The sorbs of bautzen

Not only germans live in Bautzen. The city is also home to the smallest slavic nation, the sorbs.
Sorbs found their way to germany over one thousand years ago and they still continue to inhabit the region of the lausitz to this day. Nowadays there are only about 60,000 Sorbs living in germany.
Sorbs founded Bautzen in year 1002 to be some kind of political and spiritual center to the Sorbs and for thousands of years Germans and Sorbians have lived there together.
Sorbs speak german but they also have their own language Sorbian. Although nowadays only 5 - 10% of the people living in Bautzen are actually Sorbs, there are still schools in Bautzen where you can learn and speak Sorbian.
The city of Bautzen reflects its German-Sorbian cultures and history, and this can be seen by the bilingual sign posting of all the streets and public places. Many kids in Bautzen attend Sorbian school atleast in some part of their life. But that doesn't mean that they actually learn the language. Some people can be in Sorbian school for years and still doesn't know many words of this strange slavic laguage. But the schools are there and there is always possibility to learn and study the language.

                                                  This is a tradinional Sorbian female costume.

Food

Food in Germany was different, not much but anyway. We dont actually had "one meal" at home, we got many little plates and you take little bit of everything like meat,potatoes,pasta.but they dont have salad, only "green" thing was tomato. When you finished you sit at the table and wait that everyone is finish, that can took half hour or more :-D

One typical meat in Germany is bratwurst and salami. They also like drink beer with everything. . First night we eat pumpkin soap, potatosalad, meat, dessert at the party

At school we have the school lunch -meal and that school food was great! We also get snacks in the morning when we left to school, we get all kind of  cookies, white nutella breads and carps.

Best food in Germany was the hotel breakfast oh damn.
In Germany everyone bought lot of candy and chocolate because they have much more all kind of chocolates and they was also cheaper than in Finland!

-Thank you

12.10 Leaving

Saturday 12.10 was our last day in Germany. At morning we woke up and packed our last stuff, ate last time breakfast with family and then we went to school. Many parents came also to say goodbyes to us. After the last group photo with parents and after hugs we Finns get into bus. Everybody were wawing their hands when the bus started to move.













After three hours driving, including one stop, we were at the Tegel airport in Berlin. Becouse we were on so early we waited about one hour to get in check-in. Then we had time to eat our last food we had get from familys what we weren't allowed to take to the plane. After check-in we did the last shopping from duty free.


The flight went quite quickly because it took only one and half hour. In Helsinki we were about at 21.30. We got our luggage also quickly and then we went to find our bus. The way from Helsinki to Hämeenlinna was a bit crazy. We were tired and also missing our new friends from Germany. About quarter over eleven we were at the point where we had started our trip nine days before. Then we went to home and to sleep.

From Claudia

Bautzen Top 5

Hey, i'm sorry that this post is a bit late, but its better than nothing. I had to list down my five favourite things in Bautzen. It's hard to narrow down all the moments in five separate things, because there were so many of them. I also can't really decide which memory was the best, but i tried and here they are in the order:

5. Landscape

Bautzen itself was such a historical and beautiful place. It is a hill-top town located right on the Spree river. Views from the top of the mountains were incredible.

During the hike, view was pretty amazing.

4. School activities & Workshops

Okay, so one day every Finnish and German people had to decide which workshop they want to attend to. I chose this material stamping class, where we made bags to every student in the project. It was fun, and the atmosphere in the classes was great. Second one i took was breakdance lesson, but i didn't enjoy dancing that much and don't have any pictures from there, so here's some graffitis from their artclass. Last class you could've attended to was a drumming class.

3. The Farewell party

It was the day before we left the town, Bautzen, and every family gathered together to say goodbyes. Parents of the families had made lots of food to serve and students had the workshop groups, where they performed their new skills or just some entertainment. This evening was my one of the most memorable moments there, because people were sad to realize it's soon over. The farewell party was overall very funny and entertaining. I'm sorry I don't have any footage of this evening.

2. Freetime

After school we used to go to the shopping mall for couple hours to hangout.

Ice cream cost only 1 euro, so i ate it a lot. :D Me and my friends would just wander around the shopping mall with our exchange partners and do a little shopping before we headed back to home. 

The students in the exchange group planned to do something fun together when we had freetime. So we went to play 8-pool and eat döner.

We also were bowling after school :-)

It was nice to explore the town with only our German friends and do what they did on their everyday lives.

1. Friends & Hostfamily

I made new lovely friends while being on this trip, and i miss them so much. And my hostfamily was awesome. I couldnt've asked for more. 

Selina and Julianne opening our souvenirs from Finland ;)

Jonna, Max and me

My host parents

On the last day my hostfamily took me to paint eggs with melted candles to their neighbor, who is a master in that technique.

Me and Selina trying our best to make the perfect eggs

No comments.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we had some activities. Everyone got to choose two activities out of four. Choices were breakdance, textile printing, graffiti painting and Percussion. I chose Percussion where we did "sleepy" music about two hours. We used body noices as instruments. Then we had lunch and after that we did "Siebdruck" which means textile printing. In the morning other group had already printed part of the pictures and we did the rest. These two activities were in Steinhouse but two other were at the school.

Our activities ended at 2.30 p.m and after that we had free time. Most of us went to the shopping center where I had some drama when I accidentally dropped my phone to the toilet. 

At five o´clock many of us went to play billiards for a few hours. We played in  mixed teams and in the end we went to eat kebab. We had a wonderful time with the others. Oskari and Felix also gave us a performance of Lady Gaga´s song Pokerface.



-Oona

Berlin in pictures

Now we return again to the first days in Berlin. We had great time with our group and we saw incredible sights for example Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate, TV tower, Postdamer Platz and Rotes Rathaus. Berlin is a beautiful city and one of the most traveled cities in Europe. The airport was a surprisingly small in view of Berlin is popular tourist spot. We had a nice and clean hotel well located. We had time for shopping also. 

              During the days we used a local train and also walked A LOT! After days in Berlin our legs were tired. But I think it was worth it. There wasn't so much tourists any more because it was off season. It was good for us. There weren't long queues and rush anymore.

             After our trip I had almost 900 pictures in my camera so it took a while to go through all the pictures and pick out the best of them. After that operation you can see the best pictures from Berlin here. 

Siegessäule (Berlin Victory Column), a beautiful monument surrounded by a traffic circle // Statue from Gendarmenmarkt, front of the Berlin Konzerthaus // A Beautiful Neptunbrunnen (The Neptune Fountain) front of the TV tower // The Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), town hall of the Berlin

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenbur Gate), one of the most well-known landmarks of Germany // The Berlin TV tower // West side of the Berlin Wall in interesting exhibition // "How long is now"

Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Berlin Central Station) where our train left in first day // Standing on both sides of Berlin Wall! The real place where Berlin Wall has been // Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) // Our train in second day

Shopping street in Berlin // Beautiful lightning at evening in Berlin // The view from Berlin TV tower, it was incredible beautiful view from 203 meters // Sunset in Postdamer Platz, it is important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin

Our wonderful group in the Neptune Fountain

Venla

October 9th afternoon

After waiting for the bus at the Packhofstraße we went to Rodewitz, where we met Mrs. Heiber. We started walking and Mrs. Heiber showed us some berries, and of course Iina and I had to taste them (they were really sour and reaction was similar to salmiakki tasting with germans)… The day was one of the warmest +22°C, so really hot for October. The way up was hard, but talking with friends made it easier and we got to the top of the Mönchswalder Berg. There we planned our farewell night programmes and I tasted apple strudel. Way down was easier and really funny, because we were taking silly selfies XD. Part of the group was even able to get lost, but because of that we found a cute dog and a great view… Finally we found the rest of the group and continued the journey. In a playground we took some groupphotos and after that there were not so long way to the bus stop. We said goodbye to Mrs. Heiber and Heiber.a really cute and playful cat came to be petted. On the way home a bee stung me but still the whole evening was really nice!

Popular German music and Oktoberfest

Many well known bands come from Germany and probably the most popular genre is  hard rock/heavy metal. The most important and globally well known bands are Rammstein and Scorpions. Other globally recognized bands are Silbermond (rock), Die Ärtze (punk rock), Fettes Brot (hip hop), Subway to Sally (medieval folk rock), Fantastisch Vier (hip hop also) and of course Tokio Hotel (pop rock).                                                                                                                                               Oktoberfest is the world's largest funfair held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is a 16-day festival running from late September to the first weekend in October with more than 6 million people from around the world attending the event every year. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations, modeled after the original Munich event.                                       

  I went with my host family to nearest Oktoberfest and it was really awesome experience! There were performing great band called Santiano which plays folk rock and sea shanty. We ate bretzels and langos (a popular Hungarian street food) and of course people were drinking (lots of) beer and shots. The atmosphere was happy and cheerful, people were singing and even dancing on tables.