Hello fellow English learners.
We are a group of English trainees from Nordhausen in Germany. We are quite a small group made up of 9 people. We will be training for 10 weeks and so far we have done 5.
On Friday we will go to Erfurt, which is the capital city of Thüringen. We will meet a guide in Erfurt for an English city tour. We are looking forward to our field trip and hope we learn a lot.
If anyone has any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and stay posted for our update after the trip.
Thank you very much for keeping us posted about your learning activities. It’s great to hear you have made such excellent progress and I look forward to meeting in person next week. Scott told me that you are going to complete a number of assignments during your field trip including a list of English words you come across as well as answering questions about Erfurt.
Let’s have a detailed report on Monday.
Best regards,
Torsten Daerr[YSaerTTEW443543]
We met on Friday the 14th of August 2009 at the main train station in Nordhausen.
We went to the platform 2. Our train departed at 9.28 a.m. to Erfurt. The train trip took about one and a half hour. We arrived in Erfurt on the platform 4 at 10.52 a.m.
We left the train station and went throat the city to the cathedral square (Domplatz).
That’s where we met our tour guide.
His name was Dr. Rainer Prass.
He told us during the two hours tour a lot about the historical Erfurt.
The first step of our tour was the Cathedral. The next stop was at the market place and the smallest house of the town.
After this we visited the City hall. There are a lot of paintings about the history of Erfurt and the importend periods of Martin Luthers life.
Now we know, why he said:
“Help me,St.Anna, and I will become a monk”
The last station of our tour was the Krämerbrücke, it is a verry famous and impotend Landmark of Erfurt.
Do not hesitate to contact us, if you want to know more about the trip.
We would like to tell you something about Erfurt now. It’s not only the capital city of Thuringia but it’s also the state’s largest city. Erfurt has a beautifull city center which many nice old buildings. You can nearly reach every place in Erfurt by tram easy and fast. If you want you can take a horse carriage and do a city tour. It starts at the cathedral square.
There are many different kinds of restaurant, for example Chinese, Italian, German. You can also go to one of the many cafes or try an original “Thüringer Bratwurst”. If you want to go on a shopping trip, it’s no problem. There are a lot of shopping centers in the inner city.
During our guided tour we also saw some foreign tourists. They were from Asia and England.
So if you come to Germany we suggest a trip to this beautiful and clean city.
Good to hear from you and your visit to Erfurt. The only cities in Germany I know are Braunschweig, Aachen, Berlin and Leipzig. There is always so much to see in the way of history in Germany and what impresses me most is the patience and industry shown by Germans to rebuild what was destroyed in the Second World War. The most recent example I saw of this was in Dresden a couple of years ago when my wife and I were escorted there by Torsten when we visited him in Leipzig. You describe Erfurt as beautiful and clean. Now there’s something we could learn from you in the UK. How do you manage to keep big cities clean?
thanks for your response.
First we must say that not all cities in Germany are not as clean as Erfurt. But in most cities cleanness has a high priority and you get fined when you throw your litter on the street.
Why are you asking about the way the Germans keep their cities clean? Would you say it is different in England?
Also can you tell us something about trams in the UK? We read on the internet that there are eight light rail networks in the UK and we wonder how popular this means of transportation is.
We too have rules about leaving litter in the streets or in the countryside and fines are imposed on those who drop litter in the streets but unfortunately the ‘litter louts’ as we call them, still do this. I am of a generation that was brought up to take litter home and it’s something we instilled in our children. I can remember as a child that there were large posters depicting a so called ‘litter bug’, an ugly looking insect, and you were encouraged not to be one. The reason I mentioned this in my first post was because every time we travel in mainland Europe and we do this quite frequently, we are struck by the absence of rubbish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that we’re all walking around ankle deep in rubbish! It’s just that we could do better.
On the matter of trams I’m afraid I have little knowledge. You are right to say there are 8 such systems in the UK mainly in the centre and the north of England in places like Blackpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Birmingham. Most recently a system was set up in the Docklands area of London, in East London. Near where I live there is no tram system. We have a rail system that enables us to get to central London in 20 minutes. As for popularity I would say there is considerable interest but I think it’s only possible to start a system where there is a new development because of the shortage of space. We are after all a very crowded little island and the only available space is often where few people live.
thanks for your response. It was very interesting. Firstly we would like to say that the cleanest parts of Germany are where the tourists go. An example for this is Berlin, the city center is clean and the other parts are not so clean. We wonder why if there was so much education in england why you have still a problem with street litter. We asked Scott our English trainer he said you have not so many bins on the streets of England.
We are surprised that you have not so many tram systems in the UK. In Germany they are very important to our transport system, we have trams in all of our major cities and even smaller towns. We find they are very punctual and good for the environment. Has it always been this way in England?
We have a couple of questions.
Firstly we noticed under your name there is a phrase co-founder, what does it mean? And secondly you mentioned that you travel in Mainland-Europe a lot, why and where?
Best wishes from the Nordhausen group and we look forward to your next post.
I can’t really explain why litter is such a problem here. Possibly there is a lack of community spirit or civic pride in certain places. There are of course places in some parts of the country, particularly in rural areas, where you will be impressed by the cleanliness of the whole district. We have recently come back from staying for a week with our younger son and his wife who live in the south west of England in a county called Devon. What a contrast! People are much friendlier and take a real pride in their surroundings. As for trams, I believe they were much more popular in the early part of the 20th century, particularly in London.
As for the web site english-test.net well that came into being roughly 10 years ago, which was when Torsten and I first got to know each other. Torsten knew Slava and I joined forces with them to start the website and we formed a kind of triumvirate - so that’s why we all take on the title of co-founder.
I like visiting other parts of Europe by car as flying is something I hate. Mainly we travel to France and sometimes Switzerland where my wife and I first met. I must admit that Italy is our favourite and we’re hoping to go there again within the next few weeks. You might be interested to read my latest newsletter english-test.net/forum/ftopi … _were_here
which tells of our visit to France a few weeks ago, not I hasten to add a typical experience.
Hello
we are an English team for 10 weeks and yesterday we had a trip to Leipzig.
We started our trip in Nordhausen at 7:30 a.m. and arrived in Leipzig at 9:30.
In the main station we met our English teachers Torsten and Scott.
First we went down town and we discovered many things that contains different English words. It was very interesting how many English words there are in a German city.
Than we went sight seeing like the Nikolai Church and the St. Thomas Church. We went to the wisdom tooth, a very high tower building, on it we had a great overview over the whole city.
After we took lunch in a typical Irish pub (Kildere) we went for a walk over the Leipzig Christmas market.
Scott told us a lot of facts about the history of Leipzig. It was very interesting to know.
All in all it was very nice and we enjoyed it and we can recommend it to every group!