Allison's First Blog

Allison’s GERMAN BLOG When we were off the plane and onto the Autobahn, the first thing I noticed was the cars. Every single one that passed us was either a BMW, a VW or an Audi. Laura’s mum got up to 145 km an hour and other cars just kept passing us! It was pretty crazy and scary. I also kept freaking out and thinking we were going to crash because we were on the other side of the road and I’ve nearly been run over about 4 times for looking the wrong way when crossing the road. I’ve been beeped once too. For the first couple of days I was waking up at about 6am automatically because of jetlag. The day I arrived Laura had a gymnastics competition. It was amazing and so much more advanced than the MDYC club at home. Even the kids who were 7 years old were doing things our club hasn’t even learnt yet. It was really hard to stay awake but Sandra (Laura’s mum) kept saying “you have to wait until at least 6pm before you can sleep.” When I got home, there was a basket full of German chocolates and of course, Haribo Gummibärchen!!! Breakfast in Germany is not too different to Australia, the best thing is the Pretzels!!! They are big, thick heavy bread with little chunky bits of salt. Sometimes I have them with Nutella and it’s lecker lecker! When they asked me if I wanted some cornflakes I said “YES PLEASE” and got pretty excited but then it was really “chocolaty” cereal. Nearly everything they have has chocolate or a lot of sugar in it. I’ve been craving carrots and apples so badly (I never thought I would). Their bread is brown and really thick. Sometimes it has nuts inside it too, but I got used to the Deutsche food pretty quickly. I’ve watched a few German handball matches and it looks like so much fun. It’s a sport I haven’t seen in Australia but I think we should have it. Both men and women can play and everyone gets really competitive. It was really scary the first time I watched a game because about 6 people cried and 1 girl walked off the court in anger (she threw a girl on the ground!) At school, there was a big banner waiting for us and we had to introduce ourselves in German. It was nerve racking doing it on front of 500 kids and it was amazing how they all fit into the main entrance. I like the idea of their school staring earlier and finishing at 1pm because you have much more time after school. It’s good because my host student does a lot of sport. The downside is that they have a lot more homework than in Australia and they are given a days’ notice (or sometimes no notice) for when they have a test. I went with Laura, Gaby and her host partner, Anna to the Bad Aibling Therma (pool). The mayor said it was the biggest project he has done while being the mayor and it cost 30million euros!! I had to pretend I was 15 to get in and it was so relaxing because all the people there were pretty old and everyone was quiet. It was really beautiful and my favorite pool was a whirlpool where you lie back and it just pushes you around. I can’t wait until we go back later with the exchange group. Everyone at the school speaks really good English and it’s fun to scare them about our deadly animals in Australia. They get the most frightened when you tell them about Redback spiders and that you find them in your shoes and they can live in your house. I am starting to understand a lot more of the German now but at the start it was really hard because of the different accents, some different words because they speak Bavarian German, and the speed. When Laura and her Mum talk together I probably understand it 90% of the time. I gave the family 3 double packs of Tim Tams and by the end of the 1st week they were all gone. Whenever we weren’t doing anything they would just eat them! Another thing that’s really popular is this drink called “Cola Mix.” It tastes like Cola mixed with Fanta and it’s really fizzy. It costs 2 euros and if you give back the bottle you get 1euro. It’s the same with all the plastic bottles when you give them back. It’s another good idea we need in Australia. The new Rathaus ( Town Hall) was really nice inside and waiting for us on the table were mini showbags!! We each got a T-shirt that had Bad Aibling on it. We asked the Mayor questions about the town and afterwards he brought us all a double scooped ice-cream. I regret not seeing the Tiramisu flavor. The mayor also paid for our bowling afternoon, he was really nice. He didn’t speak any English so Mr Kusch and Mrs Kreplin translated the answers to the questions for us. On the Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German Reunification Day) my host family went to the Oktoberfest!!! I got to wear a dirndl and my family were all wearing traditional German clothes. I learnt that if the ribbon for the dirndl is on the left you are without a man, on the right you are married and in the middle if you are pregnant. We went by train and going out of the train station into Munich was a human traffic jam because the station led straight into the Oktoberfest. When you get out of the station it’s overwhelming. There are rides everywhere, people everywhere and so many stalls with gingerbread hearts swinging off them in big groups. The lines of the beer tents would probably be an hour and a half long and when we were there they closed off the doors because there was so many people there and no way could they fit anyone else in. We met up with Douglas and Johannes’s family and went around together. I went on a ride that was 50metres high and it went for 100km per hour. I felt pretty sick and it was so crazy we had to take off our shoes and tie back our hair. I got to see the Oktoberfest upside down and when you’re up so high you see how big it actually is. We also went in a ghost tunnel and an Olympic rings ride which means you go upside down about 6 times. We got roses from the shooting and for lunch we had Bratwurst, the best one so far. When I got home, I found out that the fastest man in the world (Usain Bolt) just went to the Oktoberfest 36minutes prior. That was the only bad part for the day. The next day, Laura, Sandra and I travelled to Oberaudorf which was a town 4km from the Austrian border. We went on the ski lifts when there wasn’t any snow up to a luge. I liked to call it Summer Tobogganing. It was like bobsledding in a tube and you couldn’t overtake anyone. Laura and I went on it 4 times each and afterwards we go ice-cream. We also went to the Lake Chiemsee where King Ludwig’s Castle Herrenchiemsee was. That was so beautiful and everything inside was covered in gold leaf. It only took 7 years to make with a minimum of 40 people working on it day and night. It never got finished because the King ran out of money, but we saw so many rooms and it felt like it was finished to me! The saddest part was that you couldn’t take any photos. Afterwards we went to another island, the Fraueninsel where Anna, Zoe and I had lunch at a cute restaurant and I had Spätzle (a traditional German meal). It tasted like soy sauce noodles. Zoe had been craving pumpkin soup and she finally got some.” Every year, the homegroups in the school get to pick somewhere to go for a da for their “Wandertag”. Other homegroups picked to go to the airport or to Sealife but our homegroup decided to go hiking. I was the only Aussie in my class so there was a lot of listening to German that day. We got ½ way up a small mountain and the group had a debate about the class. I think it went for about an hour! It was very interesting and competitive. The next day we went hiking again! We hiked up to a mountain hut, the Mitteralm on Wendelstein, the highest mountain in the area. I walked with Zoe and it felt like the hottest day we have had because of our heavy packs and most of us were wearing shorts. For dinner we had SALAD and pasta!!!! All the Australians were loving the salad and all the Germans were just picking at it. The rooms were really cute and that night was the eclipse. It was really cool seeing the red moon with the mountains and the lights of towns below. The next day we took a gondola up to the top of the mountain where the highest church in Germany is and you can see 100km in a circle around the mountain. The hike down was very interesting, we all got split up somehow and I was in a group with Michi, Georgia, Zoe and Chloe. We were the first ones down and the only ones who went the right way. The boys in front of us walked further than they needed to and came up on the other side of the road and everyone else came up about a kilometer away from the meeting point. They were coming down pretty slowly because Laura had hurt her foot and Mr Kusch was with her. The only people who weren’t there were Gaby and Hannah who Sandra had found over at another mini hill!! They had gotten lost completely and we were going to call the police! On the weekend I went with my host family to Austria!! We stayed at Sandra’s family’s house. In the house was Laura’s Grandma and Grandpa and her Great Grandpa! We went to Hallstatt which was awesome and it was a town that China made an exact copy of. They used to dry out skulls there of people who died because there was no room underground for the people to be buried. Laura’s Grandpa had cooked a BBQ for lunch because they had an Australian and it was so good, their main meal is at lunch and then they have bread rolls for dinner. Her Family is all so nice and her Grandpa and Great Grandpa gave me money to buy an ice cream or for a souvenir for my trip. So far Germany has been an amazing experience and I’m sad that we only have two weeks left. Allison Williams