Erasmus Tagebuch Mobility 1 – Germany

Monday 17.02.2020

What is it like to attend a German school? How do the teachers treat their students? What subjects are on the schedules of German students? All these questions

were answered this Monday, as the Erasmus delegations of Latvia, Spain and Portugal attended the regular classes of their German partners. Accompanying the German partners through their regular days, their normal lives allowed the foreigners to really dive into the everyday life of the new friends.

How did they experience the long sessions? Each class at the OPS is taught for 90 minutes. What is it like to not use the mobile, because the German school does not allow the little devices on campus? How can we not get lost in a building as big as the OPS?

Then, the program for the afternoon brought the Erasmus+ club together again. We were watching four different movies in four groups. Each movie presented a different perspective of the Holocaust, so we were able to learn more about the topic that unites us.

The Italian movie “Life is Beautiful“ left many crying, because the love of father who tries to disguise life in a concertation camp as a game, touched our hearts.

Following Anne Frank for the months she had to spend hiding from the Nazis in a hidden room also allowed the Erasmus team to feel with the victims of the Holocaust.

In the movie “Where hands touch“, we saw that not only Jews were persecuted by the Nazis, but that they also discriminated people of mixed-race, such as the girl Leyna, who is one of the so called “Rhineland-bastards“, a girl with a white, German mother and an African father, that fought for the French troops during WW1.

The last movie, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjama“, showed us, how deep a friendship – even in times of cruelty, hate and death, can go.

Each group dealt with the movies afterwards, talking e.g. about fences, and how they still separate us; the real ones but also the symbolic ones. To end the day, we all met again and presentd our reactions to the movies.

Yes, it was a long day. We spent many hours at the OPS – but when we finally got home, we knew more. And learning more every day, is not just this week’s priority.