Behind bad luck comes good luck

It's Sunday which means it's time for a blog post. Not just because Germany is closed on a Sunday...

Hildesheim market square // Kurwerk // Rosenstock // Kuchen // Adolf Stoffregen Turm // Stadtmuseum // Gospel and Jazz festival

Sooo, on Friday I went for an explore in Badse. I wanted to find out for myself where everything is and more importantly how long it takes to walk there. There is a tourist information office at the far end of the main street so I bravely wandered in and got myself a couple of Badse maps, a Hildesheim map and a couple of train timetables. More on the trains another day as they deserve a post of their own. The main shopping area is the opposite side of town to where I live but only a 20 minute walk or so (longer when carrying potatoes). My proudest purchase is definitely the beautifully rectangular polyester pillow. You people in Britain appreciate those pillows because here they are hard to come by. I lucked out and found a solitary specimen for 5€ in a 1€ store! And it sounds awful but yes I prefer it to the square, puffy, goose down one!

I went to Hildesheim, the closest 'big place' for the afternoon. First task was to buy a German sim card for my phone. This was a big ask as phone shops confuse me in English, let alone German but it had to be done. Success. I am now a vodafone.de user with 100 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited internet for 15€ per month. And I even got a compliment on my German! To reward myself I bought ice cream and sat in the market square listening to the jazz band... so civilised. My inner tourist then demanded some sight seeing so I went to a couple of churches, decided it was too late to climb the tower of the St Andreas Church and ended up at the cathedral. The cathedral was undergoing major repair works (as they always seem to be when I visit) but for the huge fee of 0.30€ you could visit the Rosenstock. This was the ground floor of the building which (from what I understood) had been protected from the World War II bombing raids, including a rose bush (more like a tree) which was planted in 815 when the cathedral was built! I have no idea how they managed to protect a tree from the fire which engulfed the upper floors of the building but it was nice to see that something survived! I've just done a bit of research (read: looked at wikipedia) which says that a bombing raid on 22 March 1945 specifically targeted Hildesheim and destroyed 75% of buildings in the city, including nearly the entire historical city centre. Well that would explain why there is such a mixture of building styles and ongoing repair work...

Saturday set off with a walk to Rewe [rew-way/ru-wuh/I don't know how you say it], my closest supermarket, to get enough food to survive the dreaded German Sunday. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, everything is closed on Sundays. If you run out of food you don't eat. Anyway, my dictionary and I had a lovely time with me trying to look up words without anyone noticing that I was wandering round a supermarket with a dictionary. The highlight of the trip was going to the cheese counter and asking for "Englische Käse, vielleicht Cheddar oder so?" [any English cheese, perhaps cheddar?] prompting the sales assistant to reach into a drawer behind the counter and produce a block of cheddar. It seems they are too embarrassed to put it out on the counter with all the other cheeses! After that triumph I got through the checkout at top speed with minimal talking to the assistant so blended in quite nicely.

In the evening I got the train to Hildesheim Ost to meet M., S. and some of their friends for a meal. I went a little early so I could get to know M. and S. before everyone else got there and before the cooking started. The food was amazing (and pretty spicy) and I had a lovely evening attempting to talk but mostly listening. I was happy with how much I could understand, ranging from discussing dogs and moving house to the upcoming elections! It was a bit frustrating not being able to say anything but that will improve with time (it had better!). By the way, today's post title was from my fortune cookie (it was a Chinese meal) and I thought it would be something good to remember over the next few weeks. We finished up the evening with a game of 'Bluff' auf Deutsch before I had to get the last train home. Defo possible to have a wild night out and get the last train home at 22:42 on a Saturday. Everyone loves the Lammetalbahn [Lamb Valley Railway]! The evening was lovely and I'm feeling lucky to have been placed at IGS Bad Salzdetfurth with such an enthusiastic mentor. Although I still can't believe that out of all places to go they decided that the Scottish Highlands would be an amazing destination...

From the top of the Adolf Stoffregen Turm

Along came the aforementioned German Sunday and it was actually brilliant! I headed off with my map (which turned out to be rubbish) and went for a walk in the woods feeling like a true German (albeit without the hiking poles!). Eventually I worked out a reasonable route and headed out of Badse towards the Adolf Stoffregen Turm, a bit to the North so hopefully providing a nice view of the town. I was a little unsure of the tower but climbed it anyway and it sort of gave me the view I was after. I'm sure it was very safe but I was quite pleased to be back on the ground! The walk was shorter than expected so I decided to go to the town museum.

Ahh the town museum, or officially ‘Stadthistorisches Sole-, Salz- und Kali-Bergbau-Museum’ (this place seems to specialise in long place names). I should have taken the -erm- restricted opening times as a warning (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, 14:00 to 17:00) but continued anyway. It turned out that I was the first visitor of the day so ended up with a private tour of the museum, courtesy of an 80 year old former salt miner. Obviously everything was in German so I was struggling to understand the descriptions of boreholes and mine shafts etc yet look super enthusiastic. He and his colleague told me I had to sign the visitors book... awkwardly I got to write the first ever entry in the book... I have never eaten so much salt in my life. Every time we encountered an unusual looking block of salt my tour guide said “noch Salz, guck mal” [still salt, see] and proceeded to try it. The only accepted response seemed to be for me to try the salt too. I was then shown upstairs to the rest of the exhibition which hadn’t been unlocked yet! The guided tour continued through rooms of all the minerals found whilst mining, how the salt is purified and gifts of salt from other salt mines. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any stranger the tour guide asked me to pick up blocks of minerals. They were clearly labelled ‘do not touch’ but I was allowed to, with the tour guide delighting in the fact that, no, I couldn’t pick up a piece of iron and halite twice the size of my head! Despite the bizarreness of the museum visit, I have to say, it was interesting and my tour guide and his friend were amazing.

After a piece of Apfel und Eierlikör Kuche to recover from the experience I went for a leisurely walk through the Kurpark, past the Kurwerke (a way of removing impurities from the salty water, by running the water through twigs - it’s embarrassing how much I now know about salt). This plan went out of the window when I found myself in the middle of the ‘Bad Salzdetfurth Gospel and Swing Festival’. There were choirs from all the neighbouring villages and a large audience so I stayed a while (aka it seemed rude to just leave). Some of the choirs/songs were really good, others not so much... ‘can you feel the love tonight’ (The Lion King) will never be the same. Think ‘carn you fweell ze luff tonahht’. Mind, my German is appalling so I’ll stop with the pronunciation analysis.

Ah. My landlady has just given me a stool because she has noticed that I haven’t shut the bathroom window yet and thinks it’s because I’m too short to reach it. I’ve forgiven her because she has also brought me cheesecake.

To conclude, Sunday was brilliant, bizarre and I’m slightly excited to see what happens next Sunday!