On June 6, a group of students from the University of Nantes accompanied by our director Martin Krechting & our DAAD-Sprachassistent Arne Hintz left for a traveling trip to northern Germany. On their journey, the group made a stopover in Cologne: here is a little souvenir in front of Cologne Cathedral!
After arriving in the university town of Oldenburg on the evening of Sunday 6 June, the first stop on their journey, the group began the day on Monday 7 by discovering the “Plattdeutsch” with a presentation & a workshop at the Heinrich-Kunst- Institute, then a rally through the town of Oldenburg. This was prepared in cooperation with Etienne Légat, a German student in Oldenburg who gave the group a wonderful welcome in his city, allowed him to have lunch at the university restaurant in times of pandemic and also made him discover the campus of the Carl Ossietzy-Universität in Oldenburg before the rally at the end of the day.
Tuesday 8, the group started the day by being tested for the first time of the trip, a prerequisite for being able to then discover the very beautiful exhibition “Jüdisches Leben in Oldenburg” on local Jewish life at the regional museum of art and cultural history that is located in the city castle. After a lunch there, the time of departure had already sounded and the group left to join the eastern part of the region by gaining the pretty town of Jever. Not to discover the beer of the same name, but to visit the Gröschler-Haus (“Zentrum für judische Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte der Region Friesland”), a center of Jewish history and local contemporary history of the Friesland region where the group was expected. When he arrived in Jever, several members of the Gröschler-Haus even greeted him at the station! After a walk in town and discovering the locals and the activities of the center, the group left to join the North Sea coast in the evening, a busy day! For the next three days, the group was accommodated in the small village of Werdum, a few kilometers from the coast. The first morning, the alarm clock rang very early to start the hike from the mainland to the island of Spiekeroog through the mud: 5 am, due to the tides, an unforgettable experience from all points of view! After 12 km of crossing with their feet in the mud and following a guide, the group arrived on the island of Spiekeroog with the program: discovery of “soft tourism” and a guided tour of the Wittbülten National Park House. It was about discovering sustainable development on the island.
In short, a very natural day! The next day was a busy day: after a bike rally along the coast to explore the region, the students attended an online presentation on the Holocaust at the University of Bremen. As the pandemic does not allow us to attend face-to-face courses at German universities, participation in online courses from the Department of Romance Cultures and Languages at the University of Bremen was also organized.
On June 10, the group left in the morning for the next destination of the itinerant trip, the city of Aurich, the city where our colleague Arne Hintz is from. Travel by bus, Aurich does not have a train station. The group was also lodged there at the Youth Hostel where it carried out a supervised self-test in the evening, in order to be able to continue with the rest of the program that awaited it.
Before this test, in the afternoon, shortly after arriving there, the group had discovered the Ostfrisische Landschaft (a regional association for culture, science & education) in Aurich, where its director had introduced us the history and activities of the East Frisian region and the role of its institution throughout history for the identity of the region. The group of Nantais.es then went to visit a wind farm in Westerholt, in the suburb of Aurich, which offers a rare possibility: that of being able to climb on a platform at the top of a wind turbine at 62m high! And what about the architect of this platform, Norman Foster himself, known among others for the dome of the Reichstag in Berlin, or in France for the Carré d’art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Nîmes. There are only 2 such platforms in Germany and only 8 worldwide! What a view from this height! After a night there, Arne Hintz, Martin Krechting & the group left the city of Aurich and still went by bus to the Moormuseum in Moordorf, before continuing the trip to Emden, the largest city in the region of East Frisia and the last leg of the journey before Bremen. A few days before, Emden had been classified as a zone of high incidence for the coronavirus with more than 100 cases of Covid per 100,000 inhabitants so that the stay of the group had long been uncertain. Arriving there, the city had found a little life, but many shops were still closed and the streets were still very deserted … The youth hostel was not even officially reopened yet, but the director wanted to receive the group so well that he was able to enjoy the hostel for himself! The evening stroll through the harbor district on paths that skirted the water then gave a quick, but very nice glimpse of this city where water seems everywhere. In the morning, the group was tested again with a view to visiting the Kunsthalle d’Emden, the city’s art museum which houses, among other things, the collection of Henri Nannen, an important figure in the world of the press. post-war in Germany. After a lunch there, the group left in the afternoon for Bremen, the final stage of the itinerant journey.
On the evening of June 13, Melanie Blank, a former DAAD reader in Colombia came to pick up the group in front of the accommodation in the station area for a first tour of the city which allowed the group to discover the Schnoor and Le Viertel where he dined. The group was hosted in Bremen until their return to France on Thursday June 17th,
On Monday June 14th, our colleagues and students made a return trip to Hamburg from Bremen, for a visit to the memorial of the former Neuengamme concentration camp on the outskirts of Hamburg. The visit was done individually or in groups with a very complete and well done audio guide. For many of the participants, it was the first visit to the site of a former concentration camp and this experience was very memorable for everyone. In the afternoon, the group returned to the city center of Hamburg where Martin Krechting made a short tour of the city where he lived for several years. After yet another test for the next day’s program, the group discovered the University of Hamburg site before ending the day with a restaurant in the university district and returning by train to Bremen.
The second day in Bremen was marked by a second start out of the city, this time in the city of Bremerhaven, a port city that is part of the city-state of Bremen. In Bremerhaven, the group had an appointment at the Klimahaus (Climate House) to learn more about the different climatic zones of the planet and the threat or rather the reality of global warming through a trip to the different continents. From Bremerhaven, the group then set off again in the direction of the south to discover the artist village of Worpswede, known for its artists’ colony from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, of which the most famous artist in France is probably Paula Modersohn-Becker. A first major retrospective was devoted to him only a few years ago in France. Another busy day which ended with an evening at the French Institute in Bremen on the occasion of the football match between Germany and France. The group arrived a little before the hour at the Institute, warmly welcomed by the director of the Institute, Phanie Bluteau, to discover a photo exhibition of the Valentin bunker in the district of Bremen-Farge, one of the camps. exterior of the former Neuengamme concentration camp. By a very happy coincidence, the group met on site the scientific director of the bunker memorial Valentin Christel Found who was kind enough to inform the group about the history of the bunker and the activities of the memorial. The last day of the trip was marked by the colonial history of Germany in general and the city of Bremen in particular. The group visited the Überseemuseum (Overseas Museum), a pioneering museum in the debate around the restitution of works looted during colonial times before taking a very good guided tour in the Überseestadt district on the traces of its colonial past … On the way back to downtown Bremen, the group could not escape visiting what was initially a monument to the glory of colonialism and then renamed an anti-colonial monument, in know the Bremen elephant. To end not only the day, but also the trip, everyone then gathered for dinner in a Schlachte restaurant on the banks of the Weser, the river that crosses the city. After a night stroll back to the hotel, you had to prepare your luggage for an early departure the next morning at 5:40 am …
Another great program for this last day! Finally, on June 17, Martin Krechting, Arne Hintz and the group returned from the study trip to Nantes after two sunny weeks full of discoveries in North Germany! Thank you very much to the German University Exchange Office (DAAD) and to the FLCE of the University of Nantes for their support without which the trip would not have been possible, thank you especially to the wonderful group of participants who have played the game of an itinerant trip, the realization of which was suspended for a long time to the evolution of the health situation. Who would have thought possible two weeks before departure on a trip to Northern Germany from which we returned not only well tanned and without any case of Covid-19 …
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