Dienstag, 28. September 2010

First two weeks on German soil!

I'll begin by saying that the title of this entry's a bit misleading. I have in fact been on German soil twice before but this is an entry concerning my first two weeks after setting up home here! The first two weeks of my year abroad during which I'll be an English Language Assistant in a school in Hamburg.

Anyway, it's only the beginning and it's all going well so far. Flew into Dusseldorf early on Sunday the 12th and headed straight for beautiful Cologne. After one night of sleeping (and drinking) there, I had already made a couple of friends to go on to Altenberg with the next day. I'll say thank God for Facebook for making the new friendship situation just that little bit easier. I think Katy and I felt like we "knew" each other without knowing each other and as we both suspected, we got on great. 

Monday afternoon and there's a British invasion at Cologne's main railway station as we all gathered there before getting onto the coaches. Once on the coaches, my hands are feeling ripped apart from pulling the heavy suitcase which only has one wheel. As there were many people making this short trip to Altenberg and also in the same boat of emigrating to Germany, almost everyone was willing to talk and make friends which was cool.
As there's a lot to get through in this first entry, I'll just quickly sum up what Altenberg was all about - an opportunity to learn a bit about our roles in the German schools, continue to make friends and booze it up at night. We were in the middle of rural Germany but this old catholic church/convent thing was transformed into a 'British villiage' - I don't think I spoke one word of German while I was there. 
We also discovered during our drunken evenings that it was, somewhat a gay villiage too with someone new coming out night after night, hour after hour. So perhaps we can assume that there's either a link between studying languages and gay guys or between studying the German language and gay guys ;)

It was only three nights in Altenberg but I think people got used to it and its community atmosphere (the only bitch I had about the place was the they didn't provide any irons for us). Anyway, it was time to leave and after dragging us out of bed at 6am (that's after a late night of drinking), everyone was looking like shit and some of us, like me had long journeys to go on to do. We discovered that out of all the 'Hamburgers,' almost all of us were taking the 10:10 train - shame some people had to pay a whopping €80 for a one way ticket. Be smart in future - buy your rail tickets in Germany in advanced (bit like in the UK really) and you'll pay €44 like I did.

Four hours on the train goes by and we arrive at Hamburg's Hbf. I'm greeted by my new flatmate and he takes me to my new flat/room. The new room I found a whole week before I was due to move here!

So, the flat's cool and so is my new flatmate. 
I really like the area - five minutes walk to the U-Bahn station and just across the road from that is a McDonalds AND a mile long shopping centre which just so happens to be called the 'Hamburger Meile.' 
The U-Bahn will get me to town in 10 minutes so it's all very handy, however some of the teachers at my school are saying the required rent is too much - €430 a month. Speaking of teachers at my school, I'll tell you about my school right now...

'Schule am Eichtalpark' is quite a small school which educates kids from the age of 9 through to 16. I won't explain the German school system, it's complicated and it's made more complicated because of all the school reforms going on in Hamburg right now. 
I will say, however that the teachers are lovely and cool. The kids are funny (especially the younger ones), very interested, and now I feel a bit more at home because they all know me now. They either shout 'Hallo Mr Thomas' or 'Hallo Herr Thomas' to me in the corridors and in the playground. 
The younger ones are hilarious with their questions and they sound much cuter when they speak German than the teens do. They fire questions at me like: 'Are you married?' 
'Do you have a car?'
'Do you live in a house of your own?'
'Have you seen my aunt in London?'
'Do I like Michael Jackson?'
'Are you coming into our class today?' and many more.
I'm certainly looking forward to working with all of them over the next academic year. Also, seeing whether schools in England are stricter or not and observing where kids are better behaved - here or back at home. Kids and teachers seem to have this idea that the kids in England are so much better behaved. I'm not convinced. 

When Friday night comes around, you know what that means if you know me. We've brought the UK's excessive drinking to Germany (not that the young German aren't good at it anyway). Usually pre-lashing in Chris's WG (flatshare) where he lives with loads of other young Germans right in the middle of town. It's always good there because there's always a decent mix of German and English being spoken and it's helps to mix it up a bit when we're forgetting we're actually in Germany. Although, I'm sure it's felt like a British invasion to them in that flat over the past couple of weeks. 
When we can't go to Chris's house, we go to Katy's. She lives in student halls a short ride out of town on the S-Bahn but there's a bar there which sells shots and bottle of beer for €1 - so it's all good. I'm sure Germany's cheaper for booze than at home but the wine is cheaper by FAR - 1 litre bottle of half-decent tasting wine available in the supermarkets for €2 or even €1.79 (£1.52 if we convert that) - so you can't go wrong.

Apart from that, I don't really think I need to go into how my first few nights out have been since I've got here. They've been pretty standard really. Main difference being that everything happens later (because it's mainland Europe) so we've been leaving to go to the clubs at 12/1am and I've been getting in at times like 5/6am. 
Of course, I LOVE the famous Reeperbahn and the Schanze area, both of which remind me of London. Not the sex shops but just the lights and the atmosphere there at the weekend.

In other news, I'm still waiting for my bank stuff to come through the post. I've gone for a .comdirect account - The stuff better come through soon because I would like some pay! But I still got to get my 'Anmeldung' done, so I'm officially a German resident now ...AND  it only took 15 minutes to get done;)

Also, I've also got a phone I can live with now - with Vodafone. Even though they're quite expensive, I just couldn't cope with the cheap Samsung I had on the Blau network and this Sony Ericsson W205 came with a Vodafone SIM card. It's hard to go back to a crappy phone when you're used to a Blackberry but I've given up on getting a contract here as most of them are for two years only!

Lastly, I have a TV, FINALLY in my room. After asking the right people in the school canteen, a TV was delivered to me very speedily later that day. It's quite heavy but the thing works! So now I have German blearing in my ears almost 24 hours a day (which is a good thing).  
A lot of people bitch about German TV but I actually don't mind it. They have their own versions of almost everything we have. I will say that some of their versions are cringeworthy but I can deal with that. I sometimes like cheesy. People often have a good old moan about the dubbing too but I think I'm in the minority - I don't mind it. At least it feels like I'm somewhere else. Even though Whoopi Goldberg sounded HILARIOUS dubbed the other night, I can live with it. So with that and being bombarded with a lot of German at the school from the teachers and kids along with a lot of reading material, I'm getting quite a bit of daily practise.

Thinking back to the UK, I'm not really missing it yet. I'm sure I will be getting a little homesick at times but that's only natural, right?
Apparently, there's an English shop in Hamburg somewhere that's everyone's trying to find. I do know that 'The Apprentice' will be starting again on BBC One in about a week's time and I have to let be known that I WILL miss that and I'll be searching the internet high and low to find the episodes after they've been broadcast by the BBC in the UK.
Apart from that for the moment, there's only one other thing I've left behind in the UK, something German as a matter of fact, something I'm missing right now.... 
...He knows who he is and all I'll say is I can't wait until Friday to see him again. I'd like to thank Skype for the brilliant FREE service they provide and allowing me to keep in daily contact with him and other friends and family (of course I'll miss them too. They're all invited) also allowing the ability to be able to see them too. I really don't know what I'd do without it!


So that's my first two weeks in Germany and that's the start of my blog. Be sure to check back here and I'll let you know how I'm getting on.

Tschuss
Leo