My Shiny New Favourite German Words.

Living in a flatshare with German students, and working in a mildly crazy "Team" of teachers means I get exposed to a lot of German words that they don't exactly teach you in university. This is just going to be a short post of the best ones I've come across so far, enjoy, learn and repeat. If possible, adapt into your own language's vocabulary and use on unwitting natives in your own country.

1) Gammeln. 

      This is a fantastic verb which according to dict.leo translates as "to bum around". To avoid any awkward confusion, its better explained as what you do when you spend the best part of your day in jogging trousers/pyjamas, a hoodie and your biggest, fluffiest socks (or hausschuhe). You might venture outside, but only to the local Aldi. Being seen by friends in that state is embarrassing, but no worries, I can now at least explain the excuse for my state.

2) Weinchen. 

      Wein is...well, wine. "Chen" is a quirky part of the German language; a suffix one can add to the end of most nouns to indicate that its smaller. So weinchen is a small amount of wine. The lovely girls that live in my building taught me this word very quickly, and its a key bit of vocab before a night out with them.

3) Ätzend.

     This is a word that loosely translates as "god-awful". So not very positive but it sounds cool!

4) Wichteln.

     This is the german term for "secret santa". It is named after a small implike figure in Germanic folklore called a Wichtel (or a wight in English, not to be confused with their evil purpose in Tolkein's books) who slyly do helpful things around the house at night. Cute, eh?

5) Voll die Spassaktion!

     Couldn't possibly not put this in! This is a phrase one of the girls in my building (she'll know who she is, if she reads this) uses all the time, usually after instantaneously planning a flat party and accidentally inviting a bus load (literally, once) of people. It means "what a fun activity", but sounds way cooler (!) auf Deutsch.

6) So ist das Leben.

     A favourite phrase of one of the friendliest (if slightly crazy) teachers at school, it means "such is life" and I hear it roughly 3 times a day when at school, usually more though. Generally used at the end of a debate with another teacher but directed at me, for unknown reasons.

7) Ebenso/gleichweis

     These words mean "you too!". So if when you're leaving a shop you say to the cashier "schönen Abend noch" (have a good evening) he or she will reply with one of the above. The first time I heard gleichweis I misheard it as "ja, ich weiss", (yes, I know) which I thought was a bit dismissive, but being a scared little foreigner with no trust in her own german language ability I didn't question my own interpretation for a while. 

8) Schwätzen

    The dialect that is spoken around the area of my school uses this little gem in place of "reden" (to talk). Longer and considerably harder to pronounce and conjugate, but hey, convenience isn't high on the list of priorities when it comes to German dialects, and personally I prefer it. It's cute, don't you agree? 

9) beknackt

     I'm not sure what this literally translates as but it kinda means like 'messed up', or 'daft'. But don't quote me on this. I have yet to venture to use it myself. 

10) Pennen

        Slang for sleep, means the same as "to kip" in English. 

Hope you liked this! Next blog post up: Christmas in Trier - Voll die Spassaktion!!

The Chronicles of Beth and Getting Down the Mountain

First of all, sorry for taking so long to finish a post! I have about 3 on the go at the moment but hey, I finished this one!

Anyway,
Funny title, odd subject.

So I've alluded to it in previous posts, but the thing that triggered this post is related to the location of my school. Drawing the short straw, location wise, it is up a mountain in a small (but very friendly) village.

In the bigger town at the bottom of the mountain is a train station, which has been mentioned before in this post. Every morning I catch the train there from Trier, then get a lift up the mountain to school. Every afternoon, I frantically try and find some way of getting back down the mountain. This has varying degrees of success and has resulted in a number of "escapades", for want of a better word.

Of Taking the Bus with the Students
The most common involves me giving in and paying to take the bus down the mountain...with all the pupils. You wouldn't think this is such a big deal, but for the kids in my school it apparently is. I did it once in my first week, which was awkward enough but the good thing was hardly anyone knew who I was, so apart from a few curious looks and a half hearted attempt by one of the older students to find out who I was (I'd like to think he wasn't flirting) interest was quickly lost and I made it to school in one peice. 3 months later however, and my english club causes me to take the bus with a variety of kids from my school, including several I'd taught that day.

The bus falls completely silent apart from a few stifled giggles. Slowly, slowly, the kids creep up the bus, until I feel breathing on the back of my head. I oh-so-casually turn my head around, and there are about 20 students standing right behind me. Awkwardly I smile. The boldest shouts "Hallo Miss Thomas!" before they all explode into giggles and rush back to the end of the bus. Sigh.

Of Overly-Friendly Bus Drivers
Scenario 2 takes place exclusively on Tuesdays, when I finish after the second lesson at 9.45 am. A few weeks ago the only bridge over the Saar in the town where I take the train went under construction, so the normal 11.26 coach was replaced with a minibus. The first week it didn't show up, meaning I had to wait another hour for a bus to a completely different town with a station, where I then waited 45 minutes for an hour long train ride, returning home at 2pm. In total it took me 4 and a quarter hours to get home, nearly 3 times the amount of time I'd spent teaching.

The next week however proved more awkward, when David the 42yr old minibus driver (and owner, he was quick to add) appeared to take me down the mountain. Cue a few weeks of increasingly more uncomfortable bus rides, with questions that became more and more personal as time went on and I'd been subjected to complicated, bitter and seemingly endless stories of how and why his marriage failed. The week before last he turned to me and suggested I seemed like an interesting person and a nice change from his wife. I replied with "oh" and sat in awkward silence til we reached the train station.

Readers will be pleased to know I have since found alternative transport down the mountain on Tuesdays :)

Of Getting Caught in Snowstorms.
My school is officially the highest point of Saarland, which means I was told very early on that it is one of the worst places in the region for snow. Cue last Friday (7th of Dec), when my lift told me that by 10 am that day the snowstorm that was causing havoc in France was about to hit us, so school would probs finish early.

Before we even got to school, the snow had started, and by 9am we had 6 inches of snow. Saarland has this stupid rule that no matter how much it snows schools cannot officially shut, so its the parents' choice if they send their kids to school or not. Anyway, cue CHAOS.  By 9.45 we were verging on a foot and a half and it wasn't slowing down. Told very sternly to flee the school by my teachers, I ran to the bus stop. And waited. And waited. After nearly an hour and resembling a very life like snow(wo)man, I remembered I had a number for the bus company. Rang up to be told "Leider sieht es nicht so gut aus" (sadly it's not looking good). I trudged back to the school, to the surprise of my teachers. An hour or so later and I managed to get in the car with a teacher heading down the mountain.

Due to the careful driving of said teacher we made it to Merzig. During the trip he regaled me with his stories of living in the Student Village in Swansea uni on his year abroad and the crazy, liver-poisoning antics of his flatmates. Ah, freshers.

I made my way to my friend Katie's flat in Merzig, where bless her she put me straight to bed, me being half girl half icicle by this point, and brought me soup, pretzel, cheese and copious amounts of tea. Bliss.




These sorts of escapades sound rather annoying but hey I will always take them in good spirits. No matter how cold, irritated or mildly traumatised I am when I get home to Trier, being able to come home to lovely people and the knowledge that that evening I won't be spending alone on a beautiful but rather sparse mountain watching tv all evening makes it so, so worth it.

Things I'd wished I'd known...

More of a practical post today:
Things I wish I'd known before a) coming to Germany in general and also a few British Council Language Assistantship specific things as well.

Number 1:
Crucial this. Y'know how back in Britain (and maybe other places) you're the new kid on the block and you're in a room with one or two people you know and plenty you don't? Then your friend introduces you to the unknowns. It took me a while to realise but in Germany this doesn't really happen. It's apparently far more common to step forward, hand extended and introduce yourself. Makes sense really, and it's only a little difference, but it caused me a decent amount of awkwardness during my first few weeks when I'd have failed to introduce myself to a room full of people.

Slowly I got more used to it though (once I figured out what I'd been doing wrong), and it's actually pretty good for the self confidence in a foreign country, to step forward confidently and introduce yourself, German style.

Number 2:
Getting ill on your year abroad.
So I got ill (downside of working with kids) and  had to head to the doctors. This proved a little different to Britain, so I decided to mention a few things:

1) There are GPs, but there are also dozen and dozens of specialist doctors which you can book appointments with, if you feel its more relevant. I just went to the GP (Allgemeinmedeziner Artz) though as I had fluey symptoms.
2) They took my blood before asking me what was wrong. Not sure how normal this is?
3) The Deutsche Ring insurance will get a few raised eyebrows as it is private insurance, but hey, you technically work for the government.
4) You pay for stuff like antibiotics upfront but claim it back later.  Haven't actually done the second part yet, waiting for my doctors bill to send off.

Number 3:
When saying "Prost!" (German equivalent of cheers) you must look your fellow drinker directly in the eye when clinking glasses, or suffer the terrible consequences***

Number 4:
Ditto for always having the right change in shops. Oh and try and have it ready, after 10 seconds or so of fumbling in your purse the shop assistants become physically impatient.

Number 5:
Oh and you will spend the first 3 months (and counting) having a mild panic attack every time you buy food at a supermarket; the cashiers go so fast they practically chuck your food at you, then ask for the money before you have had a chance to pack more than 2 items into the plastic bags you remembered to bring with you. I have heard of 2 ways to approach this dilemma.

* Option 1: Do everything deliberately slowly whilst staring into the cashier's eyes as if to say "so I'm going British speed whether you like it or not".

* Option 2: not having the bravery to follow Option 1's advice, I get a trolley, chuck everything in as quickly as they scan it, pay, then move aside and pack everything properly. Pretty sure this method is the only thing keeping me from having a small heart attack.

Number 6:
If you spend a lot of time in the rural areas of Germany like I do get used to being asked in detail about your life, your family, your job, your pets, your opinion on HRH Queen Elizabeth the second, your tea preferences, what side of the bed you sleep on and your  thoughts on that dog over there.


I may have made a few of those up.

This is a good thing though, people are so friendly in the country, just curious.

Number 7:
Following on from #6, if you are Welsh (and congratulations on being so, by the way) come to Germany with a prepared opinion on your nation which you must be ready to deliver, in German, at a moment's notice.

Last weekend there was an awkward moment when a teacher found out I was Welsh, the conversation followed thus:

Teacher: "Oh, you're Welsh! Interesting. Do you want to become independent from England, just like the Scottish?"
Me: "Um, no, not really, I don't really mind...I mean...yeah, I'm happy being Welsh and British...I think...?"
Teacher:  "Well, that's a disappointing answer."

Sadly that's not the first time I'd let down an inquisitive foreigner with my laissez-faire attitude towards my welshness.

Number 8:
If possible, bring rectangular pillows with you. Square is just an impractical shape for a pillow.

Number 9:

Engage wholeheartedly in all German festivals (and there are a lot). Muchos fun to be had. And good food.

Number 10:
Take the opportunity to TRAVEL. Unless you are very lucky this is your one and only opportunity in your life where you have the time and means to explore one country in such detail. Don't waste it :)



I'll probably think of more as time goes on, these have been occuring to me slowly over the past few weeks. Usually whilst being sat on a bus/train and pondering over life in Germany, cool bean that I am.




***Ok, I lie, the consequences aren't terrible. You just get a friendly german who corrects you by opening his/her eyes widely, pointing first at them and then into your eyes and saying "look into my eyes".

Tarantulas, Bob's Your Uncle and A Lovely Walk

Hello again!
Apologies for this being a bit late again, I've been working on a different blog post for 2 weeks now but am struggling, so decided to do an update on my life one instead.

So where were we? Just after Belgium, I believe.

I managed to get ill (the couple of hours standing in a field in the rain in Vimy didn't help) so unfortunately after just one day back at school after the holidays I had to take to my bed with the flu. The silver lining to this cloud was that, as ever without the capacity to entertain myself, I got my YARP abstract written by the end of the week. Hurrah!

That weekend, and feeling better, a group of us from the building cleaned out the huge cellars underneath the building at the "request" of our landlord to be picked up as Sperrmull on the Monday. This wasn't too bad, until we got to the darkest corner of the biggest, fullest cellar and came across a white styrofoam box. When my poor flatmate opened it up, she found it was full of huge, dead tarantulas.

Cue general disgust and debate about what to do about it. We found out we should ring the fire service, so they turned up and were equally disturbed by what they found. There were around 50 of them, ranging from roughly the size of a £2 coin to well, a lot bigger. Anyway, they called for the Ordnungsdienst (the police but without guns, as they were explained to me) and after 4 hours a vet turned up, who identified them as illegal etc and got us to take photos to send off for a report. I'll do you a favour readers and spare you the photos, which were unfortunately saved on my camera.

Anyway, after the Tarantula Incident things got a lot nicer. I went to a Divali party at Gunjan's and then finally headed back to school to do some breadwinning on the Tuesday. My week at school was really nice. We learnt about Guy Fawkes' Night and with my English AG I taught them some colloquial English, at their request. Some of it was practical stuff but I chucked a few more interesting things in, for example my little group of keen yr 9s and 10s now have "Bob's your uncle" in their active vocabularly, which they were surprisingly thrilled about.

Then on the Friday after work I headed to Wissembourg, Alsace to stay with a uni friend of mine, Meg, and also to see another uni friend, Helen. It was a bit of a trek on the train (see below) but hey, when you think of how big France and Germany are it could have been a lot further away!

Wissembourg really is on the border to Germany, as you can see.

The town was lovely, so beautiful, and it was really interesting for me to visit an area I'd written a huge linguistics essay on for Multilingualism last year: people really do code-switch a lot, so the linguistics geek inside me was happy as anything.

On Saturday we had a very French lunch of baguettes, cheese, ham and amazing chocolate thingies from the local patisserie, then headed to the house of one of the English teachers at Meg's school, where a few other English teachers arrived. Then followed a beautiful hike up the hills slightly to the west, right on the German border (we actually walked into Germany!) amongst some beautiful ruined castles. Sadly it was very foggy, so we missed out on the beautiful views, but that did lend a very mystical air to everything when standing on top of the castles.

 Castle Loewenstein :)

 Cue Meg and I "It's like being in Helms Deep! Or Minas Tirith!"

A tree told us we were in Germany. Fanfare much?

Later, after 3 and a half hours proper hiking we were taken to a very rustic Tarte flambée house by the teachers, where we got a very French experience, discussed the amazingness that is the languages department at Southampton University and tried (and failed) to politely decline more Pfannkuchen than we could manage. Our French got a workout too, which was well needed.

The next morning we headed upstairs for lunch with the teacher who owns the flat that Meg lives in, it was lovely, and the family was really cool as they were totally bilingual French and German, and would swap languages according to who was in the room/leading the conversation. Switching almost seamlessly from French, to German, and back to French again, myself, Meg and Helen exchanged a few thrilled glances: if someone told me, aged 15, that in 5 years or so I'd be able to do that, I would have told them they were being silly and got back to my Macbeth coursework. How things change, and how pleased am I that my year abroad has become such an amazing experience on so many levels.

After lunch we headed out with Bergère, the sweet dog that belongs to the teacher, for a walk around the town, before watching a couple of episodes of Friends and making our way back to our respective German cities.

P.S: My long journey home was brightened up considerably by spending an hour on what appeared to be the Hogwarts Express. Since the end of the Harry Potter series it now apparently runs between Mannheim and Saarbrücken, incase you were interested.
An old lady came past and even asked me "Fahrkarten bitte", which I'm pretty sure translates to "Anything off the trolley dears?". Not 100% though, so don't quote me on that.

So a Canadian, 3 Americans and a Brit went to Bruges...or was it Ghent?

No readers, that isn't a rather crappy joke that lost its way, I really did go to Bruges (or Brugge, which made me, the Brit, laugh a lot, if you can figure out why) with a group of lovely people for the weekend.

It started at 8.30am Friday, when Tylor picked me up in the hire car. Upon seeing it I burst out into slightly hysterical laughter as the car was a BMW. Sweet!

Photo below of a pretty chuffed group of people:


We hit the road, Tylor our trusty captain at the wheel, and drove through Luxembourg and then through Belgium to Bruges, which lies near the West Coast in the Flemish speaking part. We arrived at our hostel, which was very similar to a standard British YHA hostel you'd find in the middle of nowhere in the Lake District. (This isn't really a good thing). But it was warm, dry and vaguely comfortable and came complete with an über friendly cat so we were zufrieden.

We headed into the city centre, armed with a map Patty picked up at the Youth Hostel, but quickly got confused with our bearings. It was then we realised that she'd accidentally picked up a map of Ghent, which I'm sure is a very nice place but it did render the map a bit useless. Correct map found, we found the main marktplatz, which is stunning. See below:


Those of you who have seen the film In Bruges will recognise this place, it is the Belfry of Bruges, which has apparently been destroyed by fire and/or lightning strike 3 times to varying degrees:



From there we decided to do some of the more unusual tourist activities, including finding and kissing a hidden frog on a bronze statue and discovering the ruins preserved beneath the 4 star crowne plaza hotel.





Afterwards we wandered around enjoying the beautiful little streets and the canal for a while (with me going roughly every 5 minutes "ooooh I remember this bit from the film!" until I got a grip on that annoying habit) then hit a pub. We wanted to go to a pub selling a particular brand of beer one of the euro-tripping Americans was missing, but sadly it was closed so we headed to one over the road instead and took it upon ourselves to sample a large number of fine Belgian beers (all in the name of culture, of course) and played cards.

The next day we headed to Oostende, which is a town on the coast, and drove along the "coastal path". Unfortunately you couldn't actually see the sea much to the American's chagrin, so we decided to brave the driving rain and pulled over in a small town (De Haan I think it was called) and hit the beach. After getting soaked we had a hot drink then the sun came out (sort of) so we decided to head back to Bruges. 

Next we went to a beer museum, which was good, though I embarassed myself by making fun of and taking silly photos with a huge picture of some silly looking people on the wall, who turned out to be the owners and makers of the beer, awkward. By this point it was 3pm and we were pretty hungry, so we had some food then headed to a "Celtic" bar we'd heard was good; it was, though to my disappointment it was more just an Irish bar save for the dirty Welsh flag on the ceiling.

Finally our trusty, if slightly odd, guide recommended the bar at another hostel, so we headed there for happy hour and got talking to some people from Newcastle and New York (an interesting combination). 

The next morning was a different experience alltogether: we drove to Vimy, northern France, where there is a beautiful and majestic Canadian war memorial. Tylor (who is Canadian) had found out there was a Remembrance Day Service in front of it on the Sunday, so once more we braved the driving rain and stood to watch. Serious moment here, but it was pretty moving to attend the service of an entirely different country remembering their fallen soldiers, and hearing the speeches in French was a further reminder as to how many soldiers around the world have given their lives.

The monument: breathtaking, ne?

Afterwards, throughly wet through, we headed to the car and benefitted from Germany's overengineering and toasty car heaters til we'd stopped shivering. 

Then, after one of the most interesting and funniest weekends of my life, we headed home via Belgium & Luxembourg once more. 

I will leave you with a picture of me next to a Beth-sized door, and Tylor next to a normal sized door which is currently being appreciated on Facebook. Really puts my miniature-ness into perspective, doesn't it?

Bis bald!

Two Weeks Later...

Hey everyone, you may have thought I'd been kidnapped or something in the last 2 weeks but no, I'm still here. Well actually I did run away to GB for 9 days I just couldn't stand Germany any more.



...nah just joking, I love Germany. But I did head home! As of Friday the 19th of October at 10.40 am my school had 2 weeks holiday. So what did the teachers do? Get drinking, naturally. We cracked open the beers in the team room, then headed out to an italian restaurant and ate pizza. I cannot stress how lovely the other 7 teachers in my "team" are, in the last few weeks they have been so welcoming and helpful AND they even paid for my pizza!

I then caught the train back, grabbed my (pre-packed, thank God) bag and went to catch the coach to Frankfurt Hahn airport. I was genuinely sad to be leaving my flatmates for 10 days, they are so lovely and good fun, but equally happy at the prospect of seeing my uni friends and family.

For those of you who don't know, Frankfurt Hahn airport is a bit odd. It is in the middle of nowhere in Rhineland Pfalz, and only does RyanAir flights. Because of this I had to travel there the night before and stay in the B&B hotel across the road (literally), as my flight was at 6.30 am.
I'd never stayed in a hotel alone before, but I was so tired and had to get up so early I fell asleep at 8pm and woke up at 4am, fully refreshed.

Later came the biggest challenge: negotiate the London Underground. Another first to do alone, as I can count on one hand the number of times I've even been to London. This proved even trickier than expected, as a lot of the lines were semi-down, and I accidentally got 2 poor German tourists lost with me, awkward. Eventually I managed it though, and made my way down toSouthampton, where I study.

Officially this was to do some research for my YARP (year abroad disseration thingy) but it was unofficially a chance to revisit the delights of Portswood's nightclubs and see my friends still in Southampton, both of which I'm pleased to report I did enthusiastically. A LOT of couch surfing was involved, and also a dash of dressing up as a sheep and hitting Jesters with the CymruSoc lot (highlight). I did get my research done too, somehow.

After that it was a case of heading back to Wales to see my parents and (briefly) my brother, and a  lush few days were had. I also got to go to the Cowbridge Food and Drink Festival! (http://cowbridgefoodanddrink.org/) Wandering around with a couple of my oldest friends I was hit by how much of a mixed bag my life has become: one day I'm learning about the intricacies of German culture and helping (or rather failing to help) my flatmates make Apfelstrudel. A few days later I'm back in Wales wandering around lovely stalls of Welsh cheese, cider and wine.

Being home also triggered several conversations about the things I wish I'd known before arriving, so that will be my next blog post!

I was pleased when I realised that I was excited to come back to Germany, and got straight back into life here, including singing karaoke twice (not my usual style) with a mish mash of erasmus students the night I got back. I love Trier!!!

Brilliant jet setting plans (well car-setting) this weekend, news on that next week!

I leave you with a few pictures:


Lush cheese, that I brought back with me to Germany.


Cowbridge Food and Drink Festival

Finally Southampton University Hartley Library, which deserves a mention as a) I love how it looks and b) I have spent way too much time there in the first 2 years of my degree.

Entertaining Times as an English Language Assistant

Guten Tag, wie gehts dir?

What is your name?
Where are you from?
Do you have any hobbies?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
What did you do in the holidays?

I realised that despite my new job being obviously a big part of my new life in Germany, I haven't really mentioned the work I actually do, apart from the awkward part anyway.

So above is a taster of a lot of the stuff I'm doing at the moment: taking students individually out of class and asking them questions such as those above. This has varying results.

Some kids are über keen, which considering I usually do this activity with the G course kids (those who will leave the school after class 9, so Hauptschule standard) is always a nice surprise. Some play it cool, which I get. I mean, I was a reluctant school kid myself once.

Its the ones who are visibly terrified of me that breaks my heart! I mean, I'm 5 foot tall. The only self defence I know I learnt from Miss Congeniality (SING: Stomach, Instep, Nose, Groin, if you're interested) and I don't even have any piercings to speak of. I am possibly the least terrifying person in the whole school, yet when I see them shaking and they forget all their German, let alone their English, I really have to resist the urge to give them a cwtch.

Funniest thing to happen though: Last Friday I went along with a teacher to a low ability yr 8 class. So kids who are 14 - 15 years old. I did the standard taking them out one by one thing, but each time I came back I grew more and more apprehensive of 3 boys, who were all a) a good foot taller than me b) very rude to the teacher and c) making it very clear they thought I was a bit of a joke.

When the time came to take the first one out I was more than a little nervous, but to my utter shock this guy, and the ones after him, were perfectly polite and very respectful! They even spoke some English, which to be frank I hadn't expected. Not entirely sure why they behaved to this day, presumably they were stupefied by my Englishness.

The best feeling so far though is when you find a student who, when you're sat there explaining what life in Wales is like, or asking them about what music bands they're into, actually gets bright eyed with interest, asks questions and does their best to answer. Even better, a few walk off repeating the stuff I taught them under their breath, and now greet me enthusiastically whenever they see me. I know these students are few and far between, but the feeling you get when you feel like you have actually made a small difference in someone's english ability makes me wonder if I was wrong in assuming teaching wasn't a long term option.


Addition: I wrote the above a few days ago but have something to add.

So today I went to class 8d to do a cover lesson that I'd arranged over a week before and prepared. I walked in a there was a teacher I didn't recognise there. She looked at me and said defensively "ich nehme es für die Dritte und Vierte" (I'm taking it for the 3rd and 4th lesson). I tried and failed to argue then slumped off back to the staff room.

15 minutes later the headmaster comes in and asks why my class has come to him saying Frau Thomas has left them alone for a quarter of an hour. Turns out the teacher was referring to the television, not the actual class. Oops. I blame German and its ambiguity!

Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben

Today's title has little to do with the post, its just a german phrase that my first german teacher Fr. Perks used to say to anyone who was more than 30 seconds late through the classroom door, and its one of my favourite things to say in German.

Translation: Those who come late are punished by life.

A little harsh in my opinion.

Anyway, I thought a little update was needed. I am alive and well, and things are good.

The school is lovely to me now after our little misunderstanding and there's always someone asking if I'm ok, do I have something to do etc etc. They were also very understanding when I eventually succumbed to the billions of illnesses the schoolkids have undoubtedly exposed me to. So long story short I'm very glad I said something and I have no complaints now. So ist das Leben :)

Best news of all: I have a semesterticket!!

This means I can finally travel on all public transport in the Trier area and several trains out of the Trier area for free. Including the train I take to work, saving me 22.50€ minmum a week, result!

Due to a couple of mistakes and a large amount of confusion (both on my part) it took a lot longer to sign up for the uni and receive my semester ticket than it really should have. I'd attempted to do it weeks before and failed miserably, so it was only when I had the bright idea to ask Annabel and Tylor what they'd had to do did I realise my mistake(s).

Cue me traipsing to the uni for the sprechstunden early the next morning to beg the woman to put my application through despite the fact I'd originally missed my deadline. This sort of disorganisation is a new part of my character that has only appeared since arriving in Germany. In fact, I don't think I'm actually becoming more disorganised, rather Germany's expectation of organisation is much higher than Britains.

Anyway, I digress. I arrived (sneakily, I thought) 20 mins before the office even opened, but lo and behold 8 people had already had the same idea, scheisse. My spirits sunk further. Until at least it crept closer to the important hour and to my surprise floods more people arrived and started queueing for the woman. Queues! I was mainly surprised by this, as Germans only really do queues in supermarkets, until I realised that duh, this was the international office.

So suddenly I found myself one of the envied, powerful few who had arrived early enough to have a seat and a smug look of comfort etched on our faces. Once the original 8 people had gone in (and come out again, obviously, this wasn't the beginning of a horror film) I cheerfully sprang to my feet, grinned at the guy about to steal my place and said "ich war die nächste" and strolled in. So I suppose my blog title is actually relevant after all!

Happy days.

I've also done a lot of travelling around with various assistants and also my fellow Southampton language students Helen and Meg recently, dass hat viel Spass gemacht.

Pictures below!

 From left to right: Whitney, Emma, Annabel, Hilary and Tylor. All Trier assistants.

Meg, Tylor  and Helen.

PS. Now I have no excuse not to start my Year Abroad Research Project. I repeat: scheisse.

Ein schöner Nachmittag in Trier

Today's post is about the lovely afternoon Katie and I spent in Trier yesterday, it was in fact so lovely it gets a post all to itself!

So yesterday Katie and I were invited to the house of the amazing couple we met on the train between Köln and Trier nearly 3 weeks ago. To read about them again click here. They'd told us to give them a ring and arrange a visit but it took us a while to work up the courage to do so, and when I eventually did, with Katie supporting me at my side, I pretty much forgot all my German apart from "bitte schön, danke schön" (please, thank you). Anyway they got back from an event in Heidelberg and rang us, inviting us round at 4pm the following Thursday.

That was yesterday, and from there followed a really good experience. There really is something to be said of saying YES to all invitations (within reason) on your year abroad, as it can mean you meet all sorts of people from your adopted country, not just people your own age.

Anyway, they picked us up and drove us to their lovely house in the outskirts of Trier. Upon arrival they fed us home made plum cake and that marble cake they love so much whos name I missed. They also gave us endless cups of tea and then whipped out the sherry, amazing.

The couple have had such an interesting life, having travelled a lot and studied and lived in all different regions in Germany, so they had a lot to tell us about their travels. But they also had endless questions about our lives and families etc which was very flattering!

Next we moved to the sofas, where we were served Moselwein (local wine from the region) and given an interesting explanation about the wine growing region we live in. Next appeared Mosel grapes themselves, and more nibbles. Resolving to not bother eating dinner when I got home, I tucked in, as did Katie. There we spoke for a couple of hours about all sorts of things: Africa, politics, the NPD specifically, Egypt, the German school system. Basically stuff that stretches Katie and I's German but we coped.

Then, just as we thought they were going to announce it was time to go home, they infact announced it was time for dinner! We couldn't believe how hospitable they were being! Also I wasn't sure I could eat anything more but politeness stopped me from mentioning that part. We had lamb (another awkward point as I'm not a massive meat eater myself and couldn't remember the last time I ate lamb) which was surprisingly nice and rosemary bread and (because I was starting to feel worringly tipsy from all the wine) sprüdel.

(Ok so this blog post is starting to sound like my mum's diary from when she was about 8, which consisted of "Today was ok. We had (insert list of food here for breakfast lunch and dinner) every day as far as I could tell when I read it. )

Around 9 they took us to the car (or pretty much rolled us by this point) and drove us home, but not before giving us a book written by the husband on Kenya! So sweet! He signed it and everything, picture below (sorry its on its side):

Anyway, last night may not have been my wildest night on my year abroad so far, but it was still one of the nicest. I reccommend that everyone who reads this on their year abroad befriends any nice old couples that they happen to meet, you never know how much you can learn from them about the country you're living in.

PS. I had an interesting weekend. Blog post to come soon when I find time.

Random things I've learnt in Germany

Bit of an interlude, but whilst accumulating the miles and miles (sorry, kilometres) of walking I've made a mental list of interesting stuff I've learnt in the last 3 weeks. Most are related to Germany, some not.

Therefore here are a few random thoughts:

1) I know its a stereotype, but Germany really is so efficient! After 3 weeks in Germany I finally had a train be 5 minutes late. For me, it was actually a relief to know the whole country is well, human. That there isn't some sort of secret über efficient clockwork system that the whole country runs on to which I am not party. I felt content. Much to my amusement, the people surrounding me muttered German swearwords and discussed amongst each other how standards were slipping in the country. I suppressed giggles.

2) People are friendly! Well, in general. Friendlier than Britain anyway. Interestingly, the response I get to when I speak English is markedly different to when I speak German. In general when I speak German they're friendlier (once overcoming initial mild surprise).

3) A depressing amount of German teenagers think that Wales is a city in England.

4) On  the subject, German teenagers aren't particularly interested in learning about Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, in fact they seem downright confused why they are at all.

5) As a result of 3 of the Saarland crew coming from the Emerald Isle I saw Gaelic Football for the first time today, it was good! Can't deny that most of the rules went over my head but it was entertaining to watch, to be sure.

6) In general I've learnt a lot about Ireland and Canada lately. This is a result of hanging out with the other Trier and Zoolander assistants, and its been pretty interesting to say the least.

7) Germany runs an hour ahead of Britain. No, I'm not stating the obvious here vis a vis GMT and stuff, I mean that for some (probably easily justifiable) reason the whole country just gets going one hour earlier than Britain. So it appears to be standard to be up at 6, and at work by 8, as opposed to 9 in Britain. This is tricky for me, as even for a morning person like me I'd forgotten what 9am felt like during the holidays, but I'm coping. Just. I'm not going to lie to you my dear readers, life is hard.
I think Germany as a country should just decide to get up an hour later. It's only fair. Then again, maybe that's the reason Germany's financial situation is that much better than Britains? Maybe that hour gained between 6 and 7 is the key to maintaining a healthier country bank balance. If so, I suggest Britain in fact follows Germany's example. In fact, David Cameron, if you're reading this, get on it.

8) Alcohol is so cheap in Germany! I mean, I was aware of this before but wow it is crazy cheap. You don't see so much binge drinking though compared to Britain, however I was surprised how many people smoke in Germany, and how widely advertised it is.

That concludes this random chapter of observations. I had more but I am sooo tired (as always) so I'll have to leave you literally on the edge of your seat until I remember the rest of them.

Englische Verhältnisse? Nur über meine Leiche!

Welcome to another blog written by a very tired Beth Thomas, currently of Cwtched up in Bedland, Trier, Germany.

What a weekend! It started Thursday evening, when I travelled to Merzig to stay with Katie. We watched a film, had some food, laughed at her prison fridge (see below) and cool kids as we are went to sleep at 10.50 pm as I had to be up at 6 for work the next morning. (I felt pretty bad about waking her up so early on her day off too!)


Katie's fridge. You need a key for your 1/8th and everything.

That day at school was a bit different, as it was is referred to in Britain as in INSET day, but it was very interesting for me to find out what goes on in them (or German ones at least). Basically we spent the day working in groups (the teachers that is) discussing ways to improve the school and particular aims for the staff, students and parents. Okay so I'd only been there for 3 days so I couldn't contribute that much but it did involve me listening to German for 7 hours straight on a rather specialist subject and I met a lot more teachers so all in all a good day!

Later we headed to Saarbrücken to meet up with the rest of Saarland lot, which had 2 new American additions (one temporary, sadly) and headed out to the town center after predrinks at Charlotte's. Ok so the night wasn't that mental, as we struggled to find a decent club (cue me insisting that the club give all 10 of us our money back...and being rewarded with a raised eyebrow and a firm no.) but it was fun to see everyone again and made me wish, not for the first time, that I'd been placed closer to Saarbrücken.


This is the Saarland crew, ( or as David says, the Zoolanders). Lush bunch of people.

The next morning myself, Charlotte and Katie made our way believe it or not to a football match round the corner at the Saarbrücken football ground, after Charlotte's neighbour, one of the players for Saarbrücken FC, suggested we did.  Those of you who know me well know I am not football's biggest fan. Or its smallest fan come to think of it. Long suffering girlfriend and friend of football obsessed males has caused me to automatically associate football with boredom, though I do know the offside rule I'll have you know.

Anyway, I didn't go with high hopes but wow what a cultural experience! No joke here, it was amazing, Saarbrücken FC may only be 3rd division. They may have lost 2-0 to Erfurt and we may have been three of the only females within the stadium grounds but we had so much fun. Germany really is crazy about its football but this equates to passionate fans and a brilliant atmosphere. See below for a picture of the ridiculously stolz (proud) crowd, which never stopped chanting


Interestingly, the banner reads Engische Verhältnisse? Nur über meine Leiche. This is a reference to the Hillsbrough disaster apparently, as we got some info about it as we came in.

Später we met up again at the Irish bar, where the aforementioned player appeared to hang with us for a while but sadly left early with the team and their girlfriends as they had post-failure training the next morning. Harsh in my opinion but oh well. I had a good last night away from Trier anyway, as we met a load of regulars at the Irish bar: some German, some Irish, one French guy and to my amazement a Welsh guy. Happy days! I suspect we are the the only two welsh people in Saarland.

Speaking of Welsh, I gave an hour long lesson on Wales today to a group of bemused 15 year olds. Not sure they really wanted to know that we eat bread with seaweed in, how to say you're tired in Welsh and how to say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch  but either way they know now.

I've missed out loads but it's taken me about 2 hours to write this, Katie came over last night for films and stuff but unfortunately we muddled up the train times, so got up at 5.20 am for her to catch her train to Perl but then missed it, then I got my usual train to school at 7 so it has already been 11 hours since I woke up and its only 4.09 pm! 

As to my general mood there is a massive improvement from this time last week, I don't feel lonely any more and feel more content at the school every day. Also I've noticed an improvement in my German already  :)

Until next week then. Exciting things to come are:

Weds: Schnitzelabend at a New Mintons in Trier. 

Thurs: Day off!

Friday: After school I am meeting up with my old German exchange from when I was like 16, Anna! I am so excited, she is so lovely and although our attempts to stay in contact haven't always worked over the years I am now living in the same Bundesland as her for the whole year.

Friday Evening: Birthday flat party of a fellow Trierer, should be fun.

Bis bald! xx

The School Life of Foreign Language Assistant.

So just a quick post about my first proper day as a language assistant, and I really got thrown in at the deep end!

6am: Wake up. Well, wake up and set alarm to snooze for 10 mins, then get up.
6.50 am: Walk to train station feeling oddly awake.
7.04 am: Catch train. Tiredness hits.
7.41am: arrive at train station.
7.55am: Catch bus to school (can't always find a lift) and sit awkwardly amongst 30 kids from the school who think (like everyone else at the school unless we've been personally introduced) that I'm another pupil. Awkward.
8.10: arrive in school, discover the teacher who's class I was supposed to be observing for 2 hours is ill, and so I have to teach it ON MY OWN in 5 minutes time.
8.11 - 8.15: have mild panic attack.
8.15: recover from mild panic attack and go to class. No clue what I'm supposed to teach them or what work they're doing, can't read handwriting in class book which doesn't help as well.
8.16: Stand awkwardly as 30 fourteen year old german kids eye you incredulously and try to think of something to do with them.
Rest of the lesson: Figure out what work they can do from their textbooks whilst trying to keep my nerve. After the first lesson (yes, it was a double) I shameless stole a format another group had prepared at the training the week before, using role play to learn food vocab and how to order in a restaurant. Group 2, Saarland crew, you are lifesavers. Anyway, it went down well I think.
10 am (ish): collapse in staffroom only to remember I have another 2 hours of teaching in 5 minutes time (though I knew about this one in advance. )
10.05: Walk into class 5b, who are a) 10 years old and b) very sweet. This lesson went a bit better as I'd prepared it in advance but I still was terrified throughout. Are all teachers this terrified of the kids at first? I hope so as I'm here for a year.

Midday: Collapse again. Thank God schools in Germany finish early (at half 1 anyway) Have a lift to the train station at 1.30 so spend the time preparing a lesson on Wales for year 10 next week.

1.35pm: arrive at train station. Need to cross to other side of the platform, but the barriers come down on level crossing so can't, meaning I miss my train.
1.38pm: Get to other side and realise there is an underpass which I could have taken to avoid waiting at level crossing. Realise I am also an idiot.
1.39pm: Driving rain starts. Huddle in shelter freezing and soaked through waiting for the train to arrive.
2:16 pm: train finally arrives. Immediately fall asleep listening to a Scott Mills podcast.
2: 48pm (roughly): wake myself up by bursting out laughing at something on the podcast which i was still half listening to in my sleep, startling fellow passengers as well as myself but fortunately stopping me from missing my stop in Trier Süd.

3pm: Arrive home. Wet through, shattered but oddly content. Today I did something I frankly didn't think I was capable of and moreso didn't make a fool of myself. I taught 4 hours of lessons, most of which (particularly for the 10 year olds) was in German and was understood. This year abroad really is testing me but so far I've not done too badly, in my opinion anyway.

Until the weekend then folks!

PS. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow morning. 6am starts and I will never be best buddies.

The Art of Introducing Yourself to Strangers

Guten Tag (oder Abend) everyone, welcome to my new blog post, which could alternatively be titled Reality Sets In. Because it has. But we'll get to that in a bit, first I will say some stuff about my new WG etc.

Soooooo where was I? Ah yes, Saturday morning. The kindly teacher drove me all the way to Trier to move into my new WG. When I arrived everyone treated me like  a guest and were very friendly; we sat in the sun in the garden, went out for food with some friends and got ready for the Abschieds Party (leaving party to you and I) as two of the girls (one of whom is the owner of the room I'm borrowing for a year) are leaving to go on their own year abroad. Später came the actual party, which was a mish mash of course mates and friends of one of the girls, as she comes from nearby. Mindful of my need to make friends and the fact that here was a room full of nice people I ignored my strong urges to give into the almighty fatigue from head to toe and spent the next 4 hours introducing myself to pretty much everyone and having several good conversations (with a few awkward ones mixed in but hey ho.) Finally around midnight (after being reassured that it was not "unbehöflich" -rude- to go to bed early) I gave in and slept like a baby despite the party apparently going on to 4am. 

The next day the girl whos room I'm borrowing left and I moved into my new room, its lush! 

Like seriously if I were to describe my ideal bedroom it would the eerily close to this one. Its also at least twice the size of my dinky uni room and a good £50 cheaper a month haha. The welsh flag is now on the wall and pictures of my friends and family put up so I feel very content in my room.

Then the reality started to hit me. I discovered that most of the students (including some of my flatmates) wouldn't be back til mid October, when uni starts. Meaning there's no one really around to speak to, and being a person who finds her own company rather boring this wasn't so good! But still, I had a lot to do so things were fine, and Monday morning I hit über organisation skills and managed to register at the Bürgersamt, Auslandsamt (partly anyway), open a bankkonto and buy food. Oh I'd also met the Trier language assistants the night before which was nice. 

Sadly, I managed to do this by 10.30 am and suddenly had a long day and a long week ahead of me with no social activities scheduled and no one around to talk to.  Loneliness set in. Ok, so in our many, many, year abroad pep talks at uni they said it was natural to feel lonely at first, but it still was pretty depressing and racking my brains for something to do to meet I came up a bit blank. My flatmate was around a bit, then went off to work. 

If you know me well you'll know I'm very sociable, so this was bad times. Worse was seeing all the Saarbrücken lot arranging meet ups or nights out at very short notice. Some of you may have gathered that I don't actually live in Saarland, because unfortunately my school is right on the border in the north, and a good hour's train ride from Saarbrücken. So being faced with 3 choices: live in one of the small towns near the school, live in Saarbrücken or live in Trier (about a 30 min train ride away in Rhineland-Pfalz) I chose the latter, so I could still have student flatmates and a social life etc. 

All fine, but obviously the students aren't here yet, and Saarbrucken is now a good hour and a half train ride away, meaning I watched like a sad little thing while all the Saarlanders met up every afternoon after school. 

 Ending on a  couple of good notes though:

a) I noticed there were people on the other side of the hedge of the shared garden, so eventually worked up the courage to wander over and say hello. To my relief they were very friendly and didn't laugh when I said I was a bit lonely and said I could come over whenever and hang with them.

b) Being a British person who speaks German has some massive advantages. Mainly that when necessary I can pretend not to understand even when I have, which came in particularly handy yesterday when the young guy opening my bank account started flirting with me in  a pretty creepy manner.  Pity I had to give him my address and phone number to open the bank account, mind. 

c) Tomorrow I have a day off, so I'm staying at Katie's in the evening (as she only lives a few towns away from my school), then Friday morning we head off to school (which for me is just a teacher training day so no actual teaching) and then after school head to Saarbrücken to meet up with the others. On Saturday we are rather randomly going to watch the Saarland football team play then hitting the town after, should be fun :)

First day in the School

Heute I went to school for my first day in that weird role as a foreign language assistant. The school is definitely auf dem Land (in the countryside) so I was grateful the teacher I'm staying with could drive me the first day.  Orscholz is lush though, its situated right on the bend of the Saar (called the Saarschleife) which is a bit of a tourist spot, see below:

The school is a Gesamtschule, which is a little different to most German schools, as all abilities between the ages of 10 and 16 are mixed together. At 16 some go off to do the Abitur (like A levels) and some to a work training.

Anyway, I was introduced to my mentor, who is an english and german teach only a bit older than I and is lovely. She took me to meet some other teachers, then took me to her class, which was the youngest age, just 10 years old! They are very sweet and keen but I will have to adapt myself to how slowly they learn. I managed to earn my stripes a bit though by suggesting that the students write a small dialog with me as their homework when the teacher got a bit stuck as to what to set them.

General impressions of the school were good. The students are in general very polite (a few jokers, obviously) and my mentor incredibly helpful. I'm a little doubtful that they know how to "use" me so to speak (the teachers that is ) but I can bear a few weeks observing, if after a few weeks all I've done is sit and watch still I'll pipe up. I get to teach the 10 year olds on my own next Wednesday when my mentor is on a trip anyway, that'll be fun!

I managed to find a lift from the train station to the school on Tuesday morning, which was a relief, and am now complete with a set of keys to the classrooms and a reasonably well filled timetable (missing two hours but the school suggested I teach basic French, which I can quite keen about doing actually!). I get Monday and Thursday off which is nice :)

After school I collapsed into sleep until the teacher woke me for a meal, then her and her husband took me to see some of the sights which was nice of them. Anyway, now it is time for another meal and then I move to a flat tommorow, auf wiedersehn!

Saarland crew unite!

I'm here! And have been for 5 days now. I have so much to write about I thought I'd write 2 seperate blog posts: the training days and then the second one about my first day at school.

Sooooo where do I start. Last Sunday I suppose. My parents kindly drove me to Heathrow for my flight, then said goodbye at security. Even for an unemotional family like ours it was quite emotional, I felt really rotten leaving my parents behind to deal with troublesome grandparents etc while I got to start a new life in Deutschland.

Once through security I met up with a couple of people on the same flight as me going to Altenberg for the training, which was good as I spent all of 5 minutes through security on my own so had no actual time to dwell on going away before I was sucked into meeting new people. We all sat together on the plane (they were all lovely) and most of us went onto the same hostel. Someone on the fb group had described Station Hostel as a Turkish jail, but it soon transpired they clearly hadn't stayed in a hostel before as it was fine, facilities were much better than average even if the beds were a bit firmer than desired.

First crucial lesson learnt though: when booking alone and female, don't book the cheapest option in the hostel, as I ended up in a 6 bed room with 5 grown men. I'd gone to bed quite late as we'd been playing cards downstairs, so only the 3 korean guys in the room knew I was a girl. So the next morning I get up to find the other two guys wandering around the room in just their boxers. Awkward. Was more embarrassing for them though, when they turned round, saw I was definitely female, turned an interesting shade of red and quickly got dressed.

Anyway, the next day we went to Altenberg, which is a beautiful former monastery (complete with CATHEDRAL!). Here I met Katie (I'll name her as I imagine she'll be mentioned a lot) who was in a room with me, mainly because her school is in the next village over from Orscholz, where my school is. What a relief to find she is a) nearby and b) lovely, it really reassured me to know there is a kindred spirit so close by.

The rest of the training was good, good food in general, the teaching was helpful and our group was made up of the 10 people going to Saarland from GB, Ireland and Canada. We generally stuck together as a group as Saarland was nowhere near the other states being trained (Niedersachsen und Nord-Rhein Westfalen) and it was hilarious, so much "banter" and we left promising to meet up soon (in fact they're meeting up tonight but I can't go as I'm staying with a teacher til tomorrow. )

Highlights of the training included: being invited to go flying with our legend of a teacher Herr Busch, spending an evening being told over and over again how I looked like gold medal winning Irish boxer Katie Taylor by two Irish guys (which is apparently a compliment) and the talent show, where Julia did the Saarlanders proud with her amazing piano skills.

Anyway, sickeningly early Thursday morning we were coached back to Cologne, and from their Katie and I parted ways with the other Saarlanders as we work on the other side of Saarland to them (basically as far away from Saarbrucken as you can get without going into Luxembourg) and headed to Trier on the train.

Best. Train ride. Ever. We got chatting to a mature German lady sat opposite us, who lives in Trier. A few minutes later, she got her husband to come over. Cue 3 hours of amazing conversation (all in German) with the sweetest couple I have ever met. He was an 'economical geography' lecturer (whatever that is) at Trier university, she a teacher at a Fachhochschule. They were amazing, so in love still it was ein Bisschen unglaublich! We asked how they had got together and it turned out that when they were 16 and 18 and Germany lost the second world war, they both lived right on the border that was drawn between East and West Germany, so the woman couldn't go to her old school, had to move to her future husband's and the rest is history. At this point in the story the man gripped his wife's arm, looked tenderly into her eyes and said "if Germany hadn't lost the war we would never have met; every cloud has a silver lining" (or a German version of that phrase. By the end of the journey they'd given us their contact details and insisted we come and visit them for tea sometime and we parted good friends. They also gave us cookies, win.

After that Katie and I parted and I caught a train to Perl to stay with a teacher for a bit. The house is really cool, just 400 meters from the French border and a couple of miles from the Luxembourg border! Pretty much the centre of western europe. The teacher is very nice if a little reserved, so, alone in my room for the first time since I came to Germany it suddenly hit me what I'd done and I felt an urge to cry. All of a sudden I missed everyone, not just my close friends and family but my course mates, my lecturers, my old job as  a waitress, basically where everything was familiar and minor difficulties were just that, minor difficulties. Not being a wimp however, I held the tears back and went to chat some more German with the family, as dwelling really isn't healthy in this situation.

So that ends this blog post, it is rather long but it was always going to be. Needless to say I am still happy and looking forward to my year abroad so all is well.

2 days to go!!

So this will be my last post before I go, I imagine. I am so excited! At 8.30 am I leave my sleepy village in rural Wales (sheep, or rather cow, heaven) to head to Heathrow and so on to Cologne. Luckily there are a few other assistants on the same flight and heading to the same training so we have arranged to meet in Departures and have booked seats next to each other on the plane.

I've said all my goodbyes now, but though they were of course tinged with sadness it was lovely to see how enthusiastic all my friends were on my behalf. The German "Beerfest" leaving do was hilarious, nearly everyone turned up in a Lederhosen or Dirndl! Happy days, see the picture below. By comparison I'd made little effort myself, simply draping myself in my big GerSoc flag.



I love my friends so much, they are hilarious and I'm so lucky to have them, not many friends would go to so much effort (the guy in the middle's Lederhosen are actually hand made! Also note the ones made from duct tape at the back xD)

A special mention to Abs, Abbie and Kate, whom I've known since primary school:



From left to right: me, Kate, Abbie, Abs.

Kate made me an amazing cake as well, which my friends then demolished as the Lidl Beer took hold so I had to rescue the last part for my parents to try.



So anyway, sad as it was to leave them for a year, I know (cheesy as it sounds) I've got nice people to come back to :)

Then it was time to turn myself to the arduous task of packing. I hate packing with a passion I only contribute otherwise to my hatred of speeding, mud-free 4x4s in the lanes and nail files (don't ask).
My main concern I have to admit was whether I could fit my dalmatian onesie in my suitcase, which is my most cherished item of clothing (see below to admire it in all its adorable glory)



I had my doubts as to whether my onesie would be accepted in German society (I don't want my future flatmates to think I'm a bit special should I wear it around the flat like I did in my student house) but egged on by facebook friends, including several assistants and a German friend who reassured me it would be a positive contribution to my eccentric Brit status and that we Brits would bring a onesie revolution to Germany, I found room for it. Best. Decision. Ever.

Anyway, all packed with 3 kilos on my baggage allowance to spare, hurrah! That's still 20 kilos though, which means that with the shoulder injury I mysteriously acquired in June I won't be able to actually carry it for more than a few seconds at a time but hey ho, life is there for its trials.

Tomorrow brings a lie in, a final lunch with the parents and some last minute things. Should probably track down my passport as well!  And recharge my ipod. Right now I'm copying some DVDs onto my hard drive incase I get a bit bored; I highly doubt I will be fully occupied every evening for 10 months.

So, just 36 (ish) hours to go. BRING ON DEUTSCHLAND!!!

:) xxx

The last week on Welsh soil (for a while anyway)

So its now 5 days 'til I leave! I am excited as ever but the sober reality of saying farewells will hit tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be an emotional day in general, as I'm sadly going to a funeral during the day and then in the evening I'll be having a German "Beerfest" leaving party (see keg of Lidl's finest beer below) to see my friends and say goodbye. Unfortunate to have them on the same day, but I couldn't move the party at short notice.



PS. bag in background is my 80 teabags, as mentioned in an earlier post!

Dancing round the kitchen

Sooo. I got the room!! I actually found out 2 days ago but I've been doing family stuff for a few days, I highly doubt anyone's actually been on edge to find out anyway (apart from me).

Anyway, yesss! I have somewhere to live in Germany! I was so surprised they chose me but over the moon, and really lucky as there is apparently a large student accommodation shortage in Trier.  They are so friendly as well, the email was titled "pack deine sachen :) " (pack your bags) and they say I can move in whenever, even if the other girls haven't moved out yet.

So here is my plan for the first week or so:

Sunday, 2nd of Sept: fly out to Cologne
Monday 3rd - Thurs 6th of Sept: Training course in Altenberg.
Thurs 6th of Sept: get train to Perl, in Saarland, to stay with a teacher.
Friday 7th of Sept: Go to the school with teacher to meet everyone and sort out shifts.
Saturday 8th of Sept: move into flat in Trier (well mattress on floor anyway). Flat has massive going away party for two of the flatmates.
Sunday 9th of Sept: Move into room properly.
Monday 10th of Sept: Start job at school.

That will be a crazy week but I'm sure it'll be fun. I'm very excited there will be a party the night I arrive at the flat as it will mean I'll meet a lot of people very quickly, who will hopefully adopt me as their token british friend.

Now all I have to do is pack stuff for a year into one suitcase (impossible), sort out access to euros more sophisticated than a wad of cash stuffed into my sponge bag (complicated) and actually plan some lessons!! (Not impossible but I've no idea where to start!) 10 days to go.

Still waiting

This was supposed to be the day I find out if I got a room in that WG near theSüd-Bahnhof, but unfortunately not. On Friday evening they sent me an email asking if I could wait until Tuesday, as they had one more person to meet on Monday evening before they made their decision. Argh.

On the plus side, this is a good sign, as if they didn't like me they would have ruled me out already and told me so when I asked for a response, so as my dad says they're probably just waiting to meet this last person on Monday and as long as they don't like her/him more than me I should hopefully have somewhere to live. So I can't help myself but hope they have some sort of obvious and terrible habit which immediately puts the girls off them...which is very uncharitable of me but oh well.

So the wait goes on.

However, I have just booked my one way ticket to Germany! At 1.50 pm on the 2nd of September (2 weeks time) I will be flying from London, Heathrow to Köln with Germanwings.

I'm flying to Cologne because the next day I start my Language Assistant Training in  Altenberg so there's not much point going to Trier or Saarland beforehand. 

I've not come across germanwings before, it seems a bit like easyjet though, only even more things you can pay for (just £7 to choose which seat I want to sit in for an hour and a half? Don't mind if I do!) I half expected to be asked if, for the small and reasonable fee of £20 I wanted to get first dibs on the nearest loo.

Anyway,  I am excited. In just 2 weeks and 50 minutes I will be starting my Year Abroad! I have an urge to dance around the room. If I get this room in Trier I doubt I will be able to resist said urge.

J'ai un aveu

The French speakers out there will have gathered from the title that I have a confession to make.  Because, as much as I want to adapt to my adopted country (2 weeks and 3 days!), as much as I love German food and have a soft spot for Sprüdel (<3) I cannot stand Schwarztee mit Milsch (the closest thing you get to a cup of PG tips in Germany) so, shamefully, I am allotting a not-so-small part of my one suitcase to a hefty supply of tea bags.

If they run out, I suppose I will have to rely on relief packages from my parents to get me through the tough tea-rationed times.

I wish I am joking but sadly not.

In other news I am still nervously waiting to hear if I've got a room in the flat in Trier. They said they'd get in touch with me by the 19th of August but I suspect that if I don't get chosen they may not bother to tell me :S Issues. Also a quick search on WG-Gesucht shows me a flat in the same building which has gone from advertising 2 women and 1 man + 2 spare rooms (when I visited) to 3 women and 1 man + 1 spare room...if its the same flat (its on the same floor) does that either means  I'm the new woman  (ooer) or they've filled one room with someone else and have decided I'm not their kind of person.

Anyway, I digress and also more importantly there is nothing I can do. I will ring up on the 18th or 19th if I haven't heard but until then I will sit tight and drucken die Daumen.

I have a plan B anyway but that will wait until Saturday/Sunday's post, should I need to "implement" it.

Hopefully however Saturday/Sunday's post will be one filled with joy and contentement. Watch this space...

Interlude

Not much to report apart from growing panic I won't have somewhere to live in 2 weeks and 5 days time, but I've come across this list for other (undoubtedly more interesting) YA blogs for your perusal, on the Third Year Abroad website.

http://www.thirdyearabroad.com/home/item/1284.html

But I realise I haven't really spoken about how I feel about moving abroad. Long story short: I cannot wait. I love Germany, adore speaking German and have yet to meet a German I didn't like (except for the one guy who used to follow me home from GerSoc events last year but we won't go into that here). Anyway, I had a difficult 2nd year what with one thing and another and a difficult summer so now I just can't wait to go and start a new period of my life away from former stresses and be properly independent.

I'll be sad to go a long time without seeing family and friends but I'm hardly indispensable and in terms of my friends I imagine we'll all go off to different corners of the world once we graduate anyway. Plus there's always skype and good old fashioned letters, so all in all I still feel quite positive. It'll be a massive adventure. I realise that things may not go perfectly (they never do) but hey at least when things go wrong you can learn from them.

I suspect my YA will confirm what I already am pretty sure about: that I want to live and work in a German-speaking country once I graduate, but it'll be interesting to see if this turns out to be true or not.

There's the small matter of dissertation but at least I get to choose what I write it on; I've chosen to study the use and status of the local dialect within the school, should be interesting.

Anyway, I feel very lucky really that I've got this opportunity of a lifetime to bugger off to another country for a year, not everyone has that luxury of pretty much disappearing into an exciting new life when you're feeling in limbo at home, so I will try and make the most of it.

Flat-hunting in Germany: Scenes from Die Fetten Jahren Sind Vorbei

So I have sadly proved my self horribly right by forgetting to update this blog until nearly 2 weeks after returning but hopefully I'll get more in the habit after a while.

So as mentioned before I went to Trier to visit some WGs (Wohngemeinschaft, which basically means a shared flat/house and are very common in Germany, and not just amongst students) that were in the right area and right price and *sounded* nice. Follows is an account of my visits:

Flat 1:

This flat had been found for my by my ex-A-level teacher's- godmother's-book club friend's- friend (confusingly) and was an attic apartment on the river. The apartment itself was teeny but cosy and the two girls I met (one of whom was going on her own year abroad) seemed nice. Sadly though she'd already rented the room until October 1st, whereas I kinda need somewhere to live for from September 1st, so in the end I decided it would be too much extra stress and had to say thank you but no.

Flat 2:

Sounded great on paper. Not so much in real life. I walk in and am hit by a strong smell of weed. The guy (name forgotten) who turned out not to be a student as advertised led me through a dirty, cluttered flat with, no joke, anti capitalist messages daubed ALL over the walls. It was like a scene from Was Tun Wenn's Brennt or something like that. He took me to a room which was roughly half the size it was advertised to be, had no furniture (again, in contrast to advertisement) and had a broken window  and electrical wires dangling from the ceiling. I stood awkwardly as he pointed out the plus points to the room, the highlight being a washing line traversing the room, yippee, and answered my polite questions. The answer to the whereabouts of the other 2 roommates was the most entertaining (by this time I was more there for entertainment purposes, having decided after about 20 seconds I didn't want to live there).

Me: So where are the other two, and where do they come from?

Man: Um one comes from Hungary...he doesn't speak any German...or English, and the other comes from....can't remember, but she doesn't speak much either....infact, I haven't seen them in a couple of weeks, not sure they still live here...

After that I beat a hasty exit to the door, but not before he seriously informed me that interest in the room was high and that my chances of being chosen for it were slim. I stifled a giggle, said "ja, verstehe" and ran for it. 

Lesson learnt.

Flat 3:

Didn't bother to turn up. Though the front door was wide open and there was evidence on the communal balcony of someone having recently been there, so not sure what happened there, presumably they filled the room already.

Flat 4:

This was more like it. Lovely flatmates, though all quite a bit older. Flat was fine and they even had a dog, which was really sweet. Slight issue that they smoked constantly inside, but by this time I'd realised I would be incredibly lucky to find a WG with non smokers, so I was prepared to overlook this. Despite the annoyance of being interviewed at the same time as a Colombian guy who talked so much I could barely get a word in edgeways, I felt I'd made a decent impression and left in high hopes, having only one more flat to look at, that I'd found one I could happily live in.

Flat 5: 

The final flat, and what a flat. Firstly it was SO nice inside, huge bathroom, nice kitchen, separate loo, place for bikes and the two rooms on offer were both lush. Remaining flatmates (there were 3 of them) were hilarious, they were all 19 or 20 themselves and had devised a list of entertaining questions to ask, ranging from sensible ones to "do you like to party?" (when I said yes they grinned and explained that Moritz works in one of the best clubs in Trier and so all flatmates get free drinks).

The deal clencher though was the garden. The flat was in 2 big houses joined together with a huge shared garden. So they took me outside and the garden was full of students, drinking and BBQing in the sun; everyone was really friendly and immediately I felt at home. I told them on the spot I wanted to live there and they were really keen, but they said they couldn't say yes straight away as I was they only person I'd interviewed so far, so they'd tell me by the 19th of August. This was aaaages away, but I never take risks and this flat seemed a risk worth taking so I went for it. Its a week til the 19th now so soon I will find out. If they don't choose me, then I'm back to square one and panic will set in but we'll cross that bridge if necessary.

So that was my flat hunting experience in Germany. Hopefully I won't have to repeat it but if flat #5 falls through I have arranged to stay with a teacher at the school until I find somewhere to live. 

Next on the agenda: lesson planning, because I'm terrified of turning up without anything planned to teach in 3 weeks time!

First Post: Introduction

Hey, so my name's Beth, I'm 20 years old and have so far done 2 years at Southampton University studying BA French and German (and a lot of linguistics). As of September I'll be living in Trier (in Rhineland-Pfalz, Germany) but teaching English as an Englischassistentin in a school across the border in Saarland.

Because a) I have a terrible memory and b) it's a good way for my friends and family to get an idea of the kind of things I'll get up to I've started a blog. Right now it's just the preparations going on: I've done enough forms to fill a small office block, have established contact with my school (who seem lovely) so next item on the agenda is finding somewhere to live!

Tomorrow I'm combining a 4 day holiday with the parents with flathunting in Trier, got 4 flats lined up to look at and hopefully at least one of them will be good. I've picked them specifically for their location (10 mins or less walk from the Süd-Bahnhof as I've got a 30 min commute by train to the school) and with between 2 or 4 (German speaking) flatmates.  I imagine my experiences flat hunting in Germany for the first time will form my next (and first proper) blog post, til then, auf wiedersehn!