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.
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