Ende gut, alles gut.

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Beth's hectic life in Germany!

This post is about a fun weekend in February (the first weekend). Soo picking up straight after the last one, Soph left my flat at 3.10 am to catch the dratted Flibco bus to fly home, which can't have been fun for her. 3 hours later, my own alarm went off and the horrific event I'd been dreading happening since I began working on a mountain an hour's train ride away happened: I accidentally pressed cancel instead of snooze.

A good 30 mins' dozing later, I began to sleepily register my lack of second alarm, so rolled over and looked at the time...a few seconds of pure confusion followed by utter horror, it was 6.53. My train left at 7.04 and the station is 7 mins (speedy) walk away. Shooting out of bed, I was a blur of terrified Welsh girl chucking clothes on and hoping for the best. Things were made more complicated by 2 things: 1) I was doing substitution first thing and had a class of 29 ten year olds waiting for me, so missing the train wasn't an option. 2) I was heading straight to Landau for the weekend after work, so had to pack 3 days worth of stuff into my little rucksack.

Year Abroad Tip: try and get stuff ready the night before work, even on normal days when you have more than 4 minutes to get ready it is a lifesaver.

Mettlach Bahnhof, my second home.

Anyway, I miraculously made the train, but unfortunately my stress levels soon peaked again when faced with 29 very whiny 10-11 year olds, who were doing their best to terrorize the sub. I hereby apologise to all sub teachers I made it my business to be rude to in school, I have now been on the other end of it and it really isn't fun.

Anyway, the less said about that class the better, except I accidentally told the class to "halte die Klappe", which basically means shut up and isn't the politest thing to say, oh and I made my first ever (and ideally last ever) student cry when I wrote his name on the board as a warning if he didn't stop talking. Na ja, teaching isn't all sunshine and lollipops.

Later that day (and having done my third run of the day for public transport), I found myself back on the Harry Potter train (see here for clarification) to Landau to visit Helen, with Meg coming to stay too. We've been trying to keep up these mini Southampton uni reunions roughly once a month as its a nice piece of home life that relieves the craziness of casually living in a foreign country.

Here's the route I took to Landau from Trier. Basically the same as to Wissembourg, as they're very close together.

Then followed a luuuurverly weekend of films, good food, a trip to Karlsruhe to see the beautiful palace, a looot of walking, lush cocktails and a pleasant evening in the rather pretty Irish pub, the evening only being marred by the discovery that my new set of playing cards weirdly only consisted of cards 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace, twice. This limited the amount of games we could play to er, snap.

Helen and I infront of Karlsruhe Palace, pretty breathtaking! Also very cold.

Stolen off Google, this is a shot of Karlsruhe (the palace is at the bottom of the picture) which shows how the city spreads out in a fan like shape from the palace, which I found immensely cool.

Me looking very sad at discovering I'd bought a specialised set of cards by accident that missed out numbers 2-8.

I'm sitting writing this on the train back to Trier from Landau. We had a bit of a lie in after a long sleep (in which Helen and I both nearly elbowed eachother in the face, oops) and a bit of a walk around Landau itself, which I actually really liked.

This week should be interesting: got a few things to sort out with my mentor teacher, who is still making me do a lot of substitution, plus a timetable to jiggle about for a bit of frische Luft as the Germans say.

Next weekend is...Karneval!!! I am more excited than an overly excitable dog about to be fed, so watch this space for a blog post next week explaining what it is and just how much fun I had running around Mainz in my dalmatian onesie/Welsh rugby gear. That's once I've got over the killer hangover, of course.

Tschüssi! Xx

*Oh, and the title is German's equivalent of all's well that ends well.