I would like to say that I had been delaying this update in anticipation of the world coming to an end, but the truth of the matter is I simply couldn't be bothered to write it while spending Christmas at home. Having spent three months away, it felt too good to be back to be thinking of my life out here. Not that things had been going badly in the run up to the holidays; far from it in fact...
Dusseldorf
Shortly after my last post, I headed to the state capital of Nordrhein-Westfalen for a British Council-organised meeting for all English language assistants in the Cologne, Detmold and Aachen regions. Sounding initially tedious in its description - a museum visit, a puppet theatre and a tour of the local government building - it more than exceeded expectations. The museum dealt with the Ruhr region: essentially a group of cities that merged into a massive urban sprawl during the industrial revolution, and was built inside a former coal plant. The puppet theatre staged a performance of The Neverending Story, the 1980s children's film, which turns out to be an adaptation of a German book written as a modern fairy tale with political undertones about the dangers of allowing one individual absolute power. It really wasn't as awful as it sounds. The government HQ was about as exciting as you'd expect, although they did give us some good cake in the canteen. There we also got to know some of the American assistants in the area, who did their best to dispel the stereotypes surrounding their nation but not enough to make me prefer them to the Canadians.
Pictured: Not an American language assistant.
It was in fact a three-day excuse to stay off work, with evening entertainment featuring more prominently in most peoples' intentions than the days' activities. We headed to the bar district for traditional German food and beverages. By which I mean we ate at a Mexican restaurant and then went on to an Irish pub to watch Manchester United lose against Galtasaray, play darts, and drink things that aren't usually served in Germany such as purple (a beer-cider-blackcurrant combination and official drink of Warwick University!) I also took the chance to get to know the Cologne assistants better, something I hadn't really been able to do given my location.
Christmas
December rolled around and my first term in Germany was coming to an end, but not before the extremely lengthy and dragged-out ritual that makes up the festive period over here. It begins on the first weekend of December with the first advent and carries on through St. Nicholas' Day (basically a mini Christmas on the 6th), three other advents and the main event itself, which occurs on the 24th. However, since St. Nicholas/Santa has already visited, it is the baby Jesus who visits later, which must lead to a lot of confused children as the prevailing image on TV is still that of der Weihnachtsmann visiting houses to bring presents down the chimney. The school celebrated in a suitably traditional fashion, with food appearing on tables in the staff room and wreaths of candles being lit in the classrooms. A huge health and safety risk, and yet somehow the school didn't even slightly burn down. Meanwhile my parents came out to see the Cologne Christmas Markets, which are spread across the city, and meet my host family. A week later, my girlfriend arrived for much the same reason. This latter visit was not without incident due to the 12 inches of snow that had already fallen with more coming down as I got on the train to meet her at Dusseldorf airport. To the credit of Deutscher Bahn, it was not delayed by a minute - National Rail, all of your excuses are invalid. What didn't work so well was her flight, which was diverted to Cologne once I was already at the airport. My blood pressure rising by the second, I got on another train across the state to finally catch up with her. On the positive side, I got to see Leverkusen in the middle and tick that off my list of German cities visited. All of these visits from home made me feel somewhat homesick, so I have to admit I was glad to be back in time to see in the end of creation at home. So when - rather anticlimactically I thought - that didn't happen, I realised I still needed to buy presents, so headed to Leamington to combine that with seeing the friends and girlfriend again.
And this fool, who still won't leave us alone for some reason.
Another Christmas came and went, and all too soon it was time to return to Bedburg. Travel was surprisingly painless, and Sunday was spent unpacking and hitting the gym in keeping with the family's new year's fitness drive. I must say this was welcome news given my horrendous overeating at home. I also brought my new phone out with me, which has the capacity to allow me to play Temple Run and thus ruin my life for good, or at least until I beat Justin Bieber's high score of nine million.
If only out of respect to the Canadian president who had to put up with him wearing that.
In other news I came out with 74% on a French essay I submitted before the break, despite not being in France or even being particularly involved in what's going on in that country at the moment. Hopefully this foreshadows a successful start to the new year! Here's a sample of what the kids seem to be into these days in Germany:
And on a more serious note, proof that German satirical pop is still the best there is:
TJGreenwood.
No comments:
Post a Comment