Things have been moving on (very) quickly since I set up the blog, I've had the 3 day introduction course, traveled across Germany for pretty much a whole day to get to Ilsenburg, seen the school twice, moved into a holiday apartment, had to hunt for food in a completely new place, met the teachers, bought a German phone, and then moved out of the holiday house and into the attic of a family's house. All in just under a week!
So lets start at the beginning shall we?
Before we even get to Monday morning there was already the stress of Sunday and Sunday night... trying to get 6 months worth of trousers, jumpers, coat and boots to fit into a suitcase wasn't actually the main issue here... the fact that we'd bought a suitcase big enough to fit me as well as about as many jumpers as i'd need into it meant that there was plenty of room... the weight however was the thing that got me! After struggling, stressing and moaning I managed to take out everything that wasn't completely necessary to get it down to easyjet's 20kl limit. Ergh!
And now we can go to Monday! Monday morning was an early start.. now for me 7 is already an early start but that would have been a lie-in. Dad woke me up at what felt like about 1am but it was only 3.30, I then had to get dressed into more clothes than were really necessary, and pack the last few things (yes, typical me to not have packed everything till the morning of departure...) and then jump in the car with a bread roll for breakfast, whenever that would be!
After saying goodbye it was time for Dad to drive me to the airport, i'm sure I rambled on about a million things that definitely weren't necessary or particularly interesting but hey, when you're traveling to a different country you want to know everything about everything before you leave right?
So anyway... back to the point, we got to the airport in plenty of time, and I then proceeded to stress out in the queue for bag drop as it was taking so long, longer than people who were actually checking in! So time passes, people drop their stuff and finally it's my turn, put the suitcase on the scales and... 21.3kl bums. But then the woman says I need to take out .3kl or i'll have to pay £10 now I do not want to pay sleazy jet any more money than I have to, so the suitcase is opened, right there, and I dig out a jumper. The woman then says if I buy something when I get to the other side of the security check I can just put the jumper in that bag and everything's fine and dandy, cool! So we go up the escalator to the security area and meet Lawrie and his dad, before it's time for me to unpack the little suitcase in order to fish out my laptop and shampoo etc (there really was little point in me packing), and then say the final goodbye to Dad before going through the strange high-tech barriers to security, and when you're holding as many things as i was it's not easy to hold up your boarding pass to a robot/camera gatwick! - didn't think that one through did you...
anywho i get through security (3 trays ahem) with no issues and proceed to re-pack everything so now i have my handbag, mini suitcase, and jumper.. time to go buy a drink from whsmiths so that i can stop carrying that blooming jumper round like it's a security blanket. I clearly already look like I have enough issues due to the number of layers i'm wearing when it looks like everyone else in Gatwick is going to Spain, I don't need to add to them.
So I buy the drink, pack the jumper, and the coat in the plastic bag because I want to look slightly less awkward and everything's fine, the gate opens and we head to check in there, and that's when the lady in front of us gets asked to put her handbag into her handluggage suitcase... ah.
At this point i'm fairly sure that mine is just not going to fit into my suitcase so I tried to hid my bag, not obviously, just push it behind my back and put my hair over the strap. No no, he's on to me. There were 2 major floors in my plan in hindsight; 1. I've just cut my hair! it's now not long enough to even half cover it! and 2. This is his job, I bet he get's a bonus for bag spotting.
But I accept his challenge and open the suitcase and squish everything inside it so that i can fit the handbag in and it manages... just... but I was worried about the strength of the zip. The guy then checks and see's it's in and it's fine, good. Then it occurs to me that my phone is still in my handbag, and on.
Open the suitcase again. take the bag out. turn off the phone. squish everything again. zip it all shut again. and make 3 prayers. 1. that the zip holds 2. that i haven't just cracked my laptop and 3. that he doesn't make me put the bag into the measurer thingy... it would not have made it... but god loves me and everything turns out finneeeeee.
So then, get to the other end of the flight, not much to say about that... it was a standard flight, went up and came down (on land, not water), what more could you want?
We then made it onto the train with our suitcases (my big one bigger than Lawrie's even though he doubted it) and get to Cologne main train station.
By then it was definitely coffee time! after coffee we decided to see something of Cologne as we're here. So we sussed out the suitcase store things and saw that it was 3 euros for 2 hours or 6 for 24 hours... 2 was a slightly awkward amount of time but who really wants to spend 12euros on leaving your suitcase behind?
Then comes the part where you put the suitcases in and go for a wander.. if only it were that easy.. now Lawrie's big suitcase fits in fine but he can't put the little suitcase in there at the same time so we decided to split a locker for the small ones as they will fit in together and why pay more when you don't have to? good, 3 down one to go. So remember how i said my suitcase is massive... well Cologne trainstation agreed with me on that one and the electronic locker thing would not close because of it's size... discrimination if you ask me, but who am i.. so we treck down to the human operated luggage store thing, where the shortest amount of time they do is 24hours for 6euros, i did ask if they could make it cheaper but no... you win this one Cologne.
Well done if you're still reading this though, i'm going to be honest i'm not even sure i'll read it through...
Anyway, so we wandered round the town(city?) and saw about a 10 - i'm not joking - h&ms, now that is keen. and then we found somewhere to eat, which to me seemed more like some kind of strange gym shop when i saw the sign but there you go...
After grabbing some breakfast/lunch we then headed back to the train station and with Lawrie's impeccable sense of direction we got there in about 10 minutes - a walk that would probably have taken me about 45 minutes with 23 wrong turns...
So we made it back to the station in time to pick up our luggage from the robots, who had taken very good care of everything, and to meet a whole group of the other language assistants who were all huddled in a huge group. We then discovered that we were huddled in the wrong place and so had to move near to the main entrance, which if you ask me was probably a worse place as we were like that heard of sheep you see in the middle of the road when you want to get through, and one sheep moves out of the way and about 5 get in the way... so i'm sorry for anyone who was in a rush in Cologne station between 2.30 and 3....oops
Anyway, after this things were pretty straight forward, make our way to the coaches whilst chatting and trying to meet people who may be going to the same places as you and trying not to trip up anybody who was in a rush!
I'm going to leave everything else to the next post seeing as i'm getting pretty tired of typing and no doubt anyone who's reading this is getting pretty tired of reading my ramblings so i'm going to leave it here.
although as an incentive for you to come back and read some more... here's a picture of where we're going and there's a promise that the police will be involved... now if that doesn't spark your interest I don't know what will..!
Good night for now!
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