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On Wednesday (Mittwoch auf Deutsch), I arose early to attend school with Daniel. He wanted me to attend his physics class, though I had some free time before that so I went off on a long walk to find a geocache, which was unsuccessful due to language reasons (I didn’t fully understand the hint) and eventually running out of time.

However, later that day I ordered a coffee and a slice of cake in German. I attended the physics class though unfortunately I didn’t understand much of the language nor had I studied that particular topic in physics so didn’t really follow what they were doing. I later attended his English class which was a wasted effort because the teacher didn’t utilise the fact that she had a native speaker in the room for even five minutes (though she didn’t have any warning that I would be attending).

Later that day I went off to find a geocache, which turned out interesting as well because it was a massive long walk without a map. I had to rely on the waypoint and compass feature of the GPSr. There was a farmer out ploughing his field and once I had found the cache, he stopped by to have a chat, probably wondering why the heck someone would walk so far to such a location. This was an interesting experience for me as it was my first conversation of some length in another language to someone who didn’t speak any English at all. I was able to explain to him what my travel plans were, that I was saying with a friend in Ergoldsbach, that I was from Australia, etc. It’s can amazing how much you so few can communicate with so few words sometimes. So another great day in Germany it was

My first few days in Germany proved an interesting time. The seven year old brother Johannes of my friend Daniel speaks little English if at all (he has learnt some phrases off a CD I think). So this was my first chance to utilise some basic German with a non-English speaker.

On the first day I went into Landshut with Daniel’s mother. It struck me as a rather impressive little city for something that is hardly on the tourism map with the exception of Landshuter Hochzeit ceremony (a reenactment of the marriage of Hedwig, the Polish King’s daughter, and George, the son of the Duke of Landshut, in 1475) every four years. The buildings are all painted very nice colours that are all fairly pale, something which I would have expected more in Italy (though perhaps a false expectation as Daniel assures me it’s a Bavarian thing). Landshut also features the tallest church in Europe constructed entirely of clay bricks. We also visited (insert name of German name for TAFE… Hochschule?) which is like a TAFE, to enquire about German language classes. That was also a chance to speak some more German with the program co-ordinator.

The rest of that afternoon was a rather easy one spent at home with Johannes. I will never forgot the word ‘fliegen’ now after he explained to me what to do with the fly squat. So watch out fliegen!
However, later in the afternoon when Daniel returned home from school, we did some bike riding and geocaching (a GPS based ‘treasure hunt’) around his neighbourhood. We finished up at Iris’ house and she was going to drive us home. Though her father invited us in for an Austrian meal. It was some kind of meatball served in broth. This was possibly my first experience of quite ‘different’ food in Germany.

On Sunday 27th of September I set off for my very first true international journey. I may have been to New Zealand a few times though that is merely across the ditch (the Tasman) with a flight time of about four hours.

The flight time to get across the Australian continent alone was probably longer than the time it takes to fly to New Zealand. Not least to mention that they speak English in New Zealand and the people (along with their towns and cities) are more or less the same as in Australia. I was reminded of the sheer size of Australia from this very experience. It was probably about half the distance to Bangkok.

Due to strong winds in Sydney, the plane arrived very late in Bangkok. Bangkok was an extremely busy airport and we were forced to get off the plane to pass through security, only to get on the same plane again. I don’t mind getting off the plane, though passing through security multiple times is really a pain.

The next leg of the flight was through the night and it truly had the sense of being motionless. Though I think this was the case for the entire flight anyway as I was in a centre isle seat with no view out the window. I did get some sleep but not a great amount. The seat was really uncomfortable for my legs as well. Though I did have reasonable rest. On the whole it felt like a long wait while going nowhere.

London Heathrow was a massive airport and it was really unfortunate to be stuck there for half the day without even time th other o travel into London. Though other than the pounds and slightly different accent, it didn’t feel too different from Australia.
Finally I arrived in Munich, Germany later that afternoon. It didn’t feel like I had travelled that far and going through border control was such a non-event, compared with Australia. My instinct was to speak English, though I was reminded of the fact I was in a foreign country when an airport staffer responded to my ‘thanks’ with ‘bitte’.

I had a bit of a wait for my friend Daniel to arrive. Though when he greeted me in English it once again felt less like I was in a foreign land. My only concern was that he was driving on the wrong side of the road! Sarcasm aside, it took some getting use to with sitting in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car. It may have been fatigue and the effects of such a long journey, though the country side didn’t seem out of the ordinary at the time, despite being quite different from Australia and very beautiful. Though I was glad to finally be in Germany.