My house share (WG)

Hallo miteinander,

Here's my first article on my house share!

Since the 1st of October I have been sharing a house with 6 other people and I think it's fantastic.

My housemates are really nice. There are four German people (two girls and two guys), a Spanish girl and a Belgian girl (who speaks Flemish).

Everyone here tells us that in order to improve our German, we need to make friends. What's better for that than a WG? (German for house share). The first housemate I met was a German girl called Claudia. She helped me a lot in the beginning by talking to me slowly, explaining the words that I didn't understand, and by taking me to beautiful places around Konstanz lake. She was very reassuring which was really important as I didn't have many friends when I first arrived. Even now, my actual friends are those I live with as, no matter how much we talk, I know they are there for me if I need them.

Thanks to this house share, I met Laura, who's Belgian and is an Erasmus student like me. We were lucky to meet each other and live in the same house. Like me, she studies German literature but she also studies French literature, which is a foreign language to her. We have some German literature lectures in common which is handy as she helps me a lot. In "exchange", as I do it willingly, I sometimes help her to understand her French literature texts.

We always talk to each other in German even though she's able to speak very good French. She prefers speaking to me in German so that I can improve. As she is lucky to be living with a French person, we have chosen a day where we speak French so that she can also improve. Therefore Saturdays are French days and we both find it weird to be speaking in French. Laura and I get on really well, and this house share has allowed us to really get to know each other. As well as this, nearly all of the trips we do on the weekends, we do together!

In the WG, we have a Putzplan system (our house cleaning plan) which is amusing. Whenever it's the guys week to clean, we always wonder whether or not they have cleaned up. In fact, we can never really tell the difference!

I get along well with one of the guys, Christoph, who's Bavarian. It took me a while to understand his accent (even now I still struggle), but he's very patient and he repeats or rephrases when I don't understand. We laugh a lot together and we make fun of each others ways of cooking. He says I only eat potatoes, but then again he only eats frozen pizzas. We like to tease each other.

Christoph often suggests going to see football matches with him or to go out somewhere. It's really cool, it helps me improve my German as I'm truly immersed in German life. When we are at the WG, he's a little bit like a teacher as I'm always asking him "What's this called" by showing him objects. He's happy to teach me new vocabulary and he doesn't hesitate to spell the words so that I remember them, I find that very sweet.

I also have to introduce Estefania, the Erasmus student who lives with us. She's Spanish, speaks very little English and no German and because of this, the discussions with her consists of gestures and smiles which is brilliant! I talk to her in Italian as she understands it, and she answers with the three English words that she knows. Despite this, she's always smiling and it's a joy to have her in the WG.

Because of this we don't know a lot about her. However, what we do know is that she's a very good cook, has a lot of Spanish friends here (as they are always in our house), and that she speaks very loudly on the phone at night when it's time to go to bed! It's not all that annoying as she's Spanish and it's great to have such cultural diversity in our house. In the WG, we speak German, English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian (for Estefania) which I find great! The other two German people that live with us are also very nice but I haven't had the chance to get to know them like the other four.

Well, that was the presentation of my WG. I think that as an Erasmus student, it's a real opportunity to be able to meet and live with people whose mother tongue is the language we want to learn. We can really progress and learn quickly. Also, seeing that we leave our usual environment in our country of origin, because our friends and family are not with us, it's great to be able to live with people who become our friends and allow us not to feel alone. In Germany, the WGs are offered as student accommodation by the student office (Seezeit in Germany, which is the equivalent of CROUS in France). I think that this system is really good, and from my experience is very reassuring, and it would be a great idea to set this up in France.

I've added some pictures of the kitchen/dining room to make this post a bit more alive. I'm going to sound like an estate agent but it's super functional and is really good for September. We have a TV in the dining room (although, we don't really use it as we talk a lot amongst ourselves and the German people have one in their rooms). We obviously have our own rooms and we share two bathrooms which is great.

The pictures are at the bottom of the page. See you soon!

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