Student's exchange in Germany by Kadri Kalve

Some time has past from my return to Estonia from Germany but the warm feeling of  that trip is still in me. It was an unforgettable adventure and certainly a really fun memory to remember.

The whole trip started with a long drive to Riga. Driving with bus doesn't sound that exciting but with right people everything's fun. After the long ride came the thing that had scared me the most in the whole trip - airport. Soon it turned out that it's not that scary at all and the flight went very well.

I had a change to take a picture from the plane window while flying.

  
And then finally I was in Germany. I had never been so far away from home. Actually it wasn't that different from Estonia in the beginning but when we got closer to Werther everything got a lot more interesting.

First of all the sight was so beautiful, you could see the mountains covered with woods in the distance and it was really beautiful. Roads were quite narrow and everything was a bit old-fashioned but I absolutely loved that. All the houses looked really lovely and reminded me a bit of old fairy tales. After two hours ride we arrived at Werther. It's a gorgeous little town. Well maybe it wasn't that tiny but it just felt very compact with it's narrow streets and closely standing houses.

A picture of Werther.

In the evening I met my host family. I was hosted by Emilys family, or as she preferred it Emmi. Already on our firts chat we found out that we have very much in common- love for the same movies,  drawing passion, similar clothing style and so on and on.

Emmi had a very lovely family. Her mother was named Natascha and she was probably one of the kindest person I have ever met. Her dads name was Christian, he had a great sence of humour and could tell lots of interesting stories. Then there was Emmi's brother Oliver whose englsih was surprisingly good for kid who was under ten years old. 

Their home was located in Spenge which in Germany is considered as a village, but in Estonia we would probably call it a borough. Nevertheless it was a nice village. The house I stayed at was nice and felt cozy. I felt comfortable like I was at my own home.

On the next day we visited the Werther Evangelisches Gymnasium. It was really interesting to see the school because it was all quite different from my school. First of all there were so many students I can't even remeber how many but all the parallels of Emmi's class had more students than our whole school. In the afternoon we went to the Böckstiegel museum. The museum was about Peter August Böckstiegel who was a local artist who mainly focused on impressionism. I actually kind of liked that museum because some of the art was quite beautiful. The funnest part was when we were allowed to draw one picture of the artist by ourself. 
In the evening me and Emmi started watching movies, it was really fun. We also talked a lot about all kind of things.

Bielefeld's old town.

On the third day we went to Bielefeld which is the closest big city to Werther. We had a tour in the old city where I saw many very beautiful buildings. I liked the way Bielefeld's old town looked it was really picturesque. After the tour in old town we went to a local history museum. We had a really great guide. He talked about many interesting things and made joke after joke. We could even see some old linen making machinery work wich was very impressive. At end of the tour I was even a little sad because there were so many other interesting things in the museum I wish would have had time to get to know to and what our guide could have talked about. After that we had some time for shopping and walking around the city. There weren't any big shopping malls so it was quite hard to find cool shops.
Then came the weekend which we were supposed to spend with our host families. Me and Emmis decided to go to Wether again so she could show me some things that I hadn't seen yet. First palce where we went was a really astonishing shop called The Underground Factory. I absolutly loved that place. It was a unique shop and there is nothing like it in Estonia. After that we did some more shopping and then went to visit the Sparrenburg Castle. It was a huge fortress with a hihg tower and big walls. The castle has a system of underground passages but they could only be explored from April to October. We went home for the lunch time but after that we dicided to go to some near 

This is the cool shop called The Underground Factory that Emmi showed me.

Me and Emmi at the top of Sparrenburg's castle.

located shopping mall. At the end of the day we were quite tired.
On Sunday I slept til it was twele o'clock. After a wholesome breakfast we decided to visit some art museums. First one was art museum called Marta. There was a exhibition called "Beautiful and Brutal" it sounded really cool but actually it was just some bit confusing modern art. Second art museum that  we visited was located in Bielefeld. There was exhibition consisting of many different works from many different German female artists. I absolutly loved that exhibition. In the evening we had a dinner in a restaurant to crown the great time I had in Germany. And then on Monday started the long way back to home. 

This is the art museum called Marta with the exhibition called "Beautiful and Brutal".

It certainly was a great trip and I am still so thankful for it. I'll have good memories to remember for the rest of my life. I can't wait to see Emmi again and welcome her to Estonia so I could make her stay as memorable as mine.