Settling in

I have just bought a kettle. This is significant for several reasons. The first is that it replaces the rubbish one that currently lives in our flat, which constantly leaks water and has to be emptied every time water is boiled. This is not ideal, particularly as I am partial to tea and am therefore constantly boiling and emptying the kettle. Yet for me buying the kettle is also a sign that I am beginning to settle into my new habitat and claim it for my own. That sounded less pompous in my head, I promise! In all seriousness I do feel like I am starting to get into the swing of things a bit more here, whether that be timing it perfectly to sprint to the bus station (which is about 5 seconds away from my front door) or remembering that NOWHERE is open on a Sunday.

It is now Friday, and the official end of the German pre-term language course I have been doing. Tonight we are having a farewell meal with our teachers and saying an emotional farewell... OK well not quite but I have really enjoyed the past few weeks. It’s been such a ‘soft’ start into uni life, as the course has helped us matriculate and explain a lot about the German uni system. For example, one doesn’t just waltz into to a professor’s office, or even arrange a time to meet. No, the done thing is to turn up during the ‘Sprechstunde’ (Contact Hour) which is generally only once a week. Seems a bit mad to me but hey ho.

Yesterday was the ‘Tag der deutschen Einheit’ (German Reunification Day). I spent it in Stuttgart with some friends from my course. There were special tents up to represent each of the ‘Bundesländer’. For those of you who don’t know, Germany is a federal republic and is divided up into 16 Länder (or ‘states’). I would explain the intricacies of how administration and politics are affected by this but I know you don’t care and I don’t know anything about it. 

On Tuesday afternoon we took a trip to Bebenhausen, a smallish village which (according to Wikipedia, my main source of information for my blog so far...) is about 5K from Tübingen city centre.  Our tutor took us round Bebenhausen Abbey, a monastery dating back to 1183/84. One interesting fact was that after the Second World War, fro 1946-1952, the local ‘Landtag’ (parliament) met there. It was also pretty.

Now I have a week or so to wait before the real adventure begins and I attempt to understand lectures and seminars which are entirely in German. Eek... My main subject is down as ‘Slavistik’ (i.e. Slavonic languages i.e. Russian) but I also plan to do some Music and German-as-a-foreign-language courses. I have to sign up to everything online very soon. I am not the most decisive of humans so let’s see what happens!