My name is sue I am 16 and I went to Tuebingen in Germany in February/March 2015. I was late I deciding to do an exchange but still managed to organize one with the help of Jane to go a few weeks later. I was matched with Anke who I then emailed to get to know her. I was really excited to go to Germany but nervous to go by myself for 5 weeks. When I got to Germany I met Anke and her family and knew that I was going to be ok and that i would have fun over there. I got to experience lots of aspects of German culture when I was over there. The first weekend we celebrated her granddads birthday with a meal out in a restaurant, and my last weekend there we celebrated her other grandmother’s birthday. I was really nervous about school in Germany but everyone there was really nice and welcoming and I made friends easily. Anke did other languages as well so I was lucky enough to be able to do extra German classes while she had these. Some classes were very difficult like chemistry and maths but I took in what I could and asked Anke questions after class. It’s safe to say English was my favourite class because I was able to understand everything and everyone loved to hear my Irish accent! School was very different to Irish school but I liked not to have a uniform and that the school days were much shorter. I was also lucky enough to get to go skiing with Anke, her family and a few other German families in Switzerland while I was there. It was difficult at first to understand everyone there as they had very strong accents, but nevertheless I enjoyed skiing very much and it really improved my German and understanding of dialect! I had a great time in Germany and did a lot of things that I wouldn’t normally do here in Ireland. I went to big basketball matches, I went shopping in outlets (with stores such as Calvin Klein and Michael Kors), I went ice skating and I went to different theatre plays. When I was in Tuebingen, Trinity College Dublin happened to come to perform ‘the playboy of the western world’ in German in the town university! This was funny to hear Irish accents after 4 weeks of only hearing German being spoken. I also got to play tennis, my favourite sport while I was in Germany. Anke’s father played in the local tennis club and arranged for me to join some training sessions which I was delighted about. It was great to improve my sport and the language at the same time. I also made more friends through playing tennis and got to play with lots of different people. All in all I couldn’t recommend an exchange to Germany enough! I learned so much German there and more colloquial language that we wouldn’t learn in school. As well as this I learned a lot about the culture and really enjoyed my stay and am hoping to go back again this year to visit!
