Hitzefrei: Erin's Visit

That tower is my church!

Halli hallo! The last week or so has been pretty interesting. My friend Erin who studied abroad in Holzkirchen with me is back in Germany this summer to do an internship, so she came to visit me for her first few days in Germany! It was super fun to show her the city and experience the madness that is Erfurt two days before elections.

This week at school was also pretty great - on Monday, it was ridiculously hot (79 degrees!). 79 degrees isn't actually hot, but when your school is primarily composed of windows, it seems pretty bad. After school, I decided to stop off in the Domplatz to get ice cream. One of my fifth graders stopped me to chat when he saw me get off the tram - and he did so in English. It was completely amazing. I told him I was getting ice cream and he said that the weather was warm, but "tomorrow was warmer." (Fifth graders don't really work on verb tenses.)

Back of the Dom

Then I proceeded to go and buy ice cream from this cute little shop - I didn't notice until the lady was scooping up my cone that the flavor I had chosen was vegan! It actually tasted the same as regular ice cream, but it was twice as expensive.

On Wednesday, Erin was supposed to arrive around 8, but she had rotten luck with her train connections and didn't get into Erfurt until 11 pm! It was kind of fun to go into the city that late at night.

Stasi Museum

The next day at school, it was pretty warm (see above: school is 90% windows). When I got back into the teachers' room after 4th hour, almost everyone was huddled around the bulletin board and kind of giggling. Then someone told me that since it was too hot, they were cancelling school for the 5th-9th grades after 5th hour and the 10th-11th grades after 6th hour! It's called "Hitzefrei." Many of the teachers said they'd never had a day Hitzefrei before. (Someone said that usually they check the weather and when it's really hot they do a shortened schedule and let everyone out at 1:30, but they didn't realize it was going to be so warm until the day had already started.) I think the teachers were just as excited as the students. They kept on grinning and pointing at the bulletin board and saying "Krass, ne?" It was 75 degrees outside.

Yesterday Erin and I went to a museum just off the Domplatz that's about East Germany and the Stasi (East German secret police). I thought the building was a renovated Stasi office building, which was incorrect. It was a former Stasi prison! The top floor was left as it was so we could see the conditions and the bottom two floors were exhibits about the rise and fall of East Germany. It was a really good museum, mostly because it's Germany and I can't think of a really bad museum in this country.

"Tell me where you stand." Inside the museum.

Standing behind the anti-NPD protestors. You can see the
NPD a tiny bit in the background, but this view is mostly
protesters.

Since city council and European elections are tomorrow, there's been a ton of campaigning all around the city. I keep on getting flyers in my mailbox as well - it turns out that not only is there an elected neighborhood council, there's an elected mayor of the neighborhood. All the neighborhood council candidates are running on the platform of reopening the library behind Kaufland. (I think the decision to close it came from the city council, not from them.) There have also been several campaign rallies - yesterday Erin and I stopped to listen to the band at the SPD's rally because they were playing "Sweet Home Alabama." Then we looked over at Die Linke's rally, but their music wasn't as good so we left. Today the CDU had set up a mini-carnival in Anger, and I saw a small NPD (neo-Nazi) rally near city hall. Across the street was a much larger rally of people with balloons from every other party. Most of the people had whistles, so when the NPD tried to speak they would blow their whistles so they couldn't be heard. The protesters also had a band that played loudly while the NPD candidates were trying to speak. The NPD rally was being protected by people in army uniforms while the protesters were surrounded by the local police. It was very interesting to watch!