After my return from Austria, I had just over two weeks back in England before the next phase of my year abroad in Heidelberg, Germany. Though my lecturer advised me to go at the beginning of September and take the language proficiency test at the university there (thus obtaining written proof of my perfect German skills), I had my 21st birthday to celebrate with my family. A milestone like that has priority.
I, along with most of my family, spent the first week of September in a nicely spacious lodge down in Herefordshire. Again the feeling of disconnection – no Internet, on unnamed roads, surrounded by farmland. It was a great week, getting to celebrate my 21st with so many dear people in one place. Plus, I managed to catch up with some more friends in my home town of Derby before I left. Taking up an invitation to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes was not as bad a decision as I’d thought it would be.
I use Rotten Tomatoes to guide my choice in films, however.
But the daunting day of my departure eventually arrived, and after 12 hours of low-cost travel, I had reached my apartment in Heidelberg. My mother seemed more concerned about the journey there than anything else, but getting somewhere is easy. I’ve travelled a thousand times before, and humanity has computerised navigation now. No, I quickly realised that the first challenge to deal with is getting used to living here.
Sure, I lived in Hamburg when I was a teenager, but my father was still looking after me over there. And I could live practically by myself very well in Durham, but that’s still England. Combining independent living with the setting of a foreign country has caused this weird kind of tension in my chest, like an undercurrent of adrenaline prepping me for any kind of danger, even though I know that Heidelberg is a relatively safe place. My flat-mate recently noticed that I wasn’t eating much.
My flat-mate strikes me as a decent and cool guy, though. Through some magnificent quirk of fate, I managed to acquire a place with a chemistry student who speaks both German and Russian fluently. If I end up alternating between languages every other day, that’ll be great. Yet he subverts a lot of what you might expect, being an ethnic German who was born and raised south of Moscow, moved to Germany when he was 13, abandoned his Russian citizenship, and apparently developed a pro-American libertarian political stance along the way. All my conversations with him have certainly been interesting, and he doesn’t exactly show Russia in a positive light. He told me, “In Russia, America is Public Enemy No. 1… the UK is probably Public Enemy No. 2.”
Well, damn. If I do end up in Russia, I’d better have learnt enough Russian to pass myself off as one of them.
On Friday evening, he (let’s call him J from now on) invited me to the Wurstmark in nearby Bad Dürkheim, going along with the “family of chemists” – his group of friends from university. The Wurstmark was a carnival that actually had little to do with wurst, but a lot to do with wine. Apparently, it’s the biggest wine festival in the world – a claim that seems legitimate after being served pints of the stuff.
Dehab.
I plan to continue the alcohol-fuelled tour of southern Germany with a visit to Munich in the final days of the Oktoberfest.
So far, I’m happy that I’ve managed to refrain from speaking any English since arriving here. And I ended up bantering with a group of Germans in only one day, which was something that all the ERASMUS co-ordinators at Durham advised us to do. Mostly positive developments in just a few days.
However, one obstacle I’ve come across is dealing with my UK bank (Barclays) to get my money in a German account. The whole process isn’t as fast as I thought it would be. I’ll have to remind myself to prime my account for transfers before I make the next move abroad. But I noticed that Barclays and Deutsche Bank have a partnership, and added ATM charges here can be avoided by withdrawing cash specifically from Deutsche Bank ATMs. If anyone reading this is in a similar situation, investigate that kind of small print on your bank’s website.
(By the way, anyone looking to share a flat in Germany should check out wg-gesucht.de. Great for ERASMUS students.)
Hopefully they’ll be more tales to tell later.
P.S. I’m adding some music to these stories, hopefully to come up with a whole Year Abroad Soundtrack when all this is over. I put this song on once the old travellin’ blues hit me as I was leaving England. Not only is it the theme song to one of my erstwhile favourite shows, but it’s also a first-rate anthem for journeying.
The Edge of Endeavour 