i was told they didn't do squash in germany.

This beast suggests otherwise:

(next to my laptop for scale)


All for €1.20, I imagine 'Mr. Max' is left over from the old East Germany.

i doubt i'll get any snow days.

One of my Kollegen happily informed today that the last time the school was closed due to snow was in the harsh winter of 1979... I had better get used to the slippy walk to work.

the last few weeks.

Not much has happened really. Most of my lessons were cancelled for some reason or another, be it the kids having exams or work experience and the first two weeks back after the hols I was actually earning €66 an hour, not bad really. In the lessons I have actually been in I feel I have been used better than I was before the holidays, I have been taking small groups of kids aside and doing speaking practice with them, much better than sitting around doing nothing. Also I was entrusted to teach the year 7s the 'present perfect progressive', needless to say they are probably still none the wiser. Also in my Y13 class they were discussing the difference between science fiction and utopia/dystopia literature, I kept very quiet in that lesson.

I also held my first AG (after school club). I was told that I had to teach them poems and a song in 45 minutes to a good enough standard to perform at the open day next saturday. I was told 26 kids were coming. I was slightly stressed about it. Monday came around, I was in my classroom shitting myself about how the next three quarters of an hour would go, the bell rang for 2pm and I opened to door to.... 4 children. The other 22 clearly decided they had something better to do with their Monday afternoon. I was then told by one of the other teachers that we wouldn't be doing any performances at the open day.

Pressure off I proceeded to introduce the song to them (I wanna be like youuuuu, from the Jungle Book). I asked (out of politeness, everybody knows this song which is why I chose it) if they knew how the tune went. I was met with four blank stares. So, in the absence of a set of speakers (the height of technology I had at my disposal at this stage was an overhead projector), I decided to sing them the song. As I finished and looked up, two of them (Year 6s) were in silent fits of laughter and the other two (slightly more mature Y7s) were struggling to keep a straight face. How peinlich. I won't be singing again. The rest of the session passed without event and we even learned the song in time to do a poem as well. One of the girls cheered when I said we were moving on to a poem, either she is the German version of Matilda or was taking the piss. I'm hoping for the former.

On the not-in-school-front, I had a lovely brief sojourn back to Leeds for Rebecca Wallace's birthday and last weekend I went to Köln for the start of Karneval. Yes, when we have a minutes silence on 11/11. the Germans begin carneval, slightly worrying or quite funny? I'll leave that one up to you. Karneval proper seems to be in Feb/March but the first day was last thursday. However, we couldn't get to Köln on time for the parade and just arrived late and had a night out, how typically British. I have also been to Bochum and Essen for nights out in the last three weeks, both good nights. I have finally started to build up my consumption of Döner, something which was severely lacking in the first month or so here. Off topic but it just came to me, my refusal to buy a toaster (and my lack of oven) resulted in me returning to the phenomenon which is microwavable naan bread, It's still shit.

Also I have discovered an Irish pub which shows live football, not quite hitting the cultural heights which are possible here but still invaluable! The only downside is that it takes an hour and a half to get there, could do with a local to be honest.

The German effiency myth has once again reared its ugly head... why would you make a debit card without a security code?! How can you buy things on the internet under these circumstances?! They really aren't that efficient at all.

My performances at football with the teachers have reached the stage where they want to pick me first for their teams. What can I say? Eat your heart out Marc Albrighton.

Sorry this wasn't very well structured, but I haven't written for a while and just wrote things in the order I thought of them.

in other news...

...I just made my first boredom related trip to a bakery. Very impressive given there are so many here and the food always looks so tasty! In case you care I had a creamy custardy berliner which was in the shape of a tube rather than round.

please do your bit.

As you will know, I am in Germany thanks to the British Council Language Assistantship scheme. I have had a fantastic opportunity and am having a brilliant year. However, our lovely new coalition government have told the British Council not to open recruitment to the scheme for the students in the year below me. This is disastrous for so many students who, like me, just didn't want to study in a foreign uni or work in industry. This decision is a massive backwards step for language learning in England, something which already seems to be a dying art.

The scheme reportedly costs a mere £750,000 to administer (sod all in comparison to much other spending) and is so important. Please take ten minutes to write to your local MP and complain about this, it is such a silly cut to make. Even better, if you're in Hallam then mention to Clegg his background in Europe and languages etc.

http://www.writetothem.com/

Here is some info on the cut:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414186&c=1

That is all x

would this be an inappropriate purchase?

http://www.redbubble.com/people/hipsterhitler/t-shirts/5825002-1-slogan-three-reichs-and-youre-out

I love it, the germans may not see the funny side though.

Oh also the lack of updates recently are due to it being Herbstferien and me spending a week in England generally eating and drinking far too many nice things for my own good and also, not being in Germany there wasn't much point writing about what I was up to. Last week however I learned a few things including that being drunk here has a different meaning to being drunk in England (particularly to bouncers); that it's really really sodding cold (this is October, I dread to think what it will be like by Christmas); that Irish pubs are a godsend when you want to watch football and eat a roast dinner slash proper fry up; and that Germans don't appreciate drunken English renditions of Beyonce and Jay-z in their karaoke clubs. Also I scammed the self-serve machine at the supermarket by scanning a leek as a (much cheaper) cucumber. I'm such a loutish Brit Abroad.

Finally I signed up to MyExpat today, guten tag 4od and Iplayer! This is all for now as I'm drowning under a mountain of work for Leeds Uni which I should have started sooner and also trying to prepare for my AG (which is the after school drama club I was somehow talked into running, god knows why I agreed).

Ps. I've only got 3 hours at work this week, bang tidy.

a weekend with the teachers.

So, on Friday I went on a teacher team building kind of weekend thing with some of the teachers from my school. It was based at a Schullandheim in the beautiful Rheinland-Pfalz countryside (god, I sound like Simon Reeve). Unfortunately, being out in the sticks means there isn't much to do in the day time except go walking. And boy do the Germans love walking. Being an English moron who a) didn't have a change of shoes and b) forgot to pack a change of socks, this wasn't ever going to go down well with me. Oh yeah, and c) I hate walking. Well that's not true really, I don't mind a nice stroll when you have somewhere to go, but around a murky forest and down the steepest muddiest slippiest hill in Germany at 10am on a Saturday morning with a hangover... no thanks.

Which brings me on to the other activity which we bonded over, and I'm much more into my drinking than I am my walking. On the evenings we had a few (several) beers and played games like Charades and Taboo (both very difficult when you don't understand what the word means you are trying to act out/describe!). On Friday, they were all talking animatedly about drinking Schnapps later on. I thought yeah some peach schnapps would be alright so when they divvied out the shots and we had said Prost I necked mine (as you would with a shot) only to put my glass down and see everybody else sipping theirs. Then the taste hit me. And it wasn't peachy. Apparently "Schnapps" in German doesn't mean your standard Archers. No no, it means spirits. So in fact we were doing shots of 42% Aquavit and not wanting to lose face (having already proudly told them all "Ich komme aus England, Ich trinke alles") I had a few more every time they offered me. So yes, the walk in the forest the next morning wasn't too well received.

All in all, I had a great weekend and it was really nice to spend time with the teachers outside of school and get to know them a bit more. Even if there was a lot of time where I sat there with the conversation passing me by as I just about understood what had been said several minutes previously. Possibly the best thing about the weekend (as well as the cheap beer) was the food. Despite trying to match Altenberg in the odd food mixtures department (A'berg had scrambled eggs, spinach and potato; here we had chunks of hard boiled egg in a soup) it put the food at Altenberg to shame. Only two words are necessary really: Breakfast Buffet. Maybe four more: ate like a king. They even put on a fried breakfast on the last morning alongside the regular cheese/ham/bread fest that is a German breakfast. It was here that I was tucking into a very nice substance which I had never tried before, when one of the teachers asked me how I was liking the Leberkäse. The literal translation which happened in my head wasn't pretty... Liver Cheese?! However, thankfully it has nothing to do with cheesy livers or livery cheese and actually shows the French how a Pâté should taste.

Sadly, I forgot my camera so there are no photos to accompany this post as of yet (I took a couple of my phone so will upload them when I can find my bluetooth dongle), but there are a couple of crackers which show the lovely surroundings. Just re-read this, it's very rambly my apologies but it's late (ten to 11 is late when you get up in time for German schools!) and I'm tired. Bis Bald.

last week...

the WW1 backlash finally ended as Germany paid the last of the reparations laid out in the Treaty of Versailles. I guess they won't be starting anything like that again any time soon.

notes on maturity.

In my year 7 class today we were talking about sightseeing in London and, on looking at a photo of the Gherkin in the text book, one of the lads charmingly said "look, it's the dildo!" much to the delight of his friends. I'm fairly sure that I didn't know the German word for dildo when I was 12 (and it's 'der Godemiché', if you were wondering).

Perhaps the students in the Oberstufe (6th form) would be more likely to know such vocab, but oddly the boys in my year 13 class still find it highly amusing to make fart noises and throw paper aeroplanes across the classroom.

Anyway I probably shouldn't be one to judge maturity levels of the Germans; I clearly think that a valid reason for buying food items is a funny name...

the wiesn (or OKTOBERFEST to non-deutschys)

This weekend I did something very out of character for me, namely spending lots and lots of money in one go. However, I am so glad I did because you really shouldn't have a year in the scheisse and not go to Oktoberfest. The 12 hour round trip to Munich (this country is massive) cost €100 (at half price) and the beers (from here on known as Steins) were ten euros apiece. But I had a fucking brilliant weekend so I'd say it was definitely worth it.

Rather fortunately I managed to be cheeky enough to ask a girl called Rachael from Leeds who I didn't know before (thanks to my shocking lack of attempt to socialise with course people over the last two years, I am so sorry guys) if I could stay at hers along with the others who were heading down. With six of us to sleep in a room where she isn't technically allowed guests and given the fact that we hadn't reserved a table for the beer tents there was a fair amount of things that could go wrong. We didn't let it worry us on the friday night though and went out locally for some food and a few drinks. The man in the bar didn't seem too impressed at having to sort food at 10pm so instead of giving us the menus he insisted on giving us Gnnochi (which was incredibly cheesy). Me and Ali, being the 'lads' (loosest sense of the word) of the group raced ahead on the beer front and a good night was had by all.

Completely ignoring advice to get to the festival at 7am on the saturday in order to get a bench (you can't buy drinks unless you are sat at a table) we opted for the slighly later butstillreallyfuckingearlyonaweekend time of 11am for our arrival and after buying a can and some pizza at the Hauptbahnhof we got the tube out to the Wiesn. As an aside, if you ever find yourself in Munich Hbf, but pizza from the stand with slices for €2.20/€2.40 and you won't regret it. We arrived at the festival area in the pissing down rain and headed for the nearest tent. There was a big queue but eventually we got inside. And then we saw why you should go at 7am. There was probably 7000 odd people inside and we just couldn't find a table.

So after a lot of aimless walking around we did the very English thing and gatecrashed someone elses table. Once we had our massive Steins they couldn't shift us and when we finally took the subtle hints people were giving (or in the case of the German man who lost his temper and shouted 'RAUSGEHEN' at us repeatedly, less subtle hints) and moved on to a different table. This way we managed to meet lots of Germans and people of various nationalities, including a Welsh man and an Australian who had devised a rather unsophisticated version of higher or lower and a good afternoon was had by all.




The Steins are lethal. Actually lethal. At €10 a time they should be really (well, €8.95 plus the tip you have no choice but to leave for the mardy and occasionally violent waitresses). Tipsy after a couple and completely gone after a couple more, there really isn't much I can say about the rest of the day. We angered on of the said waitresses by sitting at what looked like a perfectly available table. We went to a different tent for another drink. I spoke at length to an Australian man about cricket and probably didn't make much sense at all. I excitedly bought a Schnitzel sandwich and was completely gutted that it wasn't hot. I tried to put too much Currywurst in my mouth and it went everywhere. We went back to the same place as the previous night for tea and he took the tablecloths off the tables before letting us eat. We headed back to Rachael's with the intention of going out but i passed out under the desk and apparantly everyone else did soon after so the night out never happened. Probably a good idea really as much more alcohol would definitely been a bad idea!

The only regret I would have about the weekend is that I didn't have Lederhosen, but really at €100 it would have been one novelty purchase too far. So we did the English thing and wore white tshirts and wrote profanities on each other. And thanks to Sophie who thought writing "Ich will Maenner" on my back I got several concerned looks from German men!

So yeah, I had a brilliant weekend and I would definitely recommend Oktoberfest to everyone who likes sinking a few ales. And what could make an awesome weekend even better? Super Emile scoring a late winner in a local derby, that's what.

a thoroughly disturbing experience.

So I was at my Probetraining (kind of like a try before you buy session) at the gym the other day, innocently using one of the weight machines when a woman came over to use the machine opposite. As she lifted her weights I caught my first sight of an unshaven German female armpit. Needless to say I have now joined a different gym on the other side of Ratingen, which by the way is called McFit... a new direction for Ronald and co?

Sitzpinkeln bitte.

Only in Germany. I love this country.

some other random things i have noticed so far.

• there tends to be a bakery every 4th shop along, every 2 in a train station. they all smell gorgeous.
• most german people seem to have a dog, and they take them into town with them. in fact the other day i saw a dog as big as a baby camel, no joke.
• it is impossible to predict what the temperature is going to be from day to day.
  
• they have green lucky strikes!
• nowhere seems to sell wraps.
  
• they love their cover bands (well, if you're at Ratingen Live, the happening event of the town's social calendar, they do anyway).
• none of the schoolkids know who Aston Villa and Jamie T are.
  
• it's insanely rushed at the checkout in a supermarket and they also don't like putting your change in your hand, which makes you look simple when you struggle to scoop it up.
• most German women over the age of 55 look the same.
  
• they really really don't like it if you cross without the green man, i was tutted at yesterday
• the Pfand machines (where you recycle plastic bottles/cans for money) are amazing.
• the 'German Stare' exists, and isn't nice to be on the receiving end of.
• www.bahn.de is oddly addictive.
• they have awesomely named chocolate bars based on the german language:

the first few days in school.

I teach at the CFvW Gymnasium (grammar school, not actual gym) in Ratingen. My first day was on friday so I got up at half6 in the morning and cycled into school with the son of my host family. I say cycled... he cycled, and I struggled to stay on the bloody thing trying to negotiate my way along narrow pavements whilst avoiding stray children and badly parked cars. Why we didn't cycle on the road I don't know but he seemed to be enjoying himself. Needless to say I quickly decided to walk from then on. When we arrived (just about intact) I met with my mentor for the year who is brilliant, a really friendly man who speaks understandable German (just as an aside: don't try and keep up with a conversation between two Germans, maybe it's just me but they speak so bloody fast!).

I have had a weeks worth of trying out various lessons and teachers and will next week choose the classes I want to help out in on a permanent basis. So far there have been a mixed bag:

Year 7s - they were fine, and spoke really good English.
Year 8s - only wanted to know if I had a girlfriend, nosy bastards!
Year 13s - we were doing Shakespeare, not my cup of tea.

Year 9s - didn't stop bloody talking for the whole lesson, the teachers here don't seem to mind though which is odd. A few knobs in this class, won't be going back!
Year 13s - more Shakespeare. I nearly fell asleep as they were discussing their interpretations of Sonnets, mainly because of the 6.30am start but I think I'll steer clear of lit classes now just in case!

Year 11s - I thought thay would be the most disruptive students but they were really good, and had phenomenal English. I will go back to that class.

Year 9s mkII - a different Y9 class, and they were brilliant. This lesson was different to all the others I have had so far, because the teacher let them ask me questions about myself and England for the whole lesson... I felt quite important. By the way, if a German asks you 'who has the most style, English people or Germans?', don't say the English, no matter how true it may be. I also found out that they think the concept of a Full English is horrible, they clearly haven't been to Hukaz in Leeds.

So, in the school so far so good really. I haven't had much to do but it's been a bit of a breeze. The early mornings aren't enjoyable but when you walk out of work at 9.45am it doesn't feel too bad! Also I've been invited to a teacher team building weekend in a couple of weeks, so I'll be able to see how the Germans really let their hair down.

bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.

The Germans love it. Any excuse for forms? They will take it. Any excuse to ask for your passport? They will take it. Any excuse to photocopy any sort of official form? They bloody love it!

When you move out here you need to do anmelden, which means to register. Luckily, my host mother took me to the office to sort it out and it wasn't too difficult. Then we set up a bank account, which was another opportunity to sign several pieces of paper and have my passport checked a few times. Then we went to buy a sim card, and even at the Phone House (their Carphone Warehouse) I still had to show my bloody passport!

The worst of all of these processes, however, is enrolling at a university. When you have done this you can buy a Semesterticket, which gives you free travel throughout Nordrhein Westfalen until the end of March so is worth all the trouble, but only just! On monday I went to Essen to meet Mari, Katie and Alex so we could go and register at Essen uni at the same time. When we got to the office we were eventually told we needed an appointment and to go back on tuesday. When we went on tuesday we were told to go over the road and get some sort of insurance confirmation. When we had that we were finally able to enrol and go to bank to pay for our Semestertickets... or so we thought... the banks have variable opening hours here and the Sparkasse was closed when we got there. So I had to come back to Ratingen and cash it here today, and post my receipt to Mari so she can hopefully collect my card for me on friday. It might not sound like such a stressful process, but believe me it was! I am looking forward to this free travel though.

what's the name of the fucking game... say altenberg.

Every year the Fremdsprachassitenten (foreign language assistants) have a couple of days training in a convent just outside Köln in order to prepare them for being plonked in front of a class of german children. We all met up outside the Hauptbahnhof and were taken to the small town of Altenberg on coaches. The training is at a convent type place out in the countryside, which locks you in at 8pm and is the kind of place that you would imagine is why films like The Human Centipede are set in Germany. However, the actual place itself was lovely and shortly after arriving (desperate for the toilet... the can on the coach had been a bad idea) we were introduced to the course by a lovely German man called Günter Jacob. He is exactly what German men should be like, a new hero of mine.

Our first evening meal was one of the more bizarre that I'm sure I will eat throughout the year but I have been assured that Germans like it. We were given scrambled eggs, spinach and potatoes. Not the best of combinations when you are starving to be honest! But we can let them off the food because they gave us special dispensation to open a bar on the nights, selling big bottles of beer for €1.50 which was brilliant.

Over the course of the training the students from Leeds obtained a rather bad reputation as the loutish drinkers, with one girl even saying that whilst there was "a time and a place for getting pissed", that "this wasn't it". Anyway... we had a great time! In between the drinking games and shaving foam parties we learned a few tips about teaching in Germany and the educational side of the course, whilst not being as good as I had hoped, was still pretty useful. If only because I learned the words 'ziehen' and 'drücken', from all the bloody doors in the place! Also the getting up early routine began in Altenberg, not nice. We all returned to our towns around Germany on the thursday ready (in some cases) to start at our schools.

ankunft in deutschland.

When I found out I would be living in Ratingen for my year abroad it's fair to say I was less than impressed. There's not much info about it on the internet and I was dreading spending the year far away from everything. However when my flight landed and I met my host family it soon became clear I wouldn't be too cut off. Düsseldorf airport is only ten minutes from the town of Ratingen. My host family are very nice and after eating a quick tea with them I headed up to my room. I'm sharing the second floor of the house with the daughter of the family and I've actually got a really nice room which is brilliant, because there's a fair chance I will be spending many winter evenings in it!

There's also an ensuite shower room which is pretty cool because, if you know me you'll probably know, i am on it for having showers. Also, it's a power shower which is awesome.


There's also a toilet and a little kitchenette kind of thing on my floor with hobs and a fridge for me to use, so I'm set up pretty nicely really. So yeah, that's about it for the first day... I went to sleep reasonably early with the training course in Altenberg to look forward to the next day.