Poland-Germany exchange 2009

During the second half of the school year, the Global Studies class WG11/2 took part in an exchange with Poland. The twin town of our school is Kielce, so we corresponded with the students of this city.

An exchange like this took part a lot of times at our school and in the last two years especially with Kielce. So we were the third group of German students, who lived and spent time in the school and in the several families. After much preparations and full of expectations the exchange finally started.

First the Polish visited Germany for one week (March 2009):

Monday: arrival

Tuesday: visiting the school, getting to know each other, Town tour in Waiblingen

Wednesday: Mercedes-Benz museum, city tour in Stuttgart, shopping

Thursday: lessons, energy workshop

Friday: Ludwigsburg Castle, Fairytale Garden

Saturday: Lake of Constance, Isle of Mainau (guided tour), shopping in Constance

Sunday: staying with host families (Wilhelma, e.g.), Bowling

Monday: Farewell

At the evenings we had free time and we had a lot of fun at Parties and in Clubs.

It was a pity that it rained all time, but they liked Germany after all. They liked especially our clean cities and streets.

Here you can see our program when we were in Poland (April 2009):

Friday: Arrival, tour through the old town of Warsaw, evening: clubbing

Saturday: visiting Auschwitz, city tour Krakow (without shopping!)

Sunday: treasure hunt through the forest of Kielce

Monday: discussion about nuclear power plants in Kielce, lessons the whole day AND guided tour through Kielce (with geography teacher)

Tuesday: lessons, walk around the natural reserve in Kielce, workshop (summarizing), time for shopping in Kielce, very funny last evening with the students

Wednesday: Farewell (very sad), 30 minutes shopping in Warsaw. J

The time in Poland was amazing and we didn´t want to go back so early. Unfortunately sometimes we had little free time, but we had so great and well organized party- and clubbing evenings. J

After an exchange we saw the advantages and disadvantages in our life better than before, because, now you know how the life is in another country. There are some very important differences between Germany and Poland. In Poland you´ll need a very long time to reach your destination when you drive by bus or by car because there are nearly no motorways. It isn´t a good idea to walk on a zebra crossing without looking on the street, because the most of Polish drivers are driving very fast. They don´t stop at the zebra crossings, so you´re better careful! Poland is more countrified then Germany, but all in all we think the people are very alike to each other. Polish people are very friendly, our host families were so nice and we really liked them, although we just have been there for a few days. Also the exchange partners, they´re friends for us now. We´re in contact with a lot of them and are happy to know them. They´re not different to us, they like music, go out with friends, going to the cinema, like the Germans. There are some bad rumors about Poland, but they´re not true. It´s the same when people say that Germans just eat sauerkraut, it´s not true.

We just can say that it was an awesome event for all of us, for Polish students as well as for German pupils. We think after all our exchange was a success for everyone. We had a lot of fun, we improved our English and we learned something about the other culture. In addition it was a great experience to live in another family. That was completely different to our normal life although Poland and Germany are side by side.

In our opinion our expectations were answered and we think everyone enjoyed the exchange.

The Global Studies class (WG11/2)

(Anm.: Der Beitrag wurde auf Englisch verfasst, damit ihn auch die polnischen Schüler über unsere Homepage lesen können.)