Trains, planes and Cymru am Byth!!

Hello again to my odd blog. Today I'm writing to you from a café next to the train station in Mettlach, and I'm late for school. Not by my own means, I was at Trier Süd at 7.04 as usual but the trains have done something I wasn't even sure German had a word for, they've gone on strike. Luckily I'm not working properly til 3rd lesson, so i'm just waiting for a lift up the mountain.

Anyway, this blog post is about my short visit home last week. This isn't going to be just a long rambling post about my 30 hour wait to get home though as, fun as that was, blow by blow account would prove be a bit boring.

The departures board for the airport, hard to see but almost all flights have "annuliert" written after them (cancelled).

In a nutshell, due to heavy snow Frankfurt am Main airport got closed due to snow, and I got caught up in it. This involved:

• A 4 hour queue on Tues evening. By the end of it me and my fellow queueing buddies were best friends. Shout out to guy going to Copenhagen, guy from Mexico, guy from London and Danish guy.

The Bild (Germany's equivalent of The Sun) summed it up nicely.

• Missing 2 connections and 3 planes being delayed. Or something, lost track a bit.

• Badgering Lufthansa for food vouchers every 4 hours or so, resulting in nearly €50 worth of free food.

My final plane to take me home arriving through the snow. I thought, having got all the way to Brussels, it was cancelled again, but apparently the snow wasn't too much of a problem on Weds evening.

• Upon arriving in Birmingham discovering that my bag never left Frankfurt, and not actually giving a damn because at least I myself had made it home. (Update, it arrived Monday aternoon, 6 days after they lost it...)

Oh well, so ist das Leben and all that.

The first 2 days when I finally got home were nice, just involved seeing my family and oldest friend Abs, watching some films and visiting Cardiff. On the Saturday however Exciting Things took place: Wales v England Six Nations decider.

In general I'm not a massive sports viewer, (at least, apart from this summer when, like everyone else, suddenly all I wanted to do was watch Turkey play Spain at ooh, I don't know, the leaf-blowing semi finals at the Olympics) but when it comes to rugby my love has slowly but surely grown.

As a child I hated rugby, as it would mean every week I (accompanied by the cat) would have to make a quick exit from the living room, startled by my Dad's explosive cheers of "come on Wales!", "run you bugger!" Or "****", my ears ringing from the aural assault that is the sound of his man hands clapping together in tension/excitement.

Anyway, the older I got the better I found watching rugby, and once at uni the fun times with Southampton uni Cymrusoc cemented my own passion for rugby. So, seeing as I was home for the event of the year that was Wales v England I duly made my way into Cardiff to watch the match. Even 4 hours before the atmosphere was electric. A sea of red flowed through St Mary's Street, a hotpot of older generations booming out Sospan Fach and the younger (female) generation replete in tiny dresses, towering heels, red dragons on their faces and blue knees from the cold.

(aside here, but ok, I know we welsh are a hardy lot, but HOW those girls expected to last in those heels from 1pm to 2am I have no idea, and really wanted to ask them).

Fans watching a 15ft screen. Note the random fans dressed in white amongst the red: they're the English, bless them.

Complete with a Welsh dragon on my cheek I too headed pub-wards. We eventually settled on the Gatekeeper, where after some sly yet oh-so-casual shuffling awarded all 4 of us with a brilliant view of the 15 foot screen. At 4.55 I went to queue for the loo, forgetting that the anthem was about to start;upon hearing the words "Mae hen wlad fy nhadau..." I dashed back to my friends, garbling something about how loo time can wait.

Here is a crappy phone video of the craziness that is a welsh pub 200 metres from the stadium singing along to the Welsh nation anthem. WARNING: Turn the volume down before you watch it.

Brief pause to explain something: Wales v England is always a big deal, but this year was particularly special because, although England were winning the tournament at that point, Wales weren't very far behind them on points, so IF Wales were to beat England with 7 points of more of a lead we would win the six nations (though not the Grand Slam, sniff). Tense stuff.

The game kicked off (with huge applause for Leigh Halfpenny, current Welsh rugby god and ideally my future husband) and we screamed our hearts out. At halftime the score was Wales 9 - 3 England, so while we were in good spirits we still hadn't won the tournament by any stretch of the imagination. That is, until, early in the second half Wales scored a try, then a glorious second one, and a conversion. We screamed, hugged each other, hugged randoms, someone poured a pint down my back in excitement and frankly my dear I didn't give a damn. Before we knew it the score was 30 - 3. Even with over 15 mins left people made their way to the bar and bought bottles of champagne, and the few English in the bar either surreptitiously made their way out of the screaming pile of Welsh or (the better ones in my opinion) shrugged their shoulders, summoned a grin and congratulated the people around them.

At full time (despite a cheeky last minute attempt at a try by England) we went crazy for roughly the 8th time :for the second year in a row Wales had won the six nations!

Now, if we could just beat New Zealand one of these decades...

I know I sound like any other sports fan and you're probably sat here wondering WHAT ON EARTH this is doing in a Year Abroad blog in Germany but I'll just say this: its times like these when, no matter how Germany is and will probably continue to be in the future my adopted home, I will never give up the brilliantly average (excluding rugby of course), cheerful and ever-singing nation that is Wales.




Get me the tissues.

PS I am pretty sure this will be the last blog post til the beginning of April, as in 2 days time Tylor, Whitney and I are heading off on a 10 day backpacking adventure around Germany (and Prague) where I may be learning to drive on the right (wrong) side of the road as we go, eek. Tschüss!!

Let's just call this YARP Procrastination...

So this is one of my posts without a theme...or point. I've been in Germany for 6 months now. This is odd. I've only got 3 months left! Seriously where has the time gone?

Identifying the last 6 months as the best of my life is an easy task. I have had SO much fun this year and met some brilliant people. Also my German is y'know, getting better.

However I'm going to be honest, I'm not really the ferociously independent, culture-savvy girl I spend a lot of time pretending to be whilst hanging out in Germany (ok, you'd clearly figured that out already), and there are a few things I probably wouldn't have coped without to be honest. In no specific order...

1. The Scott Mills Show on Radio 1. It's hardly the most intelligent thing in the world and I would probs get more out of listening to German radio during my train journeys but sometimes the random banality that are the podcasts are exactly what you need. I mean like, on those days where its 8 am, you've been up for 2 hours already and haven't a soul to speak to (except for the kids from the special disciplinary school 2 train stops up from you, and that's not pleasant, believe me), its just nice to hear some familiar voices. The downside to this is it does occasionally cause me to laugh out loud on public transport, which is very much frowned at...

2. My flatmates.
What can I say. They've nicknamed me "Betzi", have endless patience for my stammering German and forgetful ways, mother me when I'm stressed and bake delicious bread. They're brilliant party buddies too (in fact much more hardcore than I). What more could I want? When I took the risk of waiting for their decision to take me for the spare room or not (read about that here) it was one of my über rare good decisions.

3. Internet-savvy parents, who are brilliant at keeping up an email correspondence, even if its a slightly odd one at times.

4. In contradiction, a best friend (shout out to Abs) who has the time, patience and good heart to keep up some good old fashioned letter writing. Nothing can cheer me up more after a hard day teaching and travelling than one of her kooky letters with its 5+ stamps waiting in the letter box.

5. Nice teachers. The ones at school who actually seem to give a damn about my presence, and are ready to help me with the little things.

• Example 1: the teachers who have agreed to sit in on my YARP interviews so I don't get suffocated by the red tape that surrounds researching involving children. 

• 2: The teacher who came up to me and went "Do you know what, I've decided. Wales is much more interesting than England, I even bought a Welsh phrase book the other day out of curiosity".* 

Day made.

6. My room. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I looove my room (and my bed) and can't imagine being happy living in a place I didn't like.

7. Trier.

Ahh, was für eine schöne Stadt! Big but not too big, with plenty to do and a nightlife in all shapes and sizes to match your mood. Highlights being:

• Cubi Culum a (miraculously) smoke free, friendly and reasonably priced bar and restaurant in an old cellar in the town centre. 
• Die Grüne Rakete (the green rocket) which is Trier's version of Jesters, only slightly cleaner but on the downside you can smoke it in and they are slightly too-keen on nineties hip-hop. Still, if like me you adore Jesters then perfection is clearly not your main concern.
• New Mintons. They have €5 Schnitzel on Tuesdays, 'nuff said.
• The Porta Nigra. (see background picture on blog). Interesting historically, looks cool and at the end of the day its a very convenient meeting point. **
• The half Turkish kebab house, half bar on the Saarstrasse. 2 things I love about this place:
• it smells SO nice on my walk home from work/anywhere else in Trier basically
• its such an odd combination but it just WORKS. So you go in and the first half is typical Döner laden: a pile of lettuce, a vat of garlic sauce and of course the two friendly Turkish guys slicing off the meat. A few metres beyond however and you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a typical Trierian bar, with wizended locals drinking Bitburger by the barrel and screaming "Jawohl!!" and other things in their incomprehensible Trierian dialect at the Handball on the TV in the corner. Odd.

8. Deutsche Bahn
Say what you like about it, if Britain had a rail network HALF as developed, efficient and reasonably-priced as Germany's David Cameron could take half the year off for Good Behaviour and spend the other half dealing with the important issues, like the ratio of crisps to air in Walker's crisp packets, or finding the key to eternal life purely for Queen Elizabeth the second's use, stuff like that.


9. Whitney and Tylor, two of my favourite people I've got to know this year. We're doing a 9 day trip in 2 weeks time to explore some of eastern Germany, including meeting up with Southampton University's very own GerSoc in Leipzig and then heading on to Prague. You guys rock and I cannot wait!!


10. My laptop. LOL JK. I feel it needs a mention because I use it so much and I wouldn't have coped without one, plus it did survive The Attack of the Facewash back in October, but I do find myself longing for one with a working keyboard and one that doesn't regularly shut down without any warning.


How did I get to 10 already? Odd. Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Bis bald! xx




*no I didn't make that up, he really said that to me! In English too, so it's not even a case of overly hopeful translation.


**sorry, I am joking, it has much more worth than a good meeting point, honest.

Mainzzzzzz

Hello everyone! Friday was St.David's Day in Wales, I was keeping up tradition (ish) by wandering round Trier in my Welsh rugby shirt and making welsh cakes (ish) on a waffle iron.

Finally got round to this post, have figured out how to keep up with the posts: downloading a notepad app and writing them on my phone on the 40 min train ride to or from work.


I've been writing this on a few mornings in late Feb. It's finally light enough to see something other than pure blackness out of the windows, so I've been enjoying admiring the early morning 80 meter coal barges puffing their way up the Saar. I can't help but wonder how the driver, situated at the very back, gets round the many corners of the windy Saar. I have trouble controlling a shopping trolley in a supermarket.


Anyway, I'm rambling. So, starting on Thurs the 7th of February the German FastNacht festival kicked off and so began one of the best weekends of my year abroad so far. The Thursday is called Weiberdonnerstag, which is traditionally a day when women are in control. What it really means is you're allowed to go up to any man wearing a tie, cut a bit off and get a kiss for your trouble.


Sadly I didn't take part it this odd tradition, but my flat did hold a pretty sweet flat party, costumes and all. We all decided to go as animals: I was a sheep, Natalie a peacock (Pfau in German), Mari as the blind mole (off a tv programm I think) and Anne as a rather spectacular owl.

See photo below.

Also, check out this photo of Tylor helping me clean the floor the next morning. I had never seen it so bad!

The next day I did the 4 and a half hour train journey to Marburg, Hessen, to see Vic, a uni friend.


She's working at a variety of uni libraries there (see her blog here) but hangs out with the Erasmus students there, who we met. Marburg is SO beautiful! I would (and have) recommend it to anyone for a day trip or weekend away: see pics below.

After that I jumped on a train to Frankfurt am Main on my way to Mainz. The train station at Frankfurt (oh and Giessen on my way to Marburg by the way) triggered strong flashbacks of mine and Soph's Maggot Farm adventure back in the day. Might make a flashback post about that next.


So, Mainz. To explain, you know how in Britain we have the scrummy tradition of making and eating pancakes just before Lent starts? Well instead for the 5 days before most of Germany including and south of Cologne dresses up in costumes, consumes large amounts of alcohol on the streets, generally goes crazy and throws big parades through towns, villages and cities. This also apparently has something to do with the end of winter too, its a confusing time of year.


Anyway this all culminates on the Monday with huge 4-5 hour long parades in Cologne and Mainz, and I was lucky enough to head to Mainz with Tylor and Whitney to stay in the apartment of Tylor's friend, which even more luckily overlooked the parade route.


The parade kicked off at 11.11 am (people having claimed the best spots -meaning something to lean on- and started drinking from 9am). It consisted of a mixture of music bands, floats with political messages and floats with people chucking out sweets and bouncy balls- check out the pictures below.

Reference to a traditional song sung on this day: "Komm, wil woll'n den Eisbär seh'n" (Come, we want to see the polar bear)

Note the people on the float chucking sweets.

Bit of a political one there...

With 3 sets of large windows overlooking the parade on the first floor we had the opportunity to test the throwing skills of the sweet-throwers in attempting to chuck us sweets through the window, to mixed results. Fun activity in its own right though.

You are supposed to shout "HELAU" and wave your arms in Mainz and "ALAAF" in Cologne. Why, sadly no one actually knew...

Once the parade was finally over we had a little break (ate food and played drinking games) before heading out to the huge street party in our costumes.


2 highlights of this more restful part of the day were:


1) watching the army of street cleaning machines and people take to the road immediately, leaving it in spotless condition after 20 kind. This was almost as entertaining as the parade itself, and was summed up amusingly by Tylor's friend saying "Germans love to PAAARTAY. But then we must clean."


2. The discovery that amaretto and fanta is lecker (tasty).

The great cleanup effort

To be honest, the less said about the evening the better (plus this is getting rather long). I will leave you with 3 excerpts:


1) Whitney finding a giant box costume, donning it, then, unable to see her feet, falling over the kerb and lying helplessly and tortoise-like on her back on the floor. Creased.

2) Me donning aforementioned giant box and dancing to LMFAO's 'I'm Sexy and I know it'. My movements being a bit restricted this basically consisted of me jumping up and down and wiggling the costume from side to side.


3) Tylor and Whitney hunting out the side of an old car bed in Sparmobel (old furniture) on the street and borrowing it. Cue all 3 of us running along the empty streets making race car noises and pretending to crash into our friends. So immature but so much fun.

Sadly said car had an accident overnight. Devastated.