Lesson #4 Heading up North...
During the heady first few days of school, and in obedience to strict stipulation from the British Council in regard to accepting invitations, I had signed myself up for a day-trip to a car-factory, with a very friendly member of staff whose name still escapes me, but who is always referred to in my diary as Eccentric Kidnapper Teacher after having whisked me away to his computer laboratory down in the catacombs within an hour of my entering the school. (English is a dangerous commodity when possessed in large quantities, advertise at your own risk.) Last Monday was the day of said trip.
Turned out to be a visit to the BMW factory in Steyr, a good 2.5hours away by coach and not the brief low-key jaunt I’d expected! However, spare time is book time in Fi’s wonderful new world, so I spent a happy journey in the company of a paperback friend. I tried not to feel guilty for not looking out of the window the whole time. The landscape was as always confusingly wonderful, but my first glimpse of snow was a real moment. Heading up North, I expected successively bigger peaks, so was somewhat disorientated to look up from my book as we approached our goal and find the mountains had vanished! The world seemed much smaller now that the horizon simply stopped, without any obvious rocky reason.
On arrival at the factory I discovered that sadly my enthusiasm for all things in German is not unbounded. Much as I appreciated 4 hours of solid exposure, detailed technical explanations regarding the production of bearings (what now??) are never going to keep me interested, or even awake, whatever language they are delivered in. It finally put paid to a secretly-cherished image of myself as someone who could be interested in anything if she put her mind to it.
In mitigation, I’d like to point out that the odds were stacked against me as soon as we crossed the boundary between states. The guide had YET ANOTHER dialect with YET ANOTHER accent to match. Still, we got to spend the day in fluorescent visability jackets with radio sets, the year abroad once again coming up trumps when it comes to unexpected experiences.
Plus, I learnt that BMW recycles 97% of it’s own waste in the same factory. However, I’m not sure that justifies their ‘environmentally friendly car’ claim, repeated in the advertisement-cum-recruitment-drive videos they insisted on sandwiching around the tour.
More green thinking to follow.
Turned out to be a visit to the BMW factory in Steyr, a good 2.5hours away by coach and not the brief low-key jaunt I’d expected! However, spare time is book time in Fi’s wonderful new world, so I spent a happy journey in the company of a paperback friend. I tried not to feel guilty for not looking out of the window the whole time. The landscape was as always confusingly wonderful, but my first glimpse of snow was a real moment. Heading up North, I expected successively bigger peaks, so was somewhat disorientated to look up from my book as we approached our goal and find the mountains had vanished! The world seemed much smaller now that the horizon simply stopped, without any obvious rocky reason.
On arrival at the factory I discovered that sadly my enthusiasm for all things in German is not unbounded. Much as I appreciated 4 hours of solid exposure, detailed technical explanations regarding the production of bearings (what now??) are never going to keep me interested, or even awake, whatever language they are delivered in. It finally put paid to a secretly-cherished image of myself as someone who could be interested in anything if she put her mind to it.
In mitigation, I’d like to point out that the odds were stacked against me as soon as we crossed the boundary between states. The guide had YET ANOTHER dialect with YET ANOTHER accent to match. Still, we got to spend the day in fluorescent visability jackets with radio sets, the year abroad once again coming up trumps when it comes to unexpected experiences.
Plus, I learnt that BMW recycles 97% of it’s own waste in the same factory. However, I’m not sure that justifies their ‘environmentally friendly car’ claim, repeated in the advertisement-cum-recruitment-drive videos they insisted on sandwiching around the tour.
More green thinking to follow.
posted by Little Fi | 6:56 AM
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