This is the end...

Easter has been a time of fires, of rejoicing that life has once more survived the winter. Unused to such contrasts between the seasons, last week Jutta and Jurgen, my wonderful hosts, enlightened me on the cold dark depths of the European winter with their photos of the Baltic sea, taken just a few months ago. The sea had frozen in massive waves on the shore, depicting an eerie surf beach stuck in cryogenic stasis. Some people say it was the worst winter in 1000 years, and while we all like to hyperbolise from time to time the point remains that the Osterfeuer has been a highly anticipated celebration this year. With this in mind, the long easter weekend has been both a poetic and appropriate ending point for our trip. To celebrate new life with our hosts is not only about the greenery that has once again filled the countryside of Brandenburg (especially Werder), but a tribute to the friendships that have been begun, tested, and ultimately, strengthened by the descent of 25 Kiwis on a German village on the outskirts of Berlin.

So, with a heavy heart and a heavier stomach, we return to Auckland. All my efforts to avoid cliche are melting away as all I can think to say is that the return is not an ending, but merely the beginning of something much larger. This has been a fantastic experience and I cannot wait to repay the generosity that we have been shown here in Germany. 

auf Wiedersehen Deutschland!

Easter Sunday (And our last Sunday in Germany D:)

It's been so much fun here in Germany and now I guess it has come to an end. Germany is so awesome and everything has been great! The weather in Werder has really shapped up this last week and it has been sunny and hot for the last week.

Easter is a huge holiday in Germany. It is celebrated 100000000x more than we do in NZ. Last night I went to a traditional Easter fire where they burn all the old remains from winter. I went with my host family (And Bradley's host family) to Trechwitz to watch. In Trechwitz, they built a huge lighthouse out of wood in the middle of the field then lit it when it became dark. It was amazing to watch but is got extremely hot after 3 minutes...

The trip to Germany has been really really fun and exciting. Many thanks to Frau Zimmer, Frau Ankersmit, and Herr Howell for orginising this trip and doing a really good job of it. I'm pretty sure everyone loved it as much as I did.

See everyone in NZ on Thursday...

Johnson.

P.S: I HAVE HARIBO :D

20th April

Even though I haven't been asked to write about this day I figured that I will as I haven't posted anything yet and nobody else has written anything about it....sorry if you were going to! I apologise in advance for how much I will probably write and if it is boring to read...XD

The 20th was the German students last day of school and Easter holidays, so we were allowed to sleep in a bit longer than usual to my delight. About 10am we met at the train station and headed off to the zoo along with some of the German students who chose to join us. The zoo was enormous, and so was the variation of animals they had on display. We all saw a million different birds, monkeys, big cats, elephants, giraffes.....bears, including the popular polar bears, panda bears....they even had sheep and cows in the zoo. Within the massive zoo I managed to get separated from the group for a lengthy amount of time but I found my way back eventually. I spent the time I got lost by somehow walking right into the aquarium and reptile house free of charge without a ticket. It was amazing. For someone who hasn't seen a snake before it was incredible, giant snakes were everywhere pressed up against the glass, also loads of water creatures like stingrays and sharks, heaps of spiders, frogs, lizards, turtles, and crocodiles too. Regretably this side trip of mine prevented me from seeing the polar bears but that was alright. The temperatures were surprisingly high, with the day being over 20 degrees and feeling like the NZ summer, everyone cooked in their usual jeans or maybe it was just me. After meeting up again, sharing pictures of the animals others had missed, we headed home leaving us with around 3 hours to prepare for the slightly premature farewell evening.

The farewell evening was held at a bowling alley, which actually turned out to be a skittles (?) alley. Everyone looked fantastic in the dresses and nice clothes they wore specially for the evening. The events began with the dreaded saying of thank you speeches, all the group was quite nervous. This mainly was from having only been informed about the speeches on Monday morning (the farewell evening being on Wednesday night) and not having much time to write and practise them. Every speech was wonderful and moving, some of the group, audience and teachers found it quite emotional. During my speech I found myself in tears as I thanked my 2 hosts, their families, the teachers.....who without, Meine Königin (Frau Zimmer) in particular, any of this absolutely spectacular experience and magnificent exchange trip to Germany would have never happen... After the speeches, and giving our hosts roses we were called upon to dance the Polka thing to Anne-marie, even with minimal space to move we still managed it. This was followed by the waltz, which some remembered while others dashed to join the queue for dinner, which conveniently was being served. The dinner was a bbq, filling and delicious, I enjoyed the steak especially. At some point amongst the blur of the evening both groups of students sang their national anthems, hopefully the NZ anthem didn't sound too bad.... and not forgetting the NZ and German performances. Johnson and Charlie did a piano and saxophone duet which sounded amazing and the Germans had 3 students playing music and Melanie perform a dance, both were much appreciated and enjoyed. To escape the mosquitos most students then headed indoors and tried their luck at skittles, similar to bowling but it involves a slimmer track and the balls are smaller without finger holes. The night was happy and sad finishing around 10pm.

-sarah

Photos

Tuesday 19th April :)

Ooooh first post, oh goodie ^^
On the 19th we went to Berlin (again) and did a tour called The Story of Berlin. It was a very interesting tour which included a tour of an unused bunker for a nuclear attack. We arrived in Berlin at 9:45am, but the tour place didn't open until 10am so the lovely Frau Zimmer gave us 15 minutes to wonder around and spend as much money as possible :) I bought some more things for family and friends and @Mr Howell, buying one bag doesn't make me a bag-a-holic xD When the clock struck 10 we scattered back to the tour building and waited for everyone else to arrive. When everyone got back, we congregated to the entrance of the tour and made our ways in. What I saw was amazing but I didn't get many photos because my camera was nice enough to die ): The first room looked like a rave club thing due to the bright colours all over the room, especially the blue lights on the floor. My group and I went into every room and thought they were all well decorated and such. The first 10 rooms on the first floor had a positive energy because of what was in them. One of my favourite rooms was room 13 because of all of the life size sculptures; there was a humongous (sp?) camera that you could walk into and could look through. It shrunk whatever you could see to a miniature size. Once my group and I had looked through the first floor, we discovered stairs with a sign that read ''Tour continues this way'' If you have been with us on this trip, you will understand why we are not a fan of stairs :P As we walked down in a casual pace, we looked at the walls and saw some slow yet subtle differences in the artwork. It started as some innocent pictures of peoples faces, of whom I think were famous people back in the day, but as you gradually went down the stairs the images and artwork started to have a negative vibe. Then when we were nearing the bottom of the staircase, we saw some Nazi pictures and it gave an eerie feel. Walking downstairs wasn't my favourite part of the tour due to the horrible past of Germany and because of all of the Nazi related topics that were downstairs. It was especially not nice to see that some of the glass moving doors (that funnily enough you can't go through) if you looked at hard enough, made the Swastika : / Dairne and I took a little break and sat on some marble seats, and Dairne was nice enough to tell Mr Howell about her funny yet weird dream, about a building catching fire and her and Callum needing to find everyone who was on the trip, Dairne couldn't find Mr Howell and Callum went in the building and brought our Mr Howell, however he had shrunk to the size of someones hand. The look on Mr Howells face when Dairne told him was priceless. After that awkward moment..... we carried on with the tour, I don't really remember much of the downstairs as my memory is a bit off :L << Laughing face. When we came out of that tour, we met up at the front and went on another tour with the Story of Berlin people.
I feel really bad but I don't remember the tour guides name :S But I do remember that she was a very nice and informative. She took us on a 30minute tour of an unused bunker that the West Berliners built as they feared a nuclear attack. We were taken through numerous rooms when reminded me of a concentration camp,due to the limited space and how everything was set-up. All the beds that were there were metal rectangles and you had no blankets or pillows due to the temperature that it would have been if you stayed in there with 3,600 other people. That's right, it could fit 3,600 people O: The rooms that I can remember were the overall room with the 'beds', the kitchen, which I thought was too small for someone or someones to cook meals for 3,600 people, the gas mask room, those masks are REALLY scary :S, the water filter room, another water room.. a water generator room I think it was, and some other rooms. The tour ended with us emerging onto the street after climbing more stairs :P I think that this was one of my favourite days to date due to how informative the tour was and how I could get a feel of how people used to live in constant fear. Danke schön Frau Zimmer!! I really appreciate how much effort and time you have spent into planning such a wonderful trip for a bunch of semi annoying pupils ;) I think I speak for everyone when I say how thankful I am and how thankful everyone is that we have had such an amazing oppurtunity (sp?) and experience in such a beautiful country. :D

Monday 18 April

Monday was our full day at school. It started out with sports in the morning - aerobics followed by a choice of volleyball, badminton, dancing and hockey. However, people mostly chose volleyball and badminton. As I have a cold, I didn't take part but it was fun and interesting to watch. The afternoon was spent first in a class with our hosts and then in a younger English class, either year 6 or year 8 - I was in year 6 along with about five other Kiwis. We each said a sentence in English about NZ and then the children asked us if we could speak German so we each said a sentence about ourselves in German. We were then each given a group of four or five students to teach them seven new sentences in English about NZ or NZ phrases. This was to help them with their English although most of us just ended up speaking German, I for one. Two girls then did a little play for us, in English, which was very good especially since they've only been learning English for about two years and they knew all their lines off by heart. After lunch we were taught the Polka dance (a.k.a. Anne-Marie) the dance we always perform at the farewell parties for this exchange. We were also taught the Vienna Waltz (if that's how it's spelt) which frightened everyone at first but we soon got the hang of it.

An enjoyable day, if I may say so myself =).

xoxDAIRNExox

Photos from our road-trip

Konigsee at dusk: choice bro!

Salzberg in a moment without snow. In the top right is Hohensalzberg.

Konigsee and a boat.

Kevin the Texan-tour-guide tells us about the glockenspiel of Munchen.