Life in Das Vaterland

After 10 years of foreign language study, the time has come for me to live the dream - to put my skills to their best possible use and head off to a faraway, exotic land free from the rain, traffic, moaning, rain, economic crisis and rain of the UK. With that in mind, I seem to have landed in a place closer to my front door than Scotland, and with almost identical weather patterns and industry. Even the names match - from Bedford to Bedburg. Oh, and I'll be teaching English. No matter, the fact is I'm now in Germany and ready to make the most of

a) actually earning money in exchange for not having to study for a while 

and

b) making the most of 9 months on the continent, seeing new places, meeting new people and experiencing all that the Federal Republic has to offer!

The trip began at the end of August as I departed from Stansted with my dad to look for a place to live in Cologne, a Rhine city that, despite huge residential areas, offered up nothing. Next stop was Bergheim to pursue an internet offer that also came to nothing. Faced with this adversity, I determinedly gave up looking and emailed the teacher who would be in charge of me to ask if there was anything going in Bedburg. Luckily there was, so on September 1st I headed to Bedburg to see the school's presentation day and meet the family whose loft I would be inhabiting for at least a while.

From there it was onward to Altenberg, the former monastery that hosted a training week for all language assistants in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Niedersachen, Bremen and the Saarland. It presented a chance to get to know the fellow students who would be in my proximity for the next year, so predictably the 20 or so of us from Warwick all stuck together from the beginning.

That said, the course itself was surprisingly enjoyable, providing us with a basis in how to lead a class, what German students could expect from us and giving advice in how to survive out here. On the 3rd day we gave a sample lesson on extreme sports and I was told that despite my tendency to fiddle with a pen while talking, I managed well. Aside from that I sampled various varieties of German beer (at €1.50 a pint, how could I not?), inhaled enough 2nd-hand smoke that I would probably have been better off smoking, put in a reasonable juggling performance in the last-night talent show, and exchanged cultural ideas with a group of Canadians on how "Canadian football is like, totally better than American football, eh?!"

Fig. 1: one of the sports.

Fig. 2: the other one.

Altenberg was fun, then, but all too soon it was time to face reality and head to the school where I would be working. And so, on a grey Thursday morning, on the back of 5 hours' sleep and no shower, I was greeted at Bedburg station by Frau Bielert and thrown straight into a meeting with the headmaster. It was here that German efficiency came into play, as he processed the mountains of paperwork concerning me in a matter of minutes, before sending me to the Anmeldeamt to register as a citizen and then Sparkasse bank to set up an account. 

The next day I was in again at 7.50 AM to experience a working day at the school, sitting in on lessons in German, Religious Studies and History, where the origin of World War I was taught with the kind of neutrality I would expect from a country that is never afraid to acknowledge their past.

But this wasn't really why I was here, so on Tuesday I got my first taste of Oberstufe English, the highest level in German schools. No problem, I told myself, an introduction followed by some conversation work and oh dear God they're doing Shakespeare. In English. Not at all modernised or watered down. So, it seems the A-level in English Lit-Lang will have to be brought into play over the coming weeks as rather than correcting grammar or pronunciation mistakes I will instead have to explain the difference between a metaphor and an analogy to an 18-year-old German whose technical knowledge of English is probably better than my own.

Not to worry though, because it has been for the most part fun. I'd honestly forgotten the atmosphere of a sixth-form classroom, a place where for the first time people come together as a group who actually care about what they're learning, and where teachers stop being disciplinarians and start coming into their own. It's a sense of anticipation, of excitement for what lies ahead. Listening to this lot enthusiastically acting out Romeo and Juliet, I was reminded of myself as a fresh-faced languages student halfway through Year 12, the moment when I realised that carrying it on to university might actually work for me. And work it has - thanks to the fact I chose to learn languages, I have, in two weeks abroad, begun my international football career alongside a group of teachers, spent two hours eating piles of food off a barbecue on a Saturday afternoon, agreed to become a gym buddy once my salary turns up and eaten bratwurst with potatoes and sauerkraut, and it was actually pretty good.

The food of kings.

All in all, it makes for an impressively long blog post. And this is only the beginning...

TJGreenwood.