YA: To Miss Or Not To Miss...

Considering I´ve got less than a month in Germany left to go, I´ve been spending a considerable amount of time thinking about all the things I´m going to miss when I go home and all the other things I won´t be so sad to leave behind. There´s a considerable amount in both catorgories and I thought, mostly because I´ve got vast reserves of time to bun at work today, that I would share these thoughts with you all.

First, I will be thoroughly glad to get rid of the early mornings. German school starts ludicrously early; the first lesson commences at 8.15, but some clever-dick also invented the 0te Stunde (a lesson ususally used only when the school are unable to fit certain sixth form classes into an ordnary timetable) which begins a whole 50 minutes earlier at 7.25. I´ve just about got used to the 6am wake up calls on ordinary school days but it´s excruitating for my student brain to be forced out of bed at 5.15 every Tuesday and expected to be awake and alert two hours later. It´s especially excruitating when, after two weeks off, you drag yourself into work at this oscenely early hour to find that the teacher you´re supposed to be working with is, in fact, away, and the class is cancelled. Like today. However, I will miss the job itself. I am by no means a natural teacher and I'm fairly confident it will not be a career I will be pursuing once my degree is over, but I can't deny that's it's been fun and there have been moments when I have been immensely proud of the classes I've helped to teach. Then there's the wage, which is bangin'. I will also miss playing my fun game, "Spot The Mini-Versions Of My Friends Among The Kids". A surprising number of you do have miniature HHG counterparts.

Another thing I will not miss is the pedantic fining system employed on German public transport. Buying a train ticket is a complex and confusing process as it is, never mind in another language, and god-forbid you should get it wrong because if you have the wrong ticket, or have forgotten your ticket, or have incorrectly stamped your ticket and you get caught, it means you will have to cough up 40 of your hard-earned Euros. Don´t have 40Euros on you? No problem! We´ll print out a ticket for you and you can pay us later at your convenience, providing your convenience is within fourteen days of issue, of course. And don´t even think about ducking out of paying it, because we´ve got your address now, Sonny Jim, we popped it into our little machine during your humiliating dress-down on the train not moments ago, and we'll be taking further action if you do not GIVE US THE MONEY. Saying that, the German train system, as frustrating as I may find it at times, is actually a vast improvement on the Britsh one (I am aware that this is not a difficult feat to achieve). As a paid-up member of a University, you can enjoy free public transport throughtout your Bundesland, and living on the continent does allow cheap and easy access via train to the rest of Europe. Me and my friends have just scored over-night tickets driect from Duisburg to Prague for 70Euros a piece, a whole 50Euros cheaper than the lowest-priced flight. I will certainly miss these low-cost travelling opportunities when back on my little island. The variety of places that have been so easily within my reach this year continually blows my mind; not only Czechoslovakia, but also Holland, France, Denmark and the east of Germany (which is actually pretty far away). And that´s only the places I´ve decided to visit. It would havebeen abundantly simple to hop on a train to Austira or Italy should the fancy have taken me. Not only that, but I love the fact that I can take a train to visit my friends who live over an hour away in Münster and it´s still free. Getting a train at home always seems like such a hassle, but here it´s a way of life. If I want to go for  night out in, say, Leeds, then the trip from Sheffield will require careful planning, estimated arrival times and a place to stay. Here, we go on nighs out to Düsseldorf all the time, because the trains run every fifteen minutes, it´s free for us and, because the trains run through the night, we know there´ll always be a way to get home again later.

Another area I have mixed feelings towards is the food; I both love and abhor German food in equal measure. The biscuits, for example, are exquisit, as is the abundance of different flavours of Milka and Ritter Sport (though since I found out you can now buy caramel Milka in Sainsburys I´m less distrught about leaving German chocolate behind.) I like that my wages allow me to buy smoked salmon on a regular basis, a product which my expensive tastes have unfotunately contirved to make me addicted to and as a student in Britain I can never afford. I believe Vapiano is the greatest chain restaurant in history and can´t believe we don´t have it at home. I enjoy Bratwurst and Currywurst and revel in the seemingly limitless varities of ice cream availible from the many Eiscafes than adorn Germany´s streets. Seriously, I cannot understand why we have not yet introduced the concept of the ice-cream parlour to Britain - none of you are going to want a Magnum when you can get Nutella, Tirimasu and Biscotti flavour at 80p a scoop. But then, there´s all the things that Germany lacks: marmite, proper tea, good bread, chedder cheese, chocolate digestives, non-processed sandwich meat, fresh milk (don´t give me that, the stuff you guys have is NOT fresh), decent chinese takeaways, fresh soups, baking potatoes, Jazz apples... I could go on. I rarely cook properly here either, due to a dramatic lack of freezer space in my flat, meaning that on the rare occasions I do buy fresh meat I have to have huuuuge meals to get rid of it all before the use-by date. I'm quite looking forward to making real meals again once I am safely ensconced in my new student house. Additionally, I plan to have a very emotional reunion with my toasty-maker. Man, I have missed toasties.

German alcohol I am going to miss rather less than German eidble delicacies. Here, my usual spirit-tipples are, though not unavailible, ludicrously expensive, so I have trained myself into liking beer. Unfortuantly, I have been rather too successful. I now love all the varities of German beer, from Alt to Weiss and from Kölsch to Pils. I think it´s brilliant that different cities have their own brands of beer, and ordering  Kölsch in Düsseldorf will lead you to being shouted down by the barman. However, this new found liking for beer has made me, to quote my mother, "whack it on". So now I am on a stirct diet and exercise regime to try and lose that half-stone before bikini season. Also, it´s difficult to miss it when I know that I will be able to hunt out my favourite varieties back home; other than Düsseldorf Altbeir, I´ve succeed in finding all the best ones on the continental beer shelf at Tesco. So really, I won't be losing out at all on the beer front back in England and therefore I'm just quite excited about being able to get back to nights out when I will not have to expend over a fiver to get a single vodka and lemonade.

I'm also looking forward to getting back the the British music scene. Germany is OK as far as music goes, but the local radio stations are frankly dire and as a country they are seriously lacking in record shops, even large ones (no HMV equivalent in sight because, no, I'm sorry, Saturn is incomparable). With my limited internet allowance, using Spotify and streaming radio stations has had to be kept to an absolute minimum, and whilst I'm immensely grateful to Charlie for letting me scam her music collection every couple of months, I want to be back in the thick of it, going to gigs, buying albums and discovering new music for myself. And it isn't just music-shopping possibilities that are thin on the ground and generally shopping in Germany is a bit of a chore. It will be nice to be able to go out to buy a new jumper and not know for an absolute certainty that you will buy it from H&M.

One thing I will certainly not miss is my flat. With it´s cold white walls and grey, dust-collecting lino floor it was always distinctly unloveable, and though I spruced my room up with photos and large amounts of cushions, the fact remains that I don´t really get on with my flatmates. The fault is partly mine, I never really made an effort to get to know them, but if they will persist in speaking Russian to eachother then I´m not really sure how I´m meant to. The new girl that moved in just before I went home for Easter is lovely, but it doesn´t change the fact that I´ve spent the majority of the year risiding with people who I´m fairly convinced don´t like me all that much.

So, I won´t miss Ruhrorterstrasse, but I certainly will miss Duisburg. I´m not going to lie, it is a bit of a dump. Very industrial, little culture and not much going on. However, I seemed to have developed the same bond with it as I have with my hometown of Nottingham. It´s crap and I know it and I say it a lot, but it´s still mine and if anyone else tried to say anything even remoteoy unflatterng I will defend it to the hilt. I don´t regard it with anywhere near the level of affection that I have for Sheffield, and the list of haunts that I can reel off is comparitively short, but there are still places that I´ve enjoyed visitng and will miss not being within a stones-throw of: Djazz, the bar near Kate´s with the funky toilet walls, the Innenhafen, the park where we had our little barbecue, the amazing tapas place, Carol´s flat (the site of so many laptop parties), Golden Grün, the statue of the naked man dealt a rough hand by Mother Nature... Then there's all the places we've frequented outside of Duisburg, like the Irish pub in Düsseldorf and Piano in Münster. All of these places and the others besides hold a great wealth of happy memories and it will be a shame not to be able to visit them again, at least not for a very long time.

Most of all, I will miss my way of life here. I've had it extremely cushy. I work for less than twelve hours a week and spend the rest of my time swanning about Europe with my friends, not a bad ol' life. I have met a truly fantastic bunch of people out here and it has been an absolute pleasure to share a year's worth of increible experiences with them. So, I think, it's not hard to see why now, at three weeks before I leave, I am a bit of a conflicted soul. Who wouldn't love my current low work, high play lifestyle? I party, I travel, I have an absolute ball. The amazing stuff about living in Europe  and the wonderful people I share it with far outweighs any niggles I have about less-than-enthusiastic flatmates and crumbly bread. But I love my life back in England too, you all know how much. There is so much of me yearning to get back the UK, with my degree and my music and my favourite places, and yet so much of me that wants to stay behind. Because missing my life at home does not mean I don't love my life here. I love them both. And to be honest, right now, I couldn't tell you which one I love more.