Leeds to Mannheim

Hallo!

This last week has been a lot less busy than my first week but I doubt it will stay like that for long as my classes are now starting! The start was a surprise to me as I’d forgotten that doing a study abroad year involved studying. Here, the lectures are an hour and a half as well which is a long time to concentrate, especially when the lecturer is talking about corporate bonds and securities for the last 30 minutes.

Over the week I’ve also managed to finally register in Mannheim (so I’m now officially allowed to be here) and attend all the orientations so in theory I know what I’m supposed to be doing. On Thursday night, I also went to my first Schneckenhof which is the big party they hold at the University every week. It was a fun party as it's in one of the University courtyards but it’s also relatively expensive, and you had to pay to go to the toilet despite paying to go in! One of the guys in the group also seemed to take offence to me talking to other boys which was strange and kind of ruined the night a bit!

Lowlights

There were a few other low lights this week:

The first problem I had this week was getting lost in the city. Mannheim is one of the only cities in the world to work in a block system which, in theory, makes it easier to navigate. Working from the castle, the left-hand side of the city is arranged in letters going from A to K and goes from 1 in the centre and counts to around 8 as you go further left. The right-hand side is a mirror image with the letters from L to U. I had misunderstood this when I needed to be at K7 to register after printing my documents out at L1. I thought that 15 minutes was loads of spare time to make my appointment when I was in L and K was surely right next to it.. K is the other side of the city and, according to google, was a 20-minute walk away. This meant I had to run through the city to get to my appointment on time. After arriving on time, I found that my appointment was then delayed by 10 minutes!

Another low point was when I went to the University to sort out payment for my cultural courses. After getting mixed up I’d paid through the wrong account so that had to be sorted but then when I went to hand over the paperwork the woman very openly sighed and snapped at me about not having two copies of each. I don’t know if that’s German directness or just someone who isn’t good at customer service.

On the same day I also spent an hour walking round trying to find the University’s central lending library as there are no signs anywhere! And one of the professors sent me the wrong way.

The other difficulty is still with actual German. I can understand a lot of things written down but most of the time I either don’t understand what someone is saying to me or I get the gist of what they’ve said but am unsure of how to reply. This meant that in the kebab shop when going to pay ( because it’s a posh kebab shop where you eat and then pay?) rather than saying that I wanted to pay and what I had I simply said “ich auch” (I also) as it was the same as the girl in front of me and the man just laughed at me! But at least I’m trying…

Highlights

There were also plenty of highlights to the week though.

On Saturday, I repaned to Heidelberg to see the fireworks over the castle. The evening was great, we went to a German restaurant and I tried Fleischkäse (literal translation “meat cheese”) which was a bit like fried spam but was good. I also ate the first piece of chocolate cake since I’ve been here, but it was technically Italian. The fireworks were magical; the castle was lit up red and had sparklers coming out the turrets while fireworks including some in the shape of hearts and emojis!!! Were set off over the bridge. There were thousands of people who had gone to Heidelberg specially to watch which did cause a bit of a problem when coming back. All of the trams and buses were packed full, so we jogged the 35 minutes from the river to the train station to get back to Mannheim!

Another highlight was during the day on Saturday. I went on a free walking tour of Mannheim which was really interesting and means that I now (hopefully) know my way around the city centre. It pans out that due to Mannheim’s position between the Rhine and Neckar, it was totally destroyed during World War 2 so everything, including the castle, is reconstructed. The Mannheim block system was also explained which should mean I don’t go to the wrong block again and end up having to rush through the city centre to get to the right one! On the tour I also met lot of lovely people from around the world and learnt about their own countries. The best part of the tour, however, was getting to try Dampfknudeln for free. Dampfknudeln are like dough dumplings and these were served with either vanilla or wine sauce. Apparently, Germans have them mostly for breakfast or in soup. I’d happily have them for breakfast because they were delicious!

On Sunday, a group of us tried to be typical German and went for Kaffee und Kuche (Coffee and cake) which was really nice. I had a cheesecake which in Germany has a kind of pastry base all the way round and is made with quark instead of cream cheese. It was one of the best cheesecakes I’ve ever had. After a few hours in the café, we went to the Technoseum which was sort of a science museum going through the history of German inventions from the industrial revolution to now. That was fun as there were loads of experiments to play on and no one judged the group of six 20-year-olds using them!

Cultural Differences

The key cultural difference I’ve noticed this week is that Germans knock on the desks at the end of lectures. In the UK, we sometimes (but very rarely) clap at the end of a lecture but here, every lecture, they do this knocking.

Over this next week I will finally get to start the rest of my classes and I’m going to the Schlossfest in Mannheim on Saturday which will involve more fireworks!

Bis später!