Letters #134-168 from Germany

Letters #134-168 come from three great classes at the Albert-Schweitzer Schule.The children vary in ages from 6-10 years old.All of their fabulous letters are written in German,so we will have to translate them in order to know what they told us. :) They also drew some lovely pictures on their letters,which we really love!We really love getting letters from kids,especially classes.They all wrote about how they were going to celebrate Easter,so that is why you will see most drawings with bunnies on them. :) As we were skimming through the letters after opening them,we noticed a few signed their signatures starting with "Deine",so we thought that it must be a popular name,but after researching it online,we found out it wasn't their names,but it was the ending to their letter, "yours",like "yours truly",so that was pretty funny for us to find out. :)

Some of the kids did not sign their names,so maybe their teacher can tell us who we missed and if we messed up any of their names,we apologize and will correct it asap.Thanks Alexandra for getting your students to participate...tell them we loved all of their letters and drawings.Here are the names we could find on the letters,so we want to give a big thanks to these students below for their letters:

Johanna
Serkan
Jula
Julia
Christin
Sina
Paul
Cedrick
Van Jaqueline
Elena
Samuel
Spohie
Jacob
Luca
Darold ?
Marivs
Monika
Alina
Kekona
Nilay
Fliegen
Jonas
Von Nergis
Trami
Mara
Philipp
Ronja
Jahre
Wiebke
Alina
Leonie

And here are their beautiful letters:

Letter #58 from Germany

Letter #58 comes from Manuela who lives in Germany.The name of the city she lives in is called Freiburg.She has 3 lovely cats that she considers her children.She loves writing letters and postcards,reading,travelling,sports,music,everything about India,Hello Kitty,Diddl and she is also interested in animal protection and animal rights.

She has lived in Freiburg since 2001 and really likes it.It is located in the southwest part of Germany.It's also called "Black Forest" and is very well-known in other countries and is a popular place for tourists to visit.Her city has 220,000 inhabitants and is near the border of France and Switzerland.Many people in her city speak French.The city is about 900 years old and its landmark is Freiburg Minister.The church's tower is 116 m. high and from the top you can see a great view.They also have many museums,a theatre,historical buildings and lots of good restaurants.

The name "Black Forest" came from the Romans who named it that because of the thickly forested mountains that had dense growth of conifers and other trees so it blocked out all of the sunlight inside of the forest.She mentioned some things that we may be familiar with that came from her area,such as the black forest cake,black forest ham and cuckoo clocks.

She says that Freiburg has two sister cities,one in Madison,Wisconsin and the other in Guildford,England.

One of the items she enclosed was a timetable for the trains since it's very important for her because she works at the German railway called Deutsche Bahn.Her job is to announce over the loudspeaker when a train leaves,arrives,is delayed,etc.She says she loves her job and that it's a great job for women since she gets to talk the whole day. :) Sometimes she works as early as 5am or as late as midnight and she also has to work on weekends and holidays.

One of her favorite countries is Greece and she says she has been there a few times already and that her next trip is to London.She is really looking forward to that trip.I hope she has a lot of fun.

Manuela has also written some German phrases for us in hher letter and also attached to the letter a 1cent Euro and 2cent Euro.Along with her fabulous letter,she sent us the cutest Diddl bags (I never knew Diddl was from Germany),the last time we were able to find Diddl in the stores here was probably 6 years ago and we never saw it again) :( She also sent us a children's book in German since we are trying to collect children's books in every language,some very cute stickers,postcards,a picture of her cats, and of course the railway timetable I mentioned earlier.Thanks Manuela for the lovely letter and goodies!Enjoy her goodies below:

Letter #36 from Germany

This letter comes from Marie in Germany.She was actually born the day before my sister.She has been to the US before as an exchange student in North Carolina.She said it was sometimes hard being here since it's so different than Germany.She remembers her host family would eat from paperplates,which in Germany,they only use paperplates for eating outside or at parties.Also,in her country,school lets out at 1pm and you eat at home as opposed to eating lunch at school.She also noticed that people over here never walk to their destination and that everything was bigger here,including the streets. :)

Another difference she notes is that in Germany,not many people go to the University,but enter  career training to become nurses,mechanics,etc.She says the Univeristy is a lot cheaper there,about $650 per semester,but not everybody can afford it and it's not common for people to take loans.

She loved travelling so much that she moved to another city to attend medical school.She lived in Auchen,which she says is very beautiful.It is a very old city with lots of history.It lies in the west of Germany at the border of the Netherlands nad Belgium.It also has a technical school there and a cathedral,which is part of UNESCO.The cathedral began construction during 792 and is a Roman Catholic Church.Charles the Great was the one who built the cathedral,he was an emperor who ruled over much of Western Europe

In March,Marie will beginning to work as a doctor in internal medicine...congrats Marie!

Marie shared some info with us about her grandmother,which she called Oma (I think that's a cool name!) She was born in 1909 and lived to be 96 years old.She said she survived World War I as a child.She also worked as medical technical assistant when not many women were allowed to work.During World War II she had to take care of her mother and work in another city.She would have to follow the train tracks to get home because the trains did not run during bomb scares.She also tol us about how her grandfather made the Nazis mad by inviting his Jewish friend over for coffee since people were not allowed to invite Jews over or be friendly with them.She says it's very important to learn from this and keep this horrible event from happening again.I agree!Marie says she is so thankful that her mother shares so much of the family history with her,she's glad to know about her relatives and how they lived.

Marie has shared a wealth of information with us,but too much to type.I hope you did enjoy the parts I did share with you all.She sent an amazing letter!Thanks Marie for the amazing letter that we really enjoyed reading!She also shared a general map of Ubersichtskarte,a postcard that shows how each city's sign looks when you enter the city and a postcard of her favorite children's author ( I would love to find a book by him) and a wonderful candy bar that we are thrilled to try!Thanks so much Marie for everything...it is really appreciated!Thanks for taking the time to share so much with us!

*Update,I did have her letter uploaded,I just had to go through tons of pictures to find it.Please enjoy her goodies below: