Ode an die Freunde
23:04 |
| Heidelberg, 2014 |
Today I'm taking a quick break from writing about my experiences in France and Italy and dedicating a post to a country that's had a far bigger impact on my year abroad than I ever would have expected. In case it wasn't obvious from the title, that country is Germany.
Despite my (very) basic knowledge of the German language and having been there twice, my knowledge of Germany didn't really extend beyond the history of the two World Wars, their role in the Cold War and the ubiquitous articles in the British news about Angela Merkel desperately trying to keep the rest of the EU in line. This changed this year. As I arrived in Pavia 2 weeks before the Italian students came back from the summer, I was faced with the choice of having Erasmus friends or no friends. I opted for friends, a rather large proportion of whom happened to be from Germany.
Part of the Erasmus experience is bridging gaps between countries and learning about new cultures. If I have learnt anything about the Germans it is that we are more similar than I believed. The general attitude of wanting to get things done is the same, although they're somewhat better at executing it. Their zebra crossings are actually zebra crossings, not just vague guidelines indicating where you may be able to dash across the road with a slightly smaller risk of being run down by a speeding Peugeot. They're one of the only countries in mainland Europe that plays decent music in their nightclubs.* I have had a couple of altercations regarding queueing, as my assumption that Germans would be the natural allies of the British on this issue turned out to be very false, but I can work with that.
I decided before Christmas that I wasn't coming back to the UK for Easter. The French Easter break doesn't begin until Easter Monday itself, so by the time I got back to the UK their holidays would be almost finished. This would mean Hertfordshire, which is not the most exciting place in the world to begin with, would be void of the people I enjoy spending time with there. My sister is in her final year of A Levels and my parents work, so I would have spent most of my time lying on the sofa plumbing the hideous depths of British daytime television. My friends who are still in Bristol, who have valiantly put up with being under constant yammering assault from me via Facebook, made it fairly clear that they were going to be too busy with finals and dissertations to entertain me upon my arrival. Faced with the prospect of being stuck indoors with no one to play with when I could be enjoying better weather and less busy people, I opted to stay on the continent. Which better country to visit than the home of most of my new friends?
I celebrated my 21st birthday in April and decided to spend my money on an Interrail ticket, which made travelling to Germany from the south of France infinitely easier and cheaper than trying to organise everything by bus. This mostly went smoothly, although SNCF's reluctance to let too many Interrailers on their fast trains meant that my journey from Aix to Frankfurt took over 16 hours including stopovers. Germany, it transpires, is more sympathetic towards young foreigners; I was able to use all of their trains, including the expensive fast ones, whenever I wanted without reservations. Once I got there it was smooth sailing. They didn't even interrogate me at border control, unlike the Swiss who held me in Basel for 10 minutes because they couldn't work out why someone who spoke German appallingly wanted to go to Germany. I managed to visit 7 new cities (Würzburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Ansbach, Heidelberg, Mannheim and Bonn) and all without incurring any accidental fines, sleeping rough in train stations or losing my passport. I call that a success.
Most of my trip was spent in Bavaria which is, I've discovered, where the stereotypical English ideas of what Germany is like come from. Old Bavarian houses resemble the illustrations from my childhood fairy tale books and the Bavarian accent is the one that British people tend to associate with Germany as a whole (much to the chagrin of northerners). Bavaria is where I spotted people dressed up in dirndls and lederhosen and where I tried 4 different types of wurst. Bavaria is the home of the Black Forest and the football team Bayern Munich, who seem to be the Chelsea FC of Germany in that they are loved and hated in equal measure. I am still completely incapable of judging whether someone has a Bavarian accent or not. However, seeing as I can't even tell people from Belfast and Dublin apart by accent, this isn't particularly surprising.
Eager as I always am to assimilate in with the locals, I indulged in a few German traditions on my travels. I tried lots of wurst as well as German wine, German cheese and German sauerkraut, all of which was lovely. I went to a beer garden in Munich and was forced to drink beer by my two Bavarian companions (to no avail - I still don't like it and secretly believe no one really does). I also took part in the traditional May 1st activities. On May 1st, which is a bank holiday in Germany, people like to meet up in big groups with a cart full of beer and go for a walk together. Sure enough, my host's friends turned up with their kinderwagon full of booze, which was duly consumed with the expected gusto. We even braved the damp weather for a walk. Another similarity between Germany and the UK - the weather is just as temperamental in the springtime. I somehow got sunburnt and rained on in the same day.
I spent almost all of my time in Germany accompanied by native speakers. This turned out to be a very good thing as my German is still at the "My name is Rowena, I am 21, I have a pet fish" stage. Holding a conversation with anyone who isn't selling food or under the age of 5 is somewhat beyond my capabilities. I started re-learning German in January and foolishly convinced myself that I'd make it up to conversational standard before I embarked on my trip. I discovered how mistaken I was when I met a group of people who didn't speak much English and was completely unable to answer most of their questions. German is pretty far removed from romance languages so I assumed that, even if I found it difficult to learn compared to French and Italian, at least I would safe from mixing my languages. I was wrong. So, so wrong. Not only does my German come out Italian but, in a cruel twist of fate, my Italian has started coming out German. I'm seriously considering my original plan of finding a German tandem partner in Bristol next year to keep up the language for fear of failing all of meine esami.
As with all travels, my journey through southern and central Germany was an adventure full of discoveries. I discovered that German trains actually can be late occasionally, that bratwurst is the closest you'll get in mainland Europe to British sausages, that Germany actually produces very drinkable white wine and that I still have a long, long way to go before I can add "competent German speaker" to my CV. But my favourite discovery of all? There's a popular brand of ice-cream in Germany that goes by the name of Bum Bum. Perhaps I should stick with talking to 5-year-olds after all.
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| http://www.bizarresigns.com/funny-signs-2/bum-bum-ice-cream-chocolate-please/ |
*I try to keep away from potentially offensive statements in this blog but I am not going to pull any punches here. You guys really need to up your game as far as mainstream music is concerned. Italy, I am looking at you in particular.
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