Last Weeks in Hedersleben
Welcome back! Here's the second half I promised in the last post. I was going to make the two into one post, but I soon realized that wasn't the best idea. So hopefully splitting into two shorter posts works better, and makes it a bit easier to enjoy. Anyways, this picks up on our 3rd week of language camp, on August 22.
The second week had been a pretty normal week, with pretty much just class as usual. Fortunately, on the third week we had our next excursion, on August 24, to the beautiful city of Quedlinburg. Our language camp was held in Hedersleben, a tiny town 40 minutes from Magdeburg. Quedlinburg was the nearest “large” town, with a little over 20,000 people populating its streets. Since it was so close, we didn’t need to rent busses like we had for previous trips. We just hopped on the local bus line, which eventually took us to Quedlinburg. We arrived a bit on the outskirts, and walked into the town to their high school, in this case a “Realschule” (Germany has five types of high schools, I’ll explain that in a later post). Here we were given a short talk and a short tour by some German students, before we walked to the town center. As we left the school, all the students from every grade came out to see us, “the Americans.” It was a very surreal experience to be the center of attention for no reason, and to see so many people so interested in our culture.
Once we reached the town center, we divided into groups based on our classes, and were taken through the city by our German student tour guides. Quedlinburg is famous for it’s half-timbered architecture (the type of architecture that might come to mind when you think of Germany), so our first stops were some of the oldest and best examples of this style. We also went in a cathedral, and saw the city’s canal system (not meant for boats, but as a way for the river to pass through the town). After this we headed to Quedlinburg’s claim-to-fame, it’s castle. It rises above the rest of the town, with steep cobbled streets, thick stone walls, and amazing views of the town below. The castle included a beautiful cathedral at the top, which was now being used as a museum to house some of the famous artifacts from the town’s history. After spending quite a while at the castle, it was time to head back to the bus stop. We headed back, and classes resumed as normal.
After devouring all that cheesecake, and a couple of other people’s, we headed into the city. First thing we did was stop for coffee, after which we went around looking in various shops. One of my friends wanted birkenstocks really badly, so we spent quite a lot of time looking for those. After a while we got hungry again, so my group split up and got Chinese food, and currywurst. Not to long after we got back on the busses and headed to Hedersleben.
Wednesday we got our train tickets, insurance information, a Bahncard, an explanation of what we could and couldn’t do, and information on how to deal with homesickness. The next day was our last normal day of class, so we made sure we had some fun. Finally it was Friday, the last day of language camp. It was a truly bitter-sweet day, because while we did have tons of fun, we all new this amazingly fun and immersive experience was coming to an end. We were all excited to meet our host families and move into our cities, but we had made lifelong friends here, and we had tons of fun together. We had our last class in the morning, which most of was spent cleaning the classroom. We also got an awesome CD with all the songs we had learned on it from our teacher, a PI bag and T-shirt, and a bunch of stuff from the German Bundestag (including gummies shaped like the parliamentary building).
Lunch was a bit smaller than usual, because we were going to have a special dinner, and needed to be hungry for it. The afternoon was spent packing and practicing for the talent show that evening. When it came time for dinner, we all dressed well for this special meal. When our amazing cooks took down the curtains that had been covering the dining hall, all the tables had been put in one straight line, and there were many elaborate decorations. Before we ate, we thanked our amazing cooks for such an amazing time and so many wonderful meals. For dinner we had an amazing meal, with a delicious cut of lamb as the main dish. After the delicious meal, they brought out a huge mountain of ice cream, complete with sparklers and a mini firework show. It was a spectacular end to our last meal.
Immediately after dinner we headed to the Aula (auditorium) for our talent show. Our class’ act was first, so I was on the stage very early. For our act, three friends and I formed a self-supporting “human-table”. It was pretty neat, but really hard to keep for three minutes. Many amazing acts followed ours, including a viola-violin-drum-vocal cover of Paradise, a choir, a guitar performance, singing, a traditional Thai dance and more. After all the acts were finished we had an award show, in which 20 awards were given out to people based on a vote that had been held earlier in the week. I was thoughtfully awarded “most likely to die in a zombie apocalypse,” with the reason cited as “you would try to befriend the zombies”. We had a lot of fun that night, and it’s definitely something we’ll all remember.
Well I’ll end that post there, on September 2, the day before we met our host families. Once again, sorry for the extremely late post; I’ve been quite busy with school and I spend a lot of my free time with my host family. In my next post (hopefully not as late as this one) I’ll cover my first week in Cologne, with my host family. So check back in soon,
Bis Gleich!
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