Return Journey and Summary

Dear students, dear parents, dear accompanying teachers, dear teaching staff, and all who have read and followed my travel blog. Today we begin our return journey directly from London, through Dover back to the beautiful Leukersdorf. For me, it is now time to reflect on the journey, to process the experiences and the time spent together. Let me say in advance that it was a unique experience to undertake such a trip with young people. This experience had its positive and negative aspects.

At the same time, I would like to address the parents as well. I am fully aware that their own child or children are the priority and should be protected. That is naturally good. However, we all, including my wife and I, should have the goal of preparing the children for their later lives and also showing them that some problems that will arise later in life must also be solved independently. What do I mean by that?

Our children will eventually enter an apprenticeship or university. This will only rarely be in Leukersdorf, Mittelbach, Grüna, Reichenbrand, Siegmar, Lugau, or Ursprung. We (the parents) will not succeed in solving all problems FOR OUR CHILDREN. We cannot call the professor when he gives a bad grade or contact the trainer or landlord if the tone was a bit rough. We may need to slowly let the comfort-protective bubble burst. The two accompanying teachers were already busy reorganizing the guests' accommodations with the help of Sara, based on detailed emails, well before we crossed the German border. This continued until Sunday with the excursion to the cliffs. I have the utmost respect for all three ladies who did their utmost to meet all requests. However, we are on an educational trip and not on a luxurious holiday trip. I could not find a renowned English magician on the bus either, and thus the possibilities were unfortunately limited and did not allow for fully meeting the wishes of all travelers.

Your children will certainly have a lot to share. Please occasionally question this with some distance. My old German teacher used to say: 'In exaggeration lies the purchasing power.' Sometimes appearances can be deceptive. I am sure that many positive experiences will remain with your children. 😉 At the same time, hopefully, they learned that a bus or rest area toilet simply does not smell like a spring meadow.

One of the greatest negative aspects of my trip was, to my regret, having to witness a significant level of disrespect among the accompanying youth - all with XY chromosome pairs AND summarily just 1/6th of ALL the accompanying students - towards their classmates, but especially towards adults (regardless of whether they had a German or English passport). I cannot imagine that this is tolerated in the clubs where the children may be active. I would not tolerate it myself. Not with our apprentices in the company and not in club life. And I am not talking about hormonal mood swings or fatigue. Of course, I will not name names. Just ask your children. 😉 Personal inquiries are, of course, allowed at my private email address. The contact details can be obtained at the school.

But I don’t want to end my blog on a negative note. I have gotten to know many students a little closer, had engaging conversations, discussed funny topics, and have also come to learn about them positively in a way that I had not heard or experienced at school events. Some understood my rather dry humor, others did not. Despite all the negative experiences, I can draw a positive conclusion from this trip. Of the 30 young people, the majority were friendly, funny, humorous, communicative, polite, attentive, and very likeable. Despite the efforts of the trip itself, I do not regret my decision to accompany these two classes as a supervisor, and I would make the same decision again anytime as I did. It was a great pleasure for me.

Finally, I would like to thank Sara for the good organization, our bus drivers Jakub and Andrej for the good journeys there and back as well as the trips to school and the sights, the two teachers for their commitment, the deputy principal for planning in advance, and last but not least, thank you, dear parents, for trusting us as supervisors to look after your children with God's help and bring them safely back home. I hope this somewhat different travel blog was easy and somewhat humorous for you to read and perhaps also enlightening to experience everything from the perspective of an (outsider).

Thank you very much and stay healthy.