My German Fulbright Experiences

A record of my adventures on a Fulbright scholarship (2017/2018) to Germany and other things I find interesting.

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End of the 2017/2018 Fulbright year - Wimbledon and home at last!

It’s over! My Fulbright year has officially come to an end. I cannot believe how many amazing people I met during the past 10 and a half months abroad, and how many places I was fortunate enough to have traveled to and to have experienced as well. It’s been an incredible ride, and though I’m sad it’s over, I’m already excited about and looking forward to whatever adventures may lie ahead.

Before leaving Europe for good, however, my Dad and I teamed up to squeeze in one more fun excursion in London, England. Below is my account of attending the first three days of the most famous tennis tournament in the world: Wimbledon!

The trip from Germany to England to meet my Dad began with - you guessed it - a delayed flight. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, as France was playing Argentina in a thrilling World Cup game, and many of the people in the Düsseldorf airport had crowded around T.V. sets to watch. Even when in transit, Europeans apparently take the sport of soccer very seriously. (Though that wouldn’t compare to the England vs. Columbia game I would later bear witness to - more on that further down.)

I eventually arrived in England that Saturday evening, and as Wimbledon didn’t start until two days later, our first day together was simply spent sightseeing around London. We first checked out the London Science Museum (note to all future attendees: although interesting, it’s mostly a children's museum) before managing to complete my favorite walk in London. Here’s how it goes:

Start at Westminster, admire Westminster Abbey and Big Ben Walk up Downing Street Stop for lunch at The Old Shades Cross Trafalgar Square Finish by walking down to Buckingham Palace and potentially taking a selfie with the Queen

At last, Monday morning finally arrived, and my Dad and I embarked on the famous tennis pilgrimage to the lawns of Wimbledon at the All England Club. It’s something every tennis player, whether professional or amateur, hopes to see at least once, and we were both thrilled to walk around the prestigious grounds and hop from match to match, knowing that we would be surrounded by world-class tennis no matter where we looked. Excitement levels: off the charts.

We started by orienting ourselves with the Wimbledon complex. One of the first things you see when you walk in is Centre Court, the most famous tennis court in the world and where only the best matches are played. Nearby are the bigger courts of 1, 2, 3, 12, and 18 (where the world’s longest match ever, at just over 11 hours spanned over two days, was played in 2010), and finally, the myriad of shops and restaurants where you can spend your money on amazingly overpriced (but still pretty cool) merchandise and snacks. Basically, the main question facing any newcomers is simple: where on Earth do you begin?

We decided to check out the outer courts for a few hours before proceeding to Court 1, the second biggest stadium at Wimbledon. There, we saw Sloane Stephens, one of the top ranked American women, lose handily to Donna Vekic (ranked 55th in the world), as well as Milos Raonic and Serena Williams win their matches with no trouble. We also managed to secure the famous strawberries and cream dish, a classic staple of the Wimbledon experience, and see Caroline Wozniacki, the #2 female player in the world, on a practice court. It was an amazing day, and only had us hungry for more once we left nearly 9 hours later.

If I had to describe day two of our Wimbledon extravaganza, it would look something like this: Centre Court. That’s right, we actually had tickets all day for Centre Court at Wimbledon, and on schedule to play were Rafael Nadal (men’s world number one), Garbine Muguruza (Wimbledon defending champion), and Simona Halep (women’s world number one). I’ve posted pictures and videos of each match below if anyone is interested in seeing a behind-the-scenes Centre Court perspective. Otherwise, take my word for it: seeing that many top players spar on the greatest tennis court in the world is nothing short of a dream come true, and my Dad and I loved every minute of it.

That evening, England played Columbia in the World Cup round of 16. We went to a pub to get the full experience, standing among at least a hundred other people (many of whom, ironically, were Americans) to watch England come within minutes of winning the game, then be stunned by a last-minute goal from Columbia, and finally see the game be taken to a sudden-death penalty shootout. The tension in the pub was palpable, and it was an amazing experience being there when England scored the final goal and the whole pub basically erupted (video posted below!).

Our final day at Wimbledon involved a little strategy, as we arrived extra early to escape the somewhat voluminous crowds. Our reward was a court level view of three great matches (featuring Gael Monfils and Stan Wawrinka) on Court 3, where we spent the first 6 hours of the day. We also managed to see some of Marin Cilic’s match on Court 1 before rain caused a premature end to the day, and to our Wimbledon experience as well. Our luck with the great weather had finally run dry, so we bought a couple of small souvenirs, sent a postcard back home, and left the gates of Wimbledon for the last time.

We had one more day in London to spend, however, so the next morning we went to the British Library, home of, among other treasures, the Magna Carta and ancient Biblical texts. In between train delays and cancelations, we also managed to see the Harry Potter store at King’s Cross and visit the House of Parliament. We ended the day by watching a few Wimbledon matches at the local sport’s bar before turning in and flying home (really) early the next day. It was a great last day in Europe, and was a suitable ending to one of the most surreal and memorable years one could ask for.

Writing this last article back home, surrounded by my 2 dogs and 3 cats, I find it hard to believe that the last year really happened. It feels great to be back, but I know I’m going to miss the traveling and late-night Döner runs. Most of all, however, I’m going to miss the amazing people I met in Germany, as well as in the other countries I traveled to during my months teaching abroad. However, I’m also excited to see how the Fulbright program will continue to develop, and what kinds of stories future participants will return with. I’d highly encourage anyone who counts among their interests living abroad, traveling, and languages to apply - you can visit their website (https://us.fulbrightonline.org) or talk to your campus representative for more information.

With that, I hope you enjoy the pictures and videos I’ve posted below of London and Wimbledon! Thank you for reading this blog of my 2017-2018 Fulbright year in Germany - I hope you’ve had as much fun reading it as I have had writing it. Safe travels!

Das Ende

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Wimbledon players in action! (Featuring Novak Djokovic, Heather Watson, Stan Wawrinka, Gael Monfils, Katie Swan, and Marin Cilic.

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Wimbledon 2018!

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Walking around London, July 1st and 7th, 2018.

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Wimbledon 2018 first round - Vesely wins vs Mayer.

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Katie Swan playing her second round match at Wimbledon 2018.

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Milos Raonic wins his first round match at Wimbledon, 2018.

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England wins vs. Columbia in the 2018 World Cup round of 16!

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Scotland!

Every single person who has been to Scotland has given me a similar description of it: it’s a beautiful place, it’s full of really nice people, and if only they could have stayed longer. I spent 48 hours in Scotland last weekend, and I now count myself as someone who would tell a future tourist those exact same things.

Because of the timing of my trip, I had to fly into Manchester first, then take two high speed trains in order to arrive in Glasgow, Scotland. Though it was a longer journey than I would have preferred, it turned out to be an almost ideal introduction to the country: I was grateful to get an up close look at the landscape and see the magnificent rolling hills which define the Scottish highlands. I also had the Braveheart soundtrack playing the entire time, which raised the experience to an entirely new level.

Fortunately, I had a contact already in Scotland waiting for me at the Glasgow main station: Darren, a native of Glasgow, had been an English teaching assistant in Germany as well, and had generously offered to host me in Scotland if I ever found a free weekend. When I finally arrived at 2 pm after eight hours of nonstop travel, we set out to make the next 48 hours the most Scottish 48 hours of all time.

We began by paying a visit to Asda, which Darren described as the “Wal-Mart of Scotland.” Unlike the Wal-Marts I’m familiar with, however, Asda had a milkshake dispenser, which we immediately made full use of. 20 minutes in and Scotland is already a win. The drive to his house was also surreal, as we passed the sites of two major battles in Scotland’s history, Falkirk and Stirling, which are portrayed in the movie Braveheart as well. Before crashing early, we made a brief run to the charming city of Edinburgh, stopping along the way to take a few sunset pictures (posted below!) and enjoy the nice summer weather.

The next day, classic rock music blaring, we drove straight into the highlands to one of Darren’s favorite spots in Scotland. After taking the winding road up the side of the largest hill in the area, we were rewarded with stunning panoramic views of the entire city of Glasgow. However, the main purpose of coming to this particular spot was to reach the waterfall hidden in the nearby woods. I have to say, that waterfall is of the most serene images I’ve seen in all of Europe: the peaceful creek it feeds into, the second waterfall located a few paces away, and the complete absence of other tourists gave me the impression that this is what the Scottish highlands are truly all about. If Europe had a beauty contest, that little grotto near Glasgow would surely be a contender.

We next headed to Nando’s for lunch, a restaurant chain originating from Mozambique whose menu resembles a crossover between Chili’s and Chipotle. Though the portions didn’t appear to be overwhelming at first glance, the chicken, fries (or chips), and coleslaw I had were both extremely filling and extremely tasty. The meal was capped off when Darren managed to secure me a bottle of the soft drink Irn Bru, which has been described as the “national drink of Scotland” and has a unique, bubblegum-like taste (at least to me - the drink is actually famous for having a taste that is difficult to describe).

Afterwards we traversed back to Edinburgh to explore the city more thoroughly and see Edinburgh Castle, which stands imposingly on a hill above all other buildings. For some reason, however, the castle had closed early, so we only got as far as the front gate, where other tourists not in the know were being turned away en masse. Bummer. However, we did manage to buy a Rubik’s Cube with kilt pattern designs, see a man in a kilt playing the bagpipes, and walk along the famous Royal Mile street.  We ended the day by taking Darren’s eternally jubilant dog for a walk, where we passed another castle that Queen Victoria had reportedly once lived in. I still think it’s totally cool that one can theoretically go to the park, or school, or work in Scotland, and encounter an authentic castle along the way. Scotland, yer aff yer heid!

Before I embarked on my return journey back to Germany the next morning, Darren and I squared off in a ferocious game of tennis in Glasgow. It was a fun way to wrap up the trip, and if there had been a crowd watching, they would have gone wild. I’m sure of it.

All in all, although the time I spent in Scotland was limited, it was very much worth it. Though he will no doubt be looking for revenge after that tennis match I just wrote about, Darren was a great host and tour guide, and I appreciated being able to see Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the Scottish countryside in less than 48 hours. I hope to return to Scotland again soon - it’s a place that definitely stays on your mind after you leave and invites you to discover everything else it has to offer. (Hopefully with bagpipes and Irn Bru included!)

Enjoy the pictures below, and see you in the next post!

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Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland!

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Waterfall located in the highlands of Scotland, 6/23/18.

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Filmed in downtown Edinburgh, Scotland, 6/23/18.

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A day-trip to Stuttgart!

Stuttgart had been one of the biggest cities still left unchecked on my bucket list. In a fun turn of events, however, a friend from college and Stuttgart native, Nick, happened to be in town and invited me to come and explore the city with him. As a result, at around 10:30 am on a sunny Friday morning, we met at the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof and embarked on a one-day, whirlwind tour of Stuttgart, a city which is both beautiful and unique in terms of what it has to offer its visitors.

We began by trekking to the city’s botanical gardens, which is really an extensive collection of flowers and plants merged with a zoo. I didn’t expect to see lions, tigers, bears, tarantulas, giraffes, and piranhas while visiting Stuttgart, but, funnily enough, I did, and it ended up being a very cool Überasschung. The zoo is very well maintained and fun to explore, and also has a surprisingly large restaurant where peacocks can roam among its customers. Therefore, after feasting on Wienerschnitzel mit Pommes among the peacocks, we caught the next U-Bahn out and headed in the direction of the Mercedes-Benz museum.

The Mercedes-Benz Museum is a gigantic collection of the entire history of the company, and it tells the story of the world-renowned automaker in many unique and compelling ways. The design of the museum is a fascinating piece itself: tourists begin on the seventh floor (which contains the origins of the company and its earliest car/horse carriage models) and literally spiral downwards toward the bottom floor, which culminates in a showcase of Mercedes Benz’s efforts to build electric vehicles and contribute towards a more sustainable climate. Some of the more noteworthy attractions of the museum include earlier models of police cars and ambulances, the collection of ritzy late 19th century horse carriages, and the large Mercedes Benz car dealership located, conveniently, at the exit of the museum. In terms of getting the most bang for your buck and an overall interesting learning experience, the Mercedes Benz Museum ranks towards the top in terms of museums I’ve visited in Europe this year, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a couple of hours to kill in Stuttgart.

After touring the museum, I parted ways with Nick and ventured back to the Hauptbahnhof alone. As it was a sunny day and I had an hour or so to kill before my train arrived, I walked to the nearby Neues Schloss, a sprawling 18th century Baroque-style palace that dominates the attention of city goers coming from the train station and invites you to take a closer look at the city. Surrounding the palace is a large park where people can simply relax and enjoy the nice weather, which turned out to be a great way to end a full yet very enjoyable day in one of Germany’s most elegant and interesting spots. I hope to get the chance to visit it again someday and uncover even more of its secrets.

Enjoy the pictures below, and see you in the next one!

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Stuttgart, Germany!

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3 fun examples of teaching English in Germany

This past month has been particularly full of memorable experiences I’ve had in English classrooms at my school. Below I’ve detailed three examples of my favorites:

1. In the class with the youngest students I teach (5th grade), we held a lesson on how to “stay fit and healthy.” The primary teacher of the class had taken a seat in the back in order to allow a teacher-in-training to conduct the full 45-minute lesson. He began the lesson by playing a CD of a yoga/pilates instructor yelling out various stretches. It should be noted that this was accompanied by loud and vibrant 90s dance music the whole time, and everyone, including me, teacher-in-training and primary teacher did the stretches along with the students and the vocal instructor. Afterwards, I was brought specially to the front of the classroom and told to demonstrate various action verbs such as “march” and “twist”, as well as to point to the major parts of the body such as “head” and “ankle.” Finally, students were put into groups of three or four and told to come up with a series of random exercises, after which each group would lead their own mini workout session. Ultimately, we were instructed by the 5th graders to do everything from clapping while marching to doing a jump-twist to doing random dances apparently made popular by the video game Fortnite. Though we were all left sweaty by the end of it, I’ll definitely remember that as being a particularly fun day at my school.

2. As I was about to walk into my 6th grade class, I was asked to deliver the entire day’s lesson. A lesson, mind you, I hadn’t even seen before this particular moment in time. The teacher I should have been accompanying for the day had suddenly needed to pick her child up from another school, and instead of reviewing the lesson together before the class per our usual custom, she gave me the textbook on her way out, told me which pages to cover, and left me to it. Though she did send for a backup teacher to supervise the class as well (which is required for teaching assistants), I figured this was a unique opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and decided to give it my best shot. Ultimately, once I had determined we would be covering Ancient Rome, I was able to successfully teach a new set of vocabulary to the students, get them to (quietly!) work in pairs for several exercises, and to relate their personal experiences with Rome and modern-day Italy to the rest of the class through rapid-fire stories. Though it was a pretty simple lesson in the end and it was not the first time I had conducted full lessons to this class, it was the first time I had taught a class with literally no preparation and without the teacher by my side. That day at school reinforced that teachers always have to be ready to improvise in the face of unexpected hurdles, and I was happy that it all went without a hitch.

3. In order to help reinforce the topic of past tenses, a 7th grade English teacher had me spontaneously create a quiz for her students. The quiz involved me writing random sentences in each of the past tenses covered up to that point (past progressive, simple past, etc.) and the students having to correctly guess which tense was used in each sentence. This was an unexpectedly fun exercise for me, as it not only reinforced my own knowledge of the English language (forcing me to learn the tenses myself instead of answering “that sentence just sounds better than the other”) but also allowed me to connect well with the students. For example, I knew that one student was a massive Tom Brady/New England Patriots fan and would talk for hours about the NFL if given the opportunity, so I created the following sentence with him specifically in mind: “We went to the Super Bowl to see Tom Brady and the Patriots win.” (Correct answer: simple past.) I almost couldn’t believe it when the school bell rang and the students actually wanted to stay and finish the quiz before leaving class.

I’m down to my last couple of weeks of teaching for the school year - here’s to a few more great experiences in a German Gymnasium and making learning English fun!

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Füssen/Salzburg!

The month of May, 2018, has been filled with a seemingly endless amount of school holidays. This past week, for example, most of the schools in Germany had no classes in recognition of the “Pfingstferien” (or “Pentecost”). I was lucky enough to be able to travel throughout the entirety of the Pfingstferien to southern Germany and Austria with two other ETAs, Madison and Olivia. Below are the highlights of the adventures we had during that week.

Out first stop was Füssen, a city renowned for its biking and its proximity to the famous Neuschwanstein castle (the one which inspired Cinderella’s castle at Walt Disney World). We arrived late to the city after an all-day drive, so our itinerary only included a nice Italian dinner and sleep at the elegant Old Kings Füssen Design Hostel - an excellent lodging establishment, if you happen to be vacationing in the area someday.

By morning, we were ready to begin our self-guided bike tour around Füssen. Excluding the large number of steep hills which no guidebook seemed to adequately preface, the area surrounding Füssen is very beautiful and seems radiate a perpetual peacefulness. Many locals sunbathed lakeside while families and tourists hiked among the myriad of trails available, making for an idyllic outdoor setting. It was easily one of the better bike rides I’ve been on since arriving in Europe.

After returning our bikes and briefly lunching downtown, our intrepid squad ventured by car towards the majestic Neuschwanstein castle. Despite the inclement weather, the rigorous hike up towards the castle was well worth it - the castle is simply a stunning piece of human achievement, even if is a highly (repeat: highly) popular tourist destination. Though this was my second time visiting the castle, it was my first walking along the Marienbrücke, a precarious bridge which extends over a nearby valley and offers the best unobstructed views of the castle anywhere. Though it rained heavily and the fear of the bridge collapsing seemed to loom above everyone, the experience was both a worthwhile and thrilling one.

By sundown we had arrived in Austria, gotten a quick dinner nearby, watched the International Space Station fly overhead (because I’m a giant space nerd and was tracking it all evening) and crashed at Haus Steiner. This particular hostel was located on a farm, which meant that a lot of the produce at breakfast was very fresh and that the sounds of goats and sheep were there to serenade us as we fell asleep. A pleasant end to a day, if there ever was one.

Salzburg is famous for being the birthplace of Mozart, and the city does not let you forget that fact easily. Every street has a shop or vendor selling Mozart paraphernalia and Mozart-themed chocolates, and it’s hard not to miss Mozart statue or Mozart birthplace as you walk through the petite-sized city. However, there are also a variety of other, non-Mozart activities which one can engage in, and also in a relatively short amount of time due to the size of the city. By the time we returned to Haus Steiner for the evening, we had already:

- walked past the oldest restaurant in Europe - toured the spectacular Salzburg cathedral - found the graves of Mozart’s parents - explored two other local churches - walked among the Botanical gardens - hiked to the top of the city and snapped several panoramic shots

The next day we drove a couple of hours to Hallstatt, a beautiful city situated by an expansive lake and which ranks among the country’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Although it rained the entire time we were there, we did manage to see the biggest highlight of the city: the “Bone House,” a small chapel-like structure decorated with painted human skulls. Though it provides for a somewhat unnerving experience for visitors, it is apparently an old Hallstatt tradition to exhume skulls from its buried citizens years after their deaths and to paint them in order to memorialize the deceased. Interesting area, that one.

Our last tourist stop for the week was intended to be the infamous Eagles Nest, located nearby, but after winding among the tortuous roads for over an hour we literally pulled into the parking lot right as the last shuttle bus drove away. Bummer. Seeing as it was Olivia’s birthday, however, we simply headed back into downtown Salzburg and began our celebrations and jubilations early. In the end, it proved to be a fitting and fun conclusion to a week in Bavaria and Austria.

Hard as it is for me to believe, my year abroad on a Fulbright Scholarship is nearly over. I still have many more adventures planned, however, so be sure to stay tuned for the next update. Enjoy the pictures below, and until next time, bis später!

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Germany: Füssen and Neuschwanstein!