Wednesday, 16 March 2011

YA: More Civilised Pursuits

You've heard the tales of the most recent debauchery, but I feel it's only right to inform you of all the stuff I've been doing that didn't involve alcohol, just to prove that they did, in fact, happen.

So, first things first, the Cambridge Exams have now been and gone. The speaking exams came first, with two pairs of very British examiners setting up camp at HHG a couple of Saturdays ago and ploughing through seventeen or so groups. I spent the first half of my day delivering plates of sandwiches and bottles of juice, the middle part trying to warm up the kids with English conversation and the final part taking away the now-empty platters and coffee pots. The feedback was positive; everyone was apparently of a very high standard, and I breathed a sigh of relief. My doubts, by the way, were by no means with the students - in my opinion they're all brilliant English speakers, they knock spots off my German. However, I was full of niggling doubts that I wouldn't have prepared them properly and if something went wrong it would be my fault.

The written exams followed the weekend after, with the higher level CAE taking place on the Friday and the FCE on the Saturday. Both these days were long and exhausting. There are four papers to the written part of a Cambridge English Award: reading, writing, use of English, and listening. In total and with breaks in between, the time taken to write all four papers was about five hours for FCE and six for CAE. And it wasn't only exhausting for the students; I was personally knackered by  the time it got to Saturday night and ended up crashing out at quarter past eight. How very rock and roll. Additionally, I have new sympathies with exam invigilators around with the world for the hours of boredom they must endure plodding up and down the rows of desks. At least I could do the exam papers to pass the time and hence provide a bit of feedback to the students during the breaks, but I also spent a lot of my time doodling, wandering aimlessly around and watching the clock. And if I wasn't entirely sure I was integrated into the school, I am now, because after the last exam I was entrusted with the school keys to look after over the weekend (my mentor teacher joking that I wasn't to hold any parties before Monday morning). It felt very similar to being asked to take care of the class hamster over the holidays. Now everything is over completely, with no lessons to plan or papers to mark, I'm at a bit of a loss of what to do with myself. No fear though, I have Abi-Vorbereitung (A Level preparation) starting with the Klasse 13 Grundkurs next week, so I'll be back to planning and panicking in no time.

The play I was working on with Klasse 6 has also been and gone. Final rehearsals came together, people finally learnt their lines and the six small boys playing Robin Hood and his Merry Men were talked into wearing their costumes. If you ever want to make a ten year old boy furious with you tell him that a) he's got to wear tights and b) he has to do a dance whilst wearing those tights (yes, you guessed it, the dance was indeed to "Men In Tights"). The conversation shouted through the door of the boys toilets whilst they were changing into the dreaded tights went something like this:

Boy: We can't wear these!
Franzi (the teacher): Why?
Boy: Well, they're very tight!
Franzi. Yes. They're tights...

It was thunderous expressions all round and I'm not sure Franzi and myself will ever be forgiven. Still, the play itself went down an absolute storm, both at the Bilingual Night and and the Grundschultheatertag (the day(s) when the pupils from the nearby primary schools are invited into their prospective "big school" to watch a few plays, in both English and German). With the set, the lighting and the music everything came together nicely, and I barely had to say "sssssh!" at all when I was hovering around behind the scenes. The other plays were very enjoyable too. I'd helped a little with the other Klasse 6 production, one they had written themselves of the 'Hound Of the Baskervilles', but no where near as much as with 'Robin Hood', so I could sit in the audience and watch that one with little idea beforehand of how the finished version would look. The other play at the Bilingual Night, 'The Hysterical History Of The Trojan War', in which some of my FCE students were participating, had me in absolute stitches. Once they included the subtle Star Wars joke I was sold, but casting half of Kl 5d (my former Klasse 5 group who I miss teaching terribly) as the entire Spartan army, having the Greek gods chat to each other on their mobiles and wheeling the tiny toy rocking horse onto the stage to represent the gigantic wooden structure of folklore were stokes of genius.

In terms of the more classy social activities, there have been a couple, mostly involving food. A couple of weeks ago we went out for Thai food as a sort of unofficial goodbye meal for Lara and a few nights ago I went to the cinema to see my second non-subtitled film in German; "Unknown Identity", set in Berlin and starring Liam Neeson. There were a lot of German actors in it, and I would be interested in seeing it in English to see which bits were spoken in German originally and which bits weren't. The night before the CAE written exams, Petra took me to the Scottish restaurant in Mülheim to watch a gig by The Paul McKenna Band, a traditional Scottish folk group who are just embarking on a European tour. The music was right up my street and the first lot of live folk I've seen in a long time, so I had a fantastic evening enjoying beautiful food whilst listening to beautiful melodies, and have a new folk CD to boot. I then stopped the night at her flat before the exams the next day. We slept in, had a very nice breakfast and were late. Ah, well. Petra also took me to another quirky little restaurant (apparently Germany is full of them) the next day after the CAE exams were over. It serves schnitzel and pancakes and is called "Hexenhaus". Hex means 'witch' in German and the entire place is decked out in little models of witches, whilst your drinks are brought to you by a little model train that travels around the room. I'm a big kid at heart and I thought this was brilliant. Especially the train.

Phew! What a month it's been. What with Cambridge, the play(s), Karneval and all my other crazy commitments now in the past, I feel at a bit of a loose end. Saying that, it has been nice to get some sleep and to enjoy the goodies that seem to be being sent to me unceasingly at the moment by my wonderful friends and family. I've actually sat down and watched some TV, cooked meals in my flat, and I've been getting a regular eight hours a night again. I might even actually now be able to find the time to send another batch of letters out.

You know it's going to get hectic again soon. But, just for now, I'm enjoying my couple of days off.

Sunday, 13 March 2011

YA: Rated 18+ (Do Not Read If You Are Of A Sensitive Disposition)

I've decided to split my blog this time round, writing a nice one about work and classy social commitments which  I will be able to show to my grandmother, and this one which will be about, erm... none of that. Brace yourself, readers, for scenes of pillage, plunder and parrot costumes. Let the debauchery commence!

The first tale of alcohol-fuelled frolics I feel I should impart is that of the fateful trip to Djazz about a month ago. Except I can't impart too much because I don't remember too much. I'll tell you about what I do recall. We pre-lashed at Kate's on a dangerous mix of vodka and Nuwang* before tottering off to the club around 11.30. Upon arriving at the club, we went to dump our stuff in the unmanned cloakroom, where there was a piano that I drunkenly attempted to play, and a tambourine, which I stole.** I believe some dancing may have followed this, though what we were dancing to I cannot say. Then came the clincher, the point of the evening from which all that follows has been entirely wiped from my knoweldge; somebody, and I name no names (Kate), got the shots in. That one drop of sambucca destroyed whatever chance any of us had of knowing what the hell happened that night, and between that point and finding Kelsey at 7am sat in Starbucks (drinking a frappé and babbling about some bloke named Samsung), I only recall a total five minutes worth of events. The rest of the night we have subsequently attempted to piece together through photographic evidence, but that in itself is so bizarre that it hasn't helped much: photos in front of the Naked Man statue, photos outside Kate's building, photos outside Kate's school... they track our drunken trail across Duisburg and still we have no recollection of any of it. I guess we'll never know.



You would have thought that after that little escapade I would have left it at least a week before daring to touch the Devil Drink again. Not a bit of it. Try less than 24 hours. For it was the good Matthew Endersby's leaving party and there was no way he was going to let us get away with spending the night on only lemonade and water. The night kicked off in very British style with a wonderful traditional roast dinner courtesy of Cerys. Yum. Then there were cornflake crispy cakes for dessert courtesy of Sammy. Double yum. Then, after a handing over of pressies and cards, not to mention a speech written by Lyndsay which, in her absence, I attempted to deliver with a straight face, we just got smashed. I'm pleased to say I curbed myself on the previous night and just got moderately merry, but not so Kelsey, who somehow acquired an odd mix of a someone else's wine and cherry liquor, before bumbling off out the flat in search of God knows what and causing a full-scale panic among the rest of us who had no idea where she'd gone. Apparently she'd been talking to some people from Manchester, but whatever, she gave me a heart-attack. When we did eventually decide to go out, we left one of our number, a little worse-for-wear, behind and set about buying cocktails-to-go from a nearby bar to get us through the oh-so-arduous walk to the club. Which we reached, eventually, in varying degrees of a state. I think the rest of the night passed without drama (except a truly foul cheeseburger at 4am) and, needless to say, my body was not thanking me for that weekend for some days to come.

You'll be pleased to know that I take a break from heavy drinking for a couple of weeks after this. My ravaged liver needed a bit of a holiday in order to prepare itself for the party-highlight of the Germany calender: Karneval.



Yes, Karneval. Commencing at 11.11 on the Thursday before the start of Lent, it lasts until the wee hours of Tuesday morning, with everybody wearing crazy costumes and boozing considerably throughout. Each day has a different significance, with the most important being the Thursday, Wieberfastnacht (which has something to do with female empowerment and means women can chop off men's ties and kiss whoever they want) and Rosenmontag (which features great big parades of thousands of people in all the major cities with floats and throwing goodies to the crowds). In NRW, the best place to go to party is definitely Cologne, although having sampled Düsseldorf I can tell you that that's pretty damn awesome as well. This is my Karneval story...



Thursday: Due to having to work until 3pm on Thursday I was unable to attend the big celebration kick-off. However, I raced over to Kelsey's after work to transform myself into a parrot*** and we managed to make it to Cologne for around 7. We even made sure we caught the others up on the train, snaffling on a couple of bottles of (awful) wine and playing the best (or most stupid) drinking game even invented: Drink Whenever You See Somebody In A Costume. We then found Kate and Lara somewhere around Clodwigplatz and proceeded to have a good ol' party. And it really was lots of fun for a while. A generous man kept buying all four of us drinks, Lara found a tambourine, we drew face-paint flags on each other and we sang riotously to the German Karneval tunes. When Kate and Lara, who after all had been on it far longer than Kelsey and myself decided to head home, we kept the party going, following two blokes dressed as pigs to some scrappy little club in Barbarossaplatz. Fun was still being had. In fact, fun was had right up until around 2.30am, whereupon fun very rapidly stopped being had because I discovered the absence of my purse; it had been stolen out of my bag. The rest of the night was given over to a trip to the police station, my hysterical tears and a prolonged sit in McDonalds until we could get the first train home on Friday morning. I got home at 7am, showered and went straight out again to the bank to cancel my cards and generally fix my life. I think I finally got to bed at bout 11.30am, after having been up for 26 hours.

Saturday: Saturday was Düsseldorf day. Well, night, really as we didn't get there until gone 9pm. I'm in love with Düsseldorf Altstadt normally, but that night it was magical. They'd rigged up a speaker system all down the main streets playing out a truly eclectic mix of tunes (The Killers, Status Quo, Viva Colonia, Whitney Huston...) and there were stalls every few meters supplying all your Karneval needs, from funny hats to beer, from Kanye sunglasses to "Karneval Kocktail". The atmosphere was infectious. We hit out favourite Irish pub before partying in the streets and then headed to Ratingerstrasse to dance the rest of the night away in Goldener Einhorn, where we met some true legends, baffled at the fact that "When A Child Is Born" is apparently a party tune in this country, and I stole a builder's hat.

Monday: 22 whole hours of party time. Everything commenced at 8.42 when, armed with a bottle of wine and dressed like twats, we grabbed the 8.42 to Cologne. We stocked up with more beer on arrival and, avoiding the attentions of an extremely pissed bloke dressed as pink bunny rabbit, we headed off to the... well, we headed off somewhere and found ourselves a good spot to watch the parade. By this time, however, I was experiencing a call of nature and all the toilets seemed to be some kind of VIP only affair. So, Kelsey, master of crime, busted me into a locked set using her own house key. Amazing. Until, that is, we got shouted at and had to run away (fortunately, I'd already made use of the facilities, so this wasn't too much of a problem). The parade itself was crackers; hours and hours of people and floats trooping by, pelting the baying crowds with biscuits, chocolate and sweeties. As Ally was dressed as a racial-stereotype Mexican, we used his hat as a container and got down to some dirty fighting in a quest to amass as much Haribo as we could. We were so good we decided to form a band of Superhero crime fighters called the "Süssigkeiten Ninjas, and then pigged out on all our spoils until we felt sick.



The only way to combat the excess of chocolate was Bratwurst and beer, which is what we did. The next few hours were a mixture of singing loudly to German anthems, pratting about in a shopping trolley in front of the Cologne Cathedral and showcasing dance moves from Jersey Shore. By 11.30 we were getting bored of staying down by the river and headed off to another part of town, eventually ending up in the same place I had been on Thursday when I got robbed. However, far from resenting that crappy little bar, I'm actually a little bit in love with it. They played some banging records (including "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, allowing Ally and myself to whack out the David Armand dance routine) and I'm sure I danced solidly and with gutso for at least three hours. Around 3am we decided it would be an idea to hit the road but then accidentally found ourselves in another bar, dancing around behind the full length glass windows and waving to the people outside. I'm not quite sure how this happened, and as Kate pointed out, we must have looked just like prostitutes in Amsterdam, prostitutes in Amsterdam dressed as red indians, cave girls or parrots. We ended up eventually leaving around 5 and getting back to Duisburg around 6.30 on Tuesday morning, staggering blearily through the crowds of commuters now on the their way work. A terrible sight indeed. I fell in my front door at seven and crashed out till lunch, when I got up again, washed the gunk from my face and hair and headed over to Carol's for hangover pancakes**** and to say bye to Lara, whose sadly now left us for the sunnier climes of Madrid. Personally, I'd have chosen Duisburg myself. 







I loved Karneval, but I've been glad of the few days normality that have followed it's dramatic climax. I'm not sure I could have handled another weekend quite like that one, though it was brilliant to watch this normally conservative region well and truly let its hair down. It was an unforgettable experience to say the very least!

And that, folks, is the cumulation of my most recent drunken escapades. I'm sure there will be new ones to add to the record very soon. There always are. However, with my next post I promise you something a little more civilised and so,  as always, stay tuned. 

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*It's ALWAYS the Nuwang. For those of you that don't know, it's a cheep pear-favoured wine coloured nuclear-green. At 10% volume, you'd wonder how it manages to do such terrible things to people, but it does.
** I still have it. It's on my desk right now. You know when you wake up alongside a tambourine that it's been a good night.
*** I made my own costume and it was pretty damn amazing, even if I do say so myself.
**** It was Pancake Day back home after all. The Germans don't celebrate Pancake Day, the poor bastards. The again, they have Karneval, so swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Sunday, 6 March 2011

Creative Writing: "Planning A Journey"

This is the final piece I wrote for Folktales following it's sad ending earlier today. I will miss writing for it greatly and have enjoyed every show I ever listened to immensely. Let's hope it's simply only in hiatus, eh?
This is the first poem I have written in earnest since the age of ten, so be gentle in your judgement. I should say also that the element of sadness is only due to me missing home, and not to the fact that I don't enjoy my life over in Germany. It was inspired by "Planning A Journey" by Leeds local folk band Whiter Than. 
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Take me back to those northern towns,
I miss the wind and the rain.
Those people I know, those places I go,
Here’s hoping that nothing has changed.

It feels like I’ve been here too long now,
Across the channel, far from home.
I’m calling family and friends, trying to pretend,
That I’m happy, that I don’t feel alone.

Because there’s something not quite right here,
I feel somehow that I don’t quite belong.
Six months passed away and there isn’t a day,
When everything fits and nothing goes wrong.

I long for a place, not exciting, not pretty,
Rather grimy, not special, a typical city,
But a place that is, for one person at least,
Completely and utterly beautiful.
I want to breathe in concrete and smoke,
Fill my lungs with memories and choke,
With laughter as I recall every time,
We did something incredibly stupid.
Let’s go to the places we said that we would,
Visit again if only we could,
Find the money or the time to spend,
On such fun and triviality.
We can walk together down old streets in old shoes,
Sit in the park at night and listen to blues.
We’ll drink coffee in that place we went every day,
And I’ll feel comfortable in my own skin.
We’ll shop for niche clothing and second hand books,
In tiny hidden shops, and get funny looks,
For giggling loudly at some silly joke
That no one else will find funny.

I’ll do everything I always did,
With the people I always did them with,
And I’ll love every second,
Because I know that this is my place, and these are my people.

So, then, I’m planning a journey,
For a time not so far away.
And then I won’t need to reminisce about everything I miss,
I can live it; I’ll be home, to stay.

I’m counting down the days until June.
Get the kettle on, love, I’ll see you soon.