I have just spent 2 weeks in my Geistheimatsland (spiritual home country) of Germany! I went mainly to fulfil my strong wish of studying at Friedrich Schiller University at their summer school for the second time, but I went via Berlin for a few days beforehand. Despite some drama with the infamous Deutsche Bahn, it was terrific, being immersed in German for that long, and I even acquired a new uni friend!
Although the Scots seemingly stole the warm German weather and replaced it with the cold, wet Scottish weather, Berlin was a big adventure! Firstly, we were staying at a youth hostel, which I had never done before. The first night was a bit cramped because our accessible room wasn’t available, but it was fine for what we needed once we got the correct room! Unfortunately, the same can not be said for Google Maps! For example, I wanted to go to the Brandenburg Gate on our first full day, but Google Maps led us away from it instead of to the thing!!!
In between getting incredibly lost, I learned so much about the country’s history! We went to a selection of museums, including a rather jarring exhibition called ROADS NOT TAKEN, which detailed what could have happened if different decisions had been made in German history (thank goodness other choices were made).
On our second last night in Berlin, we went to the opera! I had never been to the opera, but my old singing teacher is an opera singer, so I have been around opera people before! The opera was called Cassandra, and it was sung in English with captions in both English and German, so I kept one eye on the performance and the other on the German subtitles. The beginning was a bit scary as it was a very realistic mass death scene! However, there was a really interesting moment towards the end…
In my life, I am lucky enough to have three maternal figures- my amazing mum Sonia, Sylvia, whom I affectionately call “Uni Mutti” (uni mum) and my stepmother. The names Sonia and Sylvia can be spelt in different ways. There are people called Sonia, Sonja, and Sonya; the name Sylvia can also be spelt Silvia. In the opera, one of the characters was pregnant and was trying to think of baby girl names. I thought my eyes and ears were deceiving me when she sang “Sonia,” and the name appeared on the caption monitor, which is exactly how my mum spells it! Just as I was getting over this coincidence, the character sang “Sylvia”, and again, the familiar spelling popped up on the monitor! An opera featuring the names of two of my maternal figures being performed in my spiritual home country?! It was almost like the universe was trying to tell me something!
However, my two most “oh my goodness” moments happened at wall memorials.
One day, we went to the main wall memorial. I have been reading a lot about the wall and East Germany lately, so I know a lot about the subject. Seeing the concrete for myself and reading the plaques on the ground dedicated to the people who died made it real to me!! I have always known that Sylvia grew up in East Berlin, but seeing this has made me appreciate what she lived through!
My other poignant moment happened after visiting a more secluded wall memorial in the grounds of the Bundestag called The Parliament Of Trees. I was staying on the city’s east side and crossed a bridge into the west to investigate the curious thing I had noticed a few days ago. Half an hour later, it started to rain, so we decided to return to the hostel, only to find that history had seemingly repeated itself! Police blocked off all of the bridges back to the east, and I could not get onto the other side! As my mum sweet-talked a rather handsome policeman into letting us across the bridge, I couldn’t help but smirk at the ridiculous parallel to the history of Berlin!
The day after this rather ridiculous reenactment of German history, it was time to go to Jena! The small city made a big Impression on me last year, so I was excited to return! The train ride was a few hours, but time seemed to fly, and before I knew it, I was there! Like my home village of North Queensferry, the train station in Jena is on top of a big hill, and my hotel was at the bottom of this hill and on the other side of the city! Nobody from the course was available to help me with my suitcase, so I ended up having to push the suitcase while my mum pushed me in my wheelchair! This was quite hard work, and the muscles in my left arm ached and burned as I stopped the case from flying down the hill! To my relief, when I got onto the road on which the hotel was, a nice local student (who slightly reminded me of Lisa in a way) helped us the rest of the way!
The following morning, I arrived at the university and was welcomed by many excited students who were pleased to see me. Last year, I was the new person on the course, so it took people a while to warm up to me. Hence, it was so nice to receive such a lovely welcome back, as people told me that having my outstanding level of German in the classroom was very useful and joked with me about why I wasn’t in the top group yet! This year, a lady from my own uni called Christine would support me in class. Christine was there last year and was also in the meeting I spoke at in January, so we knew each other quite well. She is also a good colleague of my Sylvia, which I think perhaps contributed to why she took care of me so well! My lecturer this year was a lady called Regina. She was around last year, but I was not in her class, so we didn’t really interàct.
The first thing I learned in class was that Regina had quite a sense of humour!! She would come up with these one-liners, which were often accompanied by body language, which just made it funnier! She also seemed really curious about the way I communicated. She appeared impressed with the way I could type with my nose and speak it in perfect German! However, before long, I noticed someone else…
Across the room was a blonde who seemed as interested in East Germany as I was! My best friend Chloe often talks about how she knew she had to speak to me the moment she saw my silk scarf. I experienced the same feeling when I heard this woman talk so passionately about a subject I had also read widely about! At that moment, I told myself I had to make friends with this woman by the end of the holiday!!
As luck would have it, there was a spare seat next to her at dinner that night, so I got the chance to get to know her! It turns out that she used to be a language teacher just like I want to be one day! I also realised that she has the same sense of humour as I do, so we basically sat giggling over our schnitzels all evening!!
On Wednesday morning, there was a pronunciation workshop, and it was agreed that this wouldn’t be useful for me because of the way I communicate, so I got to have a one-to-one with Christine, like I did ìn the afternoons last year. The previous evening, my mum had spotted a poster about a hunger strike to free a theology student who had been studying in Jena and was arrested in Hungary for their ties with an extremist group. For this session, Christine brought along a newspaper with an article about the student. We discussed them along with a few other things. In class, I often felt a bit self-conscious speaking out loud (I don’t really know why) so it was nice to have the freedom to speak out loud without worrying about anything!
That evening me, my mum, Christine and two guys from my class whom I got to know last year went out for an impromptu meal! At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to join because the restaurant was a Vietnamese place, and I wasn’t sure if the food would be too spicy. Also, in my heart, I was in Germany, and I wanted German food. Despite my initial doubts, it was a delightful evening, and I’m thrilled I went! Last year, maybe because I was new, I didn’t get invited to anything outside the formal school timetable, meaning that I ate dinner with the entire school or on my own with no happy medium. Therefore, it was very nice just to relax and bond with a few friendly people without being absolutely surrounded by colleagues!
The next day felt quite special to me. We went on a trip to a city called Halle, and the night before, I wrote to Sylvia about this trip because I had learned that the town was in the same state as the city where she was born. To my absolute delight, I discovered she studied in this city! It felt so cool to visit another city that meant something to her! Although this was a big part of why it was special, there is another reason. A few years ago, I choreographed a dance film called Too Good For The SQA, which ended with me dancing to a Händel piece, and Halle was the birthplace of Friedrich Händel!!!
Although I have been studying and speaking German for five and a half years now, my mum has never really picked up any German words before. However, she did pìck up a few phrases in Halle. First of all, we went on a guided tour, and Julia and another woman from our class were talking and got ahead of the group, and Christine shouted “nicht so schnell!” (not so fast). Mum had learned that schnell meant fast in Berlin, so she understood what this exclamation meant! The other thing she learned is one of my favourite German phrases – “genau!” which means “exactly!’. Kim says genau a lot, so since working with her, I’ve wanted to say it every time I agree with mum, but I have had to hold back because of mum’s lack of German knowledge, so I am genuinely so pleased that she has mastered this word!
After a Czech lunch, we went to the house where Händel was born! There was some doubt as to how much of the house I would be able to access in my wheelchair but like always I proved everyone wrong and I could go into all the rooms! My favourite room was the beautiful collection of old musical instruments! The tour guide gave a demonstration of a selection of the instruments along with a very technical explanation in German of how it works. I was really surprised at how much I could actually understand!
In Halle is the world’s oldest chocolate factory which makes the famous Halloren Kügel (Halloren bullets) which are chocolate balls filled with nougat type stuff. After we went to the Händel house, we had a free hour so mum and I decided to visit the factory outlet shop. I was literally a kid in a sweet shop! There were shelves and shelves of all kinds of Kügel! For a second, I just sat there and admired the different coloured boxes, feeling like I had just been transported to Wonka’s chocolate factory, before I spotted the flavour that jumped out at me the most- salted caramel! My favourite flavour of pretty much anything!
The walk from the shop to the train station was a very wet and cold voyage, I was wearing one of Chloe’s thin summer dresses and no tights so the cold was beginning to go deep into my legs and feet! Despite being chilled to the bone, I was determined to take a picture of myself ìn the city where my dear friend had studied so that I could make Sylvia’s day! As I drew nearer and nearer to Halle Hauptbahnhof where I would meet my colleagues to get on the train, I became worried that the picture would have to be of me and the sign on the platform that said Halle! Luckily it was at this moment that my mum spotted something so curious that it was worth taking a photo of- an ice cream vending machine! I removed my hood, allowing my dark pigtails to get soaked and took a picture… the things I do for the people I love!!!
On the train back to Jena, everyone was cold and wet! I got a glimpse of Julia and her normally perfect long straight platinum hair hung in wet, stringy curls around her face as if she was just out of the shower! At this point, everything below my knee was completely numb from the cold and I was completely exhausted! Despite this, the journey was quite fun. People shared Kügel and just chatted. Last year I couldn’t do the excursion because it wasn’t wheelchair accessible and even though I enjoyed my day away from people, I’m really glad that I got to go on this year’s field trip!
The next morning I couldn’t open my eyes when my alarm went! I was completely knackered and still slightly cold from Halle! As I lay there practically unconscious for an extra hour, little did I know that I would make another step towards independence that evening!
Germany has always been good for my independence! I get to order food, organise train assistance and speak to people who mum would normally deal with in the UK. However, up until now, my mum has always accompanied me to every evening activity. On this evening we would go to the cinema on the market square to watch a German-language film. Since the start of the week, it was clear that the film would have subtitles but it wasn’t clear what language the subtitles would be in until Friday. Upon hearing at lunchtime that the subtitles would be in German, mum asked me if I would be comfortable just getting dropped off at the cinema and just watching the movie with my colleagues and her coming to pick me up at the end of the film. My heart soared! I’m 22 now and I want more independence but I have never been trusted like THIS! I said that it would be absolutely fine as long as she let Christine know and I started to really look forward to my little bit of independence!!!
That afternoon Julia and I were sitting in German poetry class, she asked me if I was going to the cinema later and laughed at how proudly I said “ja, aber Mama nicht!” (”yes but not mum!”). She could tell by the massive proud grin on my face that this was a big deal for me!
That night my mum left me with Christine and the leader of the course Polina. I was feeling really proud of myself for being so independent! I left the rest of the school to go down the stairs and Polina and I went to get the lift. In German the word for lift is “Aufzug” which literally translates to “up train” and given the state of German trains, it was hardly surprising when the lift did not work! The man who worked at the cinema kept pressing the call button but nothing was happening! Eventually, he figured out that it would work if he went downstairs and rode it up from there! Unfortunately for me and Polina, this was when we discovered that the light above us was motion-activated so every 2 minutes we had to take it in turns to jump so it went back on again!
Thankfully, Regina waited until I was downstairs before she played the film. It was a comedy about the week before the Ostmark was abolished. Even though the subtitles were in German, they didn’t quite match what the characters were saying which bugged me a lot! I did enjoy the film despite this mild annoyance. However, sitting in a dark room after a long busy week studying is not the best idea so I only saw three quarters of the movie before I fell fast asleep!!
I awoke confused and disoriented with Christine standing in front of me. The lights were on and it was time to go home! Groggily, I rubbed my eyes and sat myself up in my chair as Christine welcomed me back! Once I had my bearings back, she helped me out of the cinema room and into the foyer where my mum was waiting! Although I had fallen asleep, I was super proud of myself for managing this!
My final full day in my beloved Germany turned out to be extremely stressful! First of all, I was nearly late to class and only made it by a minute! I thought that this would be the drama for the day…oh how wrong I was…
At break time, my mum came in looking very worried! She told me that our train journey that we would take the train journey the following day had been cancelled! My mind raced, I was expected at a dance event on the Monday so I simply had to travel home within the proceeding 36 hours! Mum was trying to give me instructions but I couldn’t process them through my own racing thoughts! I didn’t hear anything that Regina said between break and lunch! My brain was trying to process all this stress!
Me, mum and Christine spent the lunch break sitting in my classroom on the phone. Christine was playing advocate for my mum because the English-speaking department of Deutsche Bahn was closed by this time. As Christine talked on the phone, I followed the conversation and every time it would start sounding like we were getting out of the country, a problem would be found and the journey would be scrapped! After a few cycles of this, we decided to try travelling that evening! In my heart, I didn’t want to do this because it would mean that I would miss the graduation evening and therefore not have the chance to say goodbye to Julia but I understood that this was potentially the only option so I didn’t protest!
After lunch, Christine disappeared to another room to continue her argument with Deutsche Bahn! My body was still in the classroom but my brain was trying to grapple with the very real possibility that I might just have to make a sudden exit without any proper goodbyes! At one point, I actually had to ask the Scottish guy next to me what we were meant to be doing! It was a mere five minutes later when Christine came in, gave me a thumbs up and whispered “ihr reist ganz früh morgen ab!” (”you are leaving really early tomorrow morning!”). I could have hugged that woman!
Right at the end of the day Regina presented me with a box of Halloren Kügel for being so inspiring! I didn’t quite know what to say but I was extremely touched! I had only known this woman for six days but I had managed to make an Impression on her! I sort of felt bad for my colleagues because they were watching me get this special treatment but I found this small gesture extremely sweet!
At the graduation evening, Julia and I sat together filling the room with hysterical laughter! I remember last year, I couldn’t sit with the friends that I had made at the graduation evening because I couldn’t access the table where they were sitting so it was so nice to be able to just eat with my friend! It was a buffet dinner and everyone just seemed to get on. Quite a few people asked me if I wanted to come back next year. Although last year was amazing, I feel like this year was even better so I concluded that yes, I would like to go back next year and every single year that I am able to!
In conclusion, my 2 weeks in Germany were very fun! I don’t know whether I learned more in or out of the classroom but I did obtain a lot of new knowledge about the German language and hist. It was my longest holiday and so it’s quite fitting that this is my longest article! I can’t wait to visit my geistheimatsland soon!
Eilidh Elizabeth Molly Mcgrath 💜
The Non Verbal Linguist 