Friendships Confirmed on Ansbach Exchange

An eager and excited small group of Second and Fourth Year pupils had an action packed week in sunny Bavaria the first week of the summer holidays. This was of course the second exciting instalment following the first part of the program back in March when the German pupils visited Caterham.

During the week in Germany, Caterham pupils had the experience at first hand of seeing how a German family lives on a daily basis and also sampled plenty of lessons in our partner school and, of course, plenty of regional food, of which Bratwurst , Sauerkraut and Schnitzel all came out as firm favourites!

Confidence levels in spoken German came on in leaps and bounds as the week progressed, initially by way of a few useful “survival phrases “ which pupils had been issued with and later on due to visiting lessons in German and trying to converse more fully with their hosts. Excursion highlights featured a highly informative walking tour through the medieval town of Rothenburg, where we also visited “Käthe Wohlfahrt” Christmas shop, where we learned all sorts of fascinating facts about German Christmas traditions and legends from our guide. The July sun shone on us for our boat trip on the Altmühlsee and mini golf competition and Caterham pupils all had a chance to captain the boat for a few minutes!

For most pupils, this was their very first experience of going to Germany and everyone’s smiling faces certainly reflected that it had been a happy one, to the extent that some pupils are already eager to sign up for next year.

Following the success of our German Exchange a new trip to Berlin has been added for our First Year Germanists! Details of the Information Evening for both trips will be in the first weekly Letter to Parents email this Friday, 6 September.

Mr W Jones, German Department.