1983 School Magazine

German food was far too nice. T'he breads, cheeses, sausages and above all the chocotrates were lovely but my figure definitely wasn't. A word of warning for future exchange students - the "if I try all the food now n'll get used to it and tr won't eat so much later" form of dieting does not work. One more unusual part of the German diet is Quark (curds) which is like a cross between yoghurt and cream cheese and is eaten with fruit for dessert or on bread with jam. T'he only food which I could not evep bring rnyself to try was Tartar, high quality raw mince which is spread thickly on open sandwiches. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel quite a bit. I saw almost all of Gerrnany with my host families or on Rotary Exchange student camps. tr visited E,ngland twice, once on a two week German Rotary Youth Exchange and once with my German Rotoract Club. { visited another ex-Grammar girl, Anna Hawke, in France and spent a week on the French coast with my biology class. tr also spent two weeks in Berlin and saw parts of Austria and ltaly. .Iust before I returned home, I learned to ski on a two week host family holiday in the Swiss Alps. Eut the food and the travelling were not the most important things in my year. Most important to me were the people. My German school friends were very down to earth. Clothes, hairstyles and musical taste did not matter. They were very politically aware, many of them actively supporting the Green Party. Social life was very varied. Cold, grey afternoons we often spent in cosy candlelit rooms talking and drinking tea. In the evenings there was the local bar, Dusseldorfer Altstadt (entertainment area), a parIy, a concert or dinner in one of the many cheap, students' restaurants. I did not want to be an Australian visitor in Germany. I wanted to integrate myself into the German way of life. By doing this tr know I learned an enormous amount, although I can't pinpoint exactly what I learned. X think some people call it "broadening your horizons". Of course the year was not one long party. I had a few problems with one of my five host families. Sometimes when tr hadn't seen the sun for eight weeks I would dream of a day at the coast. And of course, there was the occasinal bout of homesickness. But my year overseas was definitely the best year of my life (so far!) and to anyone thinking of applying for a youth exchange, I can only say, "Go ahead". I-enore Taylor ANAGR.AM FUZZI,E Use the letters below to find the surnames of as many German born composer-musicians as you can from the l7th, 18th and 19th centuries. HANS CUM WVORD GELT You can repeat any letter as many times as you like.' Kathleen Robinson Answens: Beethoven; Handel; Bach; Schumann; Mendelssohn; Wagner; Brahms.

After X finished Year tr2 at Gramrnar in 1981, n spent a year as a Rotary Exehange student in Germany. { lived in a srnatrl town between Dusseldorf and Cologne, near Neandertal, the valley where the farnous cave-man skeleton was found. { attended school fairly regularly for most of the year. The life of a German high school student is very like that of an Australian university student. Nearly all schools are co-ed. No uniforms are worn. Classes are conducted in the mornings only. A minimum of 75Vo of classes rnust be attended. You need only be at sctrool when you have a class and students are often so friendly with the teachers that they visit them on weekends. Any spares { had were spent in the school coffee lounge, meeting friends or making new ones.

The language was a real problem in the first few months, and I became expert at finding phrases and gestures to detour words I did not know. But of course I made many embarrassing misiakes. Once, when I was supposed to do a charade of the dove of peace, I mixed up the words Taube (dove) and Traube (grape). You can imagine what the Germans thought of the strange A.ustralian girl flapping her arms, holding an olive leaf in her mouth and saying, "I'm a grape. I'm a grape."

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