So writing this regularly seems a little difficult at the moment, but I'm pleased to report I'm having too much fun and am a little too busy on my year abroad, so that's the most important thing, gell?*
Anyway, so much to write about! I'll start with Strasbourg.
Feeling a little adventurous and fancying a weekend away Tylor and I headed to Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France. I'd always wanted to go there, having heard it was nice and also being the geeky linguistics student that I am I've written an essay or two about code switching in the area so was curious to see the linguistic situation for myself.
We headed down on the train, enjoying crossing the border into a new country in a comfortable but empty train. Our hotel was just outside of the main town, so ideal. And what a BEAUTIFUL place. Surrounded entirely by water, the old houses lean crookedly on one another for support, overshadowed by a number of majestic churches and of course the cathedral.
Petit France, Strasbourg cute oder?
A view of some lovely houses by the canal in Strasbourg.
I did it, I went full Alsace.
We enjoyed ourselves going for walks, eating crepes and practising our rusty French, until alas I was struck down by food poisoning and consigned to watch crappy French reality TV in bed, leaving Tylor to venture out in the snow alone and feed me miniature amounts of ginger ale.
On Sunday morning we travelled home, breathing a small sigh of relief upon returning to Germany, where you weren't in danger of breaking your leg the moment you stepped off the train, as they'd actually bothered to clear the ice unlike France.
Next fun activity: well actually kinda sad at the same time, but on the Thurs there was a WG party in honour of two things - my flatmate Marie's birthday and a friend, Chiara's, leaving party. Marie cooked an amazing meal for about 12 of us, then ( with a bit too much Riesling getrunken) we headed upstairs to the party.
That's me in the middle with a selection of flatmates and friends :)
Soppy moment here (I try to keep them to a minimum I promise) but several times during the evening I found myself thinking wow, how lucky am I. This is the kind of amazingness I set out for on my year abroad, but didn't hope to actually get; the opportunity to chat with good friends, meet new people, and even better party with them, entirely in German! When I think how lonely I could have been considering the location of my job I feel so very lucky that I took the gamble of coming to live in Trier. I realllyy don't want to leave at the end of the year!
Finally this week my school friend and fellow germanophile Soph took a break from serious doctory stuff to come see me in Trier. Was lush to see her: we reminisced about old times, tried some Guiness and Soph even came to school with me to see how terrible a teacher I am. We played a fun game with my AG (after school English club) where teams had to compete to conjugate a verb correctly: their reward? Being allowed to ask Soph a question. The team at the end with the most amount of info about her won.
I love being able to plan fun lessons like that.
I've already written the follow up post to this about the weekend after Soph's departure, so read on lovely people.
Bis gleich!
*gell is a local dialect word which is making it's sneaky way into my vocabulary, it means "isn't it?"
Also, the title is a shout out to Soph's catchphrase, which I think I heard at least once an hour during her visit :P
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