The cradle of German (insert highly regarded Western value)

Last week I took up the invitation, extended to me when I first showed up at Wolkenberg Gymnasium way back in September, to accompany one of the 10th grade classes on their class trip to Weimar.

------------HISTORICAL INTERLUDE------------------------
Weimar first made a name for itself in the late 18th century as the home of the two greats of German literature, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who moved there in 1787 and 1788 and remained there until their respective deaths in 1805 and 1832. Weimar is also known as the place where Germany's post-World War I, democratic constitution was drafted, leading historians to dub the state, which existed from 1919 until the National Socialists took power in 1933, the Weimar Republic. 1919 was a productive year for Weimar. In addition to the first post-imperial German state, the Bauhaus design school (to which anyone who's ever been to IKEA owes a significant debt) was founded by Walter Gropius. After World War II, Weimar ended up in the Soviet Occupation Zone, and consequently became part of East Germany, providing a counterpoint — in the form of nasty Communist architecture — to the Modernist traditions of the Bauhaus.
------------END HISTORICAL INTERLUDE--------------------

So Day 1: Tuesday, February 26. Hush that Fuss
Show up at school at 9:45 to catch the bus. Am greeted by several semi-interested "hi"s from the kids, who quickly re-busy themselves with whatever they were doing before I got there. Not til Cordula — the Responsible Adult/ faculty member for the whole affair — shows up, do I get a little conversation. She notes that I'm looking a little pale and proceeds to give my cheeks a couple smacks to liven me up. Things are certainly going well! Also along for the ride, are a parental chaperone and one of the teacher trainees who's been helping Cordula with this class. I should mention that the pretense for this whole trip is to give these 10th graders some context for the things they're studying in their German class. Anyway, here's the bus, and a big fuss is made to ensure that I get to sit where I want. I tell them, in a joking tone that, apparently, doesn't translate (note to self), that I want to sit in the tour guide seat next to the bus driver. It is roundly insisted that I do this. That was, I have to say, pretty cool. You get a good view of the road, and the dash board (I have a secret thing control panels, dashboards, cockpits etc., and I always thrill a bit when I get a close up look at some new variant, particularly one with lots of switches and buttons). So it was time to sit back and enjoy the ride. And I sat back a little too much, I guess, cause I fell asleep pretty well straight away, and woke up in front of our hostel to some good natured ribbing about having a nice nap (thank god I didn't drool!).
Wandering the Streets
We got our stuff squared away (I got a "cozy" single which was just big enough for a bed, a closet, a sink and some much appreciated privacy), and headed into town. This being a class trip, we were expected to learn something (lame!). To that end, the kids were split up into groups with different "tours" of the city to accomplish. To my pleasant surprise, one of the students, Sven, overheard Cordula telling me I could pick one of the groups to go with if I wanted and excitedly invited me to come with his group. To make sure they didn't just skip the tour and goof off, the kids had a couple questions to answer about sights around the city. Our first one was: "what is over the door to Schiller's house?" After some initial confusion about where exactly Schiller's house even was, we were dismayed to discover that whatever it was over Schiller's door had been taken down for restoration. We needed an answer, though, and I suggested the sign on the side of the door: "Closed Tuesdays". At this point, I'm starting to overlap into the part where I took pictures, so I'll let my Picasa album take over from here. Please follow the link and I'll see you in a bit...

Day 2, February 27th
Everyone's Gone to the Movies
Welcome back! One quick gap I'd like to fill in: day 2 started with a trip to the Weimar Museum, which is an animatronic spectacle narrated by Goethe himself! It takes you through a series of rooms, each depicting a scene from Weimar's past from the ancient settlers, who gave the place its name (Weimar, literally: "holy swamp") right up to the founding of the Weimar Theater by Goethe and Schiller (our narrator gets a little subjective here, needless to say...). Now, a jump to Goethe's garden house, which the teachers thought would be an appropriate setting for the kids to recite the Goethe poems they memorized. Good jobs all around, and I even stumbled through a cold reading of "Prometheus" to polite applause. After that, the boys wanted to show me the awesome playground they had found the day before while I was out on my Ringo-walk in the park. After the playground, we had some time to kill before dinner, and as I had been itching to check out the Bauhaus Museum since we arrived (no pictures allowed inside — weak!), I announced my intention to do just that, and Sven (the one from before) even wanted to come with me! The place wasn't nearly as big as the Bauhaus Archive here in Berlin, but it was still most awesome. Sven didn't hang around as long as I did, he took off to take some pictures of that big, wooden chair which I'd pointed out to him on the way back from the playground. That night, the plan had been to go to the National Theater (where the Weimar Republic constitution was drafted) for a production of Faust, but it turns out they could only wrangle enough tickets for half the class, so — generous soul that I am — I offered to take the other half to the movies. But what to see? The general consensus was Keinohrhasen, a romantic comedy which I had already seen and taken ill-advised relationship cues from, but a dozen German teenagers can't be wrong, so off we went to the local mutiplex. After the film, which was still good the second time around, we went to Burger King where, for some reason (maybe to complete the whole "American fast-food" experience), you can pay in dollars. When the kids found out I actually did have dollars on me (the $11.00 I've been carrying around since Christmas), they all wanted me to pay with them, but with the Burger King exchange rate being $1.70 to the euro, there was no way in hell. So that was that, we all went back to the hostel, fell asleep and didn't get up until the next morning when we caught the bus back to Michendorf. I sat in a regular seat this time, and only fell asleep once for about half an hour. And that was that. It's a fun city, very small and accessible. I was told Weimar was a definite must by everyone who found out I was going there, and for anyone with even a passing interest in German history or culture this is certainly true. Til next time, tourism fans...