{"id":5119,"date":"2023-03-29T05:45:50","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T05:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/?post_type=article&p=5119"},"modified":"2023-03-29T05:45:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T05:45:50","slug":"year-10-2022-german-exchange-sofie-andersen","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/article\/year-10-2022-german-exchange-sofie-andersen\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 10 2022 German Exchange – Sofie Andersen"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday 3 November 2022 I bade farewell to my family, boarded a plane and set (metaphorical) sail for Germany. I was to spend 3 months living and learning in Hannover, Germany on cultural exchange. This experience was intensely amazing and difficult – a tangle of highs, lows, steep learning curves, and ordinary days.<\/p>\n

I almost didn\u2019t make it. My departure date had been delayed by a fortnight because my initial host family failed the safety screening process! However, somewhat miraculously, I was assigned a new host family and departure date, and finally made it on the plane.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving in Hamburg, my jetlagged self was giddy with excitement about everything, taking blurry photos of a pretzel stand, the sign for the long-distance train I was catching, awkward selfies, and the beautiful view out the train window. Finally, at 6pm local time, I met my host family who helped stuff my bags into their (electric) car and drove us to the village of Garbsen, where I was to live.<\/p>\n

First impressions<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first days in my new country were quite crazy! I was in many ways amazed at the similarities between our countries, excited whenever I noticed German things, and just so excited to learn more and experience EVERYTHING I could. All at once! On my first full day, we went to a university open day near our house, during which I learnt (in German) to build a da Vinci self-supporting bridge and froze a banana with liquid nitrogen. We went for a walk in a beautiful forest. I auditioned for a choir. I started to settle in.<\/p>\n

School<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first days of school didn\u2019t feel like as much of a \u2018culture shock\u2019 as I\u2019d anticipated. I was somehow expecting to be blown over by a somehow unrecognisable school, but I found everything somewhat underwhelmingly\u2026 normal.<\/p>\n

I had a normal morning scramble to get ready and remember everything. My host sister and I walked to school at around 7:40am, at which time it was still dark outside, but so many people rode bikes – the bike racks in front of the school were at least twice as big as the entire area of the office. School went from 8am-1:10pm.<\/p>\n

The school was split across 2 buildings, one of which was a primary school on the middle floor. While some classrooms had smartboards, in most classrooms teachers used blackboards, which seemed so vintage and foreign to me, and projectors. We would have a \u201cVertretungsstunde\u201d or missed period when the teacher was away, in which class was cancelled (there were no substitute teachers) and we either started 1.5 hours late or finished 1.5 hours early.<\/p>\n

I learnt Politics, German, English, Chemistry, Spanish (which my peers had learnt for 5 years and I cannot speak and so this was a class in which I drew mandalas in my book), Biology, Music, Maths, Sport and something called \u2018Werte und Normen\u2019 which translates to values and norms and was a combination of ethics and study of religion, art, and history – 13 subjects!<\/p>\n

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Homesickness<\/strong><\/p>\n

My experience of homesickness was different from how I\u2019d imagined, manifesting often in smaller ways. On the evening I first arrived I felt keenly homesick, feeling utterly out of place and just wanting to be back home. After that first night, I was in a \u2018honeymoon\u2019 phase when everything was amazing and new and exciting, and I didn\u2019t really miss home – it just felt like an amazing holiday.<\/p>\n

Then I started really missing the foods of home, the fruits and my own familiar food and cooking with my mum. As an almost-vegan, I didn\u2019t eat any of the meat or dairy products that Germany is renowned for, but I was exposed to lots and lots of bread. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I like bread, but just not with every meal of the day!! I did get used to the German foods, and my host mum was a great cook, but I still really missed my familiar tastes of home.<\/p>\n

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Language learning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously a key goal of my going to Germany was to improve my German, which I can say did happen! It was hard at first to speak German with my host family – I didn\u2019t know all the words and felt my pronunciation of those I did know was terrible – but I eventually worked up the courage to start and incessantly asked questions, and it became second nature. Now sometimes I accidently go in \u2018German mode,\u2019 and accidentally start saying things in German! By no means is my German perfect, and I still find grammar and articles a pain, but it\u2019s certainly much better than it was before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Berlin<\/strong><\/p>\n

My trip to Berlin was probably the biggest highlight of my entire exchange; it\u2019s what I talk about first whenever anybody asks me about my exchange. Just before the New Year, I went with my host-sister and father and a close family friend of theirs for a packed one-night trip to Berlin.<\/p>\n

After a two hour drive, we visited landmarks like the Siegess\u00e4ule (victory column), Brandenburg gate, and the Reichstag building. Then we went to the Ampelmann (traffic light man) store which has paraphernalia with icons of the unique East Berlin traffic lights that remain today, an entertaining mark of the city\u2019s previous division between east and west. I\u2019ve truly never paid more attention to traffic lights.<\/p>\n

After visiting a memorial and a museum about the Berlin Wall (my history nerd was awestruck to be actually. in. the. place. where the history happened), we stopped at a cafe for some tea and a vegan apple pie – Berlin is a vegan\u2019s haven. It fell dark as we walked the streets of Berlin, which are so charged and chaotic, with loud music playing from a marching crowd, a fire twirler person just on the footpath, and a street lit with fairy lights along rows of trees. We stopped at a tiny little restaurant which made burgers and middle eastern food\u2014I got a falafel bowl that came with about 3 dips and so many toppings that I had the rest for lunch the next day.<\/p>\n

The evening held an improvisational theatre performance in German at a cool Berlin theatre, including scenes of Greek tragedy, someone responding to a pre-recorded zoom meeting, a re-enactment of the first date of couple from the audience, a 5 minute improvised song with piano accompaniment based on a slip written by an audience member of something they\u2019d said that day, and more. I couldn\u2019t stop laughing!<\/p>\n

The next day we had a beautiful Fr\u00fchst\u00fcck (breakfast) from our hosts and drove back to Berlin for a tour in escape tunnels underneath the Berlin Wall. It was utterly fascinating to learn about while actually BEING in the place where the history happened. We also visited the East Side Gallery, a 1.3 kilometre gallery of artwork on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall, and had lunch in Holzmarkt, a trendy alternative Berlin street with a hipster cafe and mish-mash vintage chairs before driving the two hours back to Hannover.<\/p>\n

Berlin was amazing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Main events<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an attempt to spare you from the detailed description I could write, here is list of other events that I found in some way noteworthy from my time in Germany:<\/p>\n