A Kid's Life in Germany

By: Leslie H.

Guten tag!  (GOO-ten TAG)  Hello!  My name is Hedda.  I am 12 years old and  I live in Berlin, Germany.  Germany is a country in central Europe.   

Living in Germany is quite interesting.  I will fill you in. 

First of all, I will tell you about school.  Everyone attends school together until 5th grade when we are tested and separated according to the results.   One of the schools you can go to is Hauptschule (HOWPT-shool-uh).  It trains students for jobs in trade and industry.  Another is Realschule (ray-AHL-shool-uh).  It trains students for mid-level jobs, and the Gymnasium (gim-NAH-zee-oom), trains students for executive-level jobs.  Our school day goes from early morning to 12 noon.  Only 5% of the kids in Germany  go to private schools and 25% go to universities.  Guess what?  The students get to help decide how the universities are run!  I can't wait! 

The food here is delicious!  My favorite are frankfurters.  Frankfurters are a kind of sausage.  There are a lot of different kinds of sausages in Germany.  Vegetables are eaten  almost every day.  Bread is eaten with almost every meal.  There are almost 300 different kinds of bread in Germany.  Bread can be flavored and topped with seeds.  One of my other favorites is cabbage pickled with vinegar.  It is called sauerkraut.

Most people in Germany speak German, of course.  Many also speak a second language such as English. Once you know the main differences between English and German, it's not so hard to speak German.  W is pronounced like an English V.  V is pronounced like an English F.  

There are no school sport's teams so most Germans belong to sports clubs.  These include bike-riding, rock-climbing, hiking, skiing, foosball (soccer), and Germany's most common sport, swimming.  Other non-sport clubs include stamp collecting and dog-breeding.  I am in a dog-breeding club.  In all, there are over 300,000 clubs.

Germany is a very beautiful country.  Besides visiting our great cities, people come here to see our beautiful Bavarian Alps which are part of the Alps, the largest mountains in Europe. There are also many famous castles in Germany.  One of the best known is the "fairy tale" Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.  It was built by King Ludwig II between 1869 and 1886.  Did you know that Walt Disney modeled the  castle in the Magic Kingdom after this castle? People also come to Germany to visit the many health clubs in the Black Forest. This area has mountains with thick forests of dark fir and spruce trees. Other places to visit include the beautiful old castles and palaces.

                In Germany we celebrate Christmas and Easter because they are religious holidays.  Most people in Germany are Christians.  We also have many festivals that are not religious.  My father always goes to the Octoberfest.  That celebrates harvest time.  In Munich, it is also called the Munich Beer Festival.  Hops and barley are important for beer and are also important local crops.  People come from all over the world just for the festival.  My sister Ute and I are taken every year to the Children's Festival in Dinkelsbürg.  We wear our traditional clothes and dance in the street.  It is my favorite holiday.