I've been here for 15 months now and even though it´s a shame that it's far from my family and old friends, I'd like to show you why I still like this place here as a home of choice. I have made a selection of photos from the last year that I hadn´t included in my
first blog post about here yet.
See for yourself!
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| The cute and historic student town of Tübingen is only 20 mins away |
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| Heidelberg is 1,20hrs away (but very touristy) |
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| The Swabian Alb is 30 minutes away with grand waterfalls and cliffs |
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| In 1,30 hrs you're in the actual Alps in Austria, near Füssen |
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| My home region from above |
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| Hohenzollern Castle |
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Walks in ehm...where was this actually? There was a forest and some deers.
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| Again Heidelberg, from the church tower |
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| Weekend hikes through fields and forests with a view |
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| My new school city Herrenberg |
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| The Stuttgart zoo with its old plant houses |
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| Neckar Valley with wine terraces |
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| Helping make wine |
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| Freiburg on the other side of the Black Forest |
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| Some city near Freiburg, reminds me of Noto in Sicily |
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| In the middle of the Black Forest on a campervan weekend |
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| And in winter, you can go skiing there. |
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| If you want to go to France for a day, you can... |
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| ..Strasbourg is only 1,30 hrs away by car |
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| ...with "little France", a very old quarter, and again, lots of tourists. |
And of course Böblingen itself is beautiful. I have the lake right in front of the doorstep and if I need to air myself out, I can just take a quick walk around it.
Let´s not forget the fact that there's even Alpacas around here ;)
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| This was taken on an Alpaca Walk that I gave Jan as a birthday present last year |
Don´t get me wrong, I miss having my old homies from before to hang out and having my family more or less close by. It´s definitely a big minus being so far away and it´s a source of both bad conscience and regret for not being there for a few things. But on the other hand, I enjoy all the activities that one can do here just because the landscape is so much more diverse than in the North. Something that bothers me a little is that it´s so densely populated here which results in all those nice places being pretty crowded on nice days - which stresses me out a little in turn and makes me not appreciate it as much. I feel like in Lower Saxony, there´s just more space for less people. Or I´m just getting old and cranky :D
School Stuff
I´ve been at my new school for two months now. Everybody is perfectly nice and also the pupils are totally fine and very teachable.
I haven´t quite arrived there yet as I had on my old two schools - it just hasn´t clicked yet. I´m not as excited about being there as I was at my old schools (or maybe I´m just romanticising them in my memory now) even though I´m very, very grateful for having a Beamtenstelle at a Secondary school in such a close proximity to my home at all, which is in no way something that is easily given away around here at the moment.
I´m getting back into the groove of the new school year and preparing and holding the lessons gets easier by the week. The only thing that´s still a real challenge for me (apart from all the gazillions of small challenges of course) is my Leistungskurs English, my exam-prep course. The students in the course don´t participate actively as they could and the time in this course drags on and on - in addition to the fact that I feel badly prepared having never before taught students taking the Abitur in this class. But it´s fine, and I´m working my way through it, even if it´s not the easiest Sunday stroll. But it´s all manageable, nothing I´m overwhelmed by.
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