Craig O'Beirne - QLD to Germany

Tue 01 Apr 2008

Craig O'Beirne, from Mt Maria Petrie College in QLD has returned from his Summer Explorer Program in Germany. Here is his news.

From November 2007 to February 2008, I had the amazing opportunity to go on exchange in Germany for three months. I had waited and waited to go. I had been looking forward to it for so long, and finally the moment came when I was stepping out of the plane and in to Frankfurt airport.

When I had arrived in Germany, I didn’t speak a word of German - basically nothing. The second day all the other Australians and I caught the train to our host families from Frankfurt main station. It was here where I suddenly realised, “I was in Germany”. Looking around seeing signs in German, hearing people around me speaking German. A few minutes later I found myself at a coffee stand, ordering coffee with my first German conversation being “Ich mochte ein Kaffee bitte”. I had pronounced the words completely wrong and felt like an outsider. It had hit me then and there that the next three months were going to be difficult but rewarding. With my host family there was a lot of miscommunications for the first few weeks, but you had to laugh it off. I was lucky my host mother, sister and brother spoke reasonable English.

School in Germany was hard. My host brother studied 11 subjects - Physic, Math, Geography, French, Spanish, English, Chemistry, Religion, Sport, Politics and German. I had done the same classes. It is common for German high school students to be studying 10-14 subjects, which I thought was really intense.

I lived in Hamburg - a really beautiful city with lots to do. My host family took me to Berlin for a day, the German exchange programme had organised a trip to Fussen the Alps and to the Castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. I also had a trip to Munich. I was lucky to travel and see the amazing sites I saw. Looking back the best experience I had with the programme was having a German Christmas and New Year which was totally different to an Australian Christmas and New Year.

After the first week I started making new friends. After the first month my German was understandable. Second month it had gotten better. By the third I didn’t want to leave, my German was improving and I had made heaps of new friends.

All in all, my time in Germany was a great experience and has made me keen on going back there next year to live and work for a few years.

Craig