Wow, the weather has suddenly changed here! After weeks and weeks of drizzle the summer has finally arrived here, albeit a little late. We've spend lots of time out in the sun, including a couple of days at the "beach" (more on that later) and a few of my friends have got burnt, so we've coined the nickname "Erfurt Brennt", a spin on "Erfurt Rennt", the run that we did back in June! The change in weather does also mean more barbecues, so there is a permanent smell of sausage hanging in the air, barbecuing being the German national sport, after beer drinking that is! I really won't be able to look another sausage in the face for a good few months after my time here!
Considering that we've all got exams, presentations and essays to be getting on with, it's actually been a great week, probably because we've been really busy thinking of other things to do! I've got a hideous amount on, but evidently by this post, I'm ignoring any of that. If I'm going to fail (which I definitely will), I might as well do so in style!
I met my tandem partner Bea for the last time this week which was sad as we got on really well. She is leaving for Britain on Thursday where she is going to be an au pair, something that a lot of Germans seem to do. With my other tandem partner Linda, I had a funny moment, she asked me what xoxox means at the end of a message, she wondered if we were just using xxx as we don't use that letter much!!!
Thinking about Erfurt Rennt, Frau Winter, who had left us for another team on the day, invited us for coffee and cake in town as an apology. So on Monday we met her and had a really nice afternoon, she gave us a mini tour of a few things the others hadn't yet seen (Lida and I had, due to our town visiting course!) and then we had delicious cake in one of the squares. Germans really do make the best cakes! There was a giant selection, eventually I chose a slice of Sachertorte, not German, but an Austrian cake, and it was absolutely delicious!
On Thursday night I came back from yoga at around 10 and was just thinking about starting some work when I had a knock on my door, and there were Orsi and Silvia, holding a whole, gigantic Sachertorte and a bottle of wine! Since Monday and cake with Frau Winter we'd all been craving more of this delicious cake, so they'd gone out and, by accident, bought the most extravagant one in the supermarket!!! They said we were having a "spontaneous birthday party", although of course none of us had a birthday! We whipped up some cream (thank goodness my housemates go to bed early, the kitchen was a state!) and the 3 of us ate nearly the whole thing! Leaving just one slice left, as we remembered that Ivan, a Russian boy, actually did have a birthday the next day! We then decided to dress up and go and serenade him and present the cake!
This was much appreciated and we were welcomed in to play monopoly with him and Sergey, another Russian. We had a really funny evening, they are really just so Russian, inexplicably so! They served us vodka and gherkins...apparently they go well together...I thought otherwise!!! Sergey had a really old version of monopoly, but what was strange, was that it wasn't from an actual town, I was expecting Berlin, as ours is London. But it appears that the German version is just streets that you might find in any town, rather than a specific town. I thought this makes it a bit boring, as, for example, the train stations are literally just, Main Station, North Station, South Station etc. It's a shame really, I was looking forward to playing Berlin monopoly. However, I have just checked it out in wikipedia and it appears that it must just be a really really old version, as they updated it to being Berlin in 1975!
As I've mentioned the weather here has been absolutely baking, so on Friday we decided to make a trip to the "beach". Of course as I'm plonk slap bang in the middle of Germany there's no sea or real beaches for several 100 kilometres. However this does not deter the Germans, a nation of sport and outdoor adventure lovers as they are! So around Erfurt there are a few lakes where you can swim and there are man made beaches around them. On Friday we visited one, which was actually quite nice, once you'd walked a few kilometres from the nearest tram stop in the basking heat to get there that is! The sand was glowing gold/yellow (about as artificial as you could get!) and the lake was beautifully clean, the water was really very blue. Not a bad idea really, and extremely popular with the Germans, the place was packed, even on a Friday.
I've mentioned this before, but it's well worth mentioning again, the Germans (above all, the East Germans, I've been told) are really into nudism! At both the beaches we visited there was a good half of the beach sectioned off for them, and it really is equally as popular as the clothed bit!
On Friday night after the beach we came back to the birthday party of Ivan, the Russian mentioned above, which was a suitably Russian affair! They really are a funny bunch and this party was very amusing. There's a bit of silent competition between the Russians and the Americans (who on the whole boycotted this party) and what with American Independence Day the next day I think the Russians were keen to show us how great their traditions are too. So the party was extravagant! There was heaps of Russian cooking and drink and lots of Russian dancing, which was highly entertaining! The guys were doing that funny thing where they hold one foot in their hand and then jump through with the other one, they were generally pretty hopeless, which made it a laugh to watch. At first they were doing it to Russian music but later this changed to hip hop and became even funnier! Incidentally, at the 2 parties I've been to there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of Michael Jackson music that's been played, people here have even set up a memorial wall in our main entrance.
The next day, Saturday, we decided to go to the beach again, but try another one. This one was even nicer and we had another really fun day, enjoying lots of activities in the sun, from kite flying, to cards, to of course ice-cream eating! This trip had a couple of funny moments, notably one when a group of extremely vicious, fearless swans came and invaded our spot, literally forcing us abandon camp and get the life guard to move them on with a long rake!
That evening, as I've already mentioned, there was a party to celebrate American Independence Day. Now if I thought that Russians threw an extravagant party, that was nothing compared to the Americans! The sheer amount of food, drink and people was impressive! They had tried to get as much typically American food as possible, so they had a roaring barbecue going with hotdogs and burgers, and then later smores (chocolate/marshmallow biscuits) were toasted on it, simply the most sickly thing that I have ever eaten! In fact much of the food was just so sweet, like a nutella cake...literally just pounds of nutella on a cake base, with a sprinkling of berries! Apparently it's typically American. Makes me realise that I could never ever live there if all the food was like that, I would need two chairs on my flight home! There were some American games and they also had fireworks, as this is typical for Independence Day celebrations in America. Unfortunately, in Germany this is illegal! So we had a visit from the police: 2 police busses each with 6 coppers inside...I think they'd heard about the number of people there (we must have been 100 or so) and thought they'd need riot control or something! However the best moment of the party definitely came later when a guy arrived in the most souped up soft top corsa we'd ever seen: I just can't describe how ridiculous it looked: neon lighting in the foot wells, speakers as big as the boot, you get the idea...if only Vivien looked like that! We added a few finishing touches to her by adding the American flag!
An interesting observation I made that night is about Germans and their shoes. A good proportion of the students at the party were exchange, but there were a few Germans there, and of course, if they need the toilet or something, they have nowhere to go. So I let a German friend of mine use the loo in my flat. What was funny is that the toilet is literally next to the door in, and she didn't have to walk anywhere, yet she insisted on taking off her shoes. Our flat isn't in good nick at all, and it's only a student place, but all the same, she took them off, despite my protests. In fact, it's the same everywhere, whenever I visit Germans I always have to take of my shoes and wear a pair of guests house slippers! On the one hand, I can sort of see the logic, and Germans really are extremely into hygiene. On the other hand, what on earth do they do if smart adults have a drinks party? Surely they can't have enough guest slippers for everyone...do guests bring their own?!
Another thing I've noted since being here, is just how "cool" leather jackets are. Loads of my friends have them, but I have to admit I find them really funny, I don't know anyone in Britain who'd be seen dead in one. According to Thomas they were all the rage here last season, maybe I'm just out of touch and I missed this in Britain too, but I do find it very amusing, everyone looks like they've just stepped out of the 50s! Especially in all this heat, to think that so many people wore one to a party in July!
So life in Erfurt has been great this week, really busy and I've met a fair few interesting people at the parties, new faces crop up all the time. We must be around 100 exchange students here, so there's a really big friendship network here. I'm pretty good at knowing people's nationalities (although people are notoriously bad at knowing ours!) but for me what's hard is actually remembering everybody's names, they're just so complicated! Orsi has had a funny moments with people at parties: there's one guy that we met last week and chatted to a while. She then saw him at the Russian party and, completely forgetting she'd already met him, introduced herself again, much to his amusement, as he clearly remembered us. What's even funnier is that she did exactly the same thing to the same guy on Saturday at the American party! It really is that difficult to remember who you know and who you don't! Thank goodness we'll not see most of these people again once we leave Erfurt, I think they have a really bad impression of us!
Just a couple of other things to mention before I log off. Firstly, it's absolutely astounding the number of Germans who speak perfect English, without ever having visited an Anglophone country, and know almost nothing about our countries. I really can't understand that, why you would learn a language without being interested in the culture, the two really go hand in hand. But a few Germans have told me that it's simply not possible for them all to do Erasmus in Britain as there simply aren't enough places for them all. If doing a year abroad was compulsory for them like it is for us, Britain would be simply swimming with foreigners, as they literally all learn English. Secondly, they learn languages for a completely different reason to us...they learn English because it's useful for business or whatever, rather than out of interest, and learning the language is as far as their interest goes. Interesting.
What's really frustrating about Germans is their determination to speak English. I never once experienced this in France, yet see it almost every day here. Even if I speak perfect German, they will often reply in English, which really bugs me. However it's far worse for my friends who aren't British or American, as Germans reply to them also in English. At this American party there were a few Germans like this, and to be honest they were just rude: My poor friend Orsi's second language is German, and she speaks it very well. She hasn't learnt English since secondary school, and really doesn't like to use it. Just imagine her frustration when she speaks to Germans in good German and they insist on replying English. When she told a couple she didn't speak English they looked on in horror and scorn. However I feel that they should have been pleased to meet someone actually interested in learning German and about their culture.
Final comment of the day is just how great walking through campus is at the moment. There are loads and loads of cherry trees and blueberry (I think!) bushes and the fruit is now ripe, mmmm, it's delicious and free, I've been having a healthy few feasts on the way to and from lectures!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Fests and Festivals: Summer in Erfurt
I think I probably start every single post mentioning something about time flying, and I'll say it again, time really is flying! This time next month I'll be on a train out of Erfurt, sad times. My exams start next week (haven't even started to think about revising for them!) and so this may be the last post for some time. However, as usual, I have plenty to say!
A couple of weekends ago we decided that we'd make good use of our Thuringia rail cards and visit a couple of random towns. So we plucked the towns of Rudolstadt and Saalfeld out of the air. We had a surprisingly enjoyable day. Rudolstadt was a typical German town, where the main sightseeing spots are the town square, the Rathaus and the castle/residence. We spent the morning pottering about there and had a picnic in the gardens of the residence, which was really nice, it was a surprisingly sunny day, a real rarity here at the moment. We then wandered back to the train station to board the train to Saalfeld. On our way we crossed some sort of fete/parade, ran by the German fire department so that was great, so many young German firemen!!!
In Saalfeld we'd heard that there were some "fairy grottos", so we walked out of the town and up a steep hill to the grotto park. Here we paid an extortionate amount to go on a guided tour of the grottos. We had to put on some brown anoraks over our clothes and rucksacks which was really funny, as we looked as though we had hunchbacks. Then we were led down into the caves by our amusing guide, who genuinely seemed to believe that fairies still lived there! The tour itself was pretty dull, but the grottos were quite remarkable, pools of water with stalagmites and stalactites, beautifully lit and really colourful (I think it's the Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the most colourful caves or something).
That evening, I went to a party at a German friend of mine's house. I only really vaguely know her, I happen to sit by her in my grammar class and she did Erasmus in Belgium last semester, so knows what it's like and is really friendly towards us. She invited me along to her party, and although I didn't know anyone there, I went along in order to live up to my year abroad motto "don't turn down any invitations". Anyway, as usual, I'm glad I went, it was good fun, and provided a story for this blog! So I was chatting to a guy and a girl and he went off to collect some drinks and when he came back I said "Prost" (German for "cheers") and he said, "wait, wait, I know this in English...ummm, oh yeah...Miss Sophie!" I was utterly bewildered by this, not sure if he thought "Miss Sophie" was my name, or if I'd misheard him or I didn't know what! So I asked him and he was totally adamant that "Miss Sophie" is English for cheers. I asked him where he got this from and then the two of them proceeded to explain to me that there's a British comedy sketch called "Dinner for One" that absolutely all Germans watch on New Year's Eve. I've asked lots of Germans since and they really do all know about it and find it hilarious. They watch it in English and apparently love it. It's well worth youtubing, it's actually pretty funny!
That week was some week of demonstrations here, the students are protesting about various things, such as the overcrowding of the university. A group of students camped in the middle of campus all week (unluckily for them, it rained constantly!) and there was a big demo in the city centre. The camp was pretty impressive with banners up everywhere and a fair few people taking part (god excuse to take a week off lectures!), but I have to say, German protests aren't a patch on French ones.
We've been out to a fair few parties recently, one memorable one would be when our Mexican friend convinced us to go to salsa with him, which was pretty funny. Despite Iliana and the others in France trying on numerous occasions to teach me I am still as hopeless as ever! Coupled with my eastern European friends who've also never done anything of the like we must have looked quite a picture!
Thinking about my friends, I had a really funny lesson with Orsi the other day. In one of my German as a Foreign Language courses we had to present our favourite book to the class. Orsi did a really good presentation, we were all enthralled by her book and really keen to read it. She of course ended her presentation by recommending it to us all and someone asked what the title would be in German, to which she replies "oh no, it's only available in Hungarian!" No-one speaks Hungarian, we were utterly disappointed! Maybe it's time we learnt!
I had a really blonde moment the other day (hmmm maybe I should call it a Henna moment, my hair still has an orange tinge!) when doing my French grammar work book. I was working through it at a decent pace when I turned over to a page whose title was "correct" with lists of sentences underneath. I immediately assumed that there was an error in each sentence and we had to spot it. I spent literally a good hour trying in vain to do it, utterly confused why I was unable to find anything wrong. In the end I left it and sent a message to my tutor to arrange to discuss it with her. The next day I opened the book again to try again, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was not supposed to be correcting the sentences...they were in fact the correct answers for all the other exercises that I'd already done! What a ninny! And what a waste of time!
Thinking about grammar, I had a funny German grammar class the other week. In this class there are the top Erasmus students and a load of Germans who want to become German teachers and so need to learn the rules of grammar. Strange idea, but it kind of works. At the end of the lesson we always play a game and this week it was a variety of the game Pairs. I was working together with a German guy and we proceeded to take all the slips of paper out of the envelope and put them face down on the table. I was putting them down completely at random, while he was lining them up in straight rows. I was utterly bemused by this, half the fun of pairs is not being able to remember where the pieces are, but he said there was no way a German could play pairs without straight lines! Ha, German organisation!
Things are hotting up here, work wise. The end of term is drawing near, far too quickly for my liking! Last week I had to give a major German presentation for my Fremdwoerter course. Rosie (the other girl from York) and I had to give a presentation to last the entire lesson, all one and a half hours of it, in German, eeeeek! The presentation actually probably couldn't have gone better, so we're really pleased, I have finally reached a decent level of German! What is funny is that the topic of the presentation was "Metasprachdiskurse" and we had to read a text on it, then summarize and develop the argumentations. Remarkably, we managed to give the entire presentation without knowing what Metasprachdiskurse actually is! Now that is success!
The weekend before last was Erfurt's second biggest festival, after the Christmas Market (which, incidentally, is apparently Germany's 3rd best market, I will definitely have to come back next year!). The festival is a huge music festival, called the Kraemerbrueckefest, after the famous old bridge that's in the town centre. I simply cannot describe the sheer scale of the festival. It stretches right through the town centre, over the bridge, round the bridge, across numerous squares and up dozens of streets. On every corner there was a food stand, someone performing and throngs of people. I don't know how many people visited Erfurt that weekend, but it felt like half of Germany had come along!
On the Friday night we watched the opening ceremony with a funny play and then headed to the cathedral square where we watched numerous acts, all really good. There was such a vibrant atmosphere there and fortunately the dicey weather held out! On Saturday, I spend the early afternoon with Nadine and some others and we wandered from square to square, sampling German cuisine (sausages of course!) and enjoying the music. There was a market beside the river and that was probably my favourite part, the theme was the middle ages so there was old cooking, costumes, music, the full works.
Then in the late afternoon I left that group and my tandem partner Linda and I went to watch a hockey match, which was great, I haven't watched hockey since Roses last year and I haven't played since Easter, it really made me want to pick up a stick. What was peculiar is that the match took place on the roof of a supermarket! What an odd idea! But somehow it worked and when you think about it, it's a really good use of space inside a packed city.
After the match we wandered back into town and met up with the others. Together we had a really good evening, watching many more live music performances and then we headed back to the main square to watch the closing ceremony. This consisted of simply the best firework display that I have ever seen, with the cathedral and Petersburg in the background and great music to accompany it. Ahhh Erasmus life doesn't get much better!
The next morning I was up like a lark as I had a trip planned with my friendly professor and wife. We met in Weimar and then headed down towards Apolda (I never thought that I would return there!) and out to a village, whose name I can't recall. We went on a really beautiful walk, along a river and then up the mountain side above it and then to a traditional restaurant in an old castle for lunch. We then headed down off of the mountain and up another, to a cafe for coffee and cake, mmmm, we'd really earnt that! After a walk, we drove in the car to something really strange, that I really didn't understand. It was a sort of wall, really tall, maybe 10 meters and fairly long, probably 40 or 50 meters, made of twigs. There was water seemingly trickling through the twigs and apparently this makes the air around extremely healthy and good for people with asthma. Well I didn't feel affected by it, but maybe that's just because I don't have asthma!
This weekend just gone I spent with Linda at her home in Wiesbaden, not far from Frankfurt. We headed down on the Friday and arrived mid afternoon to be welcomed by her parents and taken back to their apartment. Their apartment is typically German, I'd forgotten just how differently Germans live. For starters, far more Germans live in apartments, I cann't think of hardly anyone in Britain that I know that lives in a flat, even students in Britain tend to live in a proper house with garden and all. Secondly, (and bearing in mind that I have only visited about 5 German apartments, so this could well be a major generalisation) they are all really modern, above all this effect is probably due to the severe lack of carpets, they're missing out!! Thinking about modernities, we had a funny conversation about dishwashers: Linda's Mum commented how backward they are in Slovakia where the women must always wash up and they don't have dishwashers. At first I misunderstood, and thought they were talking about washing machines, but then I realised and had to confess that we don't have one at home in Britain either, apparently this is unheard of in Germany.
That afternoon we went to Mainz (I think!) and had a quick stroll along the Rhine (again...I think!!!) before having a drink in the sun in the cafe where Linda's brother works. We then headed back at that evening we went to an outdoor theatre on top of a hill looking over the city. The "play" was completely improvised and pretty funny, although I couldn't understand everything, I could follow quite easily and learnt a fair few useful (or not!) bits of vocab! Afterwards we took a water powered cable car down into the town which was quite unique and gave us nice views of the town at night.
The next day Linda and I took the train into Frankfurt. On route between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt is the Opel factory (the one that's currently in the news a lot), apparently without it the area would be completely dead as everyone works there. As we travelled along the tracks we could see the road and more than every second car was an Opel, must be pretty hard to find your car if you park up in a car park in town!
Frankfurt was really pretty cool, more like Beijing than Erfurt, towering skyscrapers dominating the skyline and really bustling shopping streets. We pottered around, enjoyed a hot dog on the banks of the Main, strolled through a flea market, walked under the shadows of the skyscrapers and nipped into a seriously modern shopping centre. I can't actually describe how modern it was, it really was an architectural masterpiece, I have photos! I was really surprised to see both Accessorize and New Look inside, I'd previously thought that they were completely unknown on the continent, but evidently not.
That evening we went out into Wiesbaden a bit and as it was getting late Linda gave me the choice, either we go to a converted abattoir, which is now a night club, or go home and get up early to go to watch a football match. Sport fan as I am, I opted for the latter and did not regret it! So, on the Sunday morning we went with Linda's dad and brother to watch the final of the German under 18s, the winners being the best team in Germany. The match was between Mainz (where we were) and Dortmund and was great fun. 11000 German football fans, certainly not a bad atmosphere! We won 2-1 so there was plenty of chanting, cheering and general banter, a really enjoyable morning.
We headed home, where Linda's Mum had been cooking lunch all morning. In fact we probably ate more Italian food that German (all very tasty!), but a couple of notable things spring to mind. Firstly, German breakfasts are very meaty! It's probably a bit rich coming from an English girl considering our traditional breakfast, but I did find hams and cheeses very strange for breakfast, although I could easily adapt! Secondly, in Britain when I am a guest I would always always wait to be offered something to eat and not serve myself, where as it appears in Germany they don't have this custom, so that's something I've learnt, although it's definitely an intuition it's hard to change.
So all in all it was a great weekend, it felt like a proper holiday to be away from Erfurt and uni life, not least because the climate down there was much better! It's a bit of a thud coming back to lectures and work, but fortunately there are many parties to be looking forward to, in July alone there's American Independence Day and French Bastille Day for us Erasmus students to celebrate, as only we can!
Well, that's all that I've been up to recently, I will leave you with a few random observations and anecdotes that might interest you.
Firstly, I have come to realise, that although if you go out here in Germany, Germans, above all girls, do not dress up like we do in Britain, for example, trainers are completely acceptable (and normal) on a night out. However, I also think that there is a large contingent of German girls who really really do care about their appearance. There are a couple in one of my German classes, both of whom have bleach-blonde hair and serious fake tan. Last week they had one of the funniest conversations that I've heard in a long time about how to get a great fake tan. One of them came to conclude that in order to get the best all over natural looking tan it's advised to drink 2 litres of carrot juice every day! She said she swears by it! I'm pretty sure that could lead to an illness of some sort or other!
I've mentioned before that Germans generally seem to be environmentally friendly but I don't think I've mentioned the deposit system on bottles before. Whenever you buy any liquid in a supermarket or a drink in a bar, you have to pay extra for the glass or bottle, which you then get back when you take it back, this system is called Pfand (German for deposit). Of course in a bar you do so as soon as you want another drink or leave, but with supermarket bottles of course you don't do so. I had therefore been very lazy/forgetful as regards taking mine back, but was collecting them diligently all the same. Last week I finally got round to taking literally bags full back to the supermarket and was rewarded with a nice sum of money, it feels rather like a present, rather than extra money that you have in fact paid the supermarket. With the said additional money it feels like you should be spending it on luxuries, so I bought us what we now know as Pfand Punch, a delicious collection of "free" drinks, which we enjoyed this week at our campus festival. Am hoping to collect lots more bottles before the end of term so we can have a big Pfand night!
The campus fest mentioned above was an all day music festival on our campus, a bit like the last official party before the exams start. I'm really getting into German music, there's a surprisingly good amount of decent stuff around. What is amusing is that I often mishear lyrics completely and when I ask Linda who sings a certain song she is totally confuddled when I attempt to sing one of these songs to her after hearing it somewhere! Maybe I have a little more respect for those French karaoke singers now! Linda has pointed out that I need a really musical tandem partner next time who can decipher my singing!
Linda has also recently made me aware of something that I was totally unaware of...you can actually buy fresh milk in Germany! After 6 months of living in La Roche where it was impossible to buy anything other than UHT, when I arrived in Germany and went to the supermarket I immediately spotted the crates of UHT (which there are loads of) and assumed Germany was the same. However after whining about this to Linda she told me I was wrong and it is in fact available in Germany, I can't believe that I lived so long without it, but oh my, what joys to have fresh milk again!
Although my German is far from as good as my French, or anything like as good as it should be, it has come on a lot. Probably one of the reasons that it hasn't improved as much as my French did is that I spend most of the time with Erasmus friends, whose German is little or no better than my own. This has interesting consequences, such as that I've picked up a hilarious accent and quirky phrases, that aren't really German at all, but we Erasmus students have developed ourselves. Another observation is that I've become remarkably good at reading body language, I'm just so used to being in a situation where either Germans are speaking really fast or 2 foreign friends are speaking their language together and I simply do not understand, yet can follow feelings and the gist with relative ease.
Final comment for tonight is how being abroad has made me realise how much I love Britain, it's funny ways and the English language. I've become surprisingly defensive of all things British and far more aware of cultural differences. A recent anecdote, probably not the best, but one that springs to mind, about how funny the English language is, is when I spoke to a friend who speaks excellent English and I said "I'll give you a bell", of course meaning that I'll phone her, but she was both flummoxed and entertained by this, although to me it was just completely and utterly normal. Thinking about it, the image in your mind of actually giving someone a bell is quite funny...!
A couple of weekends ago we decided that we'd make good use of our Thuringia rail cards and visit a couple of random towns. So we plucked the towns of Rudolstadt and Saalfeld out of the air. We had a surprisingly enjoyable day. Rudolstadt was a typical German town, where the main sightseeing spots are the town square, the Rathaus and the castle/residence. We spent the morning pottering about there and had a picnic in the gardens of the residence, which was really nice, it was a surprisingly sunny day, a real rarity here at the moment. We then wandered back to the train station to board the train to Saalfeld. On our way we crossed some sort of fete/parade, ran by the German fire department so that was great, so many young German firemen!!!
In Saalfeld we'd heard that there were some "fairy grottos", so we walked out of the town and up a steep hill to the grotto park. Here we paid an extortionate amount to go on a guided tour of the grottos. We had to put on some brown anoraks over our clothes and rucksacks which was really funny, as we looked as though we had hunchbacks. Then we were led down into the caves by our amusing guide, who genuinely seemed to believe that fairies still lived there! The tour itself was pretty dull, but the grottos were quite remarkable, pools of water with stalagmites and stalactites, beautifully lit and really colourful (I think it's the Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the most colourful caves or something).
That evening, I went to a party at a German friend of mine's house. I only really vaguely know her, I happen to sit by her in my grammar class and she did Erasmus in Belgium last semester, so knows what it's like and is really friendly towards us. She invited me along to her party, and although I didn't know anyone there, I went along in order to live up to my year abroad motto "don't turn down any invitations". Anyway, as usual, I'm glad I went, it was good fun, and provided a story for this blog! So I was chatting to a guy and a girl and he went off to collect some drinks and when he came back I said "Prost" (German for "cheers") and he said, "wait, wait, I know this in English...ummm, oh yeah...Miss Sophie!" I was utterly bewildered by this, not sure if he thought "Miss Sophie" was my name, or if I'd misheard him or I didn't know what! So I asked him and he was totally adamant that "Miss Sophie" is English for cheers. I asked him where he got this from and then the two of them proceeded to explain to me that there's a British comedy sketch called "Dinner for One" that absolutely all Germans watch on New Year's Eve. I've asked lots of Germans since and they really do all know about it and find it hilarious. They watch it in English and apparently love it. It's well worth youtubing, it's actually pretty funny!
That week was some week of demonstrations here, the students are protesting about various things, such as the overcrowding of the university. A group of students camped in the middle of campus all week (unluckily for them, it rained constantly!) and there was a big demo in the city centre. The camp was pretty impressive with banners up everywhere and a fair few people taking part (god excuse to take a week off lectures!), but I have to say, German protests aren't a patch on French ones.
We've been out to a fair few parties recently, one memorable one would be when our Mexican friend convinced us to go to salsa with him, which was pretty funny. Despite Iliana and the others in France trying on numerous occasions to teach me I am still as hopeless as ever! Coupled with my eastern European friends who've also never done anything of the like we must have looked quite a picture!
Thinking about my friends, I had a really funny lesson with Orsi the other day. In one of my German as a Foreign Language courses we had to present our favourite book to the class. Orsi did a really good presentation, we were all enthralled by her book and really keen to read it. She of course ended her presentation by recommending it to us all and someone asked what the title would be in German, to which she replies "oh no, it's only available in Hungarian!" No-one speaks Hungarian, we were utterly disappointed! Maybe it's time we learnt!
I had a really blonde moment the other day (hmmm maybe I should call it a Henna moment, my hair still has an orange tinge!) when doing my French grammar work book. I was working through it at a decent pace when I turned over to a page whose title was "correct" with lists of sentences underneath. I immediately assumed that there was an error in each sentence and we had to spot it. I spent literally a good hour trying in vain to do it, utterly confused why I was unable to find anything wrong. In the end I left it and sent a message to my tutor to arrange to discuss it with her. The next day I opened the book again to try again, and it suddenly dawned on me that I was not supposed to be correcting the sentences...they were in fact the correct answers for all the other exercises that I'd already done! What a ninny! And what a waste of time!
Thinking about grammar, I had a funny German grammar class the other week. In this class there are the top Erasmus students and a load of Germans who want to become German teachers and so need to learn the rules of grammar. Strange idea, but it kind of works. At the end of the lesson we always play a game and this week it was a variety of the game Pairs. I was working together with a German guy and we proceeded to take all the slips of paper out of the envelope and put them face down on the table. I was putting them down completely at random, while he was lining them up in straight rows. I was utterly bemused by this, half the fun of pairs is not being able to remember where the pieces are, but he said there was no way a German could play pairs without straight lines! Ha, German organisation!
Things are hotting up here, work wise. The end of term is drawing near, far too quickly for my liking! Last week I had to give a major German presentation for my Fremdwoerter course. Rosie (the other girl from York) and I had to give a presentation to last the entire lesson, all one and a half hours of it, in German, eeeeek! The presentation actually probably couldn't have gone better, so we're really pleased, I have finally reached a decent level of German! What is funny is that the topic of the presentation was "Metasprachdiskurse" and we had to read a text on it, then summarize and develop the argumentations. Remarkably, we managed to give the entire presentation without knowing what Metasprachdiskurse actually is! Now that is success!
The weekend before last was Erfurt's second biggest festival, after the Christmas Market (which, incidentally, is apparently Germany's 3rd best market, I will definitely have to come back next year!). The festival is a huge music festival, called the Kraemerbrueckefest, after the famous old bridge that's in the town centre. I simply cannot describe the sheer scale of the festival. It stretches right through the town centre, over the bridge, round the bridge, across numerous squares and up dozens of streets. On every corner there was a food stand, someone performing and throngs of people. I don't know how many people visited Erfurt that weekend, but it felt like half of Germany had come along!
On the Friday night we watched the opening ceremony with a funny play and then headed to the cathedral square where we watched numerous acts, all really good. There was such a vibrant atmosphere there and fortunately the dicey weather held out! On Saturday, I spend the early afternoon with Nadine and some others and we wandered from square to square, sampling German cuisine (sausages of course!) and enjoying the music. There was a market beside the river and that was probably my favourite part, the theme was the middle ages so there was old cooking, costumes, music, the full works.
Then in the late afternoon I left that group and my tandem partner Linda and I went to watch a hockey match, which was great, I haven't watched hockey since Roses last year and I haven't played since Easter, it really made me want to pick up a stick. What was peculiar is that the match took place on the roof of a supermarket! What an odd idea! But somehow it worked and when you think about it, it's a really good use of space inside a packed city.
After the match we wandered back into town and met up with the others. Together we had a really good evening, watching many more live music performances and then we headed back to the main square to watch the closing ceremony. This consisted of simply the best firework display that I have ever seen, with the cathedral and Petersburg in the background and great music to accompany it. Ahhh Erasmus life doesn't get much better!
The next morning I was up like a lark as I had a trip planned with my friendly professor and wife. We met in Weimar and then headed down towards Apolda (I never thought that I would return there!) and out to a village, whose name I can't recall. We went on a really beautiful walk, along a river and then up the mountain side above it and then to a traditional restaurant in an old castle for lunch. We then headed down off of the mountain and up another, to a cafe for coffee and cake, mmmm, we'd really earnt that! After a walk, we drove in the car to something really strange, that I really didn't understand. It was a sort of wall, really tall, maybe 10 meters and fairly long, probably 40 or 50 meters, made of twigs. There was water seemingly trickling through the twigs and apparently this makes the air around extremely healthy and good for people with asthma. Well I didn't feel affected by it, but maybe that's just because I don't have asthma!
This weekend just gone I spent with Linda at her home in Wiesbaden, not far from Frankfurt. We headed down on the Friday and arrived mid afternoon to be welcomed by her parents and taken back to their apartment. Their apartment is typically German, I'd forgotten just how differently Germans live. For starters, far more Germans live in apartments, I cann't think of hardly anyone in Britain that I know that lives in a flat, even students in Britain tend to live in a proper house with garden and all. Secondly, (and bearing in mind that I have only visited about 5 German apartments, so this could well be a major generalisation) they are all really modern, above all this effect is probably due to the severe lack of carpets, they're missing out!! Thinking about modernities, we had a funny conversation about dishwashers: Linda's Mum commented how backward they are in Slovakia where the women must always wash up and they don't have dishwashers. At first I misunderstood, and thought they were talking about washing machines, but then I realised and had to confess that we don't have one at home in Britain either, apparently this is unheard of in Germany.
That afternoon we went to Mainz (I think!) and had a quick stroll along the Rhine (again...I think!!!) before having a drink in the sun in the cafe where Linda's brother works. We then headed back at that evening we went to an outdoor theatre on top of a hill looking over the city. The "play" was completely improvised and pretty funny, although I couldn't understand everything, I could follow quite easily and learnt a fair few useful (or not!) bits of vocab! Afterwards we took a water powered cable car down into the town which was quite unique and gave us nice views of the town at night.
The next day Linda and I took the train into Frankfurt. On route between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt is the Opel factory (the one that's currently in the news a lot), apparently without it the area would be completely dead as everyone works there. As we travelled along the tracks we could see the road and more than every second car was an Opel, must be pretty hard to find your car if you park up in a car park in town!
Frankfurt was really pretty cool, more like Beijing than Erfurt, towering skyscrapers dominating the skyline and really bustling shopping streets. We pottered around, enjoyed a hot dog on the banks of the Main, strolled through a flea market, walked under the shadows of the skyscrapers and nipped into a seriously modern shopping centre. I can't actually describe how modern it was, it really was an architectural masterpiece, I have photos! I was really surprised to see both Accessorize and New Look inside, I'd previously thought that they were completely unknown on the continent, but evidently not.
That evening we went out into Wiesbaden a bit and as it was getting late Linda gave me the choice, either we go to a converted abattoir, which is now a night club, or go home and get up early to go to watch a football match. Sport fan as I am, I opted for the latter and did not regret it! So, on the Sunday morning we went with Linda's dad and brother to watch the final of the German under 18s, the winners being the best team in Germany. The match was between Mainz (where we were) and Dortmund and was great fun. 11000 German football fans, certainly not a bad atmosphere! We won 2-1 so there was plenty of chanting, cheering and general banter, a really enjoyable morning.
We headed home, where Linda's Mum had been cooking lunch all morning. In fact we probably ate more Italian food that German (all very tasty!), but a couple of notable things spring to mind. Firstly, German breakfasts are very meaty! It's probably a bit rich coming from an English girl considering our traditional breakfast, but I did find hams and cheeses very strange for breakfast, although I could easily adapt! Secondly, in Britain when I am a guest I would always always wait to be offered something to eat and not serve myself, where as it appears in Germany they don't have this custom, so that's something I've learnt, although it's definitely an intuition it's hard to change.
So all in all it was a great weekend, it felt like a proper holiday to be away from Erfurt and uni life, not least because the climate down there was much better! It's a bit of a thud coming back to lectures and work, but fortunately there are many parties to be looking forward to, in July alone there's American Independence Day and French Bastille Day for us Erasmus students to celebrate, as only we can!
Well, that's all that I've been up to recently, I will leave you with a few random observations and anecdotes that might interest you.
Firstly, I have come to realise, that although if you go out here in Germany, Germans, above all girls, do not dress up like we do in Britain, for example, trainers are completely acceptable (and normal) on a night out. However, I also think that there is a large contingent of German girls who really really do care about their appearance. There are a couple in one of my German classes, both of whom have bleach-blonde hair and serious fake tan. Last week they had one of the funniest conversations that I've heard in a long time about how to get a great fake tan. One of them came to conclude that in order to get the best all over natural looking tan it's advised to drink 2 litres of carrot juice every day! She said she swears by it! I'm pretty sure that could lead to an illness of some sort or other!
I've mentioned before that Germans generally seem to be environmentally friendly but I don't think I've mentioned the deposit system on bottles before. Whenever you buy any liquid in a supermarket or a drink in a bar, you have to pay extra for the glass or bottle, which you then get back when you take it back, this system is called Pfand (German for deposit). Of course in a bar you do so as soon as you want another drink or leave, but with supermarket bottles of course you don't do so. I had therefore been very lazy/forgetful as regards taking mine back, but was collecting them diligently all the same. Last week I finally got round to taking literally bags full back to the supermarket and was rewarded with a nice sum of money, it feels rather like a present, rather than extra money that you have in fact paid the supermarket. With the said additional money it feels like you should be spending it on luxuries, so I bought us what we now know as Pfand Punch, a delicious collection of "free" drinks, which we enjoyed this week at our campus festival. Am hoping to collect lots more bottles before the end of term so we can have a big Pfand night!
The campus fest mentioned above was an all day music festival on our campus, a bit like the last official party before the exams start. I'm really getting into German music, there's a surprisingly good amount of decent stuff around. What is amusing is that I often mishear lyrics completely and when I ask Linda who sings a certain song she is totally confuddled when I attempt to sing one of these songs to her after hearing it somewhere! Maybe I have a little more respect for those French karaoke singers now! Linda has pointed out that I need a really musical tandem partner next time who can decipher my singing!
Linda has also recently made me aware of something that I was totally unaware of...you can actually buy fresh milk in Germany! After 6 months of living in La Roche where it was impossible to buy anything other than UHT, when I arrived in Germany and went to the supermarket I immediately spotted the crates of UHT (which there are loads of) and assumed Germany was the same. However after whining about this to Linda she told me I was wrong and it is in fact available in Germany, I can't believe that I lived so long without it, but oh my, what joys to have fresh milk again!
Although my German is far from as good as my French, or anything like as good as it should be, it has come on a lot. Probably one of the reasons that it hasn't improved as much as my French did is that I spend most of the time with Erasmus friends, whose German is little or no better than my own. This has interesting consequences, such as that I've picked up a hilarious accent and quirky phrases, that aren't really German at all, but we Erasmus students have developed ourselves. Another observation is that I've become remarkably good at reading body language, I'm just so used to being in a situation where either Germans are speaking really fast or 2 foreign friends are speaking their language together and I simply do not understand, yet can follow feelings and the gist with relative ease.
Final comment for tonight is how being abroad has made me realise how much I love Britain, it's funny ways and the English language. I've become surprisingly defensive of all things British and far more aware of cultural differences. A recent anecdote, probably not the best, but one that springs to mind, about how funny the English language is, is when I spoke to a friend who speaks excellent English and I said "I'll give you a bell", of course meaning that I'll phone her, but she was both flummoxed and entertained by this, although to me it was just completely and utterly normal. Thinking about it, the image in your mind of actually giving someone a bell is quite funny...!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Drunkenly tottering down the train!
I made myself a promise after writing last week's huge entry that I'd do my best to keep up to date with the blog, so I'm back, it's Sunday night and I'll do my best to recount the memorable events from the days recently gone by.
Last weekend was, yet again, a bank holiday although sadly the last that I'll have here in Germany. The week was made even better as one of my tutors has been ill, thus meaning that I did in fact have a 2 day week this week, brilliant! Maybe that's the reason why I've got the time to be writing this, and already have so much to tell, I have been treating the last week as a holiday rather.
On Saturday, Katka and Miao (a Chinese friend I don't think I've mentioned before) decided that we'd like to go on a bike ride, testing our rickety second hand bicycles to the extreme! Germany is brilliant for bike trips, there are loads of cycle paths and routes so we looked one up, a 46km route, exactly 23km from here to Weimar and then 23 on to Jena. We made excellent progress, leaving here mid morning and arriving in Weimar at the perfect time for a lunch break. There was a signpost in Weimar signalling that we'd done exactly half the route, with half to go. We wanted a photo with this post and assembled ourselves and bikes underneath it, then proceeded to ask Germans to take a photo for us. We had 0% success! We finally persuaded about 3 people to take a photo...but despite us explaining what we wanted none of them actually took a photo of us with the sign! We're not sure if that's because of our poor German or their photo taking ability!
We left Weimar in the early afternoon, following what we believed to be the right path to Jena. There were lots and lots of cyclists there, benefiting from the bank holiday sun. I kept getting mixed up in a group of pensioners, who'd keep turning to me to say things and then looked rather surprised to see that I was 40 years younger than the friend they thought they were chatting with! After about 15km we arrived at another sign...but to our surprise Jena was not signposted at all. We then got out our maps out and realised that we must have taken the wrong path out of Weimar, and were heading in completely the wrong direction, to a town called Apolda. The scenery on the route had been absolutely beautiful, so we decided that we'd keep going to Apolda (which was another 15km away) and see what awaited us on the route, rather than doubling back and seeing what we'd already seen. So we sailed on, and eventually arrived in Apolda, where we headed as straight as possible (there were absolutely no signs!) for the train station, so as to catch a train to meet our friends in Weimar, a little later than expected.
Apolda did not impress me at all. Admittedly we didn't see the centre, but the outskirts were just grey and the station was almost neglected, despite there being regular trains. Not only do regional trains stop there, but the fast intercities also fly through. While we were waiting for our train, we passed the time studying our maps to see exactly where we'd gone wrong. These fast intercities came through 3 times, and every single time we were caught off guard, there was no warning, and by the time you'd heard them they were gone. Anyway what was funny was that as they passed through there was a massive air suction and maps and everything were blown around, the force was so strong it felt that our clothes were going to go too!
Eventually our rumbling train arrived and we made it to Jena in good time. Jena impressed me more than I thought that it would. It's not particularly well known for being a nice city, but was lively and there was enough to see to pass the rest of the afternoon there. Jena is a university city (Thuringia's only university was there when it was part of the East German state) and so the university is still very big, giving it very studenty feel. It also boasts a sky scraper, the only skyscraper in Thuringia, and I think, the tallest in East Germany. So that was a change from the usual greenery and countryside that I see so much of here! After visiting Jena we took the bikes back on the train, a little too tired to make the return journey!
The next day was wet and none of us really felt like doing any work, so instead we decided to dye my hair! What a way to fill a wet day! My friend Katka had some henna and so she said we'd do it with that, and I willingly agreed, my year abroad is the time for trying new things after all. It was a success, in that the colour is obvious...but far more than we had intended! In bright sunlight you could even compare me to Prince Harry! Fortunately in normal light it does look far more like copper and it's already notably faded after the first few washes. The quote of the process was from Katka, "I'll put more at the front, after all that's all that anyone really sees"...I placidly agreed, and she went ahead. However after contemplation, and seeing the result, I realise that that was a very bad idea, the colour is definitely not evenly distributed, and so the worst hair colour is at the front! Ah well!
Anyway, the reason that it's stronger than we expected is because we left it on while we did some cooking, and that took far longer than expected. I have been learning lots of recipes on my travels this year, and this week have added two exciting dishes to my repertoire. On that Sunday we made some yummy potato things, somewhere between a pancake and a hashbrown, typically Slovakian I am informed. Yesterday was Orsi's birthday and so we made a huge vat of Hungarian goulash to take to her party for everyone, and that too was absolutely delicious. The funny thing is, bar the crepes and biscuits that I made in France, everything that I have learnt to cook comes from countries other than the two I've lived in. Ah well, maybe I'm not missing out on too much by not knowing any German recipes.
On Monday we decided to visit a random town in Thuringia (we can travel overall in the state for free), so we plucked Meiningen out of the air, and it beat all expectations, chiefly because there were none. We had a really fun day out, the journeys there and back alone were eventful! On the way we had a hilarious run in with the ticket collector, who almost refused to accept my driving licence as valid ID, not because it's not accepted here, but because she got VERY confused about what it meant. She looked at the European flag, where the letters UK are surrounded by stars, and jumped to the conclusion that I was from Ukraine (although Ukraine isn't even part of the EU!). She then read it in some more detail and noticed that I was born in England, and just couldn't put two and two together (chiefly because in this case two and two don't go together!). How I was Ukrainian, but born in England, she couldn't figure out, so instead jumped to the conclusion that it was fake ID! We had a really long conversation trying to explain it to her (and avoid paying the train fine!), which became even more confusing when I said that I was British, thus from the UK...of course I couldn't say I couldn't United Kingdish! But trying to explain the difference between England, Great Britain, United Kingdom and Ukraine was a challenge, oh it was such a muddle! But eventually she either clicked or gave up and we were let off. At least she didn't try speaking any Ukrainian to us!
Meiningen is a pretty town, standard German: market place, castle, museum...you get the idea! The market had a thriving market and we were persuaded to have a go on a tombola type game, where we were delighted with the bottle of wine that we won, until we tasted it later that was! The town also has a very famous cave, but sadly that was shut, so we couldn't go in and had to opt for the museum, which took us all by surprise as it was actually great for a small town museum. They had a temporary display on theatre set and costume design which was really interesting. The only bad thing about Meiningen was all the people that we came in to contact with, the lady in the tourism office and the museum staff were particularly rude!
We left Meiningen late in the afternoon, and caught our train back to Erfurt, the journey lasting about an hour and a half. We decided that the journey had the potential to be a productive time slot to do some vocab revision for one of the German as a foreign language courses that we do together, as we were supposed to have an exam that week. I'd brought my notes with me, so as they were in English, I was the "teacher" and they my "pupils". The lesson that we were revising for is a particularly funny course that we do, which is all about broadening our lexicon, so we learn about 50 synonyms for one word. In this case it was the verb "to go". Plus we've been learning animals in more depth than we ever learnt at school. We started learning the "go" vocab, words ranging from simple alternatives, like "hurry" and "run", to more unusual, including "to waddle", "to prance", "to drunkenly totter", "to walk on stilts" etc etc! If I was learning the vocab with English people the logical thing to do would be to say the English word, and then they'd repeat the German equivalent. Of course, with a Slovakian and Hungarian whose English is extremely limited, you simply cannot do this. So all was learnt through the means of miming, which was absolutely hilarious, I did my best impressions of "drunkenly tottering" up the carriage aisle, but "drunkenly tottering" occasionally became "doing one's utmost to avoid sitting on a stranger's lap as the train goes round a corner at high speed!"
Thinks got even funnier once we'd finished that word group and moved on to animals: we were learning German animal sounds (did you know that a German cockerel says "kikeriki"?!) and more elaborate terms for animals, so not just how to say a simple sheep, but more detailed vocabulary, such as the German for a male castrated sheep! Of course this too had to be done by the means of mime and onomatopoeia, I can't describe how funny it was, I was hopeless, and their guessing was often far from the mark! Added to that, we were of course sitting amongst ordinary Germans who didn't know what we were doing and were utterly bemused by the whole thing, I heard a couple make grunting pig noises as a farewell to us as they got off!
Luckily for us we haven't had to sit that exam yet, as it's that teacher who has been ill all week, giving us a welcome couple of days off and extra, much needed, revision time! My lessons this week also threw up a couple of amusing moments, one being, as usual, in my "Foreign Words in the German Language" course. They were discussing what the plural of campus should be, one alternative being "campi", which was immediately scorned by one girl, on the grounds that it sounds far too much like scampi to be taken seriously!!! The German pupils do like a good debate in seminars, something I must say they are particularly good at!
On Tuesday evening there was trip to the town's puppet theatre that I went along to. They were putting on a performance of Faust, and realising how difficult the German would be, let alone the concepts of the work, I read a wikipedia summary before I went. Thank goodness I did, if not I think that I would have understood absolutely nothing! Oh woe, my German needs so much more work, and now that I think about it, yesterday was my 2 month anniversary in Germany, which means just under two to go, my time here is flying. So the play was highly complicated, but the theatre and puppets were amazing, at least I was able to appreciate them! They're putting on a performance of Moby Dick later this term, maybe I'll go to that, it might be more reachable for my level of German!
We've also watched a fair few films since I've been here, on dvd in one of our rooms. The films we've watched have mainly been British or American (except one AWFUL German film, put me off German cinema for life!), so we've watched them in the original language. We generally try to get German subtitles for it, but on a couple of occasions this hasn't been possible, so we've had English one's instead. One memorable film was About A Boy, we couldn't get German subtitles, and the only English ones were for another edition of the film, so although the words were perfect, they came 5 minutes before the action! My poor friend Orsi had a proper challenge on her hands, she said that she didn't understand much!
What's also interesting watching British films with them is how I've come to realise that there are so many things they don't get, not because they don't understand, but because films are simply littered with cultural references, that only British people really get. They really do miss out on a lot of the jokes and undertones. However they also have their own private laughs, which we don't have! For example, in About A Boy there's a Christmas scene and they're all sitting round wearing the crowns that come in crackers, they think this looks absolutely ridiculous, and just can't see why we all do so! Thinking about it, I really don't know why either! There are so many moments like that.
Surprisingly, that's the second time this week that I've talked about crackers! My French friend Thomas made a comment that he went to Britain in December a couple of years ago and bought a couple of packs to give away as presents, as the French too find crackers a very strange concept! Another part of everyday (well not in the case of crackers, but anyway!) British norms that I've discussed with people this week is that of carpet! Many, many people find them really awful, especially in bathrooms! They simply can not understand why they are so popular in Britain. I've tried converting them, by saying that it's very nice to walk around on plush carpet etc, but they just won't agree! Does remind me of my time in France with carpeted walls, now that really was a pleasure!
Thinking of home decorating, our corridor here has been painted this week, I'm rather upset. We previously had white walls with an apple green strip running down them. Now they're repainting and it appears that the green has been replaced with a colour that resembles vomit, in colour and smell! Oh, bring back the green!
I've been into town quite a few times this week, if I do have no lessons I might as well go shopping! Quite often when I go into town, there are groups of women hanging around, often with a pram or trolley filled with miscellaneous items or running some sort of game. I've been very confused as what has been going on, but Thomas, who says the same thing happens in France (although I never saw it) has finally explained to me what is going on. Apparently, this is in fact the German equivalent of a hen night! The girls go out during the day and ask people for donations, and in return they get something, I've seen prizes ranging from a toilet brush, to a rose, to a massage from one of the girls! We're not sure what they do with the money, I imagine that historically it went towards the wedding, but nowadays probably a bottle of tequila for the bride and bride's maids! What is interesting, is how many people actually do agree to take part and give money to a random bride-to-be!
Yesterday was the start of sport week in Erfurt, and it kicked off with a charity run called "Erfurt Rennt", which I'd entered a team for, me, Katka, Orsi, Lida and the lady from the International Office at the university, Frau Winter...a funny mix! It was a relay, the aim being for the team to run around the cathedral as many times as possible in an hour and a half, quite a dizzying experience! Unfortunately Frau Winter was capturered by another team who were 2 members short, so then there were then 2 teams, both 1 member short. Lida, who is completely unsporty and who we conned into doing the whole thing then gave up after the first few laps...so we were then only 3 and my was it hard work! However, it was a really good event, hundreds of participants and supporters, and despite the pouring rain, spirits weren't dampened, in fact it was rather refreshing!
Well I think that's the lot for this week, it's been busy! I will leave you with a couple of awful quotes that I picked up yesterday. The first I got at a street festival, where all the organisations that the university has put up a stall and advertise themselves. A bit like Freshers' Fair I suppose. The quote comes from the tent for international exchanges. They had a quiz about countries of the world, and one of the questions was "What is the patron saint of Great Britain?", the answer being "St Patrick", awful! And the second, is from an American friend of mine (who incidentally studies politics and international relations!) that I was chatting to at a party yesterday and he said "I see Britain's got political problems at the moment, Tony Blair won't be prime minister for much longer, his cabinet is falling apart around him!" And it wasn't even a slip of the tongue! I really should have replied something like "Yes, Margaret Thatcher, leader of the opposition, is hoping to regain power soon" but I was far too horrified to react!
Last weekend was, yet again, a bank holiday although sadly the last that I'll have here in Germany. The week was made even better as one of my tutors has been ill, thus meaning that I did in fact have a 2 day week this week, brilliant! Maybe that's the reason why I've got the time to be writing this, and already have so much to tell, I have been treating the last week as a holiday rather.
On Saturday, Katka and Miao (a Chinese friend I don't think I've mentioned before) decided that we'd like to go on a bike ride, testing our rickety second hand bicycles to the extreme! Germany is brilliant for bike trips, there are loads of cycle paths and routes so we looked one up, a 46km route, exactly 23km from here to Weimar and then 23 on to Jena. We made excellent progress, leaving here mid morning and arriving in Weimar at the perfect time for a lunch break. There was a signpost in Weimar signalling that we'd done exactly half the route, with half to go. We wanted a photo with this post and assembled ourselves and bikes underneath it, then proceeded to ask Germans to take a photo for us. We had 0% success! We finally persuaded about 3 people to take a photo...but despite us explaining what we wanted none of them actually took a photo of us with the sign! We're not sure if that's because of our poor German or their photo taking ability!
We left Weimar in the early afternoon, following what we believed to be the right path to Jena. There were lots and lots of cyclists there, benefiting from the bank holiday sun. I kept getting mixed up in a group of pensioners, who'd keep turning to me to say things and then looked rather surprised to see that I was 40 years younger than the friend they thought they were chatting with! After about 15km we arrived at another sign...but to our surprise Jena was not signposted at all. We then got out our maps out and realised that we must have taken the wrong path out of Weimar, and were heading in completely the wrong direction, to a town called Apolda. The scenery on the route had been absolutely beautiful, so we decided that we'd keep going to Apolda (which was another 15km away) and see what awaited us on the route, rather than doubling back and seeing what we'd already seen. So we sailed on, and eventually arrived in Apolda, where we headed as straight as possible (there were absolutely no signs!) for the train station, so as to catch a train to meet our friends in Weimar, a little later than expected.
Apolda did not impress me at all. Admittedly we didn't see the centre, but the outskirts were just grey and the station was almost neglected, despite there being regular trains. Not only do regional trains stop there, but the fast intercities also fly through. While we were waiting for our train, we passed the time studying our maps to see exactly where we'd gone wrong. These fast intercities came through 3 times, and every single time we were caught off guard, there was no warning, and by the time you'd heard them they were gone. Anyway what was funny was that as they passed through there was a massive air suction and maps and everything were blown around, the force was so strong it felt that our clothes were going to go too!
Eventually our rumbling train arrived and we made it to Jena in good time. Jena impressed me more than I thought that it would. It's not particularly well known for being a nice city, but was lively and there was enough to see to pass the rest of the afternoon there. Jena is a university city (Thuringia's only university was there when it was part of the East German state) and so the university is still very big, giving it very studenty feel. It also boasts a sky scraper, the only skyscraper in Thuringia, and I think, the tallest in East Germany. So that was a change from the usual greenery and countryside that I see so much of here! After visiting Jena we took the bikes back on the train, a little too tired to make the return journey!
The next day was wet and none of us really felt like doing any work, so instead we decided to dye my hair! What a way to fill a wet day! My friend Katka had some henna and so she said we'd do it with that, and I willingly agreed, my year abroad is the time for trying new things after all. It was a success, in that the colour is obvious...but far more than we had intended! In bright sunlight you could even compare me to Prince Harry! Fortunately in normal light it does look far more like copper and it's already notably faded after the first few washes. The quote of the process was from Katka, "I'll put more at the front, after all that's all that anyone really sees"...I placidly agreed, and she went ahead. However after contemplation, and seeing the result, I realise that that was a very bad idea, the colour is definitely not evenly distributed, and so the worst hair colour is at the front! Ah well!
Anyway, the reason that it's stronger than we expected is because we left it on while we did some cooking, and that took far longer than expected. I have been learning lots of recipes on my travels this year, and this week have added two exciting dishes to my repertoire. On that Sunday we made some yummy potato things, somewhere between a pancake and a hashbrown, typically Slovakian I am informed. Yesterday was Orsi's birthday and so we made a huge vat of Hungarian goulash to take to her party for everyone, and that too was absolutely delicious. The funny thing is, bar the crepes and biscuits that I made in France, everything that I have learnt to cook comes from countries other than the two I've lived in. Ah well, maybe I'm not missing out on too much by not knowing any German recipes.
On Monday we decided to visit a random town in Thuringia (we can travel overall in the state for free), so we plucked Meiningen out of the air, and it beat all expectations, chiefly because there were none. We had a really fun day out, the journeys there and back alone were eventful! On the way we had a hilarious run in with the ticket collector, who almost refused to accept my driving licence as valid ID, not because it's not accepted here, but because she got VERY confused about what it meant. She looked at the European flag, where the letters UK are surrounded by stars, and jumped to the conclusion that I was from Ukraine (although Ukraine isn't even part of the EU!). She then read it in some more detail and noticed that I was born in England, and just couldn't put two and two together (chiefly because in this case two and two don't go together!). How I was Ukrainian, but born in England, she couldn't figure out, so instead jumped to the conclusion that it was fake ID! We had a really long conversation trying to explain it to her (and avoid paying the train fine!), which became even more confusing when I said that I was British, thus from the UK...of course I couldn't say I couldn't United Kingdish! But trying to explain the difference between England, Great Britain, United Kingdom and Ukraine was a challenge, oh it was such a muddle! But eventually she either clicked or gave up and we were let off. At least she didn't try speaking any Ukrainian to us!
Meiningen is a pretty town, standard German: market place, castle, museum...you get the idea! The market had a thriving market and we were persuaded to have a go on a tombola type game, where we were delighted with the bottle of wine that we won, until we tasted it later that was! The town also has a very famous cave, but sadly that was shut, so we couldn't go in and had to opt for the museum, which took us all by surprise as it was actually great for a small town museum. They had a temporary display on theatre set and costume design which was really interesting. The only bad thing about Meiningen was all the people that we came in to contact with, the lady in the tourism office and the museum staff were particularly rude!
We left Meiningen late in the afternoon, and caught our train back to Erfurt, the journey lasting about an hour and a half. We decided that the journey had the potential to be a productive time slot to do some vocab revision for one of the German as a foreign language courses that we do together, as we were supposed to have an exam that week. I'd brought my notes with me, so as they were in English, I was the "teacher" and they my "pupils". The lesson that we were revising for is a particularly funny course that we do, which is all about broadening our lexicon, so we learn about 50 synonyms for one word. In this case it was the verb "to go". Plus we've been learning animals in more depth than we ever learnt at school. We started learning the "go" vocab, words ranging from simple alternatives, like "hurry" and "run", to more unusual, including "to waddle", "to prance", "to drunkenly totter", "to walk on stilts" etc etc! If I was learning the vocab with English people the logical thing to do would be to say the English word, and then they'd repeat the German equivalent. Of course, with a Slovakian and Hungarian whose English is extremely limited, you simply cannot do this. So all was learnt through the means of miming, which was absolutely hilarious, I did my best impressions of "drunkenly tottering" up the carriage aisle, but "drunkenly tottering" occasionally became "doing one's utmost to avoid sitting on a stranger's lap as the train goes round a corner at high speed!"
Thinks got even funnier once we'd finished that word group and moved on to animals: we were learning German animal sounds (did you know that a German cockerel says "kikeriki"?!) and more elaborate terms for animals, so not just how to say a simple sheep, but more detailed vocabulary, such as the German for a male castrated sheep! Of course this too had to be done by the means of mime and onomatopoeia, I can't describe how funny it was, I was hopeless, and their guessing was often far from the mark! Added to that, we were of course sitting amongst ordinary Germans who didn't know what we were doing and were utterly bemused by the whole thing, I heard a couple make grunting pig noises as a farewell to us as they got off!
Luckily for us we haven't had to sit that exam yet, as it's that teacher who has been ill all week, giving us a welcome couple of days off and extra, much needed, revision time! My lessons this week also threw up a couple of amusing moments, one being, as usual, in my "Foreign Words in the German Language" course. They were discussing what the plural of campus should be, one alternative being "campi", which was immediately scorned by one girl, on the grounds that it sounds far too much like scampi to be taken seriously!!! The German pupils do like a good debate in seminars, something I must say they are particularly good at!
On Tuesday evening there was trip to the town's puppet theatre that I went along to. They were putting on a performance of Faust, and realising how difficult the German would be, let alone the concepts of the work, I read a wikipedia summary before I went. Thank goodness I did, if not I think that I would have understood absolutely nothing! Oh woe, my German needs so much more work, and now that I think about it, yesterday was my 2 month anniversary in Germany, which means just under two to go, my time here is flying. So the play was highly complicated, but the theatre and puppets were amazing, at least I was able to appreciate them! They're putting on a performance of Moby Dick later this term, maybe I'll go to that, it might be more reachable for my level of German!
We've also watched a fair few films since I've been here, on dvd in one of our rooms. The films we've watched have mainly been British or American (except one AWFUL German film, put me off German cinema for life!), so we've watched them in the original language. We generally try to get German subtitles for it, but on a couple of occasions this hasn't been possible, so we've had English one's instead. One memorable film was About A Boy, we couldn't get German subtitles, and the only English ones were for another edition of the film, so although the words were perfect, they came 5 minutes before the action! My poor friend Orsi had a proper challenge on her hands, she said that she didn't understand much!
What's also interesting watching British films with them is how I've come to realise that there are so many things they don't get, not because they don't understand, but because films are simply littered with cultural references, that only British people really get. They really do miss out on a lot of the jokes and undertones. However they also have their own private laughs, which we don't have! For example, in About A Boy there's a Christmas scene and they're all sitting round wearing the crowns that come in crackers, they think this looks absolutely ridiculous, and just can't see why we all do so! Thinking about it, I really don't know why either! There are so many moments like that.
Surprisingly, that's the second time this week that I've talked about crackers! My French friend Thomas made a comment that he went to Britain in December a couple of years ago and bought a couple of packs to give away as presents, as the French too find crackers a very strange concept! Another part of everyday (well not in the case of crackers, but anyway!) British norms that I've discussed with people this week is that of carpet! Many, many people find them really awful, especially in bathrooms! They simply can not understand why they are so popular in Britain. I've tried converting them, by saying that it's very nice to walk around on plush carpet etc, but they just won't agree! Does remind me of my time in France with carpeted walls, now that really was a pleasure!
Thinking of home decorating, our corridor here has been painted this week, I'm rather upset. We previously had white walls with an apple green strip running down them. Now they're repainting and it appears that the green has been replaced with a colour that resembles vomit, in colour and smell! Oh, bring back the green!
I've been into town quite a few times this week, if I do have no lessons I might as well go shopping! Quite often when I go into town, there are groups of women hanging around, often with a pram or trolley filled with miscellaneous items or running some sort of game. I've been very confused as what has been going on, but Thomas, who says the same thing happens in France (although I never saw it) has finally explained to me what is going on. Apparently, this is in fact the German equivalent of a hen night! The girls go out during the day and ask people for donations, and in return they get something, I've seen prizes ranging from a toilet brush, to a rose, to a massage from one of the girls! We're not sure what they do with the money, I imagine that historically it went towards the wedding, but nowadays probably a bottle of tequila for the bride and bride's maids! What is interesting, is how many people actually do agree to take part and give money to a random bride-to-be!
Yesterday was the start of sport week in Erfurt, and it kicked off with a charity run called "Erfurt Rennt", which I'd entered a team for, me, Katka, Orsi, Lida and the lady from the International Office at the university, Frau Winter...a funny mix! It was a relay, the aim being for the team to run around the cathedral as many times as possible in an hour and a half, quite a dizzying experience! Unfortunately Frau Winter was capturered by another team who were 2 members short, so then there were then 2 teams, both 1 member short. Lida, who is completely unsporty and who we conned into doing the whole thing then gave up after the first few laps...so we were then only 3 and my was it hard work! However, it was a really good event, hundreds of participants and supporters, and despite the pouring rain, spirits weren't dampened, in fact it was rather refreshing!
Well I think that's the lot for this week, it's been busy! I will leave you with a couple of awful quotes that I picked up yesterday. The first I got at a street festival, where all the organisations that the university has put up a stall and advertise themselves. A bit like Freshers' Fair I suppose. The quote comes from the tent for international exchanges. They had a quiz about countries of the world, and one of the questions was "What is the patron saint of Great Britain?", the answer being "St Patrick", awful! And the second, is from an American friend of mine (who incidentally studies politics and international relations!) that I was chatting to at a party yesterday and he said "I see Britain's got political problems at the moment, Tony Blair won't be prime minister for much longer, his cabinet is falling apart around him!" And it wasn't even a slip of the tongue! I really should have replied something like "Yes, Margaret Thatcher, leader of the opposition, is hoping to regain power soon" but I was far too horrified to react!
Monday, May 25, 2009
An Unbrief Roundup
So that was the not so exciting part of life here in Erfurt, now onto the reasons why I simply no longer have time to write a proper blog! Am writing this in glorious sunshine, lying on the lawn in front of the library, amazing technology advances at their best! The blog was a good excuse to take some time off from the business of German university life.
Every single evening there is something going on here, it's such a lively place. I've joined the university badminton club and so go along to that most Mondays, although it is the most poorly organised badminton club that I've ever been a member of, which surprises me...every stereotype of Germany is slowly being erased, organisation one of them! I've met a few nice people there and am gradually picking up German badminton terminology, mainly "sorry" and "out"...sport being another domain where Anglicisms rule supreme! The best bit of badminton related news is that the rather nice morphology professor that I mentioned a few posts ago is also a member of the club!
The handball team here is only for elite players so I thought that, despite my stint in France, I certainly don't come under that category and I couldn't do any of the other sports as they clash with my timetable. However, I was keen to take up something new, so my friend Orsi and I now go to yoga every week. What is funny is that we can only understand about 50% of what the lady running it says and so often we really have no idea what to do...this means that it's far from as relaxing as it should be, as we're constantly peeking our eyes open to see what everyone else is doing! My absence of any ability to do the stretches, coupled together with my partial lack of understanding, does mean that I'm pretty sure that, on the whole, we're very unsuccessful at yoga! But it's fun though, and fills up another evening.
Every Tuesday evening we have what's called "International Cafe" where students from a particular country present it and their culture etc. The presentation is always followed by a huge spread of typical food from their country, so it's a really popular night with students! So far this term we've had Afghanistan, Poland and Indonesia, all of which have been really interesting, I have learnt a lot! The most memorable would be some Indonesian dancing which was quite extraordinary. It's quite hard to explain (maybe I could attempt a demonstration!) but involved them all kneeling in a line and bobbing up and down and over each other, while slapping the floor and each other, meanwhile the music got faster and faster. It was really cool, they sort of cascaded over each other...the funny thing was that it all got a bit too much for one girl and she got walloped in the face and the entire structure collapsed! Clearly showing us what remarkable skill it takes to do it successfully!
I can't remember where I left off with my "fremd" professor in the last post, but we've met a few times since I've been here, to go for hikes in the Thuringia Forest, which is just beautiful. The whole landscape here is green: vibrant green fields, mountain sides, forests, the lot. There are so many walking trails, which all seem really popular with the Germans, who seem to spend every weekend out walking or cycling. The professor and wife are really interesting characters, I can't really describe them, I think I'd need a post devoted to them alone! I went back to their house for coffee and cake after a walk last Sunday (another German speciality...no-one does coffee and cake like the Germans!) and they showed me all the photos and treasures of their travels, just remarkable. Their house is full of unusual pieces, totem poles, dream catchers, tapestries...things from right around the world. The photos were also inspiring, after seeing it all I have no desire at all to find myself a "proper" job, I might just become a travelling English teacher (with as little emphasis on the teaching part as possible!).
I think the funniest thing that I have to report on that particular meeting with them is when Joachim (the professor) explained to me what his daughter, who lives in Canada, does. She makes clothes for people who believe that they are in fact fairies! What kind of a job is that?! And how on earth are there enough of these people for her to make a decent living out of it?!? But it appears there are, and they showed me photos of her and her stall at a fairy convention in America...there were funny looking fairies of all shapes and sizes there!
The professor is also a keen motorbike enthusiast and suggested that he take me on a tour of Thuringia on his bike. So yesterday we went out for the whole afternoon. It was such good fun, I am a proper convert now! The weather was not great, heavy showers (thus I was absolutely soaked!), but bursts of sunshine to dry me up again. We visited the southerly part of Thuringia, one of Germany's oldest monasteries, the winner of "Thuringia's best village" and the smallest ever cafe, it was so small that one room could fit just one table in it! So you can see that yesterday afternoon was an afternoon of superlatives, culminating in the highest speed that I've ever travelled on a road, how on earth I'm going to go back to my push bike I don't know!
Incidentally, as mentioned there I do know have a bike here in Germany, kindly lent to me by the professor and his wife. So that's great, although cycling into town is extremely hazardous, the trams really are a silent danger, I've had a fair few close shaves already. Plus their tracks are exactly the same width as my bike tyres and so they've got stuck in the tracks on a number of memorable occasions!
I've been walking not only with the professor, but a few weeks ago (probably even a month by now) a group of us Erasmus students decided to walk the Goethe Wanderweg, the path that Goethe himself apparently took and where he wrote one of his famous poems. A group of eight of us went, my Slovakian friend, Katka; my Czech friend, Lida, 3 Greeks, Angeliki, Lina and Evi; a French boy called Thomas and a Mexican, Toni. We had a great day in the sun, although the route itself was quite strenuous, 20km up and down mountains, I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, some of our group weren't quite so used to hiking and possibly weren't 100% aware of what they'd let themselves in for! Fortunately we made it in the end, just in the nick of time to catch the last bus back from a small village right in the middle of the forest.
On the last day of April there is a big festival in Erfurt (and across Germany on the whole I think) to welcome in May, and burn witches. Erfurt had probably the most spectacular witch burning fest that I will ever see! We turned up late in the evening, just in time to catch children from the local schools doing their equivalent of country dancing in traditional dress. Then, as night fell, a giant bonfire was lit in the main square, in front of the cathedral, which made for a wonderful back drop. Then banging of drums and loud music started and to my surprise witches were flying overhead! They'd got a huge crane in and had witches hoisted up it on long, long ropes, thus swinging precariously down it, and being lowered over the crowd and swung right across the bonfire! Distinct lack of any safety measures but what a spectacle! Following this, there was a parade of the most lavishly dressed witches and really scary devil like creatures who skulked round to the beating of the music. This was followed by a theatre piece for the crowd and music and dancing later. Of course, Germany being Germany, beer was flowing and sausages were sizzling and it was a really good event. And completely free in the cathedral square, brilliant!
Unfortunately we couldn't stay until the bonfire burnt out (which would have taken an extremely long time judging by the size of it!) as we'd arranged to go to Munich outrageously early the next morning, taking advantage of the long weekend. Talking of long weekends, May day was the first of three bank holidays in May, a very welcome few days off!
We were again a large group, as you can get special train tickets where 5 people can travel anywhere in Germany for 30 euros, provided they only use the regional trains, rather than the fast intercities. So in total 10 of us headed of to Bavaria, an extremely long journey! We left the organising up to the Greeks (good idea or not is to be debated!), and they told us that we had to catch the tram at 4h15am in order to be at the station for our 5am train. We arrived punctually at the tram stop only to be greeted by them looking rather flustered, they hadn't taken into account that it was the bank holiday, and thus trams are far less frequent, there wouldn't be another one to get us there in time! Eeeeek! So we power walked the entire distance, arms flapping, bags flying everywhere, determined not to miss the train, we must have been a funny sight, an odd mix of people at an unreasonable hour, most people we met were staggering back in the other direction! It must be several kms, the walk took us nearly 45 minutes at full pace, the train station being about as far from the university as possible, right on the other side of town. We arrived with literally a couple of minutes to spare, breathless, yet wide awake at this early hour!
We decided that rather than go straight to Munich, we'd benefit from being so far south and travel on to Fuessen, where there's a very famous castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, set in the Alps, right on the Austrian border. After 7 hours of travelling, and 5 trains (!), we eventually arrived! The castle is extremely impressive, it's in an absolutely beautiful setting, there was still snow on the mountain tops, making me desperate to go skiing again! It was built by Ludwig the second, king of Bavaria and its creation nearly (or did!) bankrupt the state, it really is that extravagant. The area was crowded with tourists, but then again, so were we, so we couldn't really complain! That afternoon, as we were just about to leave the castle and walk down the mountain side, a huge thunderstorm came in. As it had previously been so sunny I had no coat or anything, but we had to leave, in order to get back into the town to catch our train to Munich. We were absolutely soaked, the rain drops were enormous and there were so many! That was my first (of many) experiences of German thunderstorms and they are remarkable, come from no where and are so powerful. Needless to say, we all looked like drenched rats on the train to Munich!
Due to many train delays and dilly dallying about on platforms, we arrived in Munich late on Friday night and so just dried ourselves out and collapsed into bed, knackered after such an early start. On Saturday, we headed out to Munich, which I really really liked, despite the vast numbers of tourists there. Our first stop was Marienplatz to watch the dancing figures moving to the glockenspiel, the square was so full of tourists in was quite unbelievable, but did make for a good atmosphere, that was felt everywhere in Munich, it was certainly lively. We visited lots of Munich, the most memorable things we saw being the English Garden, one of Europe's largest city parks; the Olympic Park, from the 1972 Olympics, debatably only interesting if you're as into the Olympics as I am and the BMW museum, where I sat behind the wheel of a real BMW for probably the first and last time in my life!
However possibly the best moment of our trip to Munich was popping into a C&A (which, incidentally, appears to be just as popular and trendy as in France!) where we found rows of Dirndls, the Bavarian traditional dresses. Silvia, Rosie and I each choose one to try on, which was so funny, we looked somewhere between Heidi and proper Bavarians barmaids that work at Munich's famous October festival! If only they hadn't been so expensive (starting price, 100 euros, and that was C&A, I dread to think how expensive they get!) I would definitely be bringing one home!
On the Sunday we visited a few more sights in Munich, as well as a residence on the outskirts, Schloss Nymphenburg, which was less impressive than the one in the Alps, but interesting all the same. So Munich was great, the first big city I've visited in Germany. However it was a very expensive place and absolutely full of tourists, I think I will have to go back at a time other than the May bank holiday (or Oktoberfest) to get a real idea of what it's like, any excuse to go back!
The following weekend we went to Berlin, and I fell in love with the city. It was such an exciting place, everything I had expected it to be and more. I've been desperate to visit it for years, so I finally feel fulfilled. We arrived on Friday afternoon, another large group of 10, and checked in to our hostel, which in itself was pretty funny. It had a reception out on the street and then the rooms were all in a block behind it, shared with all sorts of offices, on our floor our rooms were sandwiched between a physiotherapists and a kindergarten (or so it said on the door!). We were all in one room, 10 beds in a line side by side, it reminded me of guide camp or something, it was like we were to have a big sleepover! And at 10 euros a night it was perfect.
That evening we headed straight out to Alexanderplatz and then walked up Unter den Linden to Brandenburg Gate, passing a group who'd hired out a "beer bike". The concept is that you hire this thing, that is about the size of a tractor trailer. On it are 10 stools around a large table, each one with pedals, plus a collective steering wheel. At the back there is a huge barrel of beer, so you pedal round Berlin, seeing the sights, and drinking beer to your heart's content. Typical wonderful German invention! The problem being that by the time we saw the group they must have nearly finished the giant barrel, and were not only looking slightly worse for wear, but had also lost any skill regarding how to manoeuvre the beer bike! They were in a right pickle and hilarious to watch!
After seeing the Brandenburg Gate we walked on to the Bundestag (German Parliament), when a huge storm broke out, not the first, and certainly not the last time, that I will get soaked in Germany! We took cover in an underground station not so far away and thought about what to do. In the end someone had the idea to get on the next train, wherever it was going, find a dry pub there and experience an unknown part of Berlin, excellent idea in theory, interesting experience in practice! All I have to say is that I think we well and truly left the beaten tourist track and there are several, non blog worthy stories to be told!
On Saturday we visited every single corner of Berlin centre. All the typical tourist hotspots, the list is very long but includes Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdamer Platz, the Jewish Memorial, the Bundestag (where we queued for an hour to climb the dome), the Tier Garten, Ku'damm platz, the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedaechtnis Kirche, the 1936 Olympic Stadium...the list goes on! I found it slightly odd that almost everything we saw had a link to the war in one way or another, but I suppose that's a part of the attraction of Berlin, it really is a city that was torn apart and is in the process of being patched back together. It's fascinating to see it all. There is simply building work everywhere, I imagine if you left the city 10 years ago and returned now it would be unrecognisable beyond belief.
It is also a really vibrant city, there is just so much to see, and surprisingly it didn't feel as touristic as Munich, so that made it far better in my opinion. On Saturday night, we went out to experience Berlin's famous nightlife, it lived up to all expectations! We went to a huge converted barn, now nightclub, and the music and atmosphere was great, makes Erfurt look like a small village in comparison! I now just want to go back to Berlin!
On Sunday we went to a few markets that we'd heard of which was cool, I love rooting through this sort of market, there are just so many funny pieces, and it never ceases to amaze me that people are actually selling (and buying!) some of the things there, such as odd screws, single shoes, private letters...it really does make me realise that maybe half the junk shoved under my bed could actually be turned into money! We also went for a walk along the river, slightly out of the centre and visited the DDR (former East Germany) museum, which was very well presented, really hands on with lots and lots of genuine bits and pieces, including a Trabi which I loved! Interestingly, amongst our group opinions were split about the museum. From mine and Rosie's point of view, lots of things were just fascinating and strange, where as my friends from Eastern Europe were pretty indifferent about the whole thing, I suppose for them it was just like looking back a decade or so.
There are actually many occasions where we just simply do not share the same opinions on things, or where they will argue among themselves about something, which I cannot understand, because we come from different backgrounds. One example of this is how there is always a slight friction between my friends from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and my friend from Hungary. Regularly they will talk about the role of Hungary and the history of the other countries and will genuinely get very worked up about it, something which I genuinely can't understand, and find it hard to see how they can use this historical/political difference as a reason to argue amongst themselves. It's also interesting to see how they've learnt the history of the relationships between their countries from completely different sides. On a lighter note, the same goes for a Russian acquaintance of mine, who holds the opinion that "Russia won the Second World War, almost singlehandedly, with a little help from the other Allies", you wonder what sort of education he's had!
So our trip to Berlin was a massive success, I will definitely put it on my list of places to visit again and again. We had another long train journey back and we all had work to be doing, being away for a weekend in Germany is not like it was in France. In France, I had absolutely nothing that I had to do outside of school hours, whereas in Germany there's always some (or a lot!) of homework hanging over my head, which is a bit of a downer. On the way back, my Greek friend Evi had brought her German homework with her. She didn't speak German before she came here, so it was basic stuff, but she needed some help with it. She was sitting next to my Slovakian friend Katka, so she offered to help. The funny thing was she had to help in English, as that's their communal language, so the situation was: a Slovakian helping a Greek with their German homework in English, what a very strange mix! But that's everyday life here and I love it, I've never heard so many languages flying round! And I'm slowly picking up more vocabulary, all be it not German, my favourite new phrase is the Hungarian for "cheers" which is pronounced something like "Eggey shay ge de"!
There is absolutely always something going on in the city, from the witch burning evening to the "Long Museum Night" a couple of weeks ago. The idea behind it is that you buy a ticket for 4 euros and then have free entry to all the museums, galleries etc in the city, of which there are plenty. So we went along and visited no less than 5 museums in the evening, pretty heavy going, and we were knackered by the end of it. It was good for me, as, like in La Roche, I'd been saving the museums for "a rainy day" which was obviously never going to come, not only is the weather too good, but there's always something better to do. So the night did give me the push I needed to actually visit them, and it paid off, we saw some interesting things. However I did find it a very funny way to spend a Friday night, in Britain it's usually a pub crawl, not a museum crawl!
Last Thursday was the second of the bank holidays in May, which they actually have of because of Ascension Day. However, for some reason I don't know, it is also popularly also known as Maenner Tag (Men's Day), and lots and lots of men go off and do "manly" things together, such as sport, barbequing and, of course, beer drinking! I went into town for brunch with some American friends and we sat and watched them all, which was very entertaining. A popular thing to do is take a small truck on wheels full of beer out into the countryside, so there were lots and lots of groups of men pushing these funny trolleys around, quite bizarre!
Over the long weekend we decided that we'd make the most of it and go on a few trips around Thuringia, which we can do for free with our semester ticket. On Saturday we visited Eisenach, which is a small, but very famous, town in the West of Thuringia. It is there that there is a castle called Wartburg, where Martin Luther spent some time, so we visited that and Bach was also born in the town, so we visited his house and had a general look around the town. In the town square there was an SPD stand, SPD being one of Germany's biggest left wing political groups. At the stand they were giving out platefuls of chilli-con-carne and bread, yum! Of course we took our share and I think they thought they had a good catch when 10 of us looked keen, but they were highly disappointed to find out none of us would be voting in Germany's elections!
On Sunday, Nadine and I went to Weimar for the day, which was also great, not least because of the hot sunshine. Weimar is famous for its links with the German writers Goethe and Schiller, and their statue is apparently (according to a tour guide we over heard!) Thuringia's most photographed thing (of course I took photos too!). Nadine and I visited their houses, plus a Bauhaus museum (Bauhaus being a long standing theme of my time in Germany!) and a famous library (don't ask me why!) where we saw a really interesting film on how books were (and maybe still are) made, honestly it was absolutely fascinating! We also enjoyed the best sausages and ice cream, mmmmmmmm!
Thinking of ice-cream, they have become my new take away of choice after a night out. Unlike in Britain where fast food stands are all the rage, here ice cream parlours are open really late and you can pick one up on your way home, excellent! However, I'm pretty sure that all the cake and ice-cream are certainly not doing my teeth any good, which brings me onto another topic of today's blog.
I've been talking to a few German friends and my tandem partners (who are both really nice, I think I've landed on my feet there!) about stereotypes that they have of Britain. Of course all the usual ones have come up, about our humour, love of talking about the weather etc, but a new one has come up, apparently many Germans believe that the British have very bad teeth! Interesting, I hadn't heard that before, and was very scared to smile and show my wonky ones for the rest of the evening!!! I asked a few others about this and they all agreed it was true and went on to say how our health service is also thought to be extremely poor. Well I suppose that in comparison to Germany efficiency maybe it is!
Another even stranger comment that she made is that all foreigners think that our taps are strange. I just couldn't for the life of me think about what my friend found odd, until she explained that for them it's unheard of to have two taps over a sink, they all have those modern mixer ones. She found the idea that you can only get really cold or really hot water ridiculous! Funny, the more time I spend abroad the more I look at things I completely took for normal at home as slightly quirky!
A typical German thing that absolutely drives me mad is doing a supermarket shop. At the tills, the shop assistants simply throw your things through them, as fast as they possibly can, giving you absolutely no time to put anything away before it's time to pay, and the next person's things are coming through, it's genuinely absurd! Everything gets squashed and then mixed up with the next person's, I just can't understand the logic! Patience please!
I genuinely really like being here and know lots of nice people, but I have to say that as a nation, I do find the majority of Germans that I see in the street impolite and stony. People never smile at one another, in the way you might if you catch the eye of a stranger and they quite simply don't laugh very much, it's strangely noticeable. Of course this might be because I have a particularly smiley attitude but I do find it unusual. The other day I held the door open for a man and two girls, and as I passed through the door my shoe got caught on something and I fell over, none of them said anything and they literally stepped over me to get through the door, that I was still supporting open! Moreover, and I think this is just me being typically British, they rarely say excuse me (you will get pushed past) and simply do not appologise like we do, maybe for being in the way or accidentally bumping into you. Or maybe it's just because the word "Entschuldigen" is so much harder to say than a simple "sorry"! I do get a lot of funny looks for saying it, but I will keep doing so, chiefly because if I get out of habit when I return to Britain I will be considered rude! It does make you notice how cultural misunderstandings can easily arise though, it's just normal for them and not rude in the slightest.
Another thing about Germany that hits you straight away, as it did in France, is people smoking everywhere. Here the law isn't half as strict as in Britain and pubs and clubs all have smoking rooms, which tend to be where most people are and thus the most popular areas. Outside the lecture rooms there are hoards of students smoking, it's just so unbelievably like York in this respect.
Thinking about students, there are a couple of other things that really jumps out of you here. Firstly, they all carry backpacks, and these backpacks, like in France too when I think about it, are identical, absolutely everyone has an Eastpack or Ripcurl one. Eastpack is seriously popular here (I really can't se why!), the majority of people also have an Eastpack pencil case, and my friend Orsi even has an Eastpack bumbag that she wears often, that's just taking it too far! German students are also always walking out of seminars to go to the toilet (I presume), they just get up and go, even 5 minutes from the end, or in the middle of someone's presentation. They are also always eating in classes, there is absolutely always someone there who's enjoying a bread roll, the snack of choice here!
This has been an outrageously long post, if I wrote this much for my university work, I'd have already written the word length for my York essay more than twice over, ah I've got my priorities all wrong! I will leave you with one final thought. In morphology today we were presented with the word "Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher"... I ask myself why I am learning such a complicated language and know why I'm having such problems with it!
Every single evening there is something going on here, it's such a lively place. I've joined the university badminton club and so go along to that most Mondays, although it is the most poorly organised badminton club that I've ever been a member of, which surprises me...every stereotype of Germany is slowly being erased, organisation one of them! I've met a few nice people there and am gradually picking up German badminton terminology, mainly "sorry" and "out"...sport being another domain where Anglicisms rule supreme! The best bit of badminton related news is that the rather nice morphology professor that I mentioned a few posts ago is also a member of the club!
The handball team here is only for elite players so I thought that, despite my stint in France, I certainly don't come under that category and I couldn't do any of the other sports as they clash with my timetable. However, I was keen to take up something new, so my friend Orsi and I now go to yoga every week. What is funny is that we can only understand about 50% of what the lady running it says and so often we really have no idea what to do...this means that it's far from as relaxing as it should be, as we're constantly peeking our eyes open to see what everyone else is doing! My absence of any ability to do the stretches, coupled together with my partial lack of understanding, does mean that I'm pretty sure that, on the whole, we're very unsuccessful at yoga! But it's fun though, and fills up another evening.
Every Tuesday evening we have what's called "International Cafe" where students from a particular country present it and their culture etc. The presentation is always followed by a huge spread of typical food from their country, so it's a really popular night with students! So far this term we've had Afghanistan, Poland and Indonesia, all of which have been really interesting, I have learnt a lot! The most memorable would be some Indonesian dancing which was quite extraordinary. It's quite hard to explain (maybe I could attempt a demonstration!) but involved them all kneeling in a line and bobbing up and down and over each other, while slapping the floor and each other, meanwhile the music got faster and faster. It was really cool, they sort of cascaded over each other...the funny thing was that it all got a bit too much for one girl and she got walloped in the face and the entire structure collapsed! Clearly showing us what remarkable skill it takes to do it successfully!
I can't remember where I left off with my "fremd" professor in the last post, but we've met a few times since I've been here, to go for hikes in the Thuringia Forest, which is just beautiful. The whole landscape here is green: vibrant green fields, mountain sides, forests, the lot. There are so many walking trails, which all seem really popular with the Germans, who seem to spend every weekend out walking or cycling. The professor and wife are really interesting characters, I can't really describe them, I think I'd need a post devoted to them alone! I went back to their house for coffee and cake after a walk last Sunday (another German speciality...no-one does coffee and cake like the Germans!) and they showed me all the photos and treasures of their travels, just remarkable. Their house is full of unusual pieces, totem poles, dream catchers, tapestries...things from right around the world. The photos were also inspiring, after seeing it all I have no desire at all to find myself a "proper" job, I might just become a travelling English teacher (with as little emphasis on the teaching part as possible!).
I think the funniest thing that I have to report on that particular meeting with them is when Joachim (the professor) explained to me what his daughter, who lives in Canada, does. She makes clothes for people who believe that they are in fact fairies! What kind of a job is that?! And how on earth are there enough of these people for her to make a decent living out of it?!? But it appears there are, and they showed me photos of her and her stall at a fairy convention in America...there were funny looking fairies of all shapes and sizes there!
The professor is also a keen motorbike enthusiast and suggested that he take me on a tour of Thuringia on his bike. So yesterday we went out for the whole afternoon. It was such good fun, I am a proper convert now! The weather was not great, heavy showers (thus I was absolutely soaked!), but bursts of sunshine to dry me up again. We visited the southerly part of Thuringia, one of Germany's oldest monasteries, the winner of "Thuringia's best village" and the smallest ever cafe, it was so small that one room could fit just one table in it! So you can see that yesterday afternoon was an afternoon of superlatives, culminating in the highest speed that I've ever travelled on a road, how on earth I'm going to go back to my push bike I don't know!
Incidentally, as mentioned there I do know have a bike here in Germany, kindly lent to me by the professor and his wife. So that's great, although cycling into town is extremely hazardous, the trams really are a silent danger, I've had a fair few close shaves already. Plus their tracks are exactly the same width as my bike tyres and so they've got stuck in the tracks on a number of memorable occasions!
I've been walking not only with the professor, but a few weeks ago (probably even a month by now) a group of us Erasmus students decided to walk the Goethe Wanderweg, the path that Goethe himself apparently took and where he wrote one of his famous poems. A group of eight of us went, my Slovakian friend, Katka; my Czech friend, Lida, 3 Greeks, Angeliki, Lina and Evi; a French boy called Thomas and a Mexican, Toni. We had a great day in the sun, although the route itself was quite strenuous, 20km up and down mountains, I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, some of our group weren't quite so used to hiking and possibly weren't 100% aware of what they'd let themselves in for! Fortunately we made it in the end, just in the nick of time to catch the last bus back from a small village right in the middle of the forest.
On the last day of April there is a big festival in Erfurt (and across Germany on the whole I think) to welcome in May, and burn witches. Erfurt had probably the most spectacular witch burning fest that I will ever see! We turned up late in the evening, just in time to catch children from the local schools doing their equivalent of country dancing in traditional dress. Then, as night fell, a giant bonfire was lit in the main square, in front of the cathedral, which made for a wonderful back drop. Then banging of drums and loud music started and to my surprise witches were flying overhead! They'd got a huge crane in and had witches hoisted up it on long, long ropes, thus swinging precariously down it, and being lowered over the crowd and swung right across the bonfire! Distinct lack of any safety measures but what a spectacle! Following this, there was a parade of the most lavishly dressed witches and really scary devil like creatures who skulked round to the beating of the music. This was followed by a theatre piece for the crowd and music and dancing later. Of course, Germany being Germany, beer was flowing and sausages were sizzling and it was a really good event. And completely free in the cathedral square, brilliant!
Unfortunately we couldn't stay until the bonfire burnt out (which would have taken an extremely long time judging by the size of it!) as we'd arranged to go to Munich outrageously early the next morning, taking advantage of the long weekend. Talking of long weekends, May day was the first of three bank holidays in May, a very welcome few days off!
We were again a large group, as you can get special train tickets where 5 people can travel anywhere in Germany for 30 euros, provided they only use the regional trains, rather than the fast intercities. So in total 10 of us headed of to Bavaria, an extremely long journey! We left the organising up to the Greeks (good idea or not is to be debated!), and they told us that we had to catch the tram at 4h15am in order to be at the station for our 5am train. We arrived punctually at the tram stop only to be greeted by them looking rather flustered, they hadn't taken into account that it was the bank holiday, and thus trams are far less frequent, there wouldn't be another one to get us there in time! Eeeeek! So we power walked the entire distance, arms flapping, bags flying everywhere, determined not to miss the train, we must have been a funny sight, an odd mix of people at an unreasonable hour, most people we met were staggering back in the other direction! It must be several kms, the walk took us nearly 45 minutes at full pace, the train station being about as far from the university as possible, right on the other side of town. We arrived with literally a couple of minutes to spare, breathless, yet wide awake at this early hour!
We decided that rather than go straight to Munich, we'd benefit from being so far south and travel on to Fuessen, where there's a very famous castle, Schloss Neuschwanstein, set in the Alps, right on the Austrian border. After 7 hours of travelling, and 5 trains (!), we eventually arrived! The castle is extremely impressive, it's in an absolutely beautiful setting, there was still snow on the mountain tops, making me desperate to go skiing again! It was built by Ludwig the second, king of Bavaria and its creation nearly (or did!) bankrupt the state, it really is that extravagant. The area was crowded with tourists, but then again, so were we, so we couldn't really complain! That afternoon, as we were just about to leave the castle and walk down the mountain side, a huge thunderstorm came in. As it had previously been so sunny I had no coat or anything, but we had to leave, in order to get back into the town to catch our train to Munich. We were absolutely soaked, the rain drops were enormous and there were so many! That was my first (of many) experiences of German thunderstorms and they are remarkable, come from no where and are so powerful. Needless to say, we all looked like drenched rats on the train to Munich!
Due to many train delays and dilly dallying about on platforms, we arrived in Munich late on Friday night and so just dried ourselves out and collapsed into bed, knackered after such an early start. On Saturday, we headed out to Munich, which I really really liked, despite the vast numbers of tourists there. Our first stop was Marienplatz to watch the dancing figures moving to the glockenspiel, the square was so full of tourists in was quite unbelievable, but did make for a good atmosphere, that was felt everywhere in Munich, it was certainly lively. We visited lots of Munich, the most memorable things we saw being the English Garden, one of Europe's largest city parks; the Olympic Park, from the 1972 Olympics, debatably only interesting if you're as into the Olympics as I am and the BMW museum, where I sat behind the wheel of a real BMW for probably the first and last time in my life!
However possibly the best moment of our trip to Munich was popping into a C&A (which, incidentally, appears to be just as popular and trendy as in France!) where we found rows of Dirndls, the Bavarian traditional dresses. Silvia, Rosie and I each choose one to try on, which was so funny, we looked somewhere between Heidi and proper Bavarians barmaids that work at Munich's famous October festival! If only they hadn't been so expensive (starting price, 100 euros, and that was C&A, I dread to think how expensive they get!) I would definitely be bringing one home!
On the Sunday we visited a few more sights in Munich, as well as a residence on the outskirts, Schloss Nymphenburg, which was less impressive than the one in the Alps, but interesting all the same. So Munich was great, the first big city I've visited in Germany. However it was a very expensive place and absolutely full of tourists, I think I will have to go back at a time other than the May bank holiday (or Oktoberfest) to get a real idea of what it's like, any excuse to go back!
The following weekend we went to Berlin, and I fell in love with the city. It was such an exciting place, everything I had expected it to be and more. I've been desperate to visit it for years, so I finally feel fulfilled. We arrived on Friday afternoon, another large group of 10, and checked in to our hostel, which in itself was pretty funny. It had a reception out on the street and then the rooms were all in a block behind it, shared with all sorts of offices, on our floor our rooms were sandwiched between a physiotherapists and a kindergarten (or so it said on the door!). We were all in one room, 10 beds in a line side by side, it reminded me of guide camp or something, it was like we were to have a big sleepover! And at 10 euros a night it was perfect.
That evening we headed straight out to Alexanderplatz and then walked up Unter den Linden to Brandenburg Gate, passing a group who'd hired out a "beer bike". The concept is that you hire this thing, that is about the size of a tractor trailer. On it are 10 stools around a large table, each one with pedals, plus a collective steering wheel. At the back there is a huge barrel of beer, so you pedal round Berlin, seeing the sights, and drinking beer to your heart's content. Typical wonderful German invention! The problem being that by the time we saw the group they must have nearly finished the giant barrel, and were not only looking slightly worse for wear, but had also lost any skill regarding how to manoeuvre the beer bike! They were in a right pickle and hilarious to watch!
After seeing the Brandenburg Gate we walked on to the Bundestag (German Parliament), when a huge storm broke out, not the first, and certainly not the last time, that I will get soaked in Germany! We took cover in an underground station not so far away and thought about what to do. In the end someone had the idea to get on the next train, wherever it was going, find a dry pub there and experience an unknown part of Berlin, excellent idea in theory, interesting experience in practice! All I have to say is that I think we well and truly left the beaten tourist track and there are several, non blog worthy stories to be told!
On Saturday we visited every single corner of Berlin centre. All the typical tourist hotspots, the list is very long but includes Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdamer Platz, the Jewish Memorial, the Bundestag (where we queued for an hour to climb the dome), the Tier Garten, Ku'damm platz, the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedaechtnis Kirche, the 1936 Olympic Stadium...the list goes on! I found it slightly odd that almost everything we saw had a link to the war in one way or another, but I suppose that's a part of the attraction of Berlin, it really is a city that was torn apart and is in the process of being patched back together. It's fascinating to see it all. There is simply building work everywhere, I imagine if you left the city 10 years ago and returned now it would be unrecognisable beyond belief.
It is also a really vibrant city, there is just so much to see, and surprisingly it didn't feel as touristic as Munich, so that made it far better in my opinion. On Saturday night, we went out to experience Berlin's famous nightlife, it lived up to all expectations! We went to a huge converted barn, now nightclub, and the music and atmosphere was great, makes Erfurt look like a small village in comparison! I now just want to go back to Berlin!
On Sunday we went to a few markets that we'd heard of which was cool, I love rooting through this sort of market, there are just so many funny pieces, and it never ceases to amaze me that people are actually selling (and buying!) some of the things there, such as odd screws, single shoes, private letters...it really does make me realise that maybe half the junk shoved under my bed could actually be turned into money! We also went for a walk along the river, slightly out of the centre and visited the DDR (former East Germany) museum, which was very well presented, really hands on with lots and lots of genuine bits and pieces, including a Trabi which I loved! Interestingly, amongst our group opinions were split about the museum. From mine and Rosie's point of view, lots of things were just fascinating and strange, where as my friends from Eastern Europe were pretty indifferent about the whole thing, I suppose for them it was just like looking back a decade or so.
There are actually many occasions where we just simply do not share the same opinions on things, or where they will argue among themselves about something, which I cannot understand, because we come from different backgrounds. One example of this is how there is always a slight friction between my friends from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and my friend from Hungary. Regularly they will talk about the role of Hungary and the history of the other countries and will genuinely get very worked up about it, something which I genuinely can't understand, and find it hard to see how they can use this historical/political difference as a reason to argue amongst themselves. It's also interesting to see how they've learnt the history of the relationships between their countries from completely different sides. On a lighter note, the same goes for a Russian acquaintance of mine, who holds the opinion that "Russia won the Second World War, almost singlehandedly, with a little help from the other Allies", you wonder what sort of education he's had!
So our trip to Berlin was a massive success, I will definitely put it on my list of places to visit again and again. We had another long train journey back and we all had work to be doing, being away for a weekend in Germany is not like it was in France. In France, I had absolutely nothing that I had to do outside of school hours, whereas in Germany there's always some (or a lot!) of homework hanging over my head, which is a bit of a downer. On the way back, my Greek friend Evi had brought her German homework with her. She didn't speak German before she came here, so it was basic stuff, but she needed some help with it. She was sitting next to my Slovakian friend Katka, so she offered to help. The funny thing was she had to help in English, as that's their communal language, so the situation was: a Slovakian helping a Greek with their German homework in English, what a very strange mix! But that's everyday life here and I love it, I've never heard so many languages flying round! And I'm slowly picking up more vocabulary, all be it not German, my favourite new phrase is the Hungarian for "cheers" which is pronounced something like "Eggey shay ge de"!
There is absolutely always something going on in the city, from the witch burning evening to the "Long Museum Night" a couple of weeks ago. The idea behind it is that you buy a ticket for 4 euros and then have free entry to all the museums, galleries etc in the city, of which there are plenty. So we went along and visited no less than 5 museums in the evening, pretty heavy going, and we were knackered by the end of it. It was good for me, as, like in La Roche, I'd been saving the museums for "a rainy day" which was obviously never going to come, not only is the weather too good, but there's always something better to do. So the night did give me the push I needed to actually visit them, and it paid off, we saw some interesting things. However I did find it a very funny way to spend a Friday night, in Britain it's usually a pub crawl, not a museum crawl!
Last Thursday was the second of the bank holidays in May, which they actually have of because of Ascension Day. However, for some reason I don't know, it is also popularly also known as Maenner Tag (Men's Day), and lots and lots of men go off and do "manly" things together, such as sport, barbequing and, of course, beer drinking! I went into town for brunch with some American friends and we sat and watched them all, which was very entertaining. A popular thing to do is take a small truck on wheels full of beer out into the countryside, so there were lots and lots of groups of men pushing these funny trolleys around, quite bizarre!
Over the long weekend we decided that we'd make the most of it and go on a few trips around Thuringia, which we can do for free with our semester ticket. On Saturday we visited Eisenach, which is a small, but very famous, town in the West of Thuringia. It is there that there is a castle called Wartburg, where Martin Luther spent some time, so we visited that and Bach was also born in the town, so we visited his house and had a general look around the town. In the town square there was an SPD stand, SPD being one of Germany's biggest left wing political groups. At the stand they were giving out platefuls of chilli-con-carne and bread, yum! Of course we took our share and I think they thought they had a good catch when 10 of us looked keen, but they were highly disappointed to find out none of us would be voting in Germany's elections!
On Sunday, Nadine and I went to Weimar for the day, which was also great, not least because of the hot sunshine. Weimar is famous for its links with the German writers Goethe and Schiller, and their statue is apparently (according to a tour guide we over heard!) Thuringia's most photographed thing (of course I took photos too!). Nadine and I visited their houses, plus a Bauhaus museum (Bauhaus being a long standing theme of my time in Germany!) and a famous library (don't ask me why!) where we saw a really interesting film on how books were (and maybe still are) made, honestly it was absolutely fascinating! We also enjoyed the best sausages and ice cream, mmmmmmmm!
Thinking of ice-cream, they have become my new take away of choice after a night out. Unlike in Britain where fast food stands are all the rage, here ice cream parlours are open really late and you can pick one up on your way home, excellent! However, I'm pretty sure that all the cake and ice-cream are certainly not doing my teeth any good, which brings me onto another topic of today's blog.
I've been talking to a few German friends and my tandem partners (who are both really nice, I think I've landed on my feet there!) about stereotypes that they have of Britain. Of course all the usual ones have come up, about our humour, love of talking about the weather etc, but a new one has come up, apparently many Germans believe that the British have very bad teeth! Interesting, I hadn't heard that before, and was very scared to smile and show my wonky ones for the rest of the evening!!! I asked a few others about this and they all agreed it was true and went on to say how our health service is also thought to be extremely poor. Well I suppose that in comparison to Germany efficiency maybe it is!
Another even stranger comment that she made is that all foreigners think that our taps are strange. I just couldn't for the life of me think about what my friend found odd, until she explained that for them it's unheard of to have two taps over a sink, they all have those modern mixer ones. She found the idea that you can only get really cold or really hot water ridiculous! Funny, the more time I spend abroad the more I look at things I completely took for normal at home as slightly quirky!
A typical German thing that absolutely drives me mad is doing a supermarket shop. At the tills, the shop assistants simply throw your things through them, as fast as they possibly can, giving you absolutely no time to put anything away before it's time to pay, and the next person's things are coming through, it's genuinely absurd! Everything gets squashed and then mixed up with the next person's, I just can't understand the logic! Patience please!
I genuinely really like being here and know lots of nice people, but I have to say that as a nation, I do find the majority of Germans that I see in the street impolite and stony. People never smile at one another, in the way you might if you catch the eye of a stranger and they quite simply don't laugh very much, it's strangely noticeable. Of course this might be because I have a particularly smiley attitude but I do find it unusual. The other day I held the door open for a man and two girls, and as I passed through the door my shoe got caught on something and I fell over, none of them said anything and they literally stepped over me to get through the door, that I was still supporting open! Moreover, and I think this is just me being typically British, they rarely say excuse me (you will get pushed past) and simply do not appologise like we do, maybe for being in the way or accidentally bumping into you. Or maybe it's just because the word "Entschuldigen" is so much harder to say than a simple "sorry"! I do get a lot of funny looks for saying it, but I will keep doing so, chiefly because if I get out of habit when I return to Britain I will be considered rude! It does make you notice how cultural misunderstandings can easily arise though, it's just normal for them and not rude in the slightest.
Another thing about Germany that hits you straight away, as it did in France, is people smoking everywhere. Here the law isn't half as strict as in Britain and pubs and clubs all have smoking rooms, which tend to be where most people are and thus the most popular areas. Outside the lecture rooms there are hoards of students smoking, it's just so unbelievably like York in this respect.
Thinking about students, there are a couple of other things that really jumps out of you here. Firstly, they all carry backpacks, and these backpacks, like in France too when I think about it, are identical, absolutely everyone has an Eastpack or Ripcurl one. Eastpack is seriously popular here (I really can't se why!), the majority of people also have an Eastpack pencil case, and my friend Orsi even has an Eastpack bumbag that she wears often, that's just taking it too far! German students are also always walking out of seminars to go to the toilet (I presume), they just get up and go, even 5 minutes from the end, or in the middle of someone's presentation. They are also always eating in classes, there is absolutely always someone there who's enjoying a bread roll, the snack of choice here!
This has been an outrageously long post, if I wrote this much for my university work, I'd have already written the word length for my York essay more than twice over, ah I've got my priorities all wrong! I will leave you with one final thought. In morphology today we were presented with the word "Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher"... I ask myself why I am learning such a complicated language and know why I'm having such problems with it!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Life in the Lecture Theatres of Erfurt!
Well I couldn't let it get to over a month without a post, so this self-imposed deadline has made me find the time to write a long overdue update. Time has simply flown by, which is slightly worrying...I don't really feel that my German has improved at all, it's probably not even returned to it's pre-France state, and meanwhile my ability to speak French is fading rapidly! However language problems aside I'm having a great time here, more work than I have ever had in my life but equally many exciting things having been going on. Spring seems to have come and gone and we're now just touching on summer, sunny days and thunderstorms, of the most dramatic kind, my favourite! I took a minute the other day and actually looked properly out of my window, and was highly surprised to see that the view has completely changed, in fact I now have no view! The trees in front of my window have suddenly become green and bushy, I have absolutely no recollection of any actual growing happening, last time I looked out I could see fields and the city! So what've I been up to during the last few weeks?
Well sadly a large portion of my time has been in lectures, but these themselves have provided comedy moments! Not least because of the lecturers themselves, who really are an odd bunch, far more so than in York! I had one man for a lecture (whose course I subsequently dropped) who was exactly like one of the main characters from Last of the Summer Wine, in appearance AND character! So much so that I couldn't for the life of me concentrate on the course I found it so amusing!
I have to say, that although there are some aspects of the German university system that I like (such as the massive number of courses on offer, despite the uni being half the size of York), I do find Erfurt a bit stuck in the past. There are blackboards in every room, an OHP if we're lucky and that's about it. And we're all called by our surnames! Being known as Frau xxx (insert name here!) cracks me up every time, especially as most lecturers don't find it the easiest name to pronounce (anything that puts them off asking me a question is a positive!). What's even stranger as it means that I don't know the names of most of my fellow students, just their surname, if it's simple enough to remember.
In the courses that I have with other exchange students it's no better, how the teachers navigate their way round Ting, Ping and Xing I have no idea, I certainly can't, which is really embarrassing, especially as they have no problem with my name. Although it being written on most of my hoodies is probably a great help for them...however, no-one has referred to me as UYNC yet!
I have one course called Fremdwoerter, basically learning about the foreign words in the German language, of which there are plenty! A lot of the words are obviously English and so Rosie and I are often called upon to pronounce them to the class. One time, and unfortunately I can't remember the word, Rosie (who's from Birmingham) and I disagreed on the pronunciation of this word, much to their interest. They then got rather excited about hearing the different accents of English, and before we knew it we were putting on all sorts of accents for them, with limited success, but much banter! I really think that one week we should say everything in a particularly strange style just to see if they take it in...I think they would, anything we say about English language is taken as gospel!
My French courses are great, except one, where we are studying comics. COMICS! I hate comics! I really can't think of anything worse to have to read: Asterix, Lucky Luke, Isnogoud... horrific! I have to do a presentation on one this week, eugh! Reading them is just awful, words and pictures just do not go together in my head. Bring on the real literature later in the term (and I genuinely never ever thought I'd say that!).
As regards my fellow students, I have to say the whole university atmosphere is different to that in Britain. Students are a lot less friendly, they tend to arrive at the lecture, open their book and read, listen to the lecture, then go as soon as possible. Of course there are exceptions and I do have friends from my course (mainly those that learn French too) but that appears to be the norm. One friend of mine was really funny the other day, we were copying some morphology tree of the blackboard and I hadn't left enough space so it all got a bit crammed, but still completely readable. However she turned to me, tutted, and with a shake of a head said it was a shame it'd have to copy it all out again! I was shocked, and having absolutely no intention of doing so, said I'd do it at home later!
My German housemates are also very diligent, always working, never seem to go out and are tucked up in bed at 10 (I must really annoy them...at 1 am the other day I decided to rearrange my furniture, so was dragging my bed etc across the room for a good 45 mins!). Plus they go home on either Thursday or Friday and come back as late as possible on Monday morning, it's almost like they don't want to be here, but see going to university as something they have to do to get a good job etc. But we Erasmus students have a different mentality and of course there are some exciting Germans around.
Unsurprisingly, the most interesting Germans are those who also learn foreign languages and have done Erasmus themselves. I signed up for Tandem (where you meet someone and speak your language for half the meeting and then German for the other half) and now have two nice partners. What's funny is that it almost feels like I'm "two-timing" them, neither knows that the other one exists, and I'm forever having to juggle them around!
Thinking of people who learn languages, a girl randomly got in touch with me, she had a 40 page thesis in English, and she wanted me to proof-read it! I was slightly overwhelmed at the prospect but at an offer of £2.50 a page I couldn't resist and have to say it was debatably the cushtiest money that I have ever earnt! Am seriously considering setting up business here, I think it would be immensely popular. Now the only question is, is my English really up to it, I will be intrigued to find out if the girl requests a refund once she gets her mark back!
Unfortunately I have to pass a large amount of my time in the library, but this in itself has provided me with some entertainment, chiefly because they have a really funny system regarding bags etc. Nothing, except paper, pens and books (duh!) are allowed in the library, so this means that there's a locker system and then you carry your things into the library in a basket. The baskets are exactly the same as those in the local supermarket and I am beginning to wonder if they have been stolen one by one over the years! It does make for a funny sight, lots of students wandering round the library with a basket on their arm, they literally look like they're shopping for books! I find selecting books is much more fun once you feel like you're shopping, I could spend the whole day in there browsing, and then feel particularly pleased with myself for going shopping without spending any money!
So, student life in Germany is really no joke, not even for us Erasmus students, but I certainly can't complain, I do get the chance to travel and the last few weekends have been spent aound Thuringia, in Munich and in Berlin, living the life! I will evaluate (oooh, haven't I got my essay voice on?!) the exciting things in the next post, coming soon I promise (depending on the progression of my presentation on comics!).
Well sadly a large portion of my time has been in lectures, but these themselves have provided comedy moments! Not least because of the lecturers themselves, who really are an odd bunch, far more so than in York! I had one man for a lecture (whose course I subsequently dropped) who was exactly like one of the main characters from Last of the Summer Wine, in appearance AND character! So much so that I couldn't for the life of me concentrate on the course I found it so amusing!
I have to say, that although there are some aspects of the German university system that I like (such as the massive number of courses on offer, despite the uni being half the size of York), I do find Erfurt a bit stuck in the past. There are blackboards in every room, an OHP if we're lucky and that's about it. And we're all called by our surnames! Being known as Frau xxx (insert name here!)
In the courses that I have with other exchange students it's no better, how the teachers navigate their way round Ting, Ping and Xing I have no idea, I certainly can't, which is really embarrassing, especially as they have no problem with my name. Although it being written on most of my hoodies is probably a great help for them...however, no-one has referred to me as UYNC yet!
I have one course called Fremdwoerter, basically learning about the foreign words in the German language, of which there are plenty! A lot of the words are obviously English and so Rosie and I are often called upon to pronounce them to the class. One time, and unfortunately I can't remember the word, Rosie (who's from Birmingham) and I disagreed on the pronunciation of this word, much to their interest. They then got rather excited about hearing the different accents of English, and before we knew it we were putting on all sorts of accents for them, with limited success, but much banter! I really think that one week we should say everything in a particularly strange style just to see if they take it in...I think they would, anything we say about English language is taken as gospel!
My French courses are great, except one, where we are studying comics. COMICS! I hate comics! I really can't think of anything worse to have to read: Asterix, Lucky Luke, Isnogoud... horrific! I have to do a presentation on one this week, eugh! Reading them is just awful, words and pictures just do not go together in my head. Bring on the real literature later in the term (and I genuinely never ever thought I'd say that!).
As regards my fellow students, I have to say the whole university atmosphere is different to that in Britain. Students are a lot less friendly, they tend to arrive at the lecture, open their book and read, listen to the lecture, then go as soon as possible. Of course there are exceptions and I do have friends from my course (mainly those that learn French too) but that appears to be the norm. One friend of mine was really funny the other day, we were copying some morphology tree of the blackboard and I hadn't left enough space so it all got a bit crammed, but still completely readable. However she turned to me, tutted, and with a shake of a head said it was a shame it'd have to copy it all out again! I was shocked, and having absolutely no intention of doing so, said I'd do it at home later!
My German housemates are also very diligent, always working, never seem to go out and are tucked up in bed at 10 (I must really annoy them...at 1 am the other day I decided to rearrange my furniture, so was dragging my bed etc across the room for a good 45 mins!). Plus they go home on either Thursday or Friday and come back as late as possible on Monday morning, it's almost like they don't want to be here, but see going to university as something they have to do to get a good job etc. But we Erasmus students have a different mentality and of course there are some exciting Germans around.
Unsurprisingly, the most interesting Germans are those who also learn foreign languages and have done Erasmus themselves. I signed up for Tandem (where you meet someone and speak your language for half the meeting and then German for the other half) and now have two nice partners. What's funny is that it almost feels like I'm "two-timing" them, neither knows that the other one exists, and I'm forever having to juggle them around!
Thinking of people who learn languages, a girl randomly got in touch with me, she had a 40 page thesis in English, and she wanted me to proof-read it! I was slightly overwhelmed at the prospect but at an offer of £2.50 a page I couldn't resist and have to say it was debatably the cushtiest money that I have ever earnt! Am seriously considering setting up business here, I think it would be immensely popular. Now the only question is, is my English really up to it, I will be intrigued to find out if the girl requests a refund once she gets her mark back!
Unfortunately I have to pass a large amount of my time in the library, but this in itself has provided me with some entertainment, chiefly because they have a really funny system regarding bags etc. Nothing, except paper, pens and books (duh!) are allowed in the library, so this means that there's a locker system and then you carry your things into the library in a basket. The baskets are exactly the same as those in the local supermarket and I am beginning to wonder if they have been stolen one by one over the years! It does make for a funny sight, lots of students wandering round the library with a basket on their arm, they literally look like they're shopping for books! I find selecting books is much more fun once you feel like you're shopping, I could spend the whole day in there browsing, and then feel particularly pleased with myself for going shopping without spending any money!
So, student life in Germany is really no joke, not even for us Erasmus students, but I certainly can't complain, I do get the chance to travel and the last few weekends have been spent aound Thuringia, in Munich and in Berlin, living the life! I will evaluate (oooh, haven't I got my essay voice on?!) the exciting things in the next post, coming soon I promise (depending on the progression of my presentation on comics!).
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Working hard, playing harder
What a week it has been! And to think that at the end of my last post I noted that I expected life to get a lot quieter once lectures started, how wrong I was! I can see already that this is going to be a term with limited sleep, I think there was only one night this week where I got more than 5 hours sleep, and the lack of curtains can't be blamed for that! I have decided that my stint in France has to be described under the heading "one long holiday" while Germany will be known under the heading "work hard, party harder"!
On Tuesday the lectures began, with a full day, 8am until 6pm, it was an absolute beast of a day! I am quite simply not used, and unable, to concentrate for 2 hour stints at a time, especially not in German when half goes over my head and I consequently switch off. My first seminar started very badly. The tutor had sent us the work by email and we were told to print it out, but with it being the bank holiday weekend the library was shut until 8am on Tuesday morning, the time that the seminar was supposed to start. As we had been prewarned that lecturers arrive late we reckoned we'd have enough time to print out the work, and make it just in time. Oh how very wrong we were! We arrived late and got a proper ticking off from the lecturer, it took me right back to my school days. The words the lecturer used were that she was "stink sauer"...even if you don't speak German I'm pretty sure that you'll get the idea that she was not happy! Certainly not a good start, and that lecturer has been particularly cold towards my little group of late comers ever since!
The lectures and seminars this week have been a complete mix of things, I'll run through a few of the high-lights and memorable moments...
We aren't actually properly enrolled for any courses, so we have had to frantically send emails round to request special permission to attend the lectures, which are completely and utterly over subscribed. There is simply not enough space in the rooms, there are people flowing out the doors, sitting on the floor and stealing chairs from other rooms. I was in one seminar that only 5 of us took (more on this one later!), and during the 15 minute wait for the lecturer our room was gradually emptied of chairs, one by one 20 chairs were taken!!!
In my first linguistics lecture there were 25 people officially signed up and 21 on the waiting list. They all turned up and she went through every name saying if they were allowed to stay or not. She got to the end of the list and asked if there was anyone whose name she hadn't read out, so of course I had to put up my hand. She then remembered that I was an exchange student and said that yes of course I could stay as an extra. All those who had just been told that there was no space for any extras turned round and I could see a sea of angry faces, I have never felt so hated! In every class we go to we are known as the exchange pupils, although it can be very annoying we do get proper VIP treatment, just like in France with the mayor!
This class had another funny moment, it was a phon phon ortho class and so she was talking about sounds in different languages. She asked the class what the English for a word was, but as I hadn't heard the word she asked I couldn't reply, but someone else did. The answer was "sound" and she then asked for the French equivalent. No-one in this class studies French, so no-one volunteered the answer. She got a bit annoyed so, as I did know the response, I thought I'd better say it, which I did. Once again everyone turned round ("an exchange student who knows the answer?!") and she thanked me and said that she was glad that there was a French person here!!! Hahaha and to think that I hadn't known the English response. It hasn't been the only time this week that my nationality has been confused. I once replied to a tutor that I was from Grossbritannien and straight back she said to me how sorry they were about the earthquake, much to my utter astonishment! It turned out that she had misheard "Italien"! And of course the number of times that I've been taken as American is innumerable...!
I had one very enjoyable lecture about foreign words in the German language, there are soooo many, they even have dictionaries the thickness of a brick on them! Anyway what made the lecture so interesting was not the content (well for me maybe, but I won't share the ins and outs with you now!...although I can't risk adding in that the Germans use phrases such as "Ich habe es gebookmarkt!") but the lecturer himself! For starters his name is Wolf Peter Klein, what a name! Secondly he was so jolly it was unbelievable, he was very rotund, slightly balding and very merry! He was also really friendly and when I spoke to him at the end of the lecture he was very interested to hear how we were settling in, and very concerned about my lack of curtains...I wouldn't be surprised if he brought me a pair to our next lecture!
On Wednesday, I had a French lesson which was really good, I do actually seriously miss French and France, at the moment I have to say that I much prefer the French language. What was funny is my complete obliviousness to which words belong to each language, at one point the tutor asked us to name types of literature, I called out a German word, totally unknowingly, much to the amusement of everyone. Fortunately, the Germans seem far more capable of putting on a French accent than my French pupils were, so at least we can follow what's going on.
On Wednesday afternoon we have possibly the best course ever. It's entitled "Erfurt, the city of my studies" and it appears that we are going to spend every week going on a tourist walk of the town, perfect, particularly as the weather is still absolutely gorgeous. I think my description of it as "a nice spring walk with a very knowledgeable aunt" is spot on! But despite being an utter doss intellectually, it is really interesting, if anyone comes to visit me (do!) I will be able to tell you a lot about the city, probably far more than I could about York or anywhere at home!
As regards the classes there have been the good (morphology, with an extremely good looking young professor!) and the really really bad, French Lexicography being one of these! It was just absolutely cringeworthy! This "lecture" was the one where there were only 5 of us and thus was not really a lecture, more student participation required! The topic alone is highly complicated, and was conducted in the fastest German that I have ever heard (which is quite a statement for me to make considering the rate of my own speech!). What's more is that she persistently asked me questions, but didn't look directly at me when speaking to me, rather a space just above my left ear! I hadn't understood much so couldn't reply to any of her questions, oh it was awful! The minutes have never passed so slowly, two hours of pure torture. I won't be going back to that one, which is a shame as what I did understand was really interesting and right up my street.
I have an advanced grammar class which is taken by some foreign students and some German students who want to become German teachers. We were paired up, one foreigner with one German student and had to work through a gap filling exercise (slotting in the appropriate determiner, regarding gender and case). We agreed on all the answers, except one, and had a bit of a debate over this one. We were chosen to say our answers to the class and when we got to this answer she told the tutor that we'd disagreed. It turned out that I was correct, I was very, very happy and cried out to the whole class "exchange student 1, Germany 0" much to all of the Germans' surprise (and slight horror)!!! Ah, I am still very pleased that my grammar is better than that of a native German...if they can't learn it, how we can, I have no idea!
The teaching methods here and the general university atmosphere is so different too, which is certainly not helped by the fact that an awful lot of German students go home at the weekend. As I have mentioned, we have to do far more courses than in Britain, I now "specialise" in 10 disciplines, but they're in such less depth than at York. Having said that, one lecturer set us the task of learning the anatomy of vocal tract in German, Latin and Greek...you wouldn't get that in York. And I read in one of the mammoth chunks of reading that "the idea of a teacher of any discipline without good knowledge of Latin is unthinkable"...I know for sure that that train of thought is not shared in Britain, teaching of Latin went out years ago. However, a German friend of mine said that her Grandmother was an English teacher for 40 years and had not been to any English speaking country, that too is unimaginable. Apparently it was exactly like in the books when she finally went during her retirement!!!
Something that also struck me as very strange is the distinct lack of that famous German organisation as regards assessment at the end of the course, it seems to be something very much open to discussion! On the down side however, there will definitely be some major essays (12 pages of the history of the German language anyone?!) and I am already signed up for a 30 minute presentation on Metasprachdiskurse...dreaded already!
The final lecture related comment that I will make is that at the end of all lectures and seminars they all knock on the tables! I was a little shocked the first time I heard it but have since taken on this strange custom with great enthusiasm...I think that I will have knuckles made of steel by the end of it!
Well that's all that's been happening by day, and the nights have been equally as entertaining! I have been out every night this week, there is just so much going on, we have a large network of exchange students and have met lots of Germans and all invites are open to anyone. The highlights of this week would be: experiencing the Mensa turned into a hilarious nightclub (much more like a Danesfield school disco/Goodricke event than a nightclub!); meeting my 70 year old professor (more on that in a sec!); a rave in the cellar of a disused church on top of a hill (complete with more bottles of tequila than I have ever seen in my life, even in a supermarket!); gatecrashing the birthday party of someone I've never met (second time I've done that in 2 months!); an Ostalgie party (my thoughts on this will not be disclosed!) and Greek Easter (the orthodox church has a different date).
Finally I am starting to make some friends and have met such a variety of people, it's funny how we've all been thrown together and are already making friendships that will hopefully last far longer than our short time here. Going dancing with them is hilarious, from a Hungarian "gypsy hip hop" dancer, Khazakstanian twisted leg dancing and I have never tried my hand (or leg!) at so much Greek and Spanish dancing in all my life, I'm sorry to say that I'm certainly not getting any better at it though!!!
The culture differences stretch far further than the obvious things like dancing, clothing, food and language. For example, we were discussing where we come from and comparing my village of 90 inhabitants, with their cities of millions of people. And the way we view being out alone at night, I walked alone at night a lot in France (I think I walked the path home at every single hour of the day and night at some point during my time in France) and got completely used to it, while they're from dangerous cities with mafia! My Hungarian friend is never out with out her tool to give an electric shock and my Czech friend has a pepper spray for unruly men that she carries at all times! I would not like to meet these two and their weapons at night! It's true that Erfurt does have some very rough areas (we've witnessed all sorts of crime already), so maybe I ought to look into an anti-attack, or maybe self defence classes!
Another thing that I don't think I ever mentioned in France, but happened there too, is that in no other country (as far as I am aware) is putting up two fingers rude, so I am constantly sworn up as people tell me they want two of something! I remember Cecile doing this to a man in a shop in London and he was very taken a back!!! Talking about offending people, a friend of mine introduced a girl from Taiwan as from Korea, she was really not happy about that! And my Czech friend said the other day that "Britain is not part of the EU", ho hum!
As I mentioned earlier, I met my 70 year old professor and his wife the other day, they are really nice and extremely interesting. They've travelled the world and have so many funny anecdotes to tell. We went on the first of our hikes today, it was beautiful, we walked up a valley to a hidden pub that didn't have any electricity supply, then across fields, which were just immense expanses of green, i have never seen such big fields and space. The countryside is gorgeous here, especially as blossom is out everywhere, I can see that there will be plenty of cherry picking to enjoy later in the year!
Well that's the lot for now (and I mean a lot!), the final anecdote of the blog is this....I have a German friend who spent last summer giving out leaflets for a company. Completely normal, except the funny thing is that she had to get everyone she gave a leaflet to to pose for a photo as evidence that she gave it to them. How strange is that?!?!
Oh goodness and I was just rereading this when a Slovakian friend knocked at the door, she asked if she could get some of my photos. I replied and said to follow me in. She said "what?", so I repeated what I'd said again, to which she said "could you please speak in German or at least English?"!!! I'd spoken French to her twice utterly unaware. I can't believe it! I am going CRAZY, there are so many words and languages running round my head I can't cope! So, until next time, tschuess, a bientot, adios and goodbye!
On Tuesday the lectures began, with a full day, 8am until 6pm, it was an absolute beast of a day! I am quite simply not used, and unable, to concentrate for 2 hour stints at a time, especially not in German when half goes over my head and I consequently switch off. My first seminar started very badly. The tutor had sent us the work by email and we were told to print it out, but with it being the bank holiday weekend the library was shut until 8am on Tuesday morning, the time that the seminar was supposed to start. As we had been prewarned that lecturers arrive late we reckoned we'd have enough time to print out the work, and make it just in time. Oh how very wrong we were! We arrived late and got a proper ticking off from the lecturer, it took me right back to my school days. The words the lecturer used were that she was "stink sauer"...even if you don't speak German I'm pretty sure that you'll get the idea that she was not happy! Certainly not a good start, and that lecturer has been particularly cold towards my little group of late comers ever since!
The lectures and seminars this week have been a complete mix of things, I'll run through a few of the high-lights and memorable moments...
We aren't actually properly enrolled for any courses, so we have had to frantically send emails round to request special permission to attend the lectures, which are completely and utterly over subscribed. There is simply not enough space in the rooms, there are people flowing out the doors, sitting on the floor and stealing chairs from other rooms. I was in one seminar that only 5 of us took (more on this one later!), and during the 15 minute wait for the lecturer our room was gradually emptied of chairs, one by one 20 chairs were taken!!!
In my first linguistics lecture there were 25 people officially signed up and 21 on the waiting list. They all turned up and she went through every name saying if they were allowed to stay or not. She got to the end of the list and asked if there was anyone whose name she hadn't read out, so of course I had to put up my hand. She then remembered that I was an exchange student and said that yes of course I could stay as an extra. All those who had just been told that there was no space for any extras turned round and I could see a sea of angry faces, I have never felt so hated! In every class we go to we are known as the exchange pupils, although it can be very annoying we do get proper VIP treatment, just like in France with the mayor!
This class had another funny moment, it was a phon phon ortho class and so she was talking about sounds in different languages. She asked the class what the English for a word was, but as I hadn't heard the word she asked I couldn't reply, but someone else did. The answer was "sound" and she then asked for the French equivalent. No-one in this class studies French, so no-one volunteered the answer. She got a bit annoyed so, as I did know the response, I thought I'd better say it, which I did. Once again everyone turned round ("an exchange student who knows the answer?!") and she thanked me and said that she was glad that there was a French person here!!! Hahaha and to think that I hadn't known the English response. It hasn't been the only time this week that my nationality has been confused. I once replied to a tutor that I was from Grossbritannien and straight back she said to me how sorry they were about the earthquake, much to my utter astonishment! It turned out that she had misheard "Italien"! And of course the number of times that I've been taken as American is innumerable...!
I had one very enjoyable lecture about foreign words in the German language, there are soooo many, they even have dictionaries the thickness of a brick on them! Anyway what made the lecture so interesting was not the content (well for me maybe, but I won't share the ins and outs with you now!...although I can't risk adding in that the Germans use phrases such as "Ich habe es gebookmarkt!") but the lecturer himself! For starters his name is Wolf Peter Klein, what a name! Secondly he was so jolly it was unbelievable, he was very rotund, slightly balding and very merry! He was also really friendly and when I spoke to him at the end of the lecture he was very interested to hear how we were settling in, and very concerned about my lack of curtains...I wouldn't be surprised if he brought me a pair to our next lecture!
On Wednesday, I had a French lesson which was really good, I do actually seriously miss French and France, at the moment I have to say that I much prefer the French language. What was funny is my complete obliviousness to which words belong to each language, at one point the tutor asked us to name types of literature, I called out a German word, totally unknowingly, much to the amusement of everyone. Fortunately, the Germans seem far more capable of putting on a French accent than my French pupils were, so at least we can follow what's going on.
On Wednesday afternoon we have possibly the best course ever. It's entitled "Erfurt, the city of my studies" and it appears that we are going to spend every week going on a tourist walk of the town, perfect, particularly as the weather is still absolutely gorgeous. I think my description of it as "a nice spring walk with a very knowledgeable aunt" is spot on! But despite being an utter doss intellectually, it is really interesting, if anyone comes to visit me (do!) I will be able to tell you a lot about the city, probably far more than I could about York or anywhere at home!
As regards the classes there have been the good (morphology, with an extremely good looking young professor!) and the really really bad, French Lexicography being one of these! It was just absolutely cringeworthy! This "lecture" was the one where there were only 5 of us and thus was not really a lecture, more student participation required! The topic alone is highly complicated, and was conducted in the fastest German that I have ever heard (which is quite a statement for me to make considering the rate of my own speech!). What's more is that she persistently asked me questions, but didn't look directly at me when speaking to me, rather a space just above my left ear! I hadn't understood much so couldn't reply to any of her questions, oh it was awful! The minutes have never passed so slowly, two hours of pure torture. I won't be going back to that one, which is a shame as what I did understand was really interesting and right up my street.
I have an advanced grammar class which is taken by some foreign students and some German students who want to become German teachers. We were paired up, one foreigner with one German student and had to work through a gap filling exercise (slotting in the appropriate determiner, regarding gender and case). We agreed on all the answers, except one, and had a bit of a debate over this one. We were chosen to say our answers to the class and when we got to this answer she told the tutor that we'd disagreed. It turned out that I was correct, I was very, very happy and cried out to the whole class "exchange student 1, Germany 0" much to all of the Germans' surprise (and slight horror)!!! Ah, I am still very pleased that my grammar is better than that of a native German...if they can't learn it, how we can, I have no idea!
The teaching methods here and the general university atmosphere is so different too, which is certainly not helped by the fact that an awful lot of German students go home at the weekend. As I have mentioned, we have to do far more courses than in Britain, I now "specialise" in 10 disciplines, but they're in such less depth than at York. Having said that, one lecturer set us the task of learning the anatomy of vocal tract in German, Latin and Greek...you wouldn't get that in York. And I read in one of the mammoth chunks of reading that "the idea of a teacher of any discipline without good knowledge of Latin is unthinkable"...I know for sure that that train of thought is not shared in Britain, teaching of Latin went out years ago. However, a German friend of mine said that her Grandmother was an English teacher for 40 years and had not been to any English speaking country, that too is unimaginable. Apparently it was exactly like in the books when she finally went during her retirement!!!
Something that also struck me as very strange is the distinct lack of that famous German organisation as regards assessment at the end of the course, it seems to be something very much open to discussion! On the down side however, there will definitely be some major essays (12 pages of the history of the German language anyone?!) and I am already signed up for a 30 minute presentation on Metasprachdiskurse...dreaded already!
The final lecture related comment that I will make is that at the end of all lectures and seminars they all knock on the tables! I was a little shocked the first time I heard it but have since taken on this strange custom with great enthusiasm...I think that I will have knuckles made of steel by the end of it!
Well that's all that's been happening by day, and the nights have been equally as entertaining! I have been out every night this week, there is just so much going on, we have a large network of exchange students and have met lots of Germans and all invites are open to anyone. The highlights of this week would be: experiencing the Mensa turned into a hilarious nightclub (much more like a Danesfield school disco/Goodricke event than a nightclub!); meeting my 70 year old professor (more on that in a sec!); a rave in the cellar of a disused church on top of a hill (complete with more bottles of tequila than I have ever seen in my life, even in a supermarket!); gatecrashing the birthday party of someone I've never met (second time I've done that in 2 months!); an Ostalgie party (my thoughts on this will not be disclosed!) and Greek Easter (the orthodox church has a different date).
Finally I am starting to make some friends and have met such a variety of people, it's funny how we've all been thrown together and are already making friendships that will hopefully last far longer than our short time here. Going dancing with them is hilarious, from a Hungarian "gypsy hip hop" dancer, Khazakstanian twisted leg dancing and I have never tried my hand (or leg!) at so much Greek and Spanish dancing in all my life, I'm sorry to say that I'm certainly not getting any better at it though!!!
The culture differences stretch far further than the obvious things like dancing, clothing, food and language. For example, we were discussing where we come from and comparing my village of 90 inhabitants, with their cities of millions of people. And the way we view being out alone at night, I walked alone at night a lot in France (I think I walked the path home at every single hour of the day and night at some point during my time in France) and got completely used to it, while they're from dangerous cities with mafia! My Hungarian friend is never out with out her tool to give an electric shock and my Czech friend has a pepper spray for unruly men that she carries at all times! I would not like to meet these two and their weapons at night! It's true that Erfurt does have some very rough areas (we've witnessed all sorts of crime already), so maybe I ought to look into an anti-attack, or maybe self defence classes!
Another thing that I don't think I ever mentioned in France, but happened there too, is that in no other country (as far as I am aware) is putting up two fingers rude, so I am constantly sworn up as people tell me they want two of something! I remember Cecile doing this to a man in a shop in London and he was very taken a back!!! Talking about offending people, a friend of mine introduced a girl from Taiwan as from Korea, she was really not happy about that! And my Czech friend said the other day that "Britain is not part of the EU", ho hum!
As I mentioned earlier, I met my 70 year old professor and his wife the other day, they are really nice and extremely interesting. They've travelled the world and have so many funny anecdotes to tell. We went on the first of our hikes today, it was beautiful, we walked up a valley to a hidden pub that didn't have any electricity supply, then across fields, which were just immense expanses of green, i have never seen such big fields and space. The countryside is gorgeous here, especially as blossom is out everywhere, I can see that there will be plenty of cherry picking to enjoy later in the year!
Well that's the lot for now (and I mean a lot!), the final anecdote of the blog is this....I have a German friend who spent last summer giving out leaflets for a company. Completely normal, except the funny thing is that she had to get everyone she gave a leaflet to to pose for a photo as evidence that she gave it to them. How strange is that?!?!
Oh goodness and I was just rereading this when a Slovakian friend knocked at the door, she asked if she could get some of my photos. I replied and said to follow me in. She said "what?", so I repeated what I'd said again, to which she said "could you please speak in German or at least English?"!!! I'd spoken French to her twice utterly unaware. I can't believe it! I am going CRAZY, there are so many words and languages running round my head I can't cope! So, until next time, tschuess, a bientot, adios and goodbye!
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