Leeds to Mannheim

Guten Tag!

With only 3 weeks left before the Christmas holidays and 2 weeks left before exams, I have a lot to do! Most of my days are split between revising and spending time with the people that will be leaving soon, and I have even started planning for the summer already! One of the main things that I’ve realised while being here is that there is so much more of the world to see and so many more things to do, so I have written a bucket list and decided I want to spend some of summer volunteering with children abroad.

This week though, I have been busy nearly all day every day! Last Thursday, I had my German presentation so most of the day was spent preparing for that. It went quite well; my grammar was probably terrible, but people seemed to understand what I’d been talking about! After class finished, I met up with someone from my International Accounting class to start revision. It’s so much more interesting when you can talk to someone else about it instead of doing it alone. Friday was much the same with a lot of work, but I also found time to bake a self-saucing chocolate cake (and eat far too much of it). On Friday, my Netflix also finally changed to the German version so now I can watch German films and Friends in German which I’m hoping will help me improve.

The best day of this last week, however, was Saturday. Sam and I decided to go to Worms for the day. First though, we decided to stop at a newly opened café in Mannheim for breakfast. I ordered banana and Nutella pancakes and Sam had chia pudding. The pancakes took a while to come because of problems in the kitchen so they gave us both a free drink too!

Once we had eaten our breakfast, we took the regional train to Worms. This is where the Niblungenlied was based which is a kind of myth/ fairy-tale originally written as an epic poem in the 1200s. The Nibelungenlied has since been adapted into operas (the most famous being by Wagner) and various films. Many more modern stories are also based off the characters within the poem. Sam really wanted to go to Worms because she studied the story in her German classes back in the US.

The Nibelungen museum is the first place we went. It was a museum led by an audio guide in the old towers of Worms. The first part talked you through the pre-story, the characters, the main storylines and the adaptions. After that we got to walk along the bridge between the towers and look out on the view over Worms, along the bridge there were images of how the city has changed over the last 800 years. The final section was full of thrones which you could sit in while the key parts of the story were read to you, first in their original version and then translated into English so we could get a full understanding of the story. Once we finished at the museum, we explored the rest of Worms. This included a 1000-year-old cathedral which looked like a castle and the city gates.

On Sunday, I organised to meet Raina and Sam for lunch in a vintage café in town. The café was already playing Christmas music which was fun, and the food was incredibly cheap! I had a delicious BBQ burger and some very salty chips. We talked about what we were doing after Christmas as the other two will be leaving Mannheim. Raina is going to be in Brussels and has already said I can go and stay with her, so Belgium will be one of my first trips when I get back. Sam is going back to University in Richmond, but she has an internship in Berlin in May, so I can see her again too!

After lunch we went to an Orchestra performance at University as one of our friends was playing the violin in it. It was the first proper orchestra event I’ve ever been to and it was pretty confusing. The music was amazing, but I didn’t understand when you were supposed to clap (after they’ve done the full set of each composer and not after each individual song) and why the clapping went on so long when it finally did happen! After the performance, the group I went with were planning on going for an Indian. After a lot of persuading, I decided to go to but, when we got there, they had misunderstood; it was a fast-food place not a restaurant. So, they set off to find another restaurant and I went home and ate roasted veg instead!

On Monday, I spent all morning writing up lecture notes and all afternoon practicing German. I was meeting my German friend, Kathrin, at a café mid-afternoon so decided to watch Friends in German first to try and get into the German mindset. Unfortunately, I don’t think it made much difference as I could understand nearly everything Kathrin said but it’s still difficult to work out how to respond and by the time, I’ve thought about it the conversation has moved on! But I’m going to keep trying and hopefully by next June I’ll be better.

Yesterday was my longest day of the week though. I had my first lecture at 8:30, wrote up more lecture notes, tutored twice and attempted to make chimney cakes with Sam. The baking was the best part of the day. We bought half the ingredients each and worked together to try and copy the ones we had tried; I’d had them in Budapest and she tried them in Prague. The most difficult bit was making cones out of foils, but it was fun. While they were baking, we ate chilli and, once they were cooked, we decorated them with melted chocolate and cinnamon sugar and tried them. They weren’t exactly the same, but I think with a bit more practice they definitely could be, and they were delicious nonetheless.

Today is another work day including more tutoring but tonight I’m going to go and see Fantastic Beasts 2. I’ve got another busy week ahead with a lot more revision and the start of the Christmas markets!