Mit Herz, Ohne Tasche

8 things I learnt on my year abroad

This article first appeared in Edinburgh's DELC newsletter in April 2014.

Hilary Bell has just completed a 6-month language assistantship with the British Council. Teaching English in Bad Kötzting and Roding, two small towns in Bavaria, here she reveals her most enlightening experiences.

1.     Everyone is your friend

Everyone did not want to be my friend, of course. I quickly realised that if I was going to make any friends, I would have to find them myself. One Friday evening, I braved choir practice, where I was immediately enveloped in the conversation of cheery German mothers. Not the age range I was used to, but this led to a flurry of invitations to other social gatherings: a family trip to Passau to visit grandparents, volleyball training, the sports club ball. During an interview for the town newspaper on my departure, my mentor teacher remarked that it was unbelievable how many people I managed to meet. Despite this, I still had a constant fear of pestering people too much at the beginning – I learnt that you can never be too annoying!

Farewell gifts from Bad Kötzting secondary school.

2.     The world is your oyster

Apart from an excellent opportunity to travel Europe, these six months have given me so many friends from different countries. It makes you realise just how small the world is. The people I met made me see how easy it is to travel this earth, as my friendship circle included another language assistant from Italy, an American, and a girl from Brazil who had married a German and settled in Bad Kötzting. I started to think that if something so complex such as navigating the entire planet could be so easy, then surely my everyday problems could be solved this easily, too. It really put things into perspective.

3.       Prejudices are interesting

A common prejudice against Germans is that they can be rude or unaccommodating. On the contrary – some people just seemed to enjoy helping the garbling English girl! Housed in a holiday flat with no washing machine, someone quickly volunteered to cater for my laundry needs while my landlord seemed to be always phoning various banks/ television companies/ bike shops for me. As soon as people realised I needed help, it was astonishing how quickly they offered.

4.       Maybe I speak too much

Ask your average Bavarian how the meal is that you cooked for them, and most will reply with, ‘It will do.’ So many German school children said they do not understand why the British need to use so many words. Indeed, on my recent return to England, I experienced this too, struggling for the first time with the constant small talk of British life. I just wanted to get to the point of things!

5.       Culture shock is a real thing

The German day is upside-down. Get up ridiculously early, come home from school at 1pm to a gigantic lunch, and then spend the afternoon napping (other activities are available). I attempted to flaunt these unwritten German life rules, but it only left me very tired and very full from my 6pm dinner, especially during evenings of  hard-core volleyball training.

6.      Everyone has to go to a German sauna at least once

My attempt to sneak in fully-clothed was foiled, and even a swimming costume was shunned. Unfortunately, I was alone, and so my typically reserved self had no one with whom to giggle. However, once I threw away the Great British prude inside me, the naked sauna experience was quite liberating - I just had to make sure I avoided eye contact with the other teacher from my school who was loitering on a nearby sun lounger.

7.       The Germans aren’t afraid to talk about the Third Reich

For me, this was surprising and refreshing in a world that is so concerned with being politically correct. I was involved in many interesting conversations discussing the time of the Nazis and the best way to remember these events, all of which were started by other people.

8.       Disaster may strike

Mit Herz, ohne Tasche  - With a heart, without a bag. (As quoted from a newspaper report in Germany on my time in the town.)

There have been plenty of setbacks in the past six months: my bag and passport were stolen in Munich; yobs punctured both of my bike tyres (my only mode of transport in the Bavarian Forest); I was first given a flat which was so remote it had neither internet nor phone signal; the schools did not really expect me to come; the schools did not really expect me to stay; German bureaucracy once got the better of me and rendered me weeping in the staff room. Nevertheless, it was an even bigger achievement when all of these issues were solved, especially in a different language. After everything, I began to stop feeling surprised when the words to come out of my mouth were automatically German – such a feeling of achievement!

What happened in Bavaria?! Part II

     'We didn't think you would come.'

I must have done something right at one point

     On my first day at school, I was greeted by this compliment. What she was trying to say about British reliability I am not sure, but I took it as something positive; that the worst was over, now I was here and we could go on as if the doubting never happened.

     The doubting did not stop happening. About 6 weeks into term, I asked if I could set up an after-school club for English. 'My own lessons!' I thought, 'Now I can do what I came here to do!'

     Oh no. It was never going to be that simple. 

     On the week before, I designed a beautiful poster, specifying the time and date I had been given. I found some fancy pictures of the Union Jack off Google images. I printed the posters not only on white paper, but also on yellow card. Lesson plans were made, fun 'ice-breakers' researched. I was ready to go.

     The day of after-school class came, and, dressed in my most authoritative get-up (jeans and a jumper or else the Germans get confused at the output of effort into outfit selections), I strolled along to class H.13. H.13 was harder to find than H.12 and H.14. It began to seem to me that H.13 was a ploy to make me shut up about after-school English.

     Eventually, though, I found H.13. 'I'm sure I have been in this room before', I thought as I opened the door. Oh yes. Oh yes, I had. A row of sinks greeted me. And some mirrors. And some toilet cubicles. No one was there waiting for after-school English. I began to realise that I had advertised to the whole school that class was going to take place in the toilets. 

     Confronting my mentor about the situation was yet another humiliation. 'I must have got confused', she chuckled, and went back to her lunch. 

     And that was the end of after-school English class. 

What happened in Bavaria?!

Whenever people ask about my life in Bavaria, my answers never quite seem to give the full story. That is, my life there comes out seeming either amazing, or truly, truly awful. So here, I am going to try to recount the actual stories of the Bavarian Forest.

The beginning – September 2013

I arrived, after a horrendously long journey from Cologne, to be met at the station (it was really a shed with train tracks) by a man who looked kinda like an angry guinea-pig. As we drove to my new abode, he explained that my flat wasn’t actually in the big town where the school was, but a hamlet, called something which translates as ‘under the grape river’. I remember being remarkably positive, but surely my fruit-related home should have been the first warning.

My landlady lived in the same house as me. A quite sweet but a little senile old lady, who only spoke Bavarian German, was to look after me, a clueless and also senile English girl who spoke no form of German. When my parents came to stay, they asked me why I spoke so loudly when I tried to speak German. ‘You sound quite angry’, they said.

Sunset in the Forest

As I heaved my belongings up the stairs, I noticed my phone had no signal. ‘Do you have Internet?’ I enquired. The landlady (her name was Fanny, by the way) looked appalled and confused. I tried to ignore the first fissons of panic. Good. No phone signal and no internet.

We passed another door on the stairs, and I asked if other people lived here. On receiving a positive answer, I began to cheer again. Later that evening, the man who picked me up from the station (he was supposed to be my mentor) took me out for dinner with the headmaster of the other school I was going to be working at. They fed me weird vinegary salad and beer and Bavarian schnapps. Another teacher (HP his name was, more on this dude to follow) arrived later, to jokes from the other two teachers about his lateness being due to ‘having to keep his wife warm’. I went home feeling both the alcohol, and a sinking feeling that these teachers were not the friendliest of their kind in Bavaria.

The Best Goodbyes

Hindsight will definitely be the best way to look at my time in Bavaria.

Stranded in Bavaria

As the train pulled out of Cham (ironically pronounced ‘calm’ – something I generally was not during my time in the forest), I felt largely a sense of relief that my assistantship had ended. Flowers and various Bavarian goodies were bestowed upon me in the staffroom of Bad Kötzting, a full-blown interview for the local newspaper was arranged, and a table at the Chinese Buffet was reserved for my leaving party. Due to all of the fuss, they are some of the least painful – and best – Goodbyes I have had to say this year. The past 6 months have really highlighted how small the small world is, and I know that there is always a place for me here for a weekend. Saying goodbye to good friends who I will hopefully see again one day was comparatively less painful than snatched hugs at Sheffield station, Munich airport, or my grandparents’ living room. The image of Stephan and Werner, my gay German parents, waving me off on the driveway, with the cat in their arms, will stay with me forever.

Hello world - an accidental poem

‘I can’t deal with the commitment’, I thought, ‘I barely have time to eat’.

(I am a bad cook. It takes a long time. There is no one to wash up after me.)

But yet, here I am, committing to a blog, at ten to midnight on a Sunday night. Things keep on happening to me, and sometimes they are quite funny. Sometimes, they are awful (mostly they are awful). But as one of my best friends said to me before I left, ‘You should make a blog, bad stuff always happens to you.’  And so it begins!