In Germany, the children do 4 years of Elementary School, before being split into "Gymnasium" (top level), "Hauptschule" (medium) and "Realschule" (essentially for kids with severe learning difficulties). As a result, kids from 10 to 19 years old end up together in one school, which has advantages and in the eyes of the "Oberstufe" (Upper Classmen), only disadvantages.
A few days after 
moving in with this family, I left for a week. The first evening was a Rotex meeting of all the exchange students in our district, which took place in Troisdorf, a little town south of Cologne. We essentially consumed our time by chatting and playing little games, since the activities were planned for Saturday. I, however, continued on Saturday morning to meet with another district in Baden-Wüttemberg, where we started off with a tour of a town, Heidelberg, where the Prince formerly lived, before having his castle nearly levelled by the French, and relocating to nearby Mannheim.
Some highlights of this trip through Heidelberg included what wa
s left of the castle, especially two wine casks in the basement. The Prince received 10% of the wine produced in the region, as a tax. As a result, the 700 people who lived and/or worked in the castle received 2 litres of wine each, per day. To store this wine, they had many casks, including the two that still survive, the SMALLEST of which can hold over 200,000 litres (~50,000 US gal.)! Unfortunately, we were informed that we could not sample the region's wine. I have included a picture of (a quarter of) the big one. The other highlight was the town's Christmas Market, which was quite quaint.
The next day, we traveled to Italy for a week-long ski trip. We started off early with a 9 hour bus ride, driving through Austria on our way to Italy. It was a wonderful bus ride, with beautiful scenery. For me, the best part was seeing the reactions of the kids who had never seen snow before! It's always such a strange feeling when that happens! We arrived in our (very cheap) accommodations to a wonderful meal, getting us excited for the week.
The week went quite well, with the mountain being absolutely beautiful! The lunches were always good, but unfortunately the quality of our suppers went steadily downhill. The only unfortunate point, for me, was that all of the snow on the mountain was man-made, which made for often icy conditions. Out of 40 people, only 4 were seriously hurt, only one of whom was a beginner. Two of the others were hurt out of their desire to show off, and the fourth, a snowboard instructor, was cut off on the last day by a skiier, crashed, and nearly broke his collar bone. Besides a week of snowboarding in the Alps, a highlight occurred on my return trip, when I rode the newest model of the German high speed train (a Bombardier design), clipping along at a nice and slow 300 km/h, nearly as fast as a Formula 1 car!
I arrived back in Aachen to my new host family, three days before Christmas. In a very traditional way, the kitchen and living room were locked and only the parents were allowed in for the last week of Advent. Klaus makes a (famously) large Nativity Scene, and in the traditional way, that is the surprise for which the kitchen and living room are locked. The days leading up to Christmas went by quickly, and there were many family-bonding type activities.
Christmas morning,
we viewed the Nativity Scene, which was huge! I will also include a picture of that. Afterwards, we opened our presents. I had the most, since I had mostly small trinkets, compared to the single, quite large, presents of the others. Therefore it took a while to open. My three favourite presents are a Roots jacket, a present from a friend back home, a ticket to the next Cup Match of the local soccer team and a book of photos of Aachen, both from my host family. After opening presents, we went to church for mass. As a side note, this family is extremely religious, but it's not a problem. After the mass, we returned home, where I helped Timo set up his new remote control helicopter, which he'd been wishing for for quite a while, I'm told. That evening, we attempted, and failed, to fly it, and shortly thereafter, Klaus' parents came for dinner. We ate a meal of Salmon, Sauerkraut and potatoes. It was looking like there'd be no turkey for Ben!
The next day, we went to visit Klaus' parents, who live 20 kilometres away. The whole family was there, and they were all very nice. It was here that my patience was rewarded: we had turkey for lunch! It was almost as good as my grandfather's farm fresh turkeys, but I don't think those can be beat. We killed off the afternoon and evening by playing darts, another game similar to Crokenole (the name of which I've forgotten) and singing Christmas songs.
The following day, I spent some time with a friend and we went to see American Gangster in the theatre. I actually understood more of it than he did, which surprised me, but his difficulty was in the complex plot of the 2.5 hour film. Following the movie, which I felt was amazing (and we'll know in two months if it was Oscar worthy!), I packed for my second trip of the holidays.
As a family, we traveled to Switzerland, to Engelberg, near Luzern, in the southern part of the country. On the drive down, we went past Hockenheimring (I missed it on the way to Italy). Hockenheimring is the home of the German Grand Prix in Formula 1, and the autobahn provides a decent vantage point of Turn 1. There were no cars racing, however. In Switzerland, we stayed at a place at the top of the mountain, and it was interesting lugging our gear, a suitcase each and in Pia's case, also a huge teddy bear, up a chairlift. Crazy is what I'd call it. The accommodations were rustic, and a little cramped. A week without internet, however, doesn't faze me. On this trip, I vowed to only touch my phone in emergencies. The food was amazing, and the people running the lodge were extremely friendly. In German, they say "dusager", which means informal, since the German language, as with most languages, distinguishes distinctly between formal and informal. "Du" is informal, used with anyone who you speak with on a first name basis. "Sie" is used in formal situations, and it is extremely offensive to use "du" in place of "Sie", so much that traditionally, when switching from "Sie" to "du", the two participants would drink a beer together, another highly traditional and ritualized pastime.
The week in Engelberg was punctuated by the presence of real snow, with 30 cm of fresh powder falling on the second day, providing a morning of quasi-backcountry skiing, especially when we rode a trail that leads through a forest and ends after crossing two roads, dipping under a third, riding between houses and finally depositing you a short bus ride from the centre of the village. The mountain has a beautiful location, but it has a few extremely narrow points on the trails, which leads to near-collisions when caught behind slow skiiers. I was nearly ran over several times while slowing down for such people. The other disadvantage is the lack of trails to ride. There are two up top, two in the middle, and the side trail that runs to the town. For New Years, there were a lot of fireworks and all of the (other) adults drank considerable amounts of alcohol. On Friday, during a huge windstorm, Klaus and Timo built an igloo, and I helped a bit. There's a picture included. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the stay, and the food. The week was also injury free, until Friday night, when half my right index fingernail and the finger itself mysteriously parted ways. It's a nice place to be, but it wouldn't be the place to go if flying over from Canada to ski, in my opinion.
So concludes my first month with my new host family. Now I'm looking ahead to 3 busy months, I'll try and keep on top of the updates!
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