Weekday Travels Part 1: Görlitz and Rochlitz

Last week was organised slightly differently from usual, in that I did the interesting things on Thursday and Friday and achieved nothing at all worth writing about on Saturday and Sunday. 

Görlitz/Zgorzelec 
In order to say farewell to the language assistants in the Chemnitz area, the town council organised a day trip to Görlitz/Zgorzelec for us on Thursday. This is on the German/Polish border; Görlitz is the town on the German side, and Zgorzelec is across the river on the Polish side. As one of the few remaining towns that survived the wars almost unscathed, it is a popular film set. The Grand Budapest Hotel was filmed in Görlitz, as was part of Inglourious Basterds and The Reader, among others. We did manage to get a look at the building that was the actual hotel in Grand Budapest Hotel, although in typical style it was being renovated, so pressing our noses against the windows and peering in at the darkened staircase was the best we could do.

The department store usually looks like this...

And this is what it looks like in the film.

We travelled to Görlitz on a comically oversized coach also organised by the council - apparently usually it's a minibus, but the transport company thought a proper school-trip coach would provide more comedy opportunities for the eight or nine assistants who were able to attend.

Our first stop in Görlitz was a little lecture by the education agency about their efforts to improve the relationships between the two towns. The two sides seem to have little to do with each other and until recently there hasn't been much effort made to integrate them. However, times are changing; among other things, the agency offers Polish courses in some schools in Görlitz, to give pupils at least a small chance of interacting with the foreigners across the river. This was incidentally the second thing that we experienced: a Polish lesson. Although there were varying levels of enthusiasm and innate skill, the lesson was very enjoyable. The poor teacher seemed rather anxious anyway - he was quite young and became very flustered when the PowerPoint, as always, failed to function - but I thought he dealt surprisingly well with our mangling of his native language, and even managed to laugh bravely when, on his eighth time asking 'so how do we say goodbye?' we all screamed variations of 'no problem!' 'hi!' and 'schetchsehksch!' (not a word. Or perhaps it is. I am not a natural Polish speaker).

After the lesson we were taken on a tour around the town by a woman who was demoralisingly difficult to understand, and seemed equally disheartened by us and our lack of knowledge or perhaps moral fibre.

At one point she asked us if we 'remembered' the fairy tale about the goose and the wolf, because 'we were all young enough to still remember fairy tales'. Our apologetically blank expressions served to convince her that we truly were all worthless. My further investigation into the subject however had positive and negative results - positive, in that she seemed to enjoy telling me the fairy tale, but negative in that it is one of the creepier Brothers Grimm ones. Here is a condensed and very inaccurate version:

The Wolf, The Goslings, And The Out Of Control Mother Goose

Once upon a time, a Mother Goose has to leave her goslings in their goose house for a while, while she presumably runs some goose errands - alone, as Father Goose is seemingly not in the picture; probably met some terrible wolf-related fate - so she tells them to lock their goose door using the opposable thumbs that they possess, and not let anyone in except her.

So off she waddles, and a while later the wolf squirms up to the door. "Let me in, goose babies", he snarls. The goose babies smell a rat, as it were. "No way man, you're not our mother", they scream. "Shit", thinks the wolf, so off he trots to concoct a plan.

Certain that his plan is as cunning as that of a fox who has just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University, he returns to the goose house and breathily coos, "Let me in my dearest goslings, it is I, your mama". The goslings are like, hmm, this seems legit, so they open the door, again using their dextrous wing-hands, and the wolf gobbles them all up. The wolf is so full after his enormous meal of a few tiny birds that he lies down immediately to have a little snooze.

The Mother Goose returns to find her goose house is empty apart from a snoring lupine creature with a full tummy, and presumably all her goose furniture that she made or bought at the goose market. Always a goose of action, she grabs a sharp rock with either her wing, beak or foot (history does not relate) and slashes the wolf's stomach open. Fortunately, her goosey babies are all still alive and flapping. She then fills the wolf's empty stomach with heavy rocks and sews it back up again, presumably having sent one of her babies to get her goose sewing kit from its place in her house.

When the wolf wakes up he feels a little funny in his tummy. Maybe a drink of water will help, he thinks, and guilelessly goes to the river to quench his thirst. Leaning over the water to reach it with his mouth, the Mother Goose having rudely not provided him with any sort of vessel from which to drink, he loses his balance, falls into the river, and drowns.

The End.

So, the moral of the story is... Always listen to your mother? Don't try and follow the natural order set in place by the food chain? Don't fall for very poor impressions of your parents' voices by furry predators with very sharp teeth, all the better to eat you with? (I'm getting confused.)

In conclusion, German fairy tales are scary and weird, and I want to read more of them at the first possible opportunity.

Not before time, we finally reached the river and had a look at Poland on the other side. At first glance it was fairly unappealing, especially in comparison to the polished postcard look of Görlitz. This is definitely something to do with the fact that every year, half a million euros is anonymously donated to Görlitz, on the condition that it is used for the upkeep and renovation of the old town. Unfortunately Zgorzelec doesn't receive this same treatment, so from what we could see, it looked much less attractive.

We had lunch in a Polish restaurant next to the river, where we were served absolute mountains of food including Borscht (clear beetroot soup with dumplings - terrifying if you're wearing any white clothing) and Pierogi (like filled pasta but not pasta, and filled with variants of sauerkraut, spinach, potato, cheese or mushroom). It was delicious, and we all ate so much we could barely stumble back to the bus.

It was a shame we didn't get to wander round the town a little bit - I didn't even have time to buy a tacky postcard to send to a randomly-selected relative. However it was lovely to get to see a little bit of Görlitz/Zgorzelec which I otherwise would not have done, and really kind of the council to organise it for us! We've been so well looked after this year which has been a huge comfort; the knowledge that people will help you if you have a problem is incredibly reassuring.

Rochlitz
On Friday there was an international day at a school in Rochlitz organised by Becca, its indefatigable language assistant. Due to - guess what? - Deutsche Bahn striking AGAIN for the FIVE HUNDREDTH time this year, David and I got a lift there at 6.30 in the morning with a teacher who was driving from Chemnitz anyway. Despite some reservations about the early start and the wisdom of attempting to do anything with excitable 11-year-olds who are uninterested in everything, the day itself turned out to be really fun. Becca had invited three other American assistants and David and me (the token Brits) to do various activities. The American ones included finger knitting, making s'mores around a campfire and singing, and learning the cha cha slide. David and I made scones.

Astonishingly, and even though every single group used different proportions of butter/flour/milk, every batch of scones turned out not just okay, but actually delicious! I have absolutely no idea how, but they were amazingly successful. The kids seemed to enjoy it too, especially when we let them take the scones home with them, although they were less impressed with the idea of drinking tea with milk. David had brought real Irish tea to show them what tea is meant to taste like, which, however, they ignored - why are Germans so mistrustful of milky tea?

After the activities came to a floury and at one point broken-glass-y end, we spent the afternoon having a barbecue with all the assistants and Becca's lovely mentor teacher. The German 'chillen und grillen' idea is as great as it is embarrassing to say out loud.

And at the end of the day, despite more of my reservations, we even managed to make it back to Chemnitz with no problems at all, having found one train that wasn't striking. So all in all, a good day's work.

Coming up next time: Berlin! And an update on my current illness, probably. I thought I would manage a whole blog without complaining but NOPE. I have a cold (in addition to hayfever) and I feel crap and I am going to WHINE ABOUT IT until it goes away. But hoping to update my dear worried readers with better news next time.