Sylt

For the past month, I have been living on an island in northern Germany.

Sylt is a vacation island full of rich people, big cars, and summer houses. But hidden at the northern tip, settled between the dunes and the North Sea, is a little village called List. List is a nice little place, with a super market, a youth hostel, a kindergarten, a gas station, the odd hotel or two, and right in the middle of it all is the Erlebniszentrum Naturgewalten Sylt.

The Forces of Nature Experience Center on Sylt

I have been working here as an intern for about a month now. It is near the top on the list of Coolest Things in Karen’s Life, right under coming to Germany. Some of the work could be better. I spend a lot of my time cleaning and people tend to laugh at my accent when I start to talk, but the adventures through the mud flats and dune, and the interesting people I get to work with make up for it.

I live in a Wohngemeinschaft (I don’t know a good English word). 6 of us all live together in a building. We all have our own rooms, but we share a kitchen, bathroom, and shower. The bathroom and showers are also used by other people that live in the building, but it works surprisingly well. I’ve never had to wait to take a shower. They are always empty when I want them.

For breakfast and lunch, we all buy our own things and we have our personal shelves in the kitchen and fridges. In the evening, we all get back from work at about the same time. We cook and eat all together and it’s always really nice to sit down with everyone at the dinner table and talk about our days. We also have a Play Station, so we often play together after the kitchen is clean.

My days start at 9:30 when I get to work. I go through the exhibitions and check to make sure that everything is clean and working, or I set up for the school classes and check the bathrooms. Then I either stand at the entrance to the exhibition and great the guests, or I help with the tours for school classes and keep the head phones clean and organized. Talking to the guests is my least favorite part. I love talking to people, but sometimes I get frustrated with my German or people laugh at my accent and start talking to me in English.

My German is also getting better, I think. Sometimes I start stuttering, but no one that I work with has problems talking with me. Tomorrow I’m getting my first school class tour in German. I’ve already done one in English with a group from India, but I’m a little nervous to do it in German. On the bright side, it’s a class from Denmark, so they have funny accents like me. That makes me feel a little better.

I get an hour long break at either one or two o’clock. Sometimes, when it’s really busy, we’re all running around like chickens without heads cut off, and we forget about our breaks. Then we just end up at home at 7pm, starving and exhausted.

My day ends just after 6pm, when all of the guests are gone and everything is clean and ready for the next day. Sometimes there are presentations after we close, but I only have to stay if I’m assigned to, or if they are interesting (I usually stay). I also cook a lot for everyone. We have a menu that we planned for the week, and I can usually get home and start the quickest because I have the least amount of responsibilities in the center (I’m only staying for 7 weeks, and German isn’t my first language), and I love cooking for everyone.

Overall, I really like it here. The weather is nice and cool, and it’s amazing to be on the water again. 10 months without seeing a big body of water was kind of hard. I was meant to live on the coast. I love the water.

More soon (and this time it will actually be soon. I promise).