I have just visited my spiritual home country of Germany for the third time. Before going to the amazing summer school at Friedrich Schiller University in the  beautiful city of Jena, I spent some days discovering the equally (if not more) beautiful city of f Leìpzig! This is now a summer tradition which will not be stopping as I start law school! Spoiler alert 🚨 This article is very long so I have cut it up into two chapters: chapter one is about Leipzig and the second chapter is about Jena. So if you have limited time, I recommend choosing a chapter to read instead of the whole thing, or  you can read one chapter now and the other one later!

Chapter 1 – Leipzig

This year we used interrail passes. I want to discuss this because I think some of my readers are other people with disabilities or know someone who has a disability. The interrail system provides the companion of someone who has a mobility impairment with a free pass! This significantly reduced the cost of the journey and was really quick and easy to do. My mum simply purchased my pass, requested a companion pass online, provided evidence of my disability and within an hour, the second pass was with us!   Having the passes made the process of planning the journey so I would definitely recommend exploring this!

My adventure started on such a high! I knew that I was starting my journey the day before I got the results for my final German module and I  remembered that last year the results were published the day before. However, it still caught me by surprise when Chloe texted me as my first train passeď Newcastle to say that the results were out! I was expected to get my third distinction this year so my heart started beating so fast that my watch started recording moderate exercise! The OU website jams every time results come out so I spent a very frustrating half an hour to an hour trying to log in! Eventually, I learned that I had indeed gotten another distinction…but it wasn’t until the following morning when I was travelling from Brussels to Frankfurt and the website was back in order that I truly discovered what I had done! The last year has been quite difficult with both myself and my mum experiencing health challenges, but somehow, despite everything that happened, I had achieved my highest score ever for this module! I’m not going to go into the exact percentage because it seems impolite, but I was really proud of myself… and judging by the amount of emojis Sylvia replied with when I told her, she was even more proud! There was something perfect about crossing the German border while celebrating my success in the German language!

I certainly tested the legitimacy of my amazing German grade on this train ride! We thought that we were travelling from Brussels Midi to Frankfurt HBF (central station) but as our journey got underway, my observant mum noticed that the train was only going as far as Frankfurt airport. After checking that we were in fact on the right train, I prepared a message for a member of our train crew, explaining that I thought I had made a mistake because I was supposed to be going to Frankfurt HBF but  my mum had noticed that the train wasn’t going there, that we had to get to Leipzig HBF but our connection was leaving from Frankfurt HBF so how could we get to Leipzig? When we eventually located someone to speak to, I showed off my newfound German confidence! Deutsche Bahn is the only chaotic aspect of Germany, so we shouldn’t have been surprised when the man said that he only found out about the shortened route when he got on the train that morning! However, I was really impressed, normally when I email Deutsche Bahn, it takes a minimum of 24 hours for them to organise anything, but by the time we were at Frankfurț Airport an alternative train journey to Leipzig had been found and organised!

My younger cousin is going to be living in Leipzig later this year and oh my, I get why she loves this city! I was confronted by a mixture of adorable fairytale like traditional German houses, decadently decorated buildings that lookeď like wedding cakes and modern brutalist blocks of flats as well as a lot of elegant churches and spacious squares! After having a lot of trouble finding the Brandenburg Gate when we went to Berlin last year, I suggested that we spend the first day in this quaint new city just exploring and getting our bearings so that we didn’t have a repeat of last year and I’m so glad we did this! Although we were just having a relaxed walk through țown, I really got a feel for the city, especially its medieval vìbes and love for puppies! I have been in musician for 13 years so it had been on my list to see the church where Bach is buried but I wasn’t expecting to arrive at almost the perfect time. We noticed that an organ concert would be taking place that Saturday and so we bought tickets for it! The church itself reflected the medìeval style of the city and I really got a feeling of what everything must have been like around the time that Bach was alive!

Despite spending time getting our bearings, the next day we got really lost and ended up almost walking right out of town looking for an exhibition! My mum is going through quite a weird fascination with brutallist architecture at the moment so the positive part of finding ourselves on the outskirts of town was that there was definitely no shortage of these to satisfy her interest! The thing which separated this experience from having a similar situation in a British city was that although it still felt poor, it didn’t necessarily feel unsafe. Despite this, we decided to turn back and go back into town to find something to drink.

Germany has one thing that I am definitely glad that Scotland doesn’t have: a chain of shops called Pylones which sells brightly coloured gadgets and gizmos! Both my mum’s and my things entirely! I had first discovered this joy of a Shop in Berlin and when I noticed a small branch in Leipzig when trying to find a toilet after drinking my first matcha latte (I am definitely more of a tea person), I had to pause and look in here! After looking around at all the stuff which I definitely didn’t need, I continued onto my next plan,  a DDR exhibition… but more importantly, a bathroom!

There is no denying it, I am a DDR nerd and I blame my OU family for this! Sylvia grew up in the        DDR, Kim wrote her PhD on women in the DDR, and Julia is also really enthusiastic about the east of Germany between 1949 and 1990 (and beyond). So as a result, I enjoy learning about the DDR for fun! Although I had gone to a couple of DDR exhibitions last year in Berlin and studied it all 3 of the years I studied German at the OU (using past tense to describe my OU German studies feels very weird!), I actually learned a few new details, such as the soviets used to blow up cathedrals and churches to make way for  new buildings! Maybe it’s somewhat geeky to be so intensely interested in 40 specific years of German history, but I think it’s better to be passionate about something than not caring about anything at all! Actually, as I write this, I realise that my DDR obsession and my mum’s obsession with brutallist architecture kind of go together because a lot of brutallist buildings were built in the DDR in place of the buildings that were blown up! How perfect!

One thing that I do love more than the DDR is animals. When I was researching what to do in Leipzig I found out that there was a zoo so it was on my list to go. However, my excitement grew when I actually got to Leipzig and saw that all the advertisements for this zoo included orangutans! After unicorns, orangutans are my favourite animal! The young ones are just like mad hairy orange children and the big ones are so intelligent 🧡 so I was delighted to discover this! Although the orangutans had become the top thing I wanted to see, there was a lot of cool things to see, including meerkats, which I would learn, the Germans call “Erdmännchen” (little earth men 🤣)! Up until this point, my experience of animals in Germany was predominantly wasps (and all the adorable tiny puppies I had met this week of course!) and although I was certainly still chased by a few of these black and yellow buggers here, it was lovely to get a more positive experience! The orangutans were one of the last things that I saw, after all my other favouritė animals: elephants, zebras, pink flamingos and one okapi who definitely looked at my mum disdainfully when she said “oh, there is one of those at Chester Zoo” 🤣 – and they didn’t dìsappoint! The first hint of orangutan I saw was just a flash of orange hair peeking out from under a blanket in the indoor enclosure (orangutans love blankets, I once saw a gang of them fighting over a blanket at Chester Zoo!) but then I moved on to the outdoor enclosure and was treated to a group of three young ones playing! They tumbled around and one of them would climb the tree and the other two would chase him, throw him off the tree and then jump off themselves! As if this wasn’t entertaining enough, there was a little girl who was about 4 sitting watching the orangutans next to me with a stuffed orangutan in her arms and her parents were asking her if she thought her teddy was related to the three young apes before us. Next thing, she looks at the trio and yells  “FAMILIE!!” (family) at the top of her tiny ļunga and both of her parents just burst out laughing! I didn’t even know the child but to be honest, even I struggled to keep a straight face! Oh the perks of being fluent in another language! 🤣

 When I went to my last language and culture day in March, Lilian showėd us what a Viennese cafe looks like and ever since I have been wondering why on earth the woman left Vienna! On my last day in Leipzig, I got to experience a Viennese cafe for myself and now I understand my favourite Austrian even less! We had been to an art gallery and having cake for lunch had been the norm since the first day. We had spotted the cafe when we were exploring the city and I had noticed how stunning the exterior was and as I entered the cafe, I was struck by how the interior was as beautiful as the outside! A chandelier hung from the ceiling, there was a serene, hushed air, but I only realised that I was in a Viennese café when I saw the newspapers with wooden handles that Lilian discussed! If im completely honest, I was a bit unsure at first whether I should even be somewhere so sophisticated, but I have always felt much more at home in Germany than Scotland, so I soon felt like I was exactly where I belonged – a posh cafe in the middle of a beautiful medieval German city ėatinğ black forest gateau! Why Lilian chose to swap the home of these cafes for somewhere like Hull, I shall never understand!

I currently have a really nice assistant who comes from Nigeria and is really into gospel music! Shirley walking around singing hymns to herself has now become a common sound of the household so I was about to get a biğ reminder of home in this city that I can imagine being my home someday. We were making our way to Thomaskirche for the organ recital after “lunch” when we stumbled across a gospel choir singing outside a different church (Leipzig has rather a lot of churches). It was quite a warm day so we just sat down in the shade and listened. I was on a sleep course recently and one of the techniques was to picture a relaxing scene and as I sat there, i remember deciding that this moment, with the warmth of the sun, the sound of the choir and my mum beside me, would be my new scene!

From one church and one style of music to another! After a short walk, we arrived at Thomaskirche for the concert!  A Japanese organist would be playing the works of Bach, Mozarț and another German composer who I have completely forgotten about (possibly Beethoven?). For the first half, the organist played on the same level as us so although I could hear the magnificent music, I couldn’t see where it was coming from! It wasn’t until the second half of the concert when the musician moved to the upper part of the organ that I really appreciated her skills! Not only did she have to use her fingers on the keyboard but both her feet were busy at the pedals and she had to have two assistants turn the pages of her music and press additional buttons for her because she literally did not have enough limbs! I can’t believe that people get so impressed with me nosetyping when there are people like this in the world! I really don’t know who I am more impressed with- Bach or this young woman

Chapter 2 – Jena

One of the reasons why I love Germany is the fact that the people are much kinder here than in the UK and although I experienced numerous examples of this in Leipzig, I got a big slap-you-in-the-face reminder of this when I got to my spiritual home town of Jena! This year, for the first time I would be staying in the same hotel as everyone else because they finally got a wheelchair accessibe room 👏. However, I was arriving into Jena Paradies on a Sunday, which ultimately meant that I had to push a massive heavy suitcase across the cobbled streets of Jena and up a hill in order to get home! To my complete luck, outside the chemist in the centre of the small city where the suitcase had fallen on my hand for the second time in the journey from the station, a really nice Swiss man spotted us struggling and offered to help! My mum is notoriously bad at accepting help so I said “ja!” and basically threw the suitcase at the man before even bothering to translate for my mum! By some German magic, he was going to the same hotel so he could guide us to the hotel while pulling the suitcase.

 I had heard so much about this hotel over the years so I was really looking forward to seeing it for the first time! One had to travel from reception to the lobby via a lift. Once out of the lift, there was a short walk with the Moonlight Bar on the left and a comfy-looking seating area on the right before you turned the corner to get the second lift to the rooms. It was during this short walk i met one of the new members of the summer school, a retired sõldier come social worker named Joe! Joe recognised me from the Language and Culture Day in March so he decided to help us with the suitcase. The floors that had the rooms on had big cutouts in the middle, which, I would find out, made finding and communicating with colleagues very easy! My room, however, wasn’t in the main six-layer doughnut, but through a corridor attached to the back left corner of the doughnut. Once we were settled in the room, i couldn’t wait for the week ahead!

Although I don’t interact with her as much as the other members, Christine is part of my OU family just like Sylvia, Kim, Chloe and Lilian so I was really looking forward to seeing her along with my last OU family member, Julia. To be honest, I had made a secret bet with myself about how long Christine would last without mentioning my grade because if there is one thing my OU family loves, it is talking about how great I am! I can now tell you that the petite Frankfurter lasted a grand total of 15 minutes! 🤣 She started congratulating me after the welcome speech, as she took me into the classroom where I would be spending the next 5 days, and when she put my iPad on the desk, I had to humbly say that I was of course really proud because it was my best score ever and I didn’t have an easy year but I couldn’t have achieved it without the team of people around me! To this she agreed, said that she had heard a bit about what had been going on with me and told me that she was glad that I felt so supported… i wasn’t, however, expecting what she did next! Everyone had now come into the room and our teacher Regina, who haď also taught me last year, had invited everyone to share their name, what they do for work and what they were currently interested in, along with anything that had changed since last summer. This made me nervous because I had lost my job as an OU student buddy in November, I wasn’t particularly interested in anything and the changes in my life since last summer haven’t been very positive!  Because of this, I had told Christine that I was too shy to do it!  After trying to convince me that  I wasn’t actually shy, Christinė boldly said to everyone “das ist Äli, und sie hat gerade unserem Level 3 Deutschkurs mit einer sehr guten Note abgeschlossen!” (this is Eilidh and she has just graduated from our level 3 German course with a  very good grade!). At first, this did embarrass me a lot, but it did cause people to ask me some questions and me to explain some stuff and therefore warm up to the group! This is the kind of OU German department magic that I am definitely going to miss when I start law school next month! 🖤❤️💛

This year Regina gave us not one but two homework assignments! You read that right- this was a holiday with integrity 🤣! Our first assignment was to work in groups to interview residents of Jena about a chosen area within the term “quality of life in Jena” and for this, I would be working with Joe and another woman who was from Edinburgh. In fact, Joe also lived in Scotland so the trio was entirely Scottish, a fact that Joe acknowledged by saying  “kein Schottland, kein Party” (do I really need to translate?!). I could tell that my fellow Scotsman and Scotswoman were not as confident in my German tongue as I was so I tried to keep my long complex sentences to a minimum and not to scare them! Our second task was to find an interesting object in Jena to talk about when the class went on a tour of the city on Saturday morning- a brief that, little did i know, i would nail!

A few weeks before this voyage, I came across a nice guy called Brian in German Club who was sad that he wouldn’t be able to benefit from the in-person Language and Culture Days next year (damn budget cuts‼️) and so I had recommended this sommerschule to him. Poor Brian was supposed to arrive the previous day but had gotten stuck in Frankfurt and had what sounded like a nightmare of a journey ever since! I did feel rather guilty because it was my idea for him to come in the first place, but I was absolutely delighted when my mum appeared at the door in the middle of Christine’s afternoon German history workshop with a tired-looking Brian on her arm! Brian sat at the table with me, Julia and Marianne (who I had completely forgotten about and had to be reintroduced to by Julia), greeted the two older women with “ich brauche ein Bier!” (I need a beer!) and rubbed my head as if to say “thank you for bringing me here!”.  I was about to discover something that Brian and I haď in common. I have grandparents in a town called Washington in the northeast of England, a town that I didn’t know existed until my family was extended when I was 16, so I couldn’t believe it when Christine asked the newcomer where he came from and he said “a place in the northeast called Washington”! I didn’t consciously know of this similarity when I invited        him to Jena but I’m wondering now if somehow I subconsciously knew and that is why I told him about this? It may have been a random act of kindness and then a massive coincidence… my degree is in German and law and not neuroscience and psychology so I’m not really qualified to speculate 😀!

As always, the first day concluded in the traditional German restaurant called Zur Noll! As I quenched the massive thirst that the day’s work had created with a pint of my all-time favourite German drink – Bananensaft (not a milkshake or a smoothie but sort of a banana-flavoured juice) and attempted to eat a schnitzel bigger than my face, I caught up with Julia who was as loud and as sunny as ever and a newcomer called Paula with candyfloss pink  hair and a personality which complimented mine and Julia’s perfectly! Zur Noll is a lovely open-top restaurant and I always enjoy coming here but although Julia and Paula were sunny, the Jena weather hadn’t gotten the memo! Questionable-looking clouds had been gathering pretty much since we had sat down and I had been trying to use the power of my mind to get the rain to stay off (when I was 11 and in hospital after an unfortunate meeting with the back of a van, I remember my aunt telling me a story about how she once tried to move a candle with the power of her mind, so I definitely blame her for this particular eccentricity 😆), but enevitably it started to rain in the middle of dinner! The restaurant staff did put a cover on most of the roof (emphasis on the word “most”) but unfortunately my back wasn’t included in the coverage! What made it worse is the fact that I suddenly turned very Britishly polite and shook my head every time my colleagues said “Äli, wirst du nass?” (Eilidh are you getting wet?).

Once the rain had died down, Julia and I, loving the fact that we were staying in the same hotel, walked home together. Even though we had both applied to be in the same group, I was put in the middle group whereas Julia got to be in the top group. This made this short walk feel special because we were unable to be with each other 24/7. As we walked, Julia retold the amazing story of her actually being in Berlin as the wall came down! Although I had heard the story before, i remember thinking how cool an experience thìs must have been and also how amazing it was that something like this Sommerschule had made me meet such interesting people!

The second day of school was a very mixed one. I had woken up too overwhelmed to eat much breakfast and felt quite tired but for some reason seeing Christine brought out my silly sarcastic side. Christine,  who was supposed to be taking notes for me, had slept in and left all her pens in her hotel room so, after dumping what of her stuff she had at our table, she had to go to another room and find something to write with! My best friend Chloe always tells me that I’m so smart and cute that I would get away with any amount of sass and although I have never been sarcastic with Christine before, I decided to test this theory (I was literally leaving her department so  what was the worst that could happen 😂?). German people have a reputation for being efficient and organised (with the exception of Deutsche Bahn of course) so, when Christine returned having found a pen, I said “wie unďeutsch von dir” (how un-German of you). At this Christine grinned which kind of fuelled my silly mood!

As well as sarcasm, I can be prone to brutal honesty when I feel silly. It was now halfway betwėen break and lunch and we were working with a textbook that was explaining how law is one of the oldest university subjects which naturally made Christine ask if I was looking forward to starting this area of study for myself. Although I am mostly looking forward to the next chapter of my studies, I do feel a little bit nervous but Sylvia had given me a talking-to regarding worrying. This is probably why the answer to the question from Christine went “na ja, Ich freue mich. Ich bin auch sehr nervös, aber eine bestimmte Ostdeutsche sagt, dass ich weniger panikmachen soll, also ich versuche, ihr zuzuhören” (well yes, I’m looking forward to it. I’m also very nervous but a certain East German says that I should panic less, so I’m trying to listen to her). Over the last year Sylvia has been trying to teach me tto be more honest and open with people…not totally convinced that this was exactly what she meant though😆! Either way, it made Christine giggle slightly and, knowing exactly which East German I was talking about,  she agreed with her brilliant colleague and told me that I was going to be fine!

My silly mood would come to an end after lunch! Just as I was leaving for lunch, I had overheard Fiona asking to move down a level as she was finding the level of ğerman too difficult so as far as I was aware, my group was down to myself and Joe…imagine the stress i felt in the afternoon coffee break when I found out that Joe was also moving with Fiona 😱… Suddenly I was alone with a research project and a presentation to do all on my own!

Luckily I could get my mind off the stress that had just been dumped on me with this afternoon’s workshop, singing! I love to sing! Before my mum retired in May, I used to spend my days with my music up high, singing and dancing until my mind was clearer and even now, if my mum is doing something noisy such as watching TV, I just put my music on and go into my own world. The workshop was being run by a woman who I had never seen before. The workshop was focused on German folk music which is one area that I haven’t  really studied before. The first song we learned was called “zusammen singen” (sing together) which, as would become apparent as the workshop went on, was very ironic because Germans love singing in kanon (when different people start the same song at different times)! We also learned a song in a Dutch-like dialect called Plattdeutsch spoken in the North of Germany. I won’t attempt to write the title because my Plattdeutsch needs a lot of work, but I mention this particular love song because of the linguistic connection to a special someone. I didn’t find this out until I was travelling back from Brussels a week later but apparently Plattdeutsch is the dialect spoken in Magdeburg where Sylvia was born! Although I wasn’t aware of this connection when I was singing the song, I feel sort of honoured to have been in the former DDR singing the songs of my dear friend and mentor’s culture!

On Wednesday morning Christine had the bold idea of me doing my own “life in Jena” project! I do prefer doing research by myself so I chose to work with the question “wie rollstuhlfreundlich ist Jena?” (How wheelchair-friendly is Jena). We would be going to the cinema that evening and, because Germany is so bureaucratic, I had to be escorted down in the lift by someone who worked at the small movie theatre that we were going to, so Christine thought that it would be a good idea to ask this guy! I thought strategically and decided that if he had to take people up and down in the lift as part of his job, then asking him how often he has to do this would give me a good idea of how many people with disabilities use the cinema and therefore the estimated number of disabled people living in Jena.

In the afternoon, my verbal colleagues had a pronunciation workshop and because Anna (the German voice on my iPad) already has perfect German pronunciation, I had a free afternoon which my mum suggested that we use to try and find something interesting that I could use for my other assignment. At first I wasn’t sure if I was confident enough to say something on my iPad in the middle of the street so I was just going to skip the assignment altogether, but at some point, I came up with the compromise that I would write something and Christine would speak for me. Even though it was over 30°c I kind of enjoyed milling around this spiritual hometown of mine! I reckoned that my colleagues would have already snapped up all the obvious, famous and historical things, so I was on the lookout for something obscure and amazing! About an hour into our walk, we were in an alleyway between a main street and a car park (yes, I do always take my German studies THIS seriously) when I discovered that hidden gem that I was looking for! Nestled between two somewhat brutallist blocks of flats sat the sweetest-looking traditional German-style cottage! The juxtaposition was really incredible and I knew straight away that I could stop looking!

Evening came and, leaving my mum back at the hotel, we embarked on our cinema trip! This was the first time that Christine and the rest of my colleagues had pushed me through the cobbled streets of Jena before, so I learned a brand new word- “hüpilig” (bumpy)!😆 Once we were in the cinema, Christine, I, and the course director Antje all got in the lift and asked the main my questions, basically finding out that not very many people with disabilities visited the cinema! I tend to give everyone in Jena the benefit of the doubt (more than my mum does) but I really wish that someone would have warned me about the film that we were going to be seeing! A big part of the problems that I’m currently suffering from come from the loss of a young person so it was not the nicest when the main character lost his teenage brother two minutes into the film and proceeded to go on a similar emotional roller coaster to the one I am on! I did try to keep the tears in but at times I sniffled so loudly that Christine turned round and she definitely noticed that my face was wet when the lights came on! Although this was a bit embarrassing, it wasn’t as bad as last year when she discovered me sound asleep! Small mercies and all that! 😀

I tend to be quite a clumsy person who lacks spatial awareness (a lethal combination of my parents and ħaving Cerebral Patsy) and although I had gotten through almost 3 days without showing my colleagues this side of me, (with the small exception of slightly losing my balance and knocking into Brian 10 minutes after meeting the guy!) but on this particular evening, a few of my colleagues would be “treated” to the clumsy side of Eilidh McGrath! It was agreed that my mum would meet us back in the Moonlight Bar at the hotel after the film and we arrived early enough to sit and talk over drinks for a while before bedtime. I had been carrying a cloth and had put it  on the table when I arrived. When my mum told me that I would be going up to bed soon, I tried to pick it up but it fell on the floor so the independent woman in me decided that I would just bend down and get it. Unfortunately, I think my wheelchair must have rolled forward as I went down because the table was suddenly above me like some kind of lid! After a moment, Christine asked “Äli, kannst du allein hochkommen?” (Eilidh, can you come up by yourself?), at which I could only shake my head so she began to gently guide me out of my predicament. Despite her help, I still ended up knocking the table and Christine’s (luckily empty) glass fell off the table and smashed😱! I felt so guilty! I had only been in the hotel for this year and I had already managed to break something!

The next day was our trip to Erfurt. It was due to be even hotter than the day before, and to make it worse, I had woken up really overwhelmed and everything felt that bit harder! Although I always travel through Erfurt on my way to Jena, I had never seen the city outside of the train station before so although I kept debating whether to even board the train or not, I was curious to discover the rest of the city. The first thing we did was visit an old synagogue from about the 7th century which had escaped nazi destruction because it had been converted into a restaurant by the Dritte Reich and was only rediscovered as a synagogue in 2007. On the ground floor were various models of what the building looked like at various points in history along with an interactive touchscreen that told the story of Jews in medieval Erfurt. Even in the Middle Ages, jews did not have an easy time in what would become Germany. The black death was said to be caused by the jews and thus many had to leave the city of Erfurt (i can’t remember the exact details of this). Upstairs was a museum-like room with biblical texts written in Hebrew with the German translation printed beside the massive books. In the 50s, while the synagogue lay forgotten, this upstairs room was used as a dance hall. As a Germanist who dances semi-professionally in her spare time, this sort of felt “right” to be standing in! The pièce de résistance, however, was the basement (not just because it was lovely and cool😀). This humble-looking, low-ceilinged underground room contained a lot of Jewish treasure which had been lost for 600 years including the biggest golden wedding ring that I have ever seen!

I have been debating whether to include what happened next in this article because it is such a false representation of my feelings about this trip and of German people in general, but this blog is called The Non Verbal Linguist so I feel like I would not be doing right by my readers (verbal or otherwise) if I didn’t include the failure of some nonverbal communication and how it makes me feel. My mum thinks that this was my fault for not being prepared but I don’t fully agree because the reality of communicating through AAC is that it takes a bit of time and people sometimes need to be patient! As the only German speaker in the family, I always have to order the food and drinks for both myself and my mum and normally I don’t mind this  – in fact it gives me a positive sense of independence – but this afternoon the waitress was very impatient with me and didn’t seem to let me finish my sentence! What’s worse, my mum kept interrupting me to tell me to hurry up! The pressure was so intense and I wanted to tell everyone to give me a minute to actually speak! After the waitress had left, I couldn’t help but burst into tears! I think that people should understand that not everyone can speak as quickly as others, whether it be because they have speech problems such as a stammer, are an AAC user or a language barrier exists!

After this stressful start to lunch, I got harassed by wasps while eating, so I decided to go back to Jena early (although I also managed to get lost on the way back to the train station…so not my day😭) and chill. I had been learning a German card game called Skat which Christine loves so this evening she would be holding an informal Skat workshop in the hotel bar. Although I wasn’t sure if I could make it because of how overwhelmed I was feeling, I’m so glad I left my room and took part in this because it turns out that Skat is a good remedy for a bad mood and also I’m quițe good at it! Even though I was just a beginner, I won something like 2 or 3 rounds (partially because Christine told me when I had good cards😀) and left in a better mood than I came down in!

I find fidget toys helpful when I feel anxious and I definitely felt anxious a little bit before lunch on my penultimate day of the course when everyone had to give their “Lebensqualität in Jena” presentations! As I prepared to speak, my mind started to race and my chest grew tight “The disabled student talking about accessibility?! What a cliché!” “You are going to make a big German mistake!” my head began to taunt! As my anxiety grew louder, I started to root around in my handbag for a toy! After a few seconds, the guy next to me, David, noticed this frantic searching and decided to help. However, I hadn’t told David what I was looking for so he started pulling out random objects (including something unmentionable that definitely didn’t belong in there 🫪). Eventually I explained what I needed, David found one and handed it to me. I began to feel better as I pulled and played with it under the desk and was soon ready to give an improvised but well-formulated presentation about the wheelchair accessibility in Jena which impressed everyone.

After school, a few of us took a walk to a beer garden attached to a brewery that we had visited two years ago. It was forecast to rain (again, I was trying to use my “mind power” to stop it 😂) but I couldn’t get into the restaurant with my wheelchair so we ended up sitting under an umbrella in what was basically a tropical storm! Unbelievably, despite the rain, thunder and lightning I still had to battle wasps for my Bananansaft! The previous day in Erfurt, one of my colleagues had managed to trap a wasp that had been particularly in my face under a water jug and today Christine had a similar idea. A single wasp had been harassing me so much that I was on the brink of tears and Christine had said that she was very good at trapping wasps in beer glasses (what a weirdly specific talent to have 😂) and would now demonstrate… now, there are two things that you need to know about Christine Pleines, 1)  she is incredibly small in stature with a really friendly demeanour and 2) she rarely speaks English  – she even kept forgetting herself and trying to tell my mum things in German all wėek 😂. Despite this, she looked at the wasp and said “Come on, I’ll trap you!” and just as if the wasp had understood this threat and found this petite, gentle-looking woman intimidating, it immediately stopped pestering me and flew away 🤣. If I had known that all it took was a direct verbal threat, then my life would have been much easier these last two weeks! 🤣

The final morning of the course came and it was time for our tour around Jena. On the way back from the beer garden the night before, someone proclaimed “If Regina does not know a part of Jena, it does not exist!”, a theory that I was about to dramatically disprove! Regina and Christine did seem quite confused about my chosen cottage throughout the week so it wasn’t surprising that I had to lead the whole class to it by having Christine push me and using my arms to indicate left, right and straight on! I think Regina has always been sort of impressed by me but as she exclaimed that she hadn’t ever seen this place before, i could definitely tell that she was even more impressed! To be honest, even I was impressed with the fact that I had just shown a woman who has lived in Jena a long time a completely new corner of the city alł while not actually living in the area! How many people can pull that off?!

Sometimes things happen in my life that are either massive coincidences or signs from the universe. As I mentioned earlier, I’m starting law school next month so it was really fitting when, as we were going back to the classroom, Christine told me that the bit of the university that we had been working in all week (and for the other two years) was actually the law department! I keep discovering more and more bridges between German and law, for example, Sylvia is married to a lawyer, the German book that I know best (Der Vorleser) was written by a judge who became a law professor and now this! Spooky!! I wasn’t feeling very good in my head so I didn’t say anything to Christine but deep down I was absolutely amazed and I wondered if at some point in the previous two years, I subconsciously clocked this and I was inspired or maybe I was always destined to study German and Law and part of the reason why I love this course is that it’s a subtle combination of the two subjects.

The end of the course was marked by a dinner at the hotel Schwarze Bär where I stayed last year. I always like to dress up for the Abschlussabend and tonight I was sporting the same silk lilac 50s dress that I wore for my award ceremony at Edinburgh College 3 years ago which, as my colleagues pointed out, went splendidly with my new watch! As I went to order mun’s and my drinks, the waitress recognised my mum! This made me really appreciate how nice it was here! I mean sure, the owner of my favourite ice cream shop back in Edinburgh knows me and my mum, but this was different, we had only stayed at Hotel Schwarze Bär for a week and that was more than a year ago! I feel like Germany is a nicer place to live than the UK, just because the people seem to be nicer! Everyone spent the evening eating, discussing future plans for German study and just sharing stories and at the end like half the room hugged me and thanked me for my enthusiasm through the week. As I said goodbye to Christine (with a Lilian-style hug-ambush😀), she told me that if I ever want to speak German or play Skat while I was at law school, I could get in touch with her! I must make quite an impression on people because that officially makes my entire OU family who don’t want me to go to law school and forget about them!…as if that would even be possible! 😂

In conclusion, although I did struggle at times, I really enjoyed the visit to my spirit home country. I do strongly believe that doing this course is going to be one of the main ways I keep my German skills up to strength as I move on to my law adventure. I also want to thank you for reading this enormous article to the end, I know that it was a long one!

Eilidh Elizabeth Molly McGrath 💜

in memory of my beloved baby boy Cooper 2010-2026

Special thanks to Christine Pleines and Regina Wagner