German Orgies

I went on a school German exchange trip when I was 15.

Lippstadt in the 1980s

I have never envied the teachers who took us. They were a young enthusiastic married couple, who had both worked and married in Germany before coming back to England to try and instil a love of the German language into a bunch of ungrateful, hormonal teenagers with terrible Essex accents. Most of the girls (and some of the boys) instantly fell in love with the German boys (because nature insists on improving the gene pool at every available opportunity). The German girls, with names like Anke and Sabine that were pronounced as though they had an a on the end were, not surprisingly, less interested in our boys.
I was less mature and more interested in cracking the puzzle of the rubics cube and being fascinated with how they could stick any words they liked together to make winning scrabble words.
Our poor teachers had to manage the fall out from all of this deeply passionate, life and death love.

I really feel for young people in love at the moment. Every second of your life feels important at that age, especially if you are in love. Asking them to lose this time together to protect people who are close to the end of their life anyway must feel like a cruel joke.

We are coming to the end of six weeks of lockdown, which is an important timeframe because it is the most we are used to. Summer school holidays are enough. We can cope with not seeing all our peers for six weeks but any longer is unimaginable. Therefore, everyone is clamouring for details of when we can go back.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkle, used the best word yesterday that took me right back to my German Exchange trip. She asked if everyone could stop with this Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien

This is lots of words shoved together in my favourite German style. I chuckled. It has the word orgies in it. The German language student in me is firmly stuck at 15, giggling at rude words. The chancellor wants to stop the orgies of discussion about going out again.

I expect that proper German orgies are very efficient but I was instantly reminded of sweaty basement discos with boys and girls, all wearing scarves, tied in that unique German way that we spent our first 3 days learning, groping and snogging their way through the latest Kraftwerk song.

I really hope that the discussion orgies are fruitful and that teenagers everywhere can get back to doing what they do best very soon.