Online story: Meet Your Neighbour – Young European Adults German contribution: It’s a rainy day in the south of Germany in the city of gold, Pforzheim. It's the beginning of July. As a German student you don`t know what to do in a weather like this - especially two weeks before the long summer holiday of six weeks - because usually at this time of the year the weather is quite good. Sarah has to get up early at 6am, five days a week. The 17-years-old girl eats her sausages, leaves the house at 7 am, like every morning. She is walking along the biggest river of Pforzheim, the Enz, like every morning. While she is looking at the running water, she is thinking about how to escape from her daily life into an exciting adventure. Suddenly, when she sees a poster of “The Economist” she is jerked out of her thoughts: “Oh…, my English homework, I wanted to reread my summary!” During her walk to school she takes out her homework and reads through it. It reads like this: ”The article is about the migration of workers from Romania and Bulgaria to rich countries in the EU after restrictions on the free movement of workers were lifted on January 1st 2014. Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Austria are afraid of the consequences of unrestricted migration. The press and the public worry how many migrants will come. Will they take away low skill jobs? Will this create tensions? Will begging and sleeping rough shoot up, especially in big or industrial cities? Will the immigrants live off the black market, begging and petty crime? Will they be a burden on the welfare state by demanding access to social benefits? For the first time there is a mixture of anti-EU feelings and anti-immigration feelings. Politicians reacted too late to the public´s worries.” “Sounds all right to me!” Sarah thinks and sincerely hopes her teacher thinks the same. All of a sudden, a huge black German sausage dog with hungry eyes appears. With a big jump he snaps at the yummy sausage-smelling homework. Sarah is so startled that she lets the homework fall down. In this moment the wind blows it far away, into the Enz. She asks herself: “What has just happened? Nobody will believe my absurd excuse of losing my homework. My teacher is so strict that I might have to do it again, argh.” Now she has to hurry up because she has to search for the room in which she has her last Religious Education lesson. Before the lesson starts Sarah talks to her friend Claudia, who has just come back from a Comenius trip to Leiden in the Netherlands. Claudia is really enthusiastic about it and she is going to give a presentation about the whole trip in the English lesson later. Sarah can't even tell her how she lost her homework. But before Claudia can even start talking about her exciting week their teacher Mrs Fischer enters the room. After a hurried “Good Morning”, she wants to get to work immediately and doesn't leave any time for exchanging pleasantries or “any of that nonsense”, as she calls it. Claudia is rolling her eyes to Sarah, meaning: “She is so German!” Of course, Mrs Fischer doesn't believe Sarah's silly excuse of losing her homework, naturally. Claudia on the other hand can't stop giggeling until finally she is put out of the lesson to calm down. After about five minutes she returns grinning and whispering something about watering the horses. The lesson is about social justice and continues with a discussion about the meaning of the word. Both girls enjoy that part of the lesson, nearly as much as when Mrs Fischer is telling stories about her life. Despite her very German work attitude, Mrs Fischer is distracted easily and Sarah remembers a particular story about Mrs Fischer getting her church approval to teach Religious Education. Weird story. People from the church had to examine her in her lesson and only then she could continue teaching! After that, the girls think: “What you should know about Germany is that German people are mostly focused on work. So it’s normal that a teacher wants to immediately start with the lessons. Maybe the teachers back in the Netherlands weren’t that focused.” The lesson ends and Claudia starts to tell Sarah stories about Leiden, how her guest family lives, how teenagers spend their money. They come to the conclusion that it is quite similar to Germany. The most surprising topic was school. Claudia says that it is very modern and that pupils don't have Religious Education! Sarah wants to know which differences and similarities are the most important between Netherlands and Germany. Claudia tells her two main differences; the first one would be the “Abitur”. She tells her that pupils in Netherlands have the same just called with a different name “VWO eindexamen”. And the second difference, it is like in Netherlands everything is close to their neighborhood, instead of that in Germany some pupils have to take trains, busses or cars to go their school. In Netherlands they just go their schools by their bikes. She shows Sarah the pictures on her phone, iPear's latest model, of course! Claudia promises to show Sarah some more pictures after their Maths lesson. Together with the pictures Claudia shows Sarah a small Dutch-German dictionary that she had made with the help of Tim and Tessa, two Dutch friends. If you go to a foreign country, it is not that easy to communicate with each other. So Claudia did this to learn the basics of the language, so she is able to introduce herself in Dutch to more people than Tim and Tessa. And we can assume that it had to be fun to make this dictionary because they had to chat about the sentences in a different language and translate them. Dutch-German Ik ben Claudia Ich heiße Claudia Ik ben zestien jaar oud Ich bin 16 Jahre alt Ik woon in Pforzheim Ich wohne in Pforzheim Ik ga naar school Ich gehe noch zur Schule Ik hou van jou Ich liebe dich Hoe gaat het? Wie geht es dir? Het gaat goed Mir geht es gut Gefeliciteerd Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Het eten is lekker Das Essen schmeckt gut Ik heb lekker geslapen Ich hab gut geschlafen Claudia tells Sarah that she already misses her new friends in Leiden: ”The trip to Leiden was very cool and I really enjoyed it. I know now that some prejudice against Dutch aren’t right, for example that the Dutch only smoke weed and always ride the bike . It is a very interesting country with lovely houses, the North Sea nearby, interesting cities, a rich cultural life and a kingdom accepted by all its citizens – imagine we even saw the King racing past us in a car in Amsterdam. I especially liked the world famous paintings of Rembrandt. I saw in the original for the first time in my life.” Claudia remembers that the trip to Leiden and back was rather chaotic. “Imagine there was an accident that had something to do with the train tracks but our teacher did not really get what exactly was wrong. Naturally, because the message was in Dutch! So tour teacher made me ask a friendly – really cute-looking – young man to translate it. Embarrassing, really. Because of this accident we arrived at Leiden really late but were immediately welcomed by our host families who took us home.” “Hey, Sarah, what do you think about leaving all this school stuff behind us, we don't do anything anyway just now! Let's hop on a train and go to Leiden!” The two girls make the decision instantly and run out of school and along the Enz to a few days with their Dutch friends. Little do they know... But there is always a problem with Deutsche Bahn. There were two trains but for unknown reasons they made all the passengers come together in one train, and the train was really crowded. The girls paid for their seats but there are other people sitting on them who just don't leave, so they just look for room somewhere on the floor. Typically unfriendly Germans! Later it turns out, the people are Portuguese and didn't understand a word. Well... Dutch contribution: After a long trip, Sarah and Claudia finally arrive in Amsterdam. Just as they expected, it is raining. Back home, it was at least 20 degrees. The Netherlands look nothing like the pictures they saw on the internet. No tulips, just fog. Trying to see through the fog, Claudia sees the train station coming closer. Seeing their destination after a trip of 6 hours, they feel pretty relieved. Stepping on to platform 6, they see a vague silhouette of their friend Jan. He is jumping around until the train stops. ‘It has almost stopped raining, so just leave your coat in your suitcase. Let’s go see Jan!’ Sarah is yelling. They run off the train, into Jan’s direction, and tackle him onto the wet floor. ‘Guys, stop! Let’s stop hugging and just visit the centre.’ They agree and the three of them take off to the bus station to catch a bus to the centre. Looking out of the bus windows, they realize there is too much going on. No room to walk, no room to have fun, no room to do anything.