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Germany visit in Hamburg - 24/29 January 2016

January 2016: The second meeting of many Erasmus students and teachers took place in Hamburg. It was an exciting week with many interesting workshops and activities. The students arrived with their teachers on Sunday on the 24th of January. The host families picked their guests up at Hamburg Airport.
After the arrival we met at school. We had a welcome dinner with a big chinese buffet. While enjoying the dinner we met each other (again) and everybody was talking to new people or friends they already knew from the meeting in Italy. It was a nice start and everybody knew that it would be a great week!

On Monday we met at 8.30h atschool and had a short welcome address of the German headmaster. After that we had about 30 minutes to see the school. For the tour we splitted up in four groups. Each group was accompanied by two German students. One special aspect was to see the neighbouring refugee camp. Many students reacted really uncertain and asked questions, for example if it was intimidating for us to go to school next to it. It was a good start, because that was going to be our topic.

After a little break we started with the typical presentations of the media analysis, so all countries reported about their current condition in relation to immigrants. Some Greek students had read books fitting to the topic and presented them, giving a short overview what it was about and express their own opinion. Then we had lunch and break, which was a great possibility to talk to others. After the presentation of our questionnaire results we were leaving school for Hamburg sightseeing. We visited some of the typical sites you have to see when you come to Hamburg. We started with a short ferry tour, thereafter we walked through the Portuguese Quarter to the “Michel” church where we climbed the tower. Many beautiful photos where made there up. Finally we walked to the “Rathausmarkt” which is the main square of Hamburg. Then we had time for leisure. Some of us went for shopping and others went to get something to eat. In the evenings, everybody had dinner with their host families.

On Tuesday, we started by identifying four different professions, analysing the obstacles for a migrant to regain his or her original job in the host country.

After that we started with the first workshops of the week. The workshops were prepared by the different countries. There were two workshops lead by Italy and Spain which were about analysing the questionnaire results. The other two workshops lead by Greece and France employed with an assembly of a first-aid kit ''How to make your way as a refugee''. People in one of this workshop translated that into six languages. At 11.30h we were forced to stop for lunch. On one hand everybody was glad to eat something, but on the other hand everyone wanted to go on and share their creative ideas with the others. After one hour, we continued the workshops, preparing the presentation of the results for Friday.
In the end we collected some good quotes which were used in the mornings workshops. After the work was done we left school for sightseeing again. We walked through Hamburg “Speicherstadt” and the Port City which are part of the big harbour of Hamburg. Fortunately, we had the possibility to visit an exhibition at Deichtorhallen called “Streamlines”. We saw exhibited in art many topics of transoceanic transportation paths, global trading and migration. It was fun!

On Wednesday, we visited the “Ballinstadt Museum”. This is the emigration museum in Hamburg. The exhibition guides showed and explained to the visitors why and how the emigrants came to Hamburg in order to leave Germany, how they spent their time waiting for the ships taking them to UK or USA. We had roundabout one hour leisure time for individual walks in the museum before we had to be back at school. Back at school we got another introduction to Schengen and Dublin treaties, prepared by the Greek and France teachers. After a 10 minutes break, we splitted up into three groups, so everybody had enough time to speak about the legal implications. The teachers from Lithuania had prepared with a small group of students studies based on Schengen and Dublin 2.

In the evening the Germans had organised a panel discussion about “Being a refugee in Hamburg”. Invited were people standing in contact with refugees (e. g. administrant offices) and refugees living in Hamburg. The panel was also joined by some students of the German school with migration background, to take part in the discussion, at the same time they were moderating.

Thursday morning we met at school early, so we could spend as much time as possible in our capital Berlin. After a three hours trip by bus we finally arrived in Berlin and started our visit with a small walk, seeing some important monuments and sites. Included were the Reichstag (the place where the German government works), the Brandenburger Tor (this gate splitted Berlin in two parts after WW2) and the large monument which should remind us how brutal the holocaust was. And of course, we saw the few left parts of the Wall. Because our timetable was very tight, we had to go very fast to the Jewish museum in Berlin, were we had a guided tour again. The architecture of the museum is supposed to express the history of the Jewish people in Germany. In the afternoon, we had a tour through Berlin Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin with an American guide. 38% of the people living in Kreuzberg have a migration background, our tour guide said. To prevent that we wouldn’t starve we visited on Thursday a Turkish restaurant. Which was by the way very yummy ;-)

After the dinner, we had one and a half hour leisure time, which was used to go and have a shopping tour. Whacked and tired we got very late back to Hamburg.

On Friday, the ERASMUS+ projected ruled the school, because in Hamburg were public holidays. So, we finished our workshops from Tuesday and Wednesday and presented them. After the presentation of our work in the workshops we had for the first time some hours of leisure: time enough. At the evening we all met again in school, because we had a big farewell party. Prestij, a Turkish band from Hamburg, had a gig and showed us how to dance a traditional Turkish folkdance. Afterwards we partied on the dancefloor, with our own DJ - a student visiting the school in Hamburg. And then we had to say goodbye :-(.

Nobody wanted to leave so soon but would prefer to stay. There were a lot of tears and goodbyes, but everybody was eased a bit by the thought seeing the others again at one of the upcoming meetings.

All in all, we had an interesting week, filled with new friendships, meeting refugees, working on our topic and accumulating a lot of memories, that will stay forever!

Leonie Bartelt & Kati Fiegen, 10th grade, Hamburg

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