My first day in Germany
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.