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A truly European background

Nottingham, 17th July

I'm French and I've been married to Anne, who is British, for 13 years. We have zwei Kinder, two children, Kingsley (8) and Imogène (2) who are bilingual. Last year, we sat down as eine Familie, a family, to compile a chart of our goals for the next two years. One of the most popular goals was to go and live abroad for a year. It had to be somewhere in Europe, preferably in a German or French speaking country where we would benefit linguistically.I've been teaching French and some German for the past ten years in secondary schools in Nottingham and Derbyshire. When the prospect of a teaching job turned up in the former East Germany, our first reaction was a little prejudiced and dismissive: wouldn't it be all grim and grey?I went for a whole weekend interview in January, got a glimpse of what looked like a beautiful medieval town through a winter blizzard, struggled linguistically but succeded. And here I am: I will be teaching from August in einer Schule, in a school, for highly gifted children!

A truly East German experience

A few months after I was offered the job I had to go to the LEA equivalent in Dresden in order to meet a group of high-ranking officials who would formalise the offer. I was a little anxious about the process, my administrative and judicial German being rather limited, not to say non-existent. But it all went fine. We combined it mit einer Familienreise, with a family trip, so that Anne and the children could get a feel for the place.So off we went in April for six days. We stayed in an accommodation on the school campus ... and fell in love with the place straight away! Although the students were all German, they spoke fluently French, English and Russian, so linguistically we felt very cocooned. By living on site for six days, the children at the school got to know our little family very well and we were never short of eager listeners and entertainers for our children!

Swimming pools and philosophers

We toured the town and there was absolutely nothing grim or grey about it - we loved it. We went into ecstasy at the sight of the fantastic cake and chocolate shops, the little tea rooms, cobble streets and the vineyards surrounding the town. Surely that indicated wine cellars nearby!But what sold it to our children was this most amazing swimming pool with wave pool, seawater pool, indoor/outdoor pool, hot, cold, tunnels, waterfalls and giant slides, all in an immaculately clean, totally litter/graffiti/yob free zone!Back at the school, we were chaperoned by two sixth-formers, one who spoke superb English, the other who conversed in French about Voltaire and the philosophers of the enlightenment - guess who was being challenged!

Breaking the ice

We found a school for Kingsley where we had a taster lesson and despite the language barrier he felt immediately welcome. He was proud to be able to introduce himself in German: Mein Name ist Kingsley, my name is Kingsley. It took many hours of persuasion, but it was worth it! The teacher asked if anyone in the class had heard about a famous character in Nottingham. A little girl put up her hand eagerly and replied: Ro ... Robbie Williams!The whole stay was a lovely experience and we can't wait to be back.

Sent by: Frederic

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