Leeds to Mannheim

Wie geht's denn?

Yesterday was my 100th day in Mannheim! There wasn’t much celebration because I spent the whole day revising and tutoring but that’s probably a good thing since I will be at different Christmas markets every day now till next Tuesday. This week has also been a busy one, but I have managed to get all my revision notes written and my final graded presentation is tomorrow (I’m talking about Brexit).

The end of last week was spent preparing for said presentation and writing up the notes. However, I did find time on Thursday evening to attend the Weihnachtsfenster Eröffnung (Christmas Window opening) at Engelhorns, which is a big department store. This was the most exaggerated window display opening I have ever seen. They had performers, music and videos projected onto the shop walls and, when the red curtains were finally opened to show the windows, a huge fireworks display! The fireworks display was amazing with sparklers covering the sides of the building and the main fireworks going off in time to “Rewrite the Stars” from The Greatest Showman. After all that the actual windows were a bit disappointing as they aren’t Chritsmassy in the slightest. For some reason they’ve gone for a creepy circus theme! Once the display was over, everyone went in the shop to look round and I followed assuming there would be free samples. I was not disappointed and got to try truffles, popcorn and some Christmas lollies. Germans react strangely to free samples and rather than taking one per person at each basket they just took however many they wanted! It was a good evening though and definitely put me in the Christmas spirit.

On Friday night Will arrived from the UK. It was quite late, so we didn’t do anything that evening apart from get a kebab, have a chat and decide what to do the next few days. On Saturday morning, I decided to take him around Mannheim and show him a selection of the best bits. At lunchtime we went to McDonalds as he wanted to try some of the menu items that are different to the UK. It is currently McDonald’s Monopoly here but unfortunately, we didn’t win anything. That afternoon I was planning on taking Will to Luisenpark and then the Christmas Market at Ludwigshafen, but he was too tired for the park, so we headed home and watched a film before setting off to Ludwigshafen. The market at Ludwigshafen was pretty disappointing. It was very small for a Christmas market and there wasn’t much going on, it was also 90% food so there were no cute Christmas gifts to look at. Since it was mainly food stalls, we decided to eat tea there. Will had Bratwurst and Pommes and I had Kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes). We then got some Ballen for pudding which are basically less doughy doughnut balls.

On Sunday, I was hoping to go to Stuttgart Christmas market but unfortunately it didn’t actually open till today! Instead we continued the tradition of Sunday coffee and cake; I had Apfeltasche and Will had Schokolade Minischnecken (chocolate cinnamon rolls, directly translated as chocolate mini snakes!). We then headed to Luisenpark. This is the same park that I had taken Jordan to but this time I found a whole section that we missed out which was like a mini zoo! There were some adorable monkeys and tortoise, various reptiles and an aquarium with fish from all over the world and a turtle. After exploring the park for a few hours, we headed back for a rest before going for tea. I wanted to take Will to the café I went to last weekend as the food was delicious and very cheap but unfortunately it was full. We ended up getting fast food again, I had another kebab and Will had Currywurst and Pommes.

Will left on Monday morning and I spent most of Monday cleaning up and working. Monday was Annie’s birthday though so around 15 of us met at an Irish pub to celebrate and draw names for Secret Santa. I had already eaten so didn’t have food though, but it was all homemade and looked amazing. It was really nice to have such a big group together and I even met some people I hadn’t seen before despite being here 14 weeks.

The rest of the week has been boring (working) so there’s nothing else to report! However, tonight will be my first of three trips to the Mannheim Christmas markets and there are plenty more German Christmas markets to follow.