed to get both of the boats in the water.

Now, those of you who have seen professional dragon boat rowing will notice that all the oarsmen (and women) all row in time with each other. This took a while to get right (or as near to right as it was possible to get with the kids!), but we got there in the end. Then, after some more practising of technique (I'd never realised it was quite as complicated as it actually is - especially when I had to translate the instructions from the Trainer!), we had a race...or two races in fact...which I can proudly say our boat won with a clear victory. This was partly due to the fact that we were simply more co-ordinated, but may have had something to do with the fact that there were twice as many adult oarsmen on our boat than on there's! Then we had a small tour of the Saar, although we still had to work for it! Then, after we got back to the embarkation point, we had to reverse the process to put them away. This time the kids were much more subdued and co-operative. (For subdued, read tired!).

After the rowing, we had a picnic on Potato Island; which is a kind of fake beach for Saarbruecken, that has a bar, and food facilities etc. during the summer months. Then, we went to the cinema to see "Oben", (in English "Up") a Disney Pixar film, in 3d. I felt slightly odd wearing two pairs of glasses for the film, but it was a good film. I probably wouldn't have gone to see it normally, but it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Following the film, I made one of my regular trips to Edeka to do some shopping, and that was Tuesday really. We really should have more days like this in the UK!

Wednesday 30th September

Back to work today, after my stressful day rowing yesterday! Today was my day of 2 lessons at the Gesamtschule, followed by an Oberstufe lesson at the Ludwigsgymnasium this afternoon!

The first lesson passed without major incident at the Gesamtschule, working with the kids on the topic of school, so that they could prepare a short text about their school. The second lesson was more of, let's say, a challenge. I was trying to teach them how to tell the time. This should not be a particularly big challenge one would think...with the exception of half past (in German they say half-to), all that is required is to translate the words into English. However, apart from a couple of very keen pupils, they seemed to have switched off. Their teacher was also surprised about their apparent difficulties. Ah well, we'll get there in the end!

The next stage of the day was expected to be the most challenging and stressful element of the day. Over three weeks ago I opened a bank account, with which I was told I would be sent a card and PIN through the post within about 10 days. As it had been so long, and as I'd moved I went back to the bank today with the intention of having an argument with them about their inefficiency and general poor service. So, when I told the cashier the problem, he simply explained the woman who opened my account with me was wrong, and that I shouldn't have been told they would be sent to me. I was, instead, expected to pick them up, and that he would go and get them for me there and then. When you come across service like this, it's very difficult to stay cross for long - it would seem that the management of LloydsTSB and Halifax should join the First Group management on a working trip to remind them what Customer Services is all about.

After that had taken the wind out of my sails, I went home, put some washing on (I'm becoming more and more domesticated over here - I'll be allowed on the Sofa soon!), and then ambled down to the Ludwigsgymnasium. As before, I don't tend to plan anything specifically for the Oberstufe speaking lessons, I tend to pick a starting discussion topic and see where that leads! Again, it was a nice, informal class, with the students doing most of the speaking, which was, as expected, of a high standard.

Once I'd finished at the school, I met up with one of the assistants in town, and we had a nice stroll along the Saar in the sunshine!

Thursday 1st October

Today was the Kollegiumsausflug to Metz (France). For those non-Germanists (which is indeed a word!) among you, for Kollegiumsausflug - read Staff Jolly. So, we rendez-vous(ed) at the school for a prompt 9 o'clock departure on the coach to Metz. The coach journey itself was relatively uneventful, got held up slightly crossing into the border by the Douanes.

Here, it would be appropriate to mention my surprise at actually seeing Douanes. I thought they were some mythical beings of the French Minsitere de l'Interieur. In all my trips to France (and there have been quite a few), I have actually seen a Douane at the port/border crossing ONCE. (Even then, I may have been mistaken, I was getting off a ferry at 6am, so it may have simply been the cleaner larking about for all I know!). I am of the opinion that there are two possible reasons that Douanes are so seldom seen: One is that a lot of their work is done in plain clothes so as to catch the perpetrators of heinous crimes against the Hexagone in the act; the other, and, in my opinion, more plausible, reason for their being concealed is that they simply don't give a damn!

Now, back to the story! The Douanes had decided today that our coach was worth a stop. They looked slightly bemused to see a coach registered in France, being driven by a German, and full of German people. They checked everyone's ID cards and seemed satisfied, until they got to me. Now, being a British Citizen, I know I can travel freely between France and Germany until I get bored. However, the Douane who got to me had still not recovered from the confusion over the coach and its load, and was even more surprised to see an English person in the middle of this coach of German people. He asked me, in French (naturally, it is assumed by French figures of authority that if you are visiting France, you obviously speak fluent French - if you don't, then you are treated with contempt!), why I was on the coach. I explained that I was working at the school as an English assistant and was taking part in their Kollegiumsausflug (the French translation is slightly more wordy!). He was now very surprised by my ability to understand and reply to his question, and I fear I may have burst his little bubble of superiority there and then...but after a few more questions he seemed to get bored with me and moved onto the next person.

When we got to Metz itself, we took a ride on a Noddy Train with a guided tour of Metz (in German, naturally). The last time I remember riding on one of these noddy trains was when I was in Tunisia; it was so bumpy I'm still not 100% convinced my bones are back in the right places now! Noddy Trains, for those of you who aren't quite sure what I'm talking about, are also called Land Trains and are designed to give tourists a sightseeing tour without the effort of walking and trying to follow an umbrella. The passengers travel in carriages, which are effectively trailers without any suspension. Metz is an old city, and as an old city, it has old roads, old roads have cobbles, and cobbles are bumpy. This is not the worst of it though, Metz also seems to have some sort of Speed Hump fetish. The tour itself was interesting, the method of transport was somewhat less pleasant!

Bearing in mind, this is a staff jolly, no, sorry, Kollegiumsausflug, the emphasis there is on the word Kollegium (which refers to the Staff); I had, therefore, expected to go around Metz as a whole group, or maybe in smaller groups to see different things. This happened, partly. We all went for coffee together(this was after all France; when in Rome and all that). There, however, ended any real sort of group trips. I went to have a look at the Cathedral with one of the English teachers. The Cathedral itself is just astonishing - it's soooooooo big, the roof seems to be somewhere in the distance. In addition, there are some truly fantastic stained-glass windows there too. After that, we had a wander around some more of the town - before settling down in a cafe with some of the other teachers for a bit to eat!

The coach journey was uneventful. This was primarily because teachers in Germany are not programmed to function in the afternoon. The school-day starts at about 8ish in the morning, and is normally finished about half past one. Up until, say about half two, the teachers are fine! After this time, though, they begin to feel tired and require urgent sleep! So, the journey back was quiet enough because they were mostly asleep! This meant I had the chance to plan the lessons I will be covering when I come back from Altenberg.

When we got back, I went into town with a colleague and had a few drinks, and something to eat in town, before coming home and giving in to my eyelids' strongly persuasive desire to sleep!

Tomorrow is the start of the Tag der Deutschen Einheit celebrations here in Saarbruecken, so I'm thinking of going down and having a shufty around tomorrow!

Friday 2nd October

Today is the beginning of the national celebration of unity; which, as I said before, is being celebrated in Saarbruecken this year. To this end, I thought it would be nice to meet up with some of other assistants and have a nose around what was there. So we met in the usual place at about 12ish and had a cursory glance through the stands about Saarbruecken, and the sponsers' stands of the event, which were situated in the main street, Bahnhofstrasse. Then we ambled up to the Schloss, where there were a few stands relating to some of the Bundeslaender (Federal States). On the road below the Schloss, there was a stand for each Bundeslaender; so that they could raise their profile, talk about how the Fall of the Wall affected them, and sell some "local" food. For the record, the local food on nearly every single one was a type of sausage; except, if I remember rightly Rhineland Palatinate (who had cheesecake!), and Mecklenburg Pommerania (who had fish!). On the other side of the Saar, there is also some stands devoted to the various seats of power (Parliament, Government and some of the Ministries). In front of the Staatstheater there is, at present, a stage where music is played during the day, and probably into the night as well!

While I'm on the subject of the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, I feel it worth pointing out how much higher the police presence is in Saarbruecken. They seem to have drafted in police officers from all over Saarland, along with some help from the national police, who are here too. Indeed, one of the helicopters of the Bundespolizei has been circling over Saarbruecken throughout the day. On top of all that German police power, there are also some PAF (Police Aux Frontieres - French Border Police) around (although this is not uncommon in Saarbruecken), there some members of the Gendarmerie Nationale and Police Nationale of France, along with some members of the Luxembourg National Police too patrolling the streets. I got the impression it may have been more of a jolly for them than actual work though!

After our excursion into town, I went to see a film with some of the other assistants - Die nackte Wahrheit. It was a Romantic Comedy film, which probably wasn't aimed at my demographic to be honest, but it was OK. It beat typing up lesson plans hands down, and it was an evening out - a chance to practise hearing German quite intensively (i.e. without the ability to go Wie, bitte? when it gets too complex) after a day, where English was quite heavily spoken today!

Tomorrow, then, Pete, a friend from my uni course, who is studying presently in Strasbourg (or Strassburg to the locals) is coming to visit me here and to experience the Tag der Deutschen Einheit!

Saturday 3rd October

The Tag der Deutschen Einheit! So, Pete came up from Strasbourg and got here about half nine! Then we wandered around the town a bit, before having a better look at some of the stands that have been set up for it. We did this twice, as the first time was quite early and most of them were still setting up this morning. On the second trip round, we bumped into one of the other assistants and had a little chat; during which a random person stood beside us and tried to find out where in the UK we came from. Apparently Oxford is in the North East now! After that, we wandered over to my school, which wasn't too far away and had a drink at the cafe nearby. (Behind the church where Angie and the President had their church service in the morning.)

Angela Merkel's visit has caused a little controversy in Saarbruecken, because apparently it wasn't safe enough for her to walk around the stands and see what was available. This, I find quite surprising, when I consider the number of police officers that were in Saarbruecken yesterday. (About twice as many as on the Friday!) At the same time, I'm aware that a man has been arrested here in Germany over a terrorist threat made during the election. However, most Germans aren't quite sure where Saarbruecken is, I'm not overly concerned that any terrorist organisation will be any more certain!

After Pete returned to the land of snails and frogs-legs, I met up with some of the French Assistants, one of whom is working at my Gymnasium. We had a drinks, as a mass of Language Assistants and then about 2200 headed down to Tblisi Place for the Grand Finale of the celebrations. The concert itself was quite an eclectic mix of music, and dancing. There was Precious Wilson, who having looked on Wikipedia was a singer active between 1975 and 1993, who sang a few songs. There was quite a bit of dancing, by the MM Dancers from Berlin, during the gaps in between the other acts. Also playing we had a Korean opera singer, a choir from Berlin, an accordion and violin duet; but the night was really finished off by Chico and the Gypsies. They are musicians born in Morocco or Southern France, whose parents were Spanish and fled during the Civil War. They played quite a few songs, that everyone was able to sing along with, and really ended the evening on a high.

But, that wasn't the end! After the music had finished, there was a truly fantastic firework display, which seemed to correspond with some music being played; including the Marseillaise and, naturally, the European Hymn, Ode to Joy. You can see some of the official pictures of the finale here.

The concert finished about half eleven, so I wandered over to catch the last bus home, and got home about five past midnight. But, it was a fantastic evening, and although it's an annual event, I'm pleased to be able to say I was at the 2009 National Celebration of the Tag der Deutschen Einheit! Tomorrow, I've not got anything quite as exciting planned - packing for Altenberg, and tidying up a bit!

Sunday 4th October

So, this morning I had a rare lie in! When I did finally get up, I sorted out my packing for my trip to Altenberg tomorrow! After that I walked into town (the buses are hourly on Sunday, and about 5 minutes before I decided to leave!) to meet up with some of the French & English assistants. We had a wander through the main shopping street and around St. Johanner Markt and the town was more of a ghost town than it normally is on a Sunday - hardly anything was open, even in terms of cafes!

We did eventually find somewhere, and then I had a nice stroll with two of the French Assistants around Saarbruecken. We did quite a random circuit around the town, up to the Schloss, along to the road alongside it, and back again, down past my school, and over to find out where the Auslaenderamt is. Then we had a nice drink in the cafe across the road from where one of the French Assistant lives. So, all in all, a quiet day really here in Saarbruecken!

As I mentioned earlier I'm off on my Introductory course at Altenberg tomorrow. As there is very little Internet access, I won't be able to update this blog until I get back Thursday. But, rest assured, I shall write all about it then!

Chapter Three - The Third Week

2009-09-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

Monday 21st September

So, back at the Ludwigsgymnasium today. Working with a whole variety of the lower school classes. Covering topics as interesting as London (which I've visited, err....about twice!), disciplining children, and the differences between American English and British English. (That one's quite easy to explain...British English is right, any other attempt version of English is simply wrong! [In case you were in any doubt, that was a tongue in cheek comment, not a comment that could be considered subversive to the American Government]).

I have been asked to prepare a lesson on London....that was my brief....so I can cover anything I want really. So, I opted for group work - I thought it would be a nice way to get them speaking English...and it could work, and if it does, it will work well...but it may not, and then it'll be about as spectacular a failure as Apollo 13.

I will, of course, write here how the lesson goes...if I survive!

Anmeldening (a slight anglicism of a German verb there - which will probably happen quite a lot throughout this blog) was put back a day, because of German work ethics - i.e. the office was closed! So, we'll brave this stage of German bureaucracy another day!

Met up with a couple of the other assistants in the afternoon, had a nice drink by the Saar and an in depth discussion about philosophy! (Which I fear I may have lost!)

Tuesday 22nd September

Today, only 2 lessons at the Gymnasium today - working with the sixth form again, although a different class than before. We had an interesting class discussion on the advantages/disadvantages of the recent reforms to the Abitur (A-Level equivalent) in Germany. During the debate, I featured as the expert on the English school system, and how it compares!

Then, I got promptly ripped off by the Hausmeister (Caretaker) for keys to get around the school. At least it's only a deposit - but €25 seems a bit steep for two keys to me, but at least I don't have to stand outside the staffroom anymore looking like a lost sheep! (A promotion from my rabbit impression, and yet another animal impression I'm perfecting - if I keeo going like this I will be able to imitate a zoo when I get back!).

After that, I returned to the Buergeramt (where you anmelden, rather than get a Big Mac), which was indeed open today! (Stage 1: Complete!). Once you get in, you take a number (rather like how it used to be at the Deli Counter in Sainsburys) and wait until your number flashes on the screen. Fine, except my number was 142; the number itself isn't a problem, I'm not superstitious, but the fact that when i got there, we were on number 119 meant I was in for a long wait. During this wait, which wasn't as long as it could have been because some people had given up waiting, so we shot through the 120s like there was no tomorrow, I engaged in people watching, and trying to guess what they might want! For the record, I don't know if I was right or not with the guesses, but it passed the time, in the absence of a book! Finally, number 142 flashes on the screen, and not wanting to appear to keen, I resisted to go "meep, meep" as I zoomed to desk number 5. At desk 5, I handed over the Mietvertrag, and my Passport - anmeldening is a relatively easy process I'd been told by others who have survived this trial. I was doing quite well, until she decided she wanted to know who actually owned the house I was living in...information I didn't bring (silly me, I know!). So she gave me a form, to take back and get signed....I had failed this stage of the anmeldening process. I got the same feeling as you imagine a professional computer gamer gets when he's 99% complete, and he sneezes and loses his last life and the words GAME OVER appear on the screen. So, I shall now have to retry this stage on Thursday, as they only do half days on Wednesdays, which unfortunately correspond with the same half of the day as I work (i.e. Mornings). So, I'll be back on Thursday to brave it again...

As I was waiting for my bus to take me home, I was spotted by some of my fellow assistants, so we had a drink together, and then we all went shopping. Conveniently for me, 2 cheap supermarkets are all very easily reachable by bus for me. Although the 63 (yes, SIXTY-THREE) steps to my road from the bus stop, really reminded my feet to take up their militant stance again. I took the Neville Chamberlain approach, and spoke firmly to them, until I got home, when I almost immediately appeased them!

Wednesday 23^rd September

Today I discovered why I like being an assistant. I started work at 08.10, which is early, and had meant getting up at 6. This, I might add, is not a clear advantage of doing an assistantship over the other Year Abroad options. However, I had finished work by about 09.50. Yes, that’s 1 hour and 40 minutes of work today. My 2 lessons consisted of working with a small group this morning talking about food, and then with my second lesson working with some 10-11 year olds practising numbers up to 100, and days of the week. The small group were really hard working, and we’d finished all the set work with 15 minutes to spare; which meant that I needed to find something else to do...games! So we played a game where they had to take it in turns to add things to a shopping list, whilst remembering everything that had gone before them. My second lesson was spent in competition…not with the teacher, not even with the pupils, but with the Tree Surgeon, who had decided to be cutting down trees outside the room today! We got there in the end though! We did some drilling work (not Changing Rooms style) on the days of the week, then had a numbers quiz. Alas, this early finishing will not be a recurring event; as of next week I agreed to provide extra classes for the Oberstufe at the Ludwigsgymnasium on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from now on (in Period 9, which runs from 1515 until 1615).

So, what to do after I’d finished at work today…well, I opted to go into town and have a coffee and read my book! I found a nice café in the main shopping street, where by chance, there was a cellist and a clarinet player playing some fantastic music together…this is definitely the life! Anyway, after a couple of coffees, and a hundred or so pages of my book, I needed to do some shopping. I needed to get a new bag, as mine had broken – that, I thought, shouldn’t be an overtly difficult request. In a similar vein to several other times that week, I was wrong…I objected to paying €88 for a backpack (not even a hiking/camping big backpack…like a normal backpack). I was nearly resigned to having to walk around with my bag on one shoulder for the next few weeks, when I was wandering down a quiet side street, where there was an emporium that was in the midst of a closing down sale. They had some bags for sale, so in I went, and a few minutes later, I had accomplished my mission!

On top of this already near perfect day, I was able to catch up with my landlady, who was able to /sign the necessary paperwork so that I can go and anmelden at the Buergeramt tomorrow (although I shall try not to jinx it, by counting my chickens). I’m trying to decide whether it would be worth picking up a number on my way to work tomorrow morning, and then I won’t have too long after work tomorrow! Another short day tomorrow, only 4 lessons!

The weather, by the way, is still fantastic, and I’m slightly annoyed at myself for bringing hat, scarf, gloves and a thick winter coat, but no shorts!

Thursday 24^th September

So, back at the Gesamtschule for my 4 lessons today. They went OK, the first lesson was spent overseeing a class doing a test, which was a chance for some peace and quiet (slightly necessary after my early wake-up call!). Some of the kids found it easy and were finished really quickly, and others really struggled. Unfortunately the classes are not set at the Gesamtschule, which means that there are children of all abilities in the same class; thus either some get left behind, or some get bored! My second lesson was with Stefan, the Schuldirektor, I say with, that’s probably an exaggeration. He took two-thirds of the class away to get their new textbooks, so I was left with 10, very nice, pupils reading me their homeworks about their school. During the break Stefan and I had an interesting discussion; mainly revolving around 2 of his major interests; schools, and beer. Following this discussion, I was invited to the Teamsitz, which is basically a staff meeting for all the teachers at the school. More about the meeting later…

After I’d finished at the school (about 11.15) today, I decided I would brave the Buergeramt again! This time, as for Tuesday, my number and the number on the board seemed so far away! Luckily the time passed relatively quickly, and off I trotted to Desk 17. At Desk 17 sat a friendly chap, who looked genuinely delighted when I told him I wanted to anmelden. (although, I have a suspicion it could have been my German accent he could have been smiling about – it wouldn’t have been the first time!). With regards to the form I received on Tuesday, it wasn’t really a worthwhile task getting it filled out, the amount of attention he paid to it. Still, after we’d got around the question of my nationality (he seemed under the impression that because my passport says on the front “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” that I was from Belfast), still I eventually managed to convince him that I was from England – at which point he put down my hometown as London…having been exhausted mentally and linguistically from the previous discussion, I settled to accept that, in the eyes of the Saarbruecken Buergeramt, I am now a Londoner. That was it, or so I thought…I’m now required to arrange an appointment with the Auslaenderamt to get hold of an Ausweis (effectively an ID card). Still, it’s all part of the fun!

So, after successfully letting the German authorities know where I’m living, I returned to the school for the staff meeting. What Stefan had failed to mention was that the meeting was not at the school itself…it was, instead, at a pub, which finds itself in a secluded part of the woods near to Saarbruecken. We had the formal part of the meeting (albeit suitably lubricated with drinks), and this was then followed by a Saarland tradition of cooking meat by grilling it on a swinging grid. All in all though, a very pleasant afternoon, and much better than I had originally planned (i.e. nothing)! Also, I was told by Stefan I could go to Metz next Thursday on the Gesamtschule’s Kollegiumsausflug – so next week is looking up! (Not to mention Oktoberfest, and the National Celebration of the Day of German Unity being celebrated in Saarbruecken all coming up soon!)

Friday 25th September

I got up late today, so was at a bit of a loss as to what to do today. So, I thought it was about time I did the "touristy" thing in Saarbruecken today. So, with that in mind, I trotted off to town with my camera. I spent this morning, then, walking around the town taking pictures of anything vaguely interesting! Then, after lunch I went back to Sarreguemines, to have a better look round. There's more to it than meets the eye; it seems to go on for ages! It's, as I said previously, a pretty, typical French town.

The sun is still shining and the temperatures have been around 18-20 during the day, so in an atypically British manner, I shan't complain about the weather - long may it continue!

Tomorrow, is a day in Merzig beckoning with some of the other assistants here. There's some sort of festival going on there, so it should be a nice day!

Saturday 25th September

So, today was the day we went to Merzig. Merzig is a smallish town about 30 minutes away from Saarbruecken on the train. Merzig are enjoying their Oktoberfest for a week this week, but today is a special day there - today was the Viezfest (Cider Festival); which, being from the Westcountry I would be betraying my roots if I didn't attend! Three of the assistants were let loose in Merzig, exploring and savouring the smells and sounds of the festival. I think it's worth adding that Lederhosen are definitely not a thing of German mythology; they were alive and well today in Merzig. As was the typical German dress for women. After wandering through Merzig for a bit, we thought we'd just wander along a random road for a bit, and see where we ended up! As it happens, we followed a road up a hill, around a couple of very nasty bends to a chapel on the hill; from where it was possible to have a fantastic view of the Saartal (Saar Valley)...it's a difficult view to put into words, so I shall try and add the photos to this blog!

Today was my first use of the Deutsche Bahn network - I was very impressed, and enjoyed being able to sit upstairs (which is a novelty, which may take a while to wear thin!). It follows the stereotype, but if the timetable says the train leaves at 11.05, then it leaves at 11.05! I think the managers of First Group could do with a working trip out here, there's a lot they could learn from the Germans!

The Saar from the hill in Merzig

A view of the skyline from the Chapel on the Hill at Merzig

Sunday 27th September

Today is election day in Germany. This has been described by some journalists as the most boring election campaign in Germany for years, many people had predicted that Angela Merkel would remain as Chancellor, but that her coalition with the Social Democrats would be abolished. Looking at the news this morning, they were right! Angela Merkel has vowed to continue her work as Chancellor to guide Germany through these troubled economic times, and has also undertaken to start talks swiftly with the leader of the FDP (Liberal party) about forming a coalition, which would give them 48% of the seats in the Bundestag. Not quite a majority, but sufficiently large to still be successful in their tasks.

Anyway, that's enough of the election! Today, I went on a boat trip along the Saar, which was fantastic. There was a commentary, and there were many things that you wouldn't see by walking along the side of it. There are even turtles in the Saar, I know because I saw one! There are about 5/6 turtles measuring about 30cm in length which are visible throughout the summer months every year. There were a couple of herons on the trip too, and quite a few ducks (funnily enough!). The weather was fantastic, which seems to be the norm at the moment here! Looking at the ever resourceful Wikipedia, it claims that we should have about 67mm of rain (that's about 2 1/2 inches) during the month of September, although I've yet to see anywhere near as much as that!

So that was the end of week three, already I can feel my German has improved, certainly my ability to understand it, as well as my confidence in having to speak it! A few people in one of my classes at the Gesamtschule were convinced I was actually really German, and just pretending to be from England - which I took as a compliment!

Chapter Two - My Second Week

2009-09-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

So, here comes Week Two, this one ought probably to be shorter than the last one, but we shall see how it develops!

Saturday 12th September

Today was quite an exciting and novel day for me. I was able to leave the country by walking only 20 metres. How so, I hear you ask. (well obviously I can't, but I'm presuming that you want to know...if I'm wrong, then skip onto Sunday and don't bother with this entry!) Directly outside my door is a tram stop...so what, well this tram service is a bit special. It runs to France, it actually leaves Germany, and crosses the frontier. For a reasonable fee, it's possible to travel to a town in the Lorraine (57) region of France called Sarreguemines. The journey itself is not overly different to being on a normal train when you get out of Saarbruecken's city centre, and you're not stopping every 200 metres. It runs parallel to the Saar most of the way, which is nice. The tram arrives into the main Gare at Sarreguemines, from where it is possible to catch trains to Strasbourg amongst other places.

Sarreguemines itself is a nice French town, but with clear German influences in places (this area of France has throughout its history been hotly contested by the two nations). It has a nice collection of typically French shops (i.e. cafes, tabacs, bakeries, hairdressers, oh and banks!). This wasn't really a long visit, I thought I'd save it as a place to come back and visit, perhaps over a whole day. I also wanted to explore some of the other places on the tram-line back to Saarbruecken.

So, after a brief stroll around this town, I caught the tram back to Kleinblittersdorf, a small German on the bank of the Saar. When you get off at the station, it is possible to cross over the Saar and pass into a French village, with a slightly unusual (i.e. not typically French) name: Grossblitterstroff. A true example of the way the local dialect works. Anyway, it was a nice day, so I thought I'd explore this quirky French village, partake in a little coffee from one of the inevitably many cafes in the village....erm....I was slightly wrong. Grossblitterstroff is perfect if you want your barnet looked at; I counted 4 hairdressers, cafes; there was one, and it was closed! How a French cafe could be closed on a Saturday afternoon, I'll never know...but it was a little inconvenient to say the least. Having quashed my main purpose for looking around the village, I returned to the tram station, where I found I would have to wait a mere 54 minutes for a tram...not having a huge amount of patience/nor a good book on me...I had a Top Gear moment. I thought I'd walk back to Saarbruecken, after all, how hard can it be!?!

Well, it turns out, it was slightly further than I'd thought. I followed the path along the bank of the Saar, which also doubled as a cyclepath (judging by the number of disgusted looks I received, I guess it was probably a cyclepath, which the cyclists had been forced to share it with us homosapiens who don't possess a mechanical contraption for movement). Anyway, I walked for a bit, and after a couple of hours, I resigned myself to having a beer at the next available watering hole....I mean I was back in Germany by now, reputedly Europe's biggest beer drinkers, so how far would it be...not too far obviously! Erm....I may have been wrong again...it was another 4 km I walked before I found a biergarten! Now, I'd walked about 8.5 km from Grossblitterstroff to a suburb of Saarbruecken called Duedingen. I was quite proud of this walk, so I thought I'd sit down and take the wait off, before finishing the last 6 km or so into town....this was another misjudgement...as soon as I sat down, my feet began to let my brain know they had adopted a French mindset, and had gone on strike! After refuelling (i.e. finishing my beer), I decided that I would walk a little further (500m to be precise) to the tram station, from where I caught the next available tram, and then just about managed to hobble the last few metres from the tram stop to my room....although I regretted that it was on the 1st floor quite a lot!

When I got back to my room, I did the diplomatic thing, and gave into my complaining feet, and pretty much got into bed, and stayed there all evening!

Sunday 13th September

Today is a Sunday (obvious I know, but it sets up the rest of the sentence, so bear with it!), and in Saarbruecken 99% of everything shuts on Sunday. Indeed the only places I've found that open here are cafes. So not wanting to be a boring recluse, I thought I would meet up with our newest arrival, and show her around Saarbruecken a bit. It was a nice day, so we started with coffee in the St. Johanner Markt, which I'm sure is compulsory on Sunday's! Then we followed a similar tour to that which Sabine had taken me. Then we thought we'd just keep walking, and we tried to find one of her schools. We found the road it was in, so then we walked and talked about anything and everything that came to mind. We walked back through the suburbs, which went from being normal "middle class" houses, through to an area, which it could be suggested had problems with unemployment, and high numbers of immigrants....how can we tell....because in advance of the pending Budestagswaehl in Germany, there were only NPD posters up in this area that hadn't been vandalised at all! But it was nice (if that's the right word), to see a different face to the city. After that, we went home and braced ourselves for our forthcoming weeks at school!

Monday 14th September

Today, I worked with some of the other English teachers; each has their own style and rapport with the pupils, and it's nice watching and sometimes participating in the classes too. Today was spent working primarily with the lower years at the school, which is nice, because they often ask the questions which are the most difficult to answer on the spot. "Why am I here?", "Why did you bother learning a language, everyone else speaks English anyway?" and some more quirky ones..."What colour's your favourite shirt!?!", "What's your phone number?". But I'm really impressed at their grasp and standard of English, sometimes they just need coaxing but with a little bit of work, they'll all be talking away in English before long.....just you wait!

After school, which I finished early today, I went back to Sarreguemines today...not for the same hike as the previous day, I went to see what was in the town centre, but I got distracted by boxes of books for sale. I'm really a sucker for books, particularly French ones...so I came away €3 lighter, but with 5 books to peruse. Two about learning English & German (albeit in French, but potentially useful too), Le Petit Prince (just because I've heard it mentioned a lot, and thought I probably ought to make an effort to read it), 20,000 leagues under the sea (simply so I can see what this whole pride in Jules Verne is all about!), and Le Proces by Kafka (so I could pretend to cultured really, but I'll still read it, and probably find it just as difficult to get my head round!). So, with my backpack loaded up again, I went home and set about deciding which one I should read first - settled on Le Petit Prince (it had pictures to go with it!) and I'm finding it quite good actually!

Tuesday 15th September

Today, I worked with the Oberstufe (Sixth Form equivalent) English classes today, and was again blown away by not only their level of English ability, but their really intelligent and well-thought out arguments! We were discussing immigration, and some of them were able to give real-life experiences, they were able to discount the political propaganda being thrust upon them, they gave me some really intelligent suggestions about how the problems could start to be resolved.

It's days like this, that remind me why I want to teach!

Wednesday 16th September

Today was my first proper day at the Gesamtschule in Ludwigspark. I spent the first lesson with my Betreuungslehrerin observing her in a cover lesson with a 7. Klasse (Year 8 equivalent), which was quite an interesting experience. The lesson was spent with the students doing colouring by numbers exercises to practise new vocab learnt. Then I observed a German lesson, as there was no English lesson being undertaken at this time. It was nice to see German being taught as a 1st Language - they were doing the basics of summarising a text about a local wolf sanctuary. I spent my 3rd and last lesson of the day, with the Schuldirektor covering another English lesson with the class from my first lesson. It was also interesting to note that there was little difference in how the children behaved for the Headteacher than the other English teacher. During this lesson, we carried out a quick name eliciting exercise, whereby I took half the class, and asked their name and where they were from....of the 17 or so children I asked....3, yes three, were native Germans. All of the others had an immigrant background of some description, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why the children are less likely to pay attention in English lessons - simply because it's too hard for them to learn another language on top of the German they've already had to learn. So my first impression of the Gesamtschule is that it will be more of a challenge, but I like a challenge, and it'll be a rewarding year hopefully, watching them learn and progress on with their languages.

Thursday 17th September

Back at the Gesamtschule today, where I had to take a cover lesson on my own (you know, the one thing the British Council say you shouldn't be asked to do) but it went OK really. As expected the class pushed the boundaries, but I like to think we came to a certain understanding! Apart from that little shock, the day itself passed without incident really!

Friday 18th September

Today was the day of the Kollegiumsausflug from the Ludwigsgymnasium, where we went for a 10km walk around a (very old) disused quarry about 40 km outside of Saarbruecken. There would have been some fantastic views, had the weather been less cloudy, but it was nice to be able to get to know some of the other teachers better, and for them to get to know me as well. I'm not sure of the educational benefits for the pupils of the teachers effectively going on a jolly for a day, but hey, as a member of staff, it was a fantastic day, which hopefully will start to catch on in the UK, although i doubt it will! After the walk, during which I mainly spent the time talking to one of the English teachers who was an assistant in Bristol, and so had some knowledge of the area, we had a nice buffet lunch. It was a generally fantastic day, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed. I should point out that my militant socialist feet were again protesting in the evening, but it was just tough!

Saturday 19th September

Today I moved! :-) This is fantastic for me...I'm moving out of my very expensive temporary solution into a much cheaper room, in quite a posh area of the city. The house is on a one way street, with no tram in sight, which means I sleep like a baby (although without my thumb in my mouth, nor the baby alarm). It's got TV too, which although not compulsory is a fantastic luxury, which I've not had until now! So, generally chuffed with it! Thanks should also go to Sabine, without whose help, I would have had to trek my stuff across town using public transport, which would have taken, err, all day, and most of the evening too! My only small complaint is that the militant wing from my feet, have now passed to my arms, where I pulled a muscle....but I'll get over it!

Sunday, 20th September

Finally, the end of the week! Today, I met up with some of the other assistants again, we had lunch together, and then we went for a stroll up by the Saar, and then ambled back again. Made a very nice afternoon of it!

Just as an afterthought

I thought I would live up to the stereotype here and give you a brief update on the weather here...It has rained about twice seen I've been here, mainly at night, although I did get a little bit rained on one day...other than that, it generally very cold in the morning meaning I dress warm, and then when I finish at school about lunchtime...the sun is beating down, and it's then a fantastic day!

Chapter One - The first week

2009-09-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

So, here we go, time for me to explain what's happened since I arrived! Probably easiest to do this in the form of a diary! (Also, this will make it much easier for me, when it comes to writing my reports for uni about what I've done!)

Friday 4th September

Today's the day I leave home for the first time properly, albeit at half 6 in the morning (meaning I was only half awake at the time!). Then began the drive to Dover, which went surprisingly well! (All the accidents on the M4 and M25 happened behind us!) We arrived in plenty of time to catch the ferry on which we were booked at 1200, but with a bit of asking nicely Norfolk Line agreed to put us on the ferry before, which left about half an hour later. The ferry crossing itself was reasonably uneventful - I spent two hours reading my book and drinking coffee, psyching myself up for the long drive the other side.

When we arrived in Dunkerque, it was my turn to take the wheel for the long haul part of the journey to Saarbruecken. If you draw an imaginary straight line between Dunkerque and Saarbruecken, then avoid it, that was the way we came - I've never been in so many European countries as on that day! We drove through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and then back into France again, where the hotel was! Hooray for the Schengen Agreement! (We drove past Schengen actually!) The drive itself was relatively stress free, apart from the Stau we sat in as we crossed into Germany for an hour because they'd closed the motorway! Poor TomTom couldn't cope! Then we checked into the Hotel F1 about 15km outside of Saarbruecken, and slept in advance of an exciting and interesting day ahead!

Saturday 5th September

So, this was it, my first proper visit to Germany ever (the previous day didn't really count!). Had a few things to do on this day, the first was that we had arranged to go and see a room at 11am, which I was led to believe was one of many this particular woman had available to rent. However, it turned out she only had one room, and that it wasn't her decision about whether I could have it or not; it was the decision of the other people in the flat. On top of that, the room wasn't available until the 1st October. It's worth pointing out, at this juncture, that whilst the schools had not found me anywhere specific, one of my mentor teachers had offered me a room at her house, if I couldn't find anywhere else! So, rather disheartened and let down - we thought we'd go and have a look around Saarbruecken, which was at first glance an OK city (although we didn't really take the time to look on the Saturday!), then after we'd had a short look down the main street (which I know now is called Bahnhofstrasse) we returned to France to do some shopping at the E. Leclerc across the road from the hotel. After all that, we returned to the hotel for a sleep, and hopefully a better following day!

Sunday 6th September

Sunday was set to be a hectic day. I was meeting mentor teachers from both schools (the Ludwigsgymnasium and the Gesamtschule in Ludwigspark) at 10. We had, luckily found the place the day before, so we knew roughly where we were going! After having a coffee, we embarked on a tour with one of my Mentor Teachers from the Ludwigsgymnasium, Sabine Kackert, who showed us some of the more historical and cultural parts of Saarbruecken, as well as giving me the lowdown on the school itself, how the English lessons worked, and how she perceived my role to work. After the tour, we had another walk around Saarbruecken, listened to some live music by the Staatstheater and then went back to the woman from the previous day who had a room I could rent (by the day) until I found somewhere less expensive! After moving in, no mean feat in itself, as I'd brought sooooooooooo much stuff with me (all of it essential, absolutely!) we went for what my Dad ominously termed the "Last Supper"; ooh, did I feel positive then or what! ;-) We had a nice meal in a cafe/bar/restaurant in the St. Johanner Markt in SB, before we returned to my room, and said our farewells.

Then, I was all alone, in the big, wild world that is Saarbruecken...(cue dramatic music)

Monday 7th September

My first day at school! (well, not exactly; I have been to school before, but you get what I mean!) Today I was shadowing my other Mentor Teacher at the Ludwigsgymnasium, Thomas Gross, who was very friendly and welcoming. We met the Schuldirektor, Dr. Heinz Paulus, who teaches English, French and Spanish! After that Thomas introduced me to some of the English teachers, and the rest of the staff in the staffroom. Although I'm sure I spent most of the time looking like a rabbit caught in headlights, just nodding and saying "ja" quite a lot. (Incidentally in Saarland they tend to say "jo" instead of "ja", along with "Meue" instead of (Guten) Morgen or Moin). After my brief meeting with my colleagues for the next nine months, I followed 3 of Thomas' lessons, and one of Rainer Andler's lessons. Both lessons were carried out in slightly different ways, although they all used music in some way to illustrate a point, or to practise specific language! After the lessons, I agreed to meet Thomas again in the afternoon, when we would go and open a bank account.

When I got back to the school, it was a short walk to the bank, and the process of opening the account in itself was much more painless than I imagined it might be! It was all done within about 30 minutes, which left me the afternoon to explore more of Saarbruecken on foot!

Tuesday 8th September

Tuesday was my second, and last day, of the week at Ludwigsgymnasium, and on this day I followed my other Mentor Teacher, Sabine, for her lessons, which again used music in some way. Also, I was set my first homework during this period too! I had to prepare to discuss the topic of Immigration with the Oberstufe, who, for the first time ever, have to do formal oral exams in languages! I finished early at the school today, as Sabine had free lessons, so I used the opportunity to meet up with another English Assistant, and begin the process of registering at the uni as foreign students. This, I thought, would be a 1 day 'in-and-out' job; how wrong I was!

The trip up to the uni itself isn't too bad, about 15 minutes on the bus, which is about the same as Bath to be honest. When you get to the uni, it's relatively easy to find the building in which the Akademische Auslaendersamt is situated, however, when you go in the building you are left to your own devices. We do eventually find it, although it's a wonder there aren't assistants/students from last year still searching the building for it! At the office, they then basically agree to take us on as students, (which we're only doing to get free travel around Saarland, and access to the library and other uni facilities). They then give us a list of things to do/bring with us the next day. So, back into town we go, off to pay €137 at the bank for uni registration for 1 semester. That was pretty much it for Tuesday!

Wednesday 9th September

Wednesday was the first day at my other school, the Gesamtschule in Ludwigspark. I was told on Sunday to report to the Schuldirektor at 9.30 on Wednesday morning and he would sort me out! So, getting there nice and early, (we've all heard the stereotype about German's disliking tardiness) I set about asking the first person I saw where his office was....fine.....but the first person I saw was the Hausmeister, who seemed to recognise what I was saying as German, but felt the need to respond in a thick Saarlandisch dialect (which can sometimes feel as foreign as welsh, although I'm assured it's not really that hard!). After giving him my best rabbit in headlights impression (I'd had a couple of days to perfect it by now!) He eventually took me there. Now comes a dilemma.....what to do.....do you:

a) Wait until 9.30 when he should come and out and meet me?

b) Knock on his door and tell him you're there?

c) Knock on his door and just walk in?

d) A mixture of all of the above?

I opted for D...I waited until about 9.35, after watching the way other teachers handled this dilemma - they all opted for C, but I thought I'd go for B after I'd done A for a bit...but there was no answer....so I bit the bullet and went for C. Surprisingly this seemed expected, and he wasn't at all put out by this! When I told him who I was, he had a bit of a head in hands moment, as he'd forgotten I was coming. Not to worry, he gave me a quick tour of the school, and I was walking home half an hour later!

So, after the short spell at school, I returned to the Uni for stage 2....

Having paid the money into the uni's bank account, and collected the various things I needed to take with me...I headed up to the International Office to collect some more bits of paperwork to take to the registration office. At the registration office, they registered me on a course of Romanisitic Studies (it had lots of places, and it's not expected for me to attend!). Ah, I'd cracked it I thought...when do I get my uni card/bus pass? Alas, not until the next day....ah, well....I was beginning to enjoy the bus ride to the uni anyway!

Thursday 10th September

Another short day at the school, 1 lesson observed, the children were of mixed ability, with some very keen and able, and others who were less of both. I've been reliably informed though that the students do seem to have improved since our first meeting, which can only be a good thing right!?!

The afternoon was devoted to another trip up to the uni, me and bus route 124 are getting to know each other quite well it would seem. Finally, I got my bus pass today, although after being given all your paperwork back, you then have to go to another office where they print your card, and you then validate it in the machine. Then I realised my pass isn't valid until the 1st October. Oh well, it did seem too good to be true! So, until then I'm limited really to Saarbruecken, and some of the small towns surrounding it (although more on those to come later!)

Friday 11th September

Today, I met up with some of the other assistants in Saarbruecken, there's probably about a dozen altogether in Saarland, and about 6 in Saarbruecken itself. We had a coffee, followed by a walk along the Saar, followed by an afternoon spent on Saarbruecken's fake beach (rather like Paris' attempt, but the river seems somewhat cleaner than the Seine!) having a few beers (when in Rome and all that!).

There endeth week one really, there's more to follow, but for now, it's time for bed!

So, the important questions first...

2009-09-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

What?

As I'm doing a degree in Modern Languages & European Studies, I have to spend a year of my studies abroad. Thus making my Bachelor's course 4 years, instead of the usual 3. For my Year Abroad, I'm spending the year working as a Language Assistant in a Gymnasium (Grammar School) and a Gesamtschule (Comprehensive School) in Saarbruecken.

Where?

Saarbruecken (or Saarbrücken if you've got a keyboard with a number pad) is a smallish city in the Saarland. Saarland is one of the smallest Bundeslaender in Germany, and has a history steeped in confusion over its identity. The Saarland has a unique history within Germany, seeing as it has been controlled by both Germany, France, then Germany again, then Independent (although with leanings towards France), then back to Germany again. So, are the Saarlaender German or French.....err...neither, they're Saarlaender, obviously!

Why?

Why Saarbruecken?

I chose Saarbruecken for several reasons. The primary reason is that I can go to France on a regular basis and practise my French while I'm here. Another reason was that when I told people I was thinking of coming here, they all sort of went, "where?" - and I like going to those sorts of places, which people haven't heard of and making them my own!

Why being an assistant?

That's a much easier question! In the future I want to teach Languages in a secondary school in the UK, thus being out here will give me more school experience (always helpful!), as well as allowing me to contrast the different teaching methods and school systems. Also, I get the school holidays off, and also finish at about lunchtime (win-win situation!)

So that's the basics covered....now let's move on to the story!