Week 1: Saarbrücken

I made it!

I’m going to be in Saarbrücken, in the heart of Saarland, which is a Bundesland (state) of Germany on the Germany-France border. Paris is about two hours away by train.

Where’s Saarbruecken?

In the state of Saarland, which is in southwestern Germany.

Within Saarland, it’s here:

#Host Family & Accommodations

My host family’s great; they’ve got a house in the scenic Altenkessel quarter with decent access to public transit (one bus is a three minute walk; the other is about 10 minutes away).

I’ve got a private room with a queen-sized mattress and the classic german pillow/duvet combo; I’ve also got a dresser and a small couch.

Check out this view from my balcony:

My host family also has a pool, wonderfully angenehm in the 37C+ heat:

Public transit here is mainly busses (there is the one S-Bahn, but it only really goes a few places; not at all comparable to Berlin’s U- and S-Bahn coverage), most of which operate at half-hourly or hourly intervals. I’m about a half-hour away from the city interior and forty-five minutes from the language school.

Read: planning ahead for travel into the city is required.

Without further ado, here’s what happened this week:

#Language School

On Monday, we went straight into language school, starting every weekday at 8:30. Days usually end around 4PM (except on Fridays, where we’re done at noon).

Unterricht (class) is conducted in sessions of one-and-a-half-hour sessions, broken up by thirty- or fifteen-minute breaks. A bit long, for my tastes (I prefer forty-five minute blocks with breaks in between; it helps me stay focused).

I’ll adjust.

We have two instructors (conducting class completely auf deutsch, of course) and a tutor (he’s something like a tour guide, local, and advocate for us in a non-instructional sense).

I’m under the impression that we’re somewhat experienced students here, so while we have a foundational understanding of the language and can get by during the day-to-day, we’re not at the discussing-politics-and-religion or writing-opinion-articles-for-the-newspaper level yet.

Here’s a photo of the squad:

#Free Time

We spent a bit of time out and about this week. We celebrated a birthday with a picnic on the river, tried some of the local fare, and took part in some weekend festivities; according to my host family, they’ve got a fest nearly every weekend out here!

Crazy.

On the 31st of July, we took a tour with Johannes, our tutor - he showed us a bit of the city, including the city castle and Ludwigskirche:

On the 8th of August, we visited the Völklingen Ironworks, an old (mostly) decommissioned iron and steel processing facility. It’s known here as the Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte, and is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Neat photos (courtesy of fellow CBYXer Fabienne) follow:

There was also an art gallery:

…and that’s my first week here in Saarbrücken.