Above - Horst and Jannik with the makeshift hosepipe pour the petrol into the minibus.
Above - Görlitz city centre.
Above - Görlitz city centre.
Above - Görlitz city centre.
Above - Görlitz city centre.
Above - the glass blowing shop - see the things in the plant pots?
Above - nearly everyone from the trip - (from left to right) Karin's daughter, Karin, Annetta, Jenny, Beata, Jannik, Me, Karin and Horst.
Above - Jenny and Jannik with the whispering arch. You whispered into one side and person with their ear to the other side could hear! Apparently it wasn't built to be like this but was discovered afterwards that you could whisper from one side to the other. Quite who or how discovered this is not know...
Above - Jenny and Heidi.
Above - Standing in Poland looking across the river to Germany.
Above - Standing on the border looking at Poland.
Above - in the Polish restaurant.
Above - Piroggen - a Polish meal and vegetarian too!
Above - apple cake and hot chocolate.
Above - the Polish restaurant where we ate.
Avove - Poland. Can you see how different it is from Germany?
On Saturday morning at 9h we gathered as a group under the grey skies of Herrnhut outside the Jesus Haus. I was beginning to regret not packing a winter coat, or at least a jumper. But after 33*C just a couple of days ago how can we now be struggling to get to 20*C??! There was Jenny and Jannik, Karin and her daughter, the other Karin, Hannaloore, Horst, Maren, Beata, Annetta, Heidi and myself. Some of us went in the Jesus Haus minibus, some of us went in Karin’s car. We were heading on a daytrip, to mark the end of the English course, to Görlitz –
Görlitz – Historical City on the River Neisse
Görlitz is called a city and well, if Herrnhut is a town then I guess that Görlitz is a city! Although I do have to question the German definition of ‘town’ and ‘city’ – I dread to think what a ‘village’ is... Anyway, Görlitz is the largest place around here and has been in existence in one way or another from 1071. Its geographic situation is interesting – it’s so much on the border with Poland that half of it is actually in Poland. The river Neisse has, since the end of the Second World War, formed the border between Germany and Poland and it just so happened that Görlitz got in the way when the border line was drawn up and so was split into two by the river. Today a bridge allows easy border hopping between Germany and Poland. But of course in this modern day and age, in such a civilised world, two developed countries could not be seen to be harmoniously sharing a town, city, whatever. Oh no, poor old unfortunate Görlitz has been well and truly divided – both geographically by the river and politically by the German-Poland border. The Polish part has been renamed Zgorzelec and is, according to Poland, not actually a part of Görlitz - which is German. So, depending on how you look at it you could say that the two towns of Görlitz and Zgorzelec used to be as one but are now separated in everyway possible and all that remains to remind us that they were once a unity is that little wooden bridge running over the river…
But if you think Görlitz has an identity crisis then you should spare a thought for Zittau – the city on three borders! (Germany-Poland-Czech Republic)
One of my students here – Horst, he’s retired and was actually born in what is today Poland, although at the time it was Germany. This information caused the stirring of a long and distant history lesson from school telling me that yes, I did know that the whole of Germany was shifted west at some point. Anyway, it was interesting to think he was born in Germany, his parents were German, he is German, but today, his birth place is actually in Poland!
The level of unemployment here, according to Heidi, is higher than in other parts of Germany, but yet she has found a market for teaching English. The people here did not learn English at school. If you talk to people in their forties they will tell you that English was not offered at school. The majority of them learnt Russian. For that reason the level of English here is virtually non existent with anyone over the age of thirty. They were not given the opportunity to learn. They can, however, give you the odd word of Russian. It’s still really obvious here that there is still an East/West divide in Germany but I’m told that it’s more evident in the East than the West. The area is still relatively poor and its ties with eastern Europe are far far stronger than with western Europe, which is something that is reflected in the area’s history, as well as linguistically: whether it be the lack of English-speaking Germans or the influence of eastern European Languages on the German spoken in this area.
Anyway, back to the day trip!
It took us about 40 minutes to get there but as we stopped to ask for directions to the centre Jannik stopped the engine of the minibus and it wouldn’t start again. We were parked on a bit of a slope and the petrol marker was nearing empty so we all got out of the back to try and raise the level of the back a bit to allow the petrol to flow through to the engine but it wasn’t working. We allowed the minibus to roll around the corner and then pushed it into a parking space so we weren’t blocking the road. Everyone seemed pretty convinced it wasn’t broken; it had just ran out of petrol. Thankfully Karin had come in her car so she went with Hannaloore and Horst to buy petrol. We then had to somehow get the petrol from the canister into the minibus… time for a bit of improvisation. Horst quickly drank his bottle of water and Maren supplied a Swiss knife. Before long we soon had out own makeshift hosepipe to siphon the petrol from the canister into the minibus! Whilst Jannik and Horst were topping up the minibus with petrol Karin drove a car-full of us to the city centre as we had to be there for 10h40 for our bus tour complete with English commentary (Everyone except me may have been German but this was a trip which was part of the English course hence the English commentary which had actually been translated and recorded, by Heidi, for the company). Before Karin had got back to take a second car load of us to the centre Jannik had got the minibus going and we were on our way. We were there under the grey skies in a cold Görlitz on time. It’s just a shame that our bus tour wasn’t. Whilst we were waiting we looked in the church which dated from the 17th century but still our bus tour wasn’t ready. It was at this point that I saw and heard (although I didn’t really understand all of what was said) the directness of the Germans. If they are not happy then they sure aren’t slow in coming forward in saying! Hannaloore was amazing. She made it quite clear this was unacceptable as Heidi had actually booked the tour 3 days ago so they should have been prepared for us. Heidi told me that Hannaloore said he could at least take us on a walking tour of the city to compensate! Which he did start but as Heidi was translating it for me she said he seemed a bit ‘put on the spot’ and after a few sentences he left us in a glass blowing shop. It was a shop where the glass was blown on site. Apparently the area is well known for its glass. The glass was pretty and was useful too – it had been blown into a shape like what is inside a thermometer holding the liquid, but much bigger. You filled it with water and put it in your potted plants so that they were watered whilst you were on holiday – the water just slowly trickled out. Neat! After the glass blowing, the bus tour was still no where in sight so we decided not to wait around any longer. We went to the tourist information office and picked up a map which had a tour marked out that you could walk. The leaflets were available in German, Polish or English. I was surprised that there weren’t more languages but apparently the region is not particularly popular with tourists what with it being so far away from any main cities. Therefore they aren’t very up on their translating. We had just started our very own guided tour of the city when the bus tour man came to say that the tour bus had arrived and he’d even managed to find his English CD. We abandoned our own makeshift tour to go on the bus tour instead. It took about half an hour but we saw the main parts of the city and learnt a bit about it too. It’s quite a rich city which is evident in some of the architecture which is in the Baroque style. We drove alongside the river Neisse and could see Poland on the other side of the river! After the tour had finished the bus driver dropped us off by the bridge which we crossed over the river Neisse and into Poland. The border is now fully open and you can wander from country to country quite freely. It has only been like this since January of this year, before you needed your passport to hop from country to country. Even though, theoretically, the part of Görlitz in Poland is the same city as the Görlitz in Germany it evidently can’t be just one city as Dresden or Berlin is one city. Not only does the river divide it but you also needed your passport to move from one side of the city to another as recently as December 2007. And just by crossing the river the differences are evident. On one side of the river, in Germany, are rich, impressive Baroque houses, churches and other buildings. On the other side, in Poland, are poorer, more run down, more ‘communist-looking’ buildings and the language immediately changes too. You might think such a city would be bi-lingual but no. The people are most definitely Polish; they speak Polish and some, like one of the waitresses in the Polish restaurant, prefer English as a second language rather than German. It was all quite strange. Nobody quite knew which language to communicate in. We went to a lovely restaurant in Poland for lunch. It reminded me, from the inside, of an old English country pub. We sat around a big table upstairs and as there were 12 of us and only one toilet we formed a rather large queue! Afterwards we ordered drinks – I had an orange juice but some people had coffee or tonic water or apple juice – others had both! Then we had menu problems. Not only did we only have one food menu between the 12 of us, it was also in Polish! We did eventually get a German one. I was surprised to find two vegetarian options and one of them was a typical Polish dish! So I decided to be adventurous and try Polish cuisine. I had ‘Piroggen’ which is like small parcels made out of some kind of dough, it tasted like it had been fried but yet it wasn’t fatty. It was a cross between batter and samosa pastry and was stuffed with vegetables and sauerkraut – a typically German cabbage. I then had apple cake and a hot chocolate. I also tried some of Karin’s typically Polish soup which tasted like it was made with beetroot – it was quite nice. The meal was truly delicious and so so so cheap. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was. It was only €7,74!! And Poland, it seems, is very much like Switzerland in its currency. They do accept the Euro but they also have their own currency – the zloty, and everything is priced in zloty just like everything is Switzerland is priced in Swiss Francs. Anyway, 24 zloty and €7,74 later - Bargain! After lunch the weather had improved and grey skies had given way to blueness and sunshine. We walked back across the bridge and through the German part of the city to our minibus. We got back to Herrnhut at about 17h40 and all said goodbye to each other.
It has been a really really enjoyable week in so many ways. The teaching has gone incredibly well. Everyone has been so nice. We have all met at 11h each day for coffee and cake. We all ate lunch together which Jenny and Jannik had prepared for us. We celebrated American Independence Day together and then, today, we all went to Görlitz and Poland together. I wonder whether next week could possibly be anywhere near as amazing?
