On the 16th of March 2002, a group of pupils from Sir Thomas Rich's and Denmark Road, left from Seabrook Road on their journey to Göttingen in central Germany.
The first leg of the journey was a 2½-hour bus ride to Heathrow airport where we were to take a plane to Germany. After a 2-hour flight we reached Frankfurt where we were to undertake the second leg of the journey to Göttingen, which took approximately 3 hours. When we finally arrived in Göttingen it was the middle of the night and the last thing anyone felt like doing was speaking a foreign language, but we had to.
Our first day was spent acclimatising to our new surroundings; however, many of us met up later that day at the local swimming pool - a refreshing change to life in Gloucester!
Contrary to popular belief the exchange is not actually a holiday, on Monday it was straight back to school and back to regular lessons. This time lessons had an unusual twist; they were in German (even the English lessons.) For those of you thinking that this is easy, imagine trying to understand French spoken with a German accent let alone Latin.
But it was not all hard work, school finishes at 1:00 and the rest of the day is all free time. Even easier most of the exchange time was taken up with visits to interesting historical sites and other such places of intrigue.
The most interesting of these was a whole day visit to Berlin. To get to Berlin we took the high speed train from Göttingen to Berlin. We started with a guided tour from a relative of one of the German teachers. The tour took us around places such as the Bundestag, or more commonly known as the Reichstagbäude, or in English the German Parliament Building. On top of this is an immense glass dome from where we probably saw the most of Berlin that day. The only thing that couldn't be seen from there was a very interesting hole. Yes, a hole. This hole was of great fascination to all the Germans as it is a memorial to the Nazi reign and the fire which happened there when Germany's books and history were destroyed. One of the only other signs of Berlin's past was a small cobbled line down the middle of the city, which marks where the Berlin Wall used to stand.
Other visits during the exchange included the nearby town of Goslor, the highlight of which being 80 meters underneath the town; in the old silver and copper mines, which brought the town the majority of its wealth. Also an official reception with the mayor of Göttingen was arranged in the modern Rathaus, or town hall. Here the mayor met all the exchange groups visiting the area. We were given the opportunity to see an interesting, and informative, video about the history of the town and the modern day-town.
But all too soon the trip was over and everyone had to say a sad farewell to his or her exchange partners. The mood on the way back was one of disappointment at having to leave, but relief to be talking English full time again. Overall all had a good time and a lot of useful German was learnt - and practised with a genuine need to do so.
