German Exchange 2007
The annual German Exchange with the Bertolt Brecht School in Nuremberg was an eventful occasion this year. The thirteen German pupils and their teachers stayed with us during the first week in February. Apart from the usual visits to London, the group spent a day in school and participated in various bi-lingual lessons. On their final morning, they visited Eltham Palace and left that afternoon for Stansted Airport, taking our very own Joe Grima with them. Due to his participation in a Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme trip during half term, the plan was for Joe to go ahead to Nuremberg and for us to join him there on Thursday 8th February. It was not to be. The day we had booked our return visit coincided with the heaviest snowfall to hit Stansted in recent years. It was a health and safety nightmare: a whole five inches of snow forced the clearly unprepared authorities to shut the airport for much of the day. Stephen Lenzi’s premonition that he would once travel all the way to Stansted just for breakfast turned out to be horribly accurate, as all flights were cancelled and we realized to our horror that what was to have been the German Exchange was, in fact, merely a cooked breakfast at the airport and a 
return coach trip to Victoria Station. Faced with the prospect of having to wait until Sunday for a direct flight to Nuremberg, Mr Pollard took the rash decision of accepting Air Berlin’s offer of a Friday night flight to Leipzig, which is miles away from Nuremberg but at least in Germany. Some quick internet research from our contact at home Mr Cheshire secured us accommodation at the youth hostel in Leipzig. We arrived at midnight. It was situated in the middle of a deserted housing estate. We were greeted with an extensive list of rules and a rather unpleasant smell in the foyer. The following morning, we did a whistlestop sight-seeing tour of Leipzig’s main train station and took some pictures of the taxi rank in front of it, before beginning our epic five hour train journey down to Nuremberg. Changing trains in the Bavarian town of Hof ought to have been a stress-free experience, and all was well until the train was about to leave and good old David Ireland announced that he had left his bag containing his passport on our previous train. This did at least give us ample opportunity to try out some GCSE German live with an unsurprisingly unhelpful and not at all bothered Bavarian gentleman at Nuremberg train station. The students spent their weekend with their partners; Mr Howls and Mr Pollard hit the Starlight Karaoke Bar opposite Aldi in Nuremberg’s historic old town. On Monday we reconvened in school. Having attended some lessons with their partners, the entire group went into Nuremberg for a guided tour. On Tuesday we had a guided tour in German of Albrecht Dürer’s house with a vivacious lady masquerading as his sister Agnes, before going to the Toy Museum and having lunch at the famous little sausage restaurant. In the afternoon we visited the more sombre 
surroundings of the former Nazi rally grounds and toured the excellent Dokuzentrum. The following day we went to more lessons in school and continued our journey to Vienna. This provided a new twist on our usual travel routine, and we were joined on this leg of the tour by Miss Hobot. Despite some pretty wet weather, we took in various cultural treasures including St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the big wheel at the Prater, the Rosenberger self-service Gemüse restaurant and a production of Die Fledermaus at the Volksoper. Miss Hobot’s highlight was our return journey from the very Eastern European Bratislava airport. It was a great trip, and the German Department in partnership with Frau Brunner in Nuremberg is hoping to diversify into further links including work experience. Stay tuned for future developments…
Links Modern Foreign Languages | German | Cultural Trip to Berlin Nov '06