Altenburg

by Will Long

We came in on the train around 7ish. Our host parents picked us up, and we all went to our various homes. My host family was pretty cool. The whole family was really into heavy metal. I had sschnitzel and noodles, watched the soccor game, and went to bed. The next day, the group went into Altenburg and saw the castle, or as nathalie would say ‘’Kaaaaaastleeee.’’ Then, we went to the art muesem . We had coffee with the german hosts, and also a tour of the muesem, which was nice. I met some nice germans there, and I think I may have a few new pen pals. After that, I went home and had some pizza. Then, my host family showed me pictures of their trip to London, and I went to bed. The next day, we left on the train. There was only one issuse the whole time. Two of the hosts in the next city couldn’t host anymore, so Chip and Connor had to stay behind. I offtered to let one of them have my spot in Hannover, but that didn’t work out. Anyways, it was a good trip.

Uetze & Hannover

by Nathalie Brewer

    My first impression of my host family in Uetze was that they were very enthusiastic  about hosting me. Most of the Germans I have met have been very happy to meet Americans. My host, Franzisca, was wearing an American flag scarf when I woke up the next morning. I have observed that most Germans, especially the girls, wear American flag apparel.

            After a hardy breakfast of doughnuts, meat, bread, cheese, and carbonated water, my host family took me on a trip to Wolfsberg, Germany. In Wolfsberg, there is a gigantic Volkswagon factory. My host mom told me that the factory made the city what it is today. Wolfsberg is a pretty good sized city. There were many people, stores, and things to do. Wolfsberg’s economy is in good shape because of the Volkswagon factory.

            The next day the group of Americans and their hosts went on a trip to Hannover. Hannover is about a 30 to 45 minute train ride from Uetze. We saw many interesting things there. We went up a slanted elevator to the top of a tower to see the entire town of Hannover from above. It was an amazing sight.

            After the tower ride, we went shopping throughout Hannover. I saw some stores that were also in American but the name was changed for some reason. Some examples were Tk Maxx, instead of Tj Maxx. Another store was Forever 18, instead of Forever 21. They were the same stores but the name was changed.

             The last event we did together as a group was a farewell barbeque. My host family made me chicken and sausages. I had a great time in Uetze.

Dresden 2

by Connor McKenna

     After getting held in Altenburg for four extra days due to conflicts, a fellow groupmate, Chip, and I had to find ways to stay entertained. The daughter of our group leader Erika Körnor gave us the options of going to two cities close by: Leipzig and Dresden. In Leipzig, there was an abundance of different sights and points of interest including a museum of the secret police in former East Germany and a museum of modern German history. 
 
In Dresden, Chip, Erika, and I all traveled to a former residence of the Prussian Kings. This residence was named Zwinger and housed an armory museum named Rüstkammer and a museum of the Prussian King’s art named Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Art Gallery of the Old Masters). Both of these exhibits within this immense estate were extraordinary and really did an excellent job of showing the Prussian kings truly illustrious lifestyle. After our tour of Zwinger our group traveled to the massive and almost fully transparent Volkswagon factory. In the factory we learned that all the factory workers operate under constant watch due to all of the factory walls being glass. After finishing the tour in Dresden we returned to Altenburg.

Paris

by Mackenzie Deal & Mandy McMenemy

Paris is a place for new experiences and delicous food. At the first restaurant we went to, called Chartier, we decided to try a typical French dish. Escargot! What is escargot? Steamed snails that are scrumpicous. I was afraid they would taste like rubber and be very slimy. Surprisingly, they were full of flavor and everyone enjoyed their snails very, very much. Erin was so excited about them that she kept all the shells from the snails. Another thing we learned about French food etique is that dinner can last up to three hours and you always have a three course meal. The restaurants are always full of people and laughter.   

The only downfall was that there was never any air conditioning.Coming from America where every building is cool and refreshing, to a place where it is more humid inside than it is outside in the sun was very difficult. In our youth hostel opening up the window only made it worse. The worst place for being overly hot was the metro station. The cars were always packed and no one on there knew what deodrant was.. hot and smelly was not a good combination. 

The Effiel Tower at sunset was truly an amazing sight to see. Pictures of the Effiel Tower doesn’t give it the credit that it deserves. Something of that size and beauty needs to be seen with the naked eye. Overall Paris is a place I would recommend going to.

Berlin Livin'

Joey Schwind

         

 Berlin gave the trip an awesome first impression.  The big city life was awesome, and of course, much different from our small town of Morganton.  I think Berlin was a culture shock to some. My family spoke great English and my host brother, Felix, admired the American culture. Speaking of my family, they were amazing. The differences in family life are quite different as well. During our three days in Berlin, we toured many sites, watched a European Championship soccer game, got lost for awhile (3 hours), and visited the school.

            So, the second night there, the fun began. We went to watch the Germany-Denmark soccer game. Germany won 2-1. We went to an “American” style bar to watch the match, and the meal combinations were defferent. I ordered chicken tenders, and they came with a side of tortilla chips. Afterwards, we all wanted to go out for a little while. The game ended at 9:45 and nobody wanted to go home. So, we left the restaurant and headed towards the train. As soon as we got to where we needed to go, everyone decided it was too late to go home. That night turned into a night of work, trying to find everyone’s house and such. Lesson learned: have a way home before making plans. Regardless, everyone had a great night. Finally, we get home at 3 a.m.

            The following day, we visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp, went to the school for an end of the year festival, and went out for the night. Since we all had to wake up early the next day, it wasn’t a late night.  The school was a private school and very different. None of the classrooms had any kind of technology in them except for a tv. The class sizes were so small and the school looked like it hadn’t been updated in a pretty long time. Nevertheless, the school was one of the most elite schools in all of Germany! The school festival was pretty cool. In celebration of their last day of school, all of the students put on ‘Schulfest’ (school festival) where all of the student organizations gathered together and made food to be sold and this festival was open to the pubic. After Schulfest, we all went shopping and then to Cancún in Potsdamer Platz. We watched the Spain and Croatia soccer match. After people began to leave, we wanted to go to the Sony Center (in the photo on the right) and just hung around there for awhile.

            Berlin was fun and a city full of life. I think that it’s safe to say that the bar was set pretty high for the trip after Berlin. We all wanted to stay longer, and I will definitley go back.

Dresden & Leipzig

by Chip McKenney
 
During the time that Connor, Erika, Mrs. Hack and I spent in Altenburg away from the group, we visited both Leipzig and Dresden. While we were in Dresden we visited the Volkswagen factory and were able to see cars being produced.

In the bottom floor we got inside of the display models and took some funny pictures. Another place that we visited in Dresden was the Rüstkammer museum of art and armory.

When we were in Leipzig we went shopping and visited the university, which shocked Joey and I when we learned that it was tuition free.

We also had some awesome chocolate pear cake with coffee. The next day, I visited an airplane museum with my host family, the Hoppman’s. 

Later that day we went to my host brother’s grandparent’s house by car and swam at a lake near their house. The water was freezing so swimming turned into a game of soccer pretty fast. We had a huge dinner with all kinds of wurst and steak, and then five kinds of cakes and pies for dessert. The train ride from Altenburg to Frankfurt was pretty uneventful. Connor, Erika, and I played cards, hangman, and ‘if you know what I mean’ to pass time until we reunited with the rest of the group in the Frankfurt trainstation.

Arrival in Munich

by Erin and Nikki Hack

 

            After eight hours on a plane filled with screaming babies and no sleep, we were all glad to be able to finally arrive in Munich. That happiness probably ended as soon as we got out of the airport, because it was super hot. We got to split up in groups and wander around and look at random stuff before we all got back together to eat. The restaurant we ate at was Bavarian and quite a strange experience. Mr. Koerner had to translate basically everything on the menu because none of us could read German well enough. Some of us ordered half of a chicken; it literally looked like the chicken had been cut in half , cooked, and placed on a plate. 
 




Then we had some more time to walk through Munich and we got the chance to see a church. The church was huge and we were amazed at how detailed it was. When we were finished walking around Munich, we finally got to get on a second flight that was only an hour long that took us to Berlin, where we got to meet our first host families. Munich was fun, but we were glad to be on our way to Berlin.

 

First week in Achern

by Rebecca Jaynes & Emily Petersen

   We left Uetze and took a two hour train ride to Frankfurt.  We spent the day in Frankfurt walking around, but the weather wasn’t very good. We visited the largest skyscraper in Frankfurt, the Maintower.  Then we went back to the station and caught another train to Achern. When we arrived it was late in the evening so we just went home, showered, and went to sleep in our new host family homes.  It was difficult to wake up the next morning because we all didn’t get much sleep but we had to go to school.

           The first couple of days we were in Achern we had to go to school.  We sat through a German class and a politics class the first day.  Also, throughout the week we gave presentations to different age level English classes.  Everyone did presentations on things like our schools, life at home, and our hometowns.  We also gave them an opportunity to ask questions they might have about America.  A lot of them were interested in our opinions on American politics... especially Obama.  For lunch we typically ate in the school cafeteria with our hosts and their friends, but occasionally all the Americans would walk to the city for pizza and döner (above). 

         

           On June 28^th, we all dressed up in German colors and went to the public viewing section in Achern to watch the EuroCup soccer match between Germany and Italy.  While we were watching the game, a teenage guy with a megaphone approached us and asked where we were from.  After we responded America, he started a “USA!” chant. Germany ended up losing the soccer match 3-1 after Balotelli from the Italian team scored the first two goals for Italy. Needless to say, everyone in Germany is holding out a small grudge. After beating Germany, Italy moved on to the finals to play Spain and ended up getting pounded by Spain 4-0.. In the next days, we spent time going to school and spending time with each other after school at places like the lake and the city.

Berlin Museums and Sachsenhausen Memorial

by Thomas Pope

In Berlin we visited a few museums and memorials. The most interesting one of these, in my opinion, was the Pergamon Museum. This museum exhibited many of the ancient artifacts from Rome and Babylon. The museum was enourmous. There had to be close to 100 rooms, and we didn’t have enough time to see them all. One of the largest exhibits was Ishtar Tor, or the Ishtar gate. 

            Other exhibits included small artifacts such as gold jewelry, lots of pottery, and statue remnants that had been recovered. Many of them were in fragments, and had to be peiced together to the eye. There were also large stone lions that had to weigh a few tons apiece, and lots of other artwork and sculptures from the time period. The ancient Babylonian manuscripts were also particularly interesting, the writing, while impossible to read, looked really cool. There were also some inverted geometrical carvings which had been painted and smoothed with laquer. These were some of the most interesting things there.

 

            While in Berlin, we also visited the site of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It was a very humbling experience. We saw barely a glimpse of the conditions that prisoners were forced to live in, but even so, it was emotional. We saw the large pillar memorial constructed in the center of the camp that seemed to loom over everything. We also saw the guard towers and a few of the living quarters.

            In the camp, we had the oppurtunity to read about some of the history of the camp. I’m glad we had the oppurtunity. There were many notes, flowers, and rocks placed on some of the memorials as a sign of respect. Some of the members of our group, including myself, placed small stones on some of the plaques.