Experiences by Sarah
„Hi I’m Sarah. I´m 16 years old and a few weeks ago I was a part of the Erasmus-Project.
Today I will give an overview about my experiences during the Vigo-Hamburg exchange.
First of all I will start about the intercultural differences between Vigo and Hamburg and my experience with it. When I arrived in Vigo I was surprised about the fact that nobody of the Spanish students go to school by bike. Some of them take the bus and others are brought by their parents by car. In Hamburg most of the students go to school by bike and the parents drive to work by car. I think the different is also there because of the fact that in Vigo are a lot of hills and it´s hard to ride to school without arriving exhausted. In Hamburg there are nearly no hills at all so you can easily take the bike. When I was in Vigo we used the car every morning, but when my exchange student, Mario, visit us in Hamburg we had to take the train most days, because he didn´t ride the bike very often before and it was hard for him to ride 3km to school in the morning. Another difference is that the school courses in Germany are stricter than in Vigo. As an example joining the history lesson in Vigo all students discuss the possible solutions for one and a half hour and at the end every students had the chance to tell his choice to the teacher for grading. Vise versa in Hamburg there is less discussion between the students during the lesson and it is stricter and more structured.
In Vigo we did a lot of things. One day we visited the town hall. Then we joined a guide tour thru the city and saw all the beautiful street arts. Another day we visited the island Cies and we sprayed graffiti. I´ve never did graffiti art before, so it was a wonderful new experience for me and I had a lot of fun. In Hamburg we worked out an exhibition. As an example we had to take some photos of the city by doing a rally tour thru the city from Altona fish market to Landungsbrücken and some other points of interest. On top of that we did some artwork with our t-shirts and designed a wall full of photos, frottage’s and drawings. We also made some other art, for example we construed some pictures like the rivers from Hamburg only with nails and threads. We had a lot of fun but I preferred the selection of art work offered in Vigo. In Hamburg we had more stress and less effort while having better results while spending less time and work in Vigo.
In general the week in Hamburg was more exhausting because the program was like twice as much than in Vigo and we hadn´t that much time to relax. That’s why I think the week in Vigo was a little bit more relaxing. But I also liked the week in Hamburg. And when my group and I thought that the exercises are too stressful we changed them to have time to relax, time to make the exercises and time to see also other things we were interested in.
I´m so glad, that I had a wonderful host family, I couldn’t get a better family. They were so funny and so friendly - I felt like being at home. They tried to do everything for me, like to see all the cool thing´s in Vigo and other cities (in example the city of Santiago). I love it to visit different countries and cultures. I like it to see the architecture and to try the different foods. My family tried to do all this together with me. We went to a tapas bar, drove to other cities and made a lot of sightseeing. In Hamburg we did the same with my exchange student. My family and I walked with him to the traditional harbor birthday party and had a lot of typical German or Hamburg food, like curry sausage with fries. We also went with him to the Alster river to show the city and a lot of other things to him.
Summarized I’m very happy to get the chance being part of the exchange and to gather all these wide amount of new experiences. My exchange student and I are still in contact and my host family invited me to visit them during my next holidays if I have time for it.
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