Report of the first week
Day 1 14.08.2017: Arrival
After long weeks of preparation, 27 teenagers from Taiwan arrive at Hamburg. Christian went to pick the group up at the airport in Frankfurt and accompanied them on the train to Hamburg. Despite some minor problems regarding the delay of the train in Frankfurt, the group arrived in Hamburg, better late than never, at the main station where most of the aubiko staff was waiting for them at the platform. After a quick rush to the hostel to drop the enormous amount of luggage that was meant to last for one year, we proceeded to the DB-canteen for a late, but well-earned lunch. Even though everybody was tired from the long journey, the kids chatted lively and were happy and excited to get to know the city and details on what would expect them in the weeks to come.
After lunch, we took a walk to the seminar rooms at A&O Hostel for the first introduction round. In the seminar room, the attending aubiko staff members were introduced and first rules and instructions were given to the students. Subsequently, we all played a funny name memory game to get to know each other and went back to Generator hostel.
Over there, the rooms were distributed and first things unpacked from the suitcases. Since the time always goes by very quick on the first day, the students had only a short time to settle in before we had dinner together at the hostel. No further activities were planned for the evening since everybody was tired and looking forward to a good sleep in order to be fit for the following days.
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Report of the second week
Day 8 21.08.2017: Visit of the Miniature Wonderland
As the second week starts, so does German class in the morning as usual. Although the students have only spent 7 days in Germany so far, their German skills improve every day and most of them lost their retention to speak German.
After lunch, we all met in front of the hostel and proceeded to the Miniature Wonderland by taking the subway. We alighted at the river Elbe again and took a short walk through the historic warehouse district to the Museum. The Miniature Wonderland is a great place to visit; it is located on several floors of a former warehouse where Hamburg, Germany and other European countries are exhibited on a small scale.
The students were free to explore the museum on their own and everybody took time to inspect the scenes and places that are displayed with lovable attention to detail. We saw Hamburg, Scandinavia, Switzerland and other countries, with moving cars and trains, an airport where trains were taking off and in Italy, a volcano would sometimes spy smoke and flames. Eventually the light would turn off and the lights on the cars, trains, street lamps and houses would turn on, immersing the place in a new light.
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Report of the third week
Day 13 26.08.2017: Trip to Bremen
Today we could sleep a little longer and had breakfast at 8 am. After breakfast everybody started packing because tomorrow morning we would leave Hamburg and go to Berlin.
Around noon we gathered at the hostel entrance and proceeded to the main station to take our train to Bremen. Bremen is an old town close to Hamburg and we went sightseeing with Bert and afterwards the students were to form groups and take a tour through the ancient city centre and answer questions of a quiz.
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