fulbright blog.: A Strike & Springtime

Empty parking lot belonging to an apartment building
that was torn down after the end of East Germany.

Yesterday I was supposed to teach a lesson in one of my 11th grade classes. I had prepared and brought my laptop with me so that we could do a listening exercise as part of the lesson. But when I got to the tram stop at 9:05 am, a lady stopped to tell me that the trams weren't running until 10 am due to a union strike by all the tram and bus drivers. My option, therefore, was to try to walk to school. My school is 6.5 km away from my apartment. Luckily, it was a beautiful day to walk a really long ways, and due to the strike there were tons of people walking around. I (also luckily) had my phone with me, so I was able to call the school and tell them I was going to be late. I finally caught the first tram in the direction of my school at 10:30, which was 10 minutes before the end of the lesson. This tram didn't go all the way to my school, so I rode it for three stops then walked the last two stops to school. By then, it was 10:40 and the lesson was over. It was actually my only lesson of the day, so I just popped in the teachers' room to see if the teacher whose lesson I had missed was there (she wasn't). It was an interesting adventure, to say the least, and I had been wanting to walk from my apartment to the train station. If I had to do it again, though, I'd probably leave my laptop at home. :)

Today is the first day of spring!! Germany responded with incredible weather. The high today was 67, and it was nice and sunny. I went for a walk to Dittelstadt, a village that's really close to my apartment, after I got home from school. The sun was warm, so I wore a t-shirt and shorts. Germans tend to stare a lot normally, but if you're wearing a t-shirt and shorts, they will stare more than usual. The pictures don't do the scene justice - the colors were all so vibrant that they were almost hurting my eyes!!