Looking Back - Part Five

The reward for months of agonizing over the conjugating of German verbs was that I was eligible for the student exchange program. Which meant I got to go to Germany and live for three weeks with a German family, whose daughter I had been getting to know as a pen-pal, via just one or two exchanged letters (no e-mail in those days, only snail-mail). This was both exciting and nerve-wracking. Nerve-wracking because I knew I was totally incapable of holding a conversation in German! Never-the-less, the thought of getting out of Goole for a few weeks was the greatest motivation.

So, on April 5th, 1960 I packed my suitcase and walked across the street to the train station with my parents, to meet up with the other students who were going to Germany. Here we would take the train via London to Harwich, and then catch the ferry that would take us overnight across the English channel to the Hook of Holland. There we would catch another train to go Bruhl, near Cologne, to meet up with our respective exchange families.

Here's a neat link to a video of Goole Station (sorry, no sound). The first train you see is the Yorkshire Pullman, likely the very train I would have taken, pulling into the station on its way to London. Amazingly, the video was taken in 1960! I hope you don't get as bored as that station master was. You will even see a little of the town centre -- unfortunately looking away from where the Station Hotel was. This is the same station where, just a few months earlier I think, we had said goodbye to my newly-married sister and her husband, on their way to live in Canada. Little did I know that in a couple of short years, I would be joining them in Toronto!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9r2Dm-5FXk

There was great excitement once we reached Harwich. For most of us it was the first time we had been on a 'big' boat. This is the old ferry -- of course it wasn't 'old' to us in those days:

We all thought we would have the run of the ship, but since we had arrived late evening we were immediately confined to our cabins -- two per room -- and told to sleep: "When you wake up, we'll be there!" Problem was, we never slept -- at least not my room-mate and I.

Our cabin was right over the engine room. The vibrating rumble of the engines, combined with the rolling of the ship and the smell of the oil fumes, made us both deathly ill -- and since we weren't allowed to leave our cabins, (we were very obedient in those days), and there was not even one porthole in the cabin, there was no hope of getting any fresh air . We had no idea where our accompanying teachers were, so we hung miserably, one over the tiny sink, the other over the toilet, the whole night. When dawn came and it was time to disembark, I could have kissed Dutch ground!

On arrival in Bruhl, I was dropped off at my pen-pal's home and left to fend for myself. Brigitte (name changed to protect the innocent) was at school, and her father was at work. So I was left alone with her non-English speaking mother for a few hours.

In the information letter that the school had sent home to the parents prior to the trip, one paragraph jumps out at me, as I read it again now, after all these years:

During the stay abroad, the English pupil stays with his/her pen-pal as a member of the family, speaking their language (ha!), and sharing their life. It provides our pupils with the opportunity of learning the language and the way of life of a foreign people by intimate personal contact.

If my parents had known the life I was going to share with this family they would have been horrified and would never have allowed me to take the trip!

To be continued...