25-30. 08. 2012
My "Explore Germany" period started in the late August when my university group had got cultural exchange opportunity to stay in Darmstadt, Hessen and dive into the local society and the motherland of Goethe, whose works we analysed the semester before. We lived in host families of the retirees who volunteered to host us and arrange the cultural programme.
I would call the first days of my sojourn as a crazy adapting. Suddenly the English philologist was thrown into the big house of an extremely pleasant woman, who originated from Lichtenstein and talked to us exclusively in German. By the end of the first day my ears were aching out of tensity, because I tried to catch and somehow interpret every word I heard, especially when the lady was explaining the rules to us.
The first kind of culture shock was when I saw the etiquette we were to keep while having meals. Our lady was eating even fruits with a knife and a fork. For 100% you'll never see this in Ukraine.
Darmstadt itself represented a rather small city with a long history, however. As far as someone told me it could be translated as an "Intestine city", I hope that originally it was something else:) Darmstadt was chosen by our university, because it is a sister city of my hometown, Uzhgorod. It also has around 140 thousand population. The city is quite interesting since it combines some of the old buildings and very modern on the place of those that were damaged or fully destroyed in 1943.
The first thing that surprised us a lot was absence of controlling staff in the public transport. Maybe, I was lucky enough, but in my ten days of commuting from one point to another I never met those guys.
One of the peculiarities of the city was also that there were quite a lot of students studying there. We could meet many of them in the city centre (which was tiny and quite cozy I must admit).
We got opportunity to meet a city mayor, who turned out to be a pleasant man with a good sense of humour. He asked us about our impression of the city, told its history and even told some words in Russian. The local council had a balcony, from which we had a marvelous view upon the Luisenplatz - the main square of the city with the monument to Ludwig in the centre. In a few days we also visited local radio station, where we had an interview.
In one of the days we visited the highest peak
of the city, that had a nice view all over it.
I had two favourite places to go in Darmstadt, besides the central square. Those were English and French gardens. French garden was bursting with blooming flowers and was posh.
The English one was more plain, covered with lawns of grass and beautiful big mighty trees. It was a perfect place to relax with friends and family, or just to have a break at work.
Hundertwasser House was like a bright colourful spot on the city. That was the first his building I had seen. We weren't allowed to enter it since they had some kind of repairment, but we had opportunity to look at its facade from different angles. I liked this peculiar "castle" and hope to see some of his other works in the future.
I also liked the idea of having an open library, where people share some books with others. That's a good way of exchanging the books you've read with other people and find some interesting ones for yourself without having to buy them in the book shop. It makes your own library composed only with the best books. Once you've read a book and you liked, you can go and buy the same in the book shop for your collection. I wish we could have that in my country.
The song of the day:
My "Explore Germany" period started in the late August when my university group had got cultural exchange opportunity to stay in Darmstadt, Hessen and dive into the local society and the motherland of Goethe, whose works we analysed the semester before. We lived in host families of the retirees who volunteered to host us and arrange the cultural programme.
I would call the first days of my sojourn as a crazy adapting. Suddenly the English philologist was thrown into the big house of an extremely pleasant woman, who originated from Lichtenstein and talked to us exclusively in German. By the end of the first day my ears were aching out of tensity, because I tried to catch and somehow interpret every word I heard, especially when the lady was explaining the rules to us.
The first kind of culture shock was when I saw the etiquette we were to keep while having meals. Our lady was eating even fruits with a knife and a fork. For 100% you'll never see this in Ukraine.
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| First day in a new place. Darmstadt. |
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| The sign of Uzhgorod in Darmstadt |
The first thing that surprised us a lot was absence of controlling staff in the public transport. Maybe, I was lucky enough, but in my ten days of commuting from one point to another I never met those guys.
One of the peculiarities of the city was also that there were quite a lot of students studying there. We could meet many of them in the city centre (which was tiny and quite cozy I must admit).
One of the modern buildings
We got opportunity to meet a city mayor, who turned out to be a pleasant man with a good sense of humour. He asked us about our impression of the city, told its history and even told some words in Russian. The local council had a balcony, from which we had a marvelous view upon the Luisenplatz - the main square of the city with the monument to Ludwig in the centre. In a few days we also visited local radio station, where we had an interview.
In one of the days we visited the highest peak
of the city, that had a nice view all over it.
I had two favourite places to go in Darmstadt, besides the central square. Those were English and French gardens. French garden was bursting with blooming flowers and was posh.The English one was more plain, covered with lawns of grass and beautiful big mighty trees. It was a perfect place to relax with friends and family, or just to have a break at work.
I also liked the idea of having an open library, where people share some books with others. That's a good way of exchanging the books you've read with other people and find some interesting ones for yourself without having to buy them in the book shop. It makes your own library composed only with the best books. Once you've read a book and you liked, you can go and buy the same in the book shop for your collection. I wish we could have that in my country. 
