Germany Trip to Uelzen 2025
Posted on May 19, 2025
Ten students studying German from Years 10-12 and two teachers, Christine Wittlinger and Shaun O’Rourke, left Tasmania on the first day of term break (9 April) to spend 2.5 weeks in Germany. After a very long flight, we arrived in Berlin where we stayed for four nights, experiencing German culture at its best. We delved into history and politics when we visited, among others, the remains of the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial, the Brandenburg Gate and art museums. The students also visited the beautiful city of Potsdam with its impressive ‘Sanssouci’ palace on our last day in Berlin before we took the train to Uelzen, which is in Lower Saxony, near Hamburg.
The students were welcomed by their exchange partners and spent the Easter weekend getting to know the many traditions around this popular German holiday.
During the following week, the students got to know our sister school ‘Lessing Gymnasium Uelzen’ and how the German school system is both different and similar to the Australian one. During that week, we went on two outings; the first one was to ‘Heidepark’, a fun park, where everybody could test the limits of gravity. The other outing was to Bad Bodenteich; here we visited the border museum in an old fortress, as the former border between East and West Germany used to be close by. We also experienced a ‘Mittelalterspektakel’ – a medieval spectacle – in the same location, which offered a glimpse into life 1000 years ago.
Before flying back home, we spent a full day in Hamburg, cruising around the famous Hamburg harbour, visiting the ‘Elbphilharmonie’ and enjoying the interesting ‘Miniaturmuseum’. It was really hard for the students to say goodbye to their exchange partners, but they are looking forward to hosting them in October.
After about 30 hours of travel time, the group arrived safe and sound back in Tassie on Wednesday 30 April. It was an amazing experience that everybody will remember very fondly.
